Magic Duel question

[Viajero]

Posted this in another thread but maybe lost down teh list of posts, so thought to ask in a separate nte:

Magic Duel is 100 fatigue (1 S gem required) and Returning is 200 fatigue (2 S gem required), both S1 spells.

Assuming you have a mage with S2 scripted to first Magic Duel then Returning with just 3 S gems , can he cast both from a fatigue point of view? or does fatigue after Magic Duel (fatigue 100 / (1+2-1) = 50 ) need to be recovered down to zero before being able to cast Returning?

Can he do it if he carries 4 gems?

[Sombre]

He should be able to do it with 3 gems in 2 rounds.

[Fate]

I think I read once (but have not confirmed myself) that any spell with over 100 fatigue will have the fatigue capped at 100 for the *Caster only*. So in communion, the slaves need to deal with the full fatigue of the spell, but the caster never need kill themselves casting a spell.

Which means in your case, the mage *should* be able to cast Magic Duel (50 fatigue) and then returning (to bring it up to 150 fatigue before they actually return).

In practice the AI might decide to use extra gems to reduce the fatigue from Magic Duel (spend another gem gives only 25) only to suddenly realize they don't have enough for returning (the AI does not think ahead when spending gems). So if you want a guarantee consider giving your mage 4 astral gems (or testing it beforehand).

[Sombre]

Yeah that's true. I've had the AI, with an S3 caster, use an extra gem to cast power of the spheres. Sometimes it's just really anti-fatigue.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Fate

I think I read once (but have not confirmed myself) that any spell with over 100 fatigue will have the fatigue capped at 100 for the *Caster only*. So in communion, the slaves need to deal with the full fatigue of the spell, but the caster never need kill themselves casting a spell.

The first part is definitely not true--a spellcaster can take 200 fatigue from a single spell. It happens to me every time I cast Master Enslave.

I've played around with testing fatigue in communions, and I'm somewhat sure the slave fatigue is also capped at 200, but I don't remember explicitly testing it. I just seem to remember slaves taking full fatigue being one of the subjects of discussion at the time (although the main focus was on whether fatigue from a single spell was really capped at 200 or whether the caster would just refuse to cast a spell that would cost more than 200 fatigue), and I also remember being pretty sure after the testing was over that you could cast one spell without putting master or slaves over 200 fatigue, no matter how much fatigue the caster is supposed to take--fatigue-to-HP-damage conversion doesn't take place unless you're already at 200 fatigue.

-Max