Battle: coloured lines under unit icon

[Wendigo]

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?

The mage will not cast the spell.
To cast a spell with over>200 fatigue you need to have a much higher proficiency than the required in the magic path (so that you get a fatigue reduction), use gems to reduce fatigue or lead a communion so that you drain your comunicants instead of yourself.

The mage will not purposefully suicide, this applies also to spells that cause less than 200 fatigue but would take the mage over 200 fatigue when already fatigued. The mage is not so careful about the lives of his communion slaves, the bastard.

[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...)

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by Gateway103:
Hmm... I distinctively recall Kristoffer said that at Fatigue > 200, the unit dies...

-Gateway103

No, I've seen it myself, it does not die instantly. It does lose hit points. Of course, it will eventually die from it

The easiest way to do it is to setup a communion, and have your master cast some very high fatigue spells. The slaves take the fatigue, and can easily go over 200 and start losing hit points.

Actually this is not entirely accurate. They take damage and accrue afflictions as well.

If you can save them in time (the master's stop casting spells, Relief/Reinvigoration is cast, etc) they will just wander around crippled and feebleminded.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Gateway103:
Hmm... I distinctively recall Kristoffer said that at Fatigue > 200, the unit dies...

-Gateway103

That's a generalization. Normal units that become that fatigued will take damage and die rapidly. I've seen some lifeless and undead units easily survive going up to some 800 fatigue totally unscathed and locking up battles in limbo-land until the autokill limit because they couldn't recover in time.

[Graeme Dice]

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.

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Gateway103:
Hmm... I distinctively recall Kristoffer said that at Fatigue > 200, the unit dies...

-Gateway103

Are you sure?

IIRC troops will take a few points of damage every time a 200 fatigue unit is fatigued again. A 7 gem spell will only increase fatigue to 200.

[ February 11, 2004, 15:31: Message edited by: Kristoffer O ]