casting spells with gems

[Bananadine]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

Your question is all "explained" on p.89. Having said that, I find the example there confusing. They say an Astral 2 guy can use 2 gems, 1 to boost to Astral 3 to cast the spell and another 1 to reduce fatigue. That's 4. I don't get how that jells with "a mage can only use as many gems as his current skill level in that path", because it seems to me he's using one more than that, whichever way you look at it....

The spell in the example is Astral Fires, which uses no gems by default. So an S3 mage (well, F1S3 or whatever) could cast it without gems. The mage in the example has one less astral skill level so he MUST spend at least one gem to cast it (barring external boost due to items etc.). He can spend one additional gem to reduce fatigue. Those are the "2 gems" you mention--you're counting them twice to get to four.

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by Bananadine

The spell in the example is Astral Fires, which uses no gems by default.

So sorry, I guessed this after I posted. I mis-read the example as a base-2-gem spell, my bad. Yes, thank you, now it all makes sense.