[PhilD]

Originally posted by incognito:
Greater than 200 fatigue and you lose hit points? Does that mean a mage who casts a 700 fatigue battle enchantment, for example, is sacrificing himself?

There are actually three ways of taking less fatigue than printed in the spell description:

* having a higher magic level than required: for each additional level, the fatigue is divided (so if you cast a spell requiring Death 4, and you are Death 6, the spell fatigue will divided by 3 [1 base, +2 bonus levels]

* spending a gem to "power" the spell will let you cast it as if you were 1 level higher - both for reaching the required level, and to take less fatigue. I think it's limited to 1 gem for each spell.

* if you have a Communion [Sabbath (Blood) or Communion (Astral)]: each time a Master casts a spell, the fatigue is divided evenly among himself and all the Slaves. The number of Slaves also determines a bonus to all paths that each Master gets (2 Slaves: +1; 4 Slaves: +2; 8 Slaves: +3, etc.), but while this will decrease the fatigue for the master, most of the time the Slaves will be low-level and will take their full part of the fatigue.

So, imagine you want to cast Master Enslave, the highest Fatigue level spell in the game (800, Astral 8). If you have an Astral 6 Master and 4 Astral 1 Slaves, the Master is effectively Astral 8, so if he casts the spell with "only" 8 gems (the minimum), each of the 5 participants will take 160 (800/5) fatigue (plus encunbrance). They will all pass out, and if another Master starts casting as well, the Slaves are quite likely to go over 200 Fatigue and start dying.

Now, if you have the same Astral 6 Master, plus 8 Slaves, and the Master spends 9 gems (1 additional), he will be Astral 10 for the casting, so, while each Slave will take 800/9=89 Fatigue, he will only take (800/3)/9=30 Fatigue (as a result, he could go on casting spells... potentially killing the Slaves...)