Mages and scripted spells

[thejeff]

You cannot use more gems in casting a spell than you have in the path of the spell.
You also cannot use more than one more than the gem cost of the spell.
I'd have to check the manual, but I believe it is confusing but not actually wrong.
There was a discussion here a while back that hashed this out. I went into that with the impression that you could use one gem to boost your level to be able to cast the spell, then more to reduce fatigue. I think the manual discusses all of these in separate places, leading to much of the confusion.

[Fate]

I don't think this is in the manual, but I think it was mentioned before that mages will not kill themselves if casting the spell would kill them (due to fatigue).

[Tuidjy]

Casting a spell cannot kill a mage. If he's conscious and meets the requirements,
the mage will cast the spell, and even if his fatigue should rise over 200, it will not.
Furthermore, a mage will use more than one gem over what the spell requires.
The only limiting factor as far as I can tell is the magic path level.

[Yrkoon]

Now I'm all confused again

[llamabeast]

thejeff has it right.

Gem usage:
- Minimum: Gem cost of spell
- Maximum: Gem cost of spell + 1
- Another maximum: Mage's level

Fatigue cannot rise above 200 from spellcasting. A mage cannot damage himself from excess fatigue. Hence very high fatigue costs only really reflect the number of gems required for casting.

Some consequences:
(Required facts:
Imaginary Spell A is A5 and needs 1 A gem
Fog Warriors is A5 and needs 3 A gems
Shimmering Fields is A6 and needs 2 A gems
Imaginary Spell B is A9 and needs 9 A gems)

An A3 mage cannot cast Fog Warriors, as his level cannot be boosted enough. He cannot even cast Imaginary Spell A - there is no way an A3 mage can cast an A5 spell.

An A4 mage can cast Fog Warriors and will need 4 gems (3 for spell + 1 to boost level)

An A4 mage cannot cast Shimmering Fields.

An A5 mage can cast Shimmering Fields with 3 air gems.

An A6 mage can cast Shimmering Fields using either 2 or 3 gems. Using 2 he will get 200 fatigue. Using 3 he will count as a level 7 and will only get 100 fatigue.

An A9 mage can cast Imaginary Spell B. Although the fatigue is listed as 900, he will only take 200 fatigue.

I am reasonably sure of all this. Hope that is helpful.

[thejeff]

Very high fatigue cost also affects how high you need to boost your level to drop the resulting fatigue down below 200.
Imaginary Spell B is probably too extreme, but an A7, 7 gem spell cast by an A10 pretender with 3 boosters= A13 and an extra gem for A14 would be 87 fatigue, so it is possible even for very high gem cost spells.

More commonly it also affects how quickly communion slaves used to cast the big spells die. They are not limited to 200 fatigue.

Also, I'm not sure, but I believe the AI will use an extra gem to reduce fatigue, even if it doesn't get reduced below 200. An A10 mage casting Imaginary spell B would use 10 gems and take 300 fatigue capped to 200.

[sum1lost]

A mage will use more than 1 more than the gem cost to cast a spell, but not to increase caster level.