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Old February 11th, 2004, 10:32 PM

Chris Byler Chris Byler is offline
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Default Re: Battle: coloured lines under unit icon

Quote:
Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
quote:
Originally posted by PhilD:
* 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.
One gem per skill level actually. An astral 8 mage can cast master enslave with no communicants by spending enough extra astral pearls.
Only the first gem (above the required gem cost if any) increases power of the spell. The others only reduce fatigue.

As an example, suppose an Anathemant Dragon (Fire-3) wishes to cast Heat from Hell (Ench 6 Fire 4, fatigue 200-, magic gems required 2). He must spend at least 3 gems to cast it at all (two for the required gem cost, and one more because he is not normally powerful enough to cast it). If he spends only 3 gems, he pays the full 200 fatigue plus his encumbrance, passing out and probably taking damage.

If he spends 4 gems, the spell takes effect at only 4 levels of power, but he now pays only 100 encumbrance because his level *for fatigue purposes only* is 5. Spending 5 gems will reduce his fatigue to 67. He cannot spend 6 gems - the maximum is 2 (required gem cost) + 3 (the Anathemant's power in fire).

Now suppose Asmodeus the Moloch, with Fire 8, wants to cast the same spell. He must spend a minimum of 2 gems, which will give him a fatigue of 40 (200 / 1 + 4 extra levels). One extra gem (three total) would raise the spell's effective power to level 9 and reduce his fatigue to 33 (200 / 1+5), two extra gems would still be power level 9 but fatigue would decrease to 28, etc. He could spend up to 8 extra gems (for a total of 10), which would raise his power level to 9 but his fatigue reduction level to 16, making his fatigue 200/(1+12) or about 15 (plus encumbrance).

If an Astral 9 Monolith casts Master Enslave (Astral 8, 800- fatigue, 8 gems required), spending the maximum possible total gems of 17, it would cast the spell at effective power level 10 (fatigue reduction level 18) and pay a fatigue cost of 800/(1+10)=73. Of course, after you cast Master Enslave it's not very likely that you will need to do much else.
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People do not like to be permanently transformed and would probably revolt against masters that tried to curse them with iron bodies.
Pigs, on the other hand, are not bothered, or at least they don't complain.
-- Dominions II spell manual
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