Massive fatigue spells

[Snacktime]

I don't understand spells like Master Enslave that list fatigue of 800 or whatnot. How could you ever cast that spell?

I realize 800 fatigue is a strange way to say that you need 8 gems to cast the spell (right?). But you also take the fatigue hit, don't you? In the case of Master Enslave, the spell is also S8, so even if you had an S10 pretender, you'd still be getting 200 fatigue from this spell. or am I misunderstanding? It just seems very hard to understand how some of these spells could be possible.

[NTJedi]

Communion items and/or communion slaves while casting these high spells.

Also lots of extra gems beyond the original casting can be used to reduce fatigue.

These spells are extremely powerful... and thus difficult to cast.

[Snacktime]

When I use gems to cut fatigue in a battlefield spell cast, do the gems help in any other way besides by raising my path by one and thereby lowering fatigue? the book says you can only raise your path by 1 with gems, so that wouldn't really do the trick i don't think.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

From what I hear, here's how an 800 fatigue spell works with an 8 strong magic path, and no communions involved (ideally, you do want a communion, but not everybody has access to that).

Eight gems are spent. The fatigue cost of the spell remains 800, but due to a cap on the effect of spell casting on fatigue, you take only 200 fatigue points of damage and fall asleep. You don't cast any more spells. Any fatigue damage dealt after that point (by chill auras, for instance) goes straight to damage your health. But at the moment, you go to a round 200 and stop there. Recovering 5 a round as you sleep it off. No spell cast by an individual will kill your mage.

A mage leading a communion, however, can push the fatigue of slaves past 200.

The reason for the high fatigue is two fold.

The exact mechanics of spell fatigue must be explained by someone more familiar with the game than i, but this should approximate the situation.

[Jazzepi]

Fatigue works like this.

Your mages can cast ANY SPELL regardless of it's fatigue cost as long as they are at least within one magic level of the spell. If master enslave is S8, and you have an S7 mage, they can cast it once by using a single EXTRA gem in the process. That extra gem is in addition to any of the gems cost to cast the spell in the first place.

Your battle mages can never use gems during the casting process to elevate themselves more than one level. This is not something you have to give a command for, just provide the extra gems in the caster's inventory and they will use them automatically (hopefully).

Note that when you cast a spell with massive fatigue cost, like master enslave at the listed level for the spell, it takes you directly from whatever fatigue you are at to 200. A unit with 99 fatigue can cast master enslave and not die.

Now, if you want to *spam* a spell like master enslave from a single caster you have to do thing differently. You have two options.

1. Get the caster's level in astral magic so high that it makes the cost in fatigue manageable. You can use boosters like ring of wizardy, starshine skullcap, crystal coin, ring of sorcery. You can also cast spells while in combat such as Power of The Spheres, or Light of the Northern Stars.

When you're using this method, for each level above and beyond the spell's required level you divide the fatigue cost by that much.

So, if you are casting master enslave and it requires S8 to simply cast it at 800 fatigue here is the progression on cost reduction.

S9 = 400 fatigue (divide 800/2)
S10 = 266 fatigue (divide 800/3)
S11 = 200 fatigue (divide 800/4)
S12 = 160 fatigue (divide 800/5)
S13 = 133 fatigue (divide 800/6)
S14 = 114 fatigue (divide 800/7)
etc, etc

Magic scales also play a factor in this, with drain increasing the fatigue cost, and magic bonus scales decreasing it. I don't have those numbers in front of me. They are in the instruction book.

In addition to casting spells to boost one's skill in astral magic, you can also use gems to boost the battle mage's skill by one during the act of casting for the explicit reason of fatigue reduction. I do not know how reliable this is, or how the battle mage AI figures out when to use a gem verus when to not use a gem, but I have used it before. Note that by doing this it is possible to use up to an extra +2 gems for any casting of a spell, 1 to raise the level of the caster to make it possible, and 1 to raise the level again to reduce fatigue.

2. Do some tricks with communion slave + communion master. I have no idea how this works, but there is a really good thread on it.

Jazzepi

[Folket]

Jazzepi, a S7 can't cast master enslave since they can only use 7 gems per casting, while they would need 9. One to raise path and 8 to cast.

[Jazzepi]

Is there some hard limit on the # of gems a caster can use during a spell? This is the first I've heard about it if there is.

Jazzepi

[Cor2]

I thought i read somewhere that even when scripted a mage would not cast a spell that would put them above 200 fatigue. Is that not true?

[Jazzepi]

A single spell can't put you over 200 fatigue. Go try it out in a practice game.

Jazzepi

[llamabeast]

Yep, that's not true Cor. To my mind the manual is quite unclear on this stuff.