Actually, I would love to see the same open-ended d6's used with astral duel that are used elsewhere. That would make astral risky for everyone, but there is, I'm sure, a reason why the devs decided not to use open ended dice here.
From what I've heard, it's your astral plus 1d6.
You: 6
Them: 1
If you roll 1 and they roll 6. (1/36 chance), then you both die. This isn't even a less than 1% chance regarding what occurred.
I find that the computer rarely forces an astral duel. So I try to avoid them unless I'm attacking something a lot more valuable than what I'm risking or have a great chance of success.
I've found those astral-2 merc magi quite useful against AIs that put astral 1 or 2 on their pretenders.
