Sorcerer spell grades in normal mode (all)

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JT, is there some reason that you are repeating your list/comments within a CODE block and outside of one?

 

There are two ways to answer this:
1. Let the required roll to save be 2. Then the chance of the target failing both saving throws without debuff is 1-0.95*0.95=0.0975. The chance of the target failing one saving throw while debuffed is 1-0.85=0.15. Regardless of what your concept of "far better" is, 0.0975 is not that when compared to 0.15.
2. This is the actual discussion. The other is just for show. For the moment, we'll ignore direct damage spells and consider only effects.
a. Success rate: Lets consider compare the two success rates. Let x be the chance of failure of a spell. Then the chance of failure of two casts is x^2, and the chance of failure of one cast with Malison is x-0.1. Consider the difference, x^2-x+0.1. This has a minimum at 0.5 and has the value -0.15. It's 60% vs. 75%. It is negative from ~0.13 to ~0.87 and positive otherwise. This is assuming two casters with precisely equal DC, which is the ostrich treatment. Suppose, then, that we have two casters, one of which has GSF: Enchantment, and the other has no focus. Then, the chance of failure of two casts is x*(x+0.2), whereas one cast+Malison is still x-0.1. Then the comparison between the two is x^2-0.8x+0.1. This has a minimum at 0.4 and has value -0.05 and is negative only from 0.16 to 0.66--it's losing half the time and winning half the time.
b. Cost: Consider 3x Symbol of Hopelessness vs. Malison+Emotion: Despair+Symbol of Hopelessness. The cost of casting two L4 spells and one L8 spell is obviously much lower.
c. Versatility: Even when comparing cost of 3x lower level debuff spells to Malison+Emotion: Despair+debuff, there is the cost of having the other caster devoting spell slots to the debuff. For example, committing a cleric to memorize 3x as many Hold Persons as with Malison+Emotion: Despair is a bad strategy.
d. Speed: This is a natural concern raised by b and c. How fast those 3x spells can be cast is limited by the number of casters who know the spell. Consider CL15 casters, then only the cleric can use Symbol of Hopelessness. You will need 3 rounds to pull off 3 Symbols as opposed to 1 round with Malison+Emotion: Despair+Symbol.

F? Anything less than a B is ludicrous. I, of course, still find Malison to be an A grade spell.

There are a number of enemies immune to Dominate Person but not Feeblemind: Harshom's War Bears, all half-dragons, histachiis, Isair, Madae, and probably other boss/demon type enemies that I missed. Only the Guardian and the Lost Followers are immune to Feeblemind.

[ January 26, 2007, 04:04: Message edited by: Mokona=Modoki ]

 

Mokona=Modoki is right about Malison, but goes into it too much for me to read!
Put simply, it increases the chances of an enemy's saving throw failing by 10%.
In other words, if you use the cheese tactic of Disintegrate against the Guardian:
If the chance of success is 10% (around the average in normal mode - after casting Lower Resistance twice for a 13th level caster), then you have to cast it 10 times (on average) for Disintegrate to work.
Casting Malison cuts it down to 5 times or 20%.

4-6 Opinions:

Beltyn's Burning Blood - C (A in the hands of the enemy - this spell really annoys me in the Ice Temple in HoF mode)
Feeblemind - C
Shroud of Flame - C (decent when a group of enemies is webbed)

All other 4th-5th level spells I agree with JT, rather than Mokona=Modoki.

Level 6 (based on Mokona=Modoki's thoughts):
Acid Storm - C+: highest acid damage spell and ONLY acid-based Evocation spell
Chain Lightning - C+: highest electricty damage (arcane) spell. Great against Driders.
Otiluke's Freezing Sphere - C+: highest cold damage spell, but only affects one target
Power Word: Silence - F (B against spellcasters)
Tensor's Transformation - B: more DEX and STR than Bull's Strength and Cat's Grace, up to 180 extra hit points, +4 generic AC, at least +5 to hit and +5 Fortitude saves! (A+ in the hands of a melee-based caster)

 

@Mokona=Modoki: The main reason why I gave those debuffing spells (Malison, Emotion Despair) an F is that they give such a small benefit.

An example: If you cast 10 times a "malison" + "dominate person" combo you'll only experience a difference once or even less average. Having to cast 10 malisons just to get 1 single extra success with "dominate person" just isn't worth it.

With mass affecting spells the effect is a little better, but when only one additional member of the targeted group of 5 enemies is affected and this only every second attempt it's still not worth wasting a sorcerer known spell slot and time he could use doing something else.

The superiority of casting twice in a row was only one aspect to show how crappy this spell is but stays true nevertheless.


You made some errors in your posting. Your calculations are quite correct but this doesn't help if your assumptions and conclusions aren't.

First let me make clear how saving throws work in 3E games like in IWD2. Enemies don't just get a fixed value between 2 and 20 they have to reach with a d20 roll in order to shrug off a spell like it usually worked with the older D&D rules (+- little spell specific additions).

In 3E the calculation of what's required to save vs a spells is far more complicated: It depends on the victim's save bonus (VSB), but also on the spell's DC (SDC) which depends like spell level, the caster's stats, spell focus, ...
"SDC - VSB" isn't just a simple value between 1 and 20, it can be far lower than 0 or far higher than 20. Some values will be more often than others during the game. But no matter what the difference, a natural 1 will always fail and a natural 20 will always succeed. The required roll to save (RRS) is therefore SDC-VSB capped at the edges 2 and 20.

Now to your post:

The target doesn't have to fail "both" saving throws to be toast, failing "one of both" is enough to get toasted. But this is obviously only a typing error, the logic error follows afterwards.

If the required roll to save is 2, you cannot conclude that SDC-VSB is 2, you can only conclude that the result is 2 or lower, it's not very likely that it's exactly 2. And if SDC-VSB isn't 2 , the chance of the target failing one saving throw while debuffed isn't increased to 0.15. If SDC-VSB is 0 or lower a -2 penalty is useless, the spell is wasted for nothing.

The success chances at low values are only higher if SDC-VSB just happens to be 1,2 or 3 (whereas the difference is minimal at 1 or 3), but the monsters don't have signs describing SDC-VSB against the different caster/spell combos printed onto their forehead, even small things like the difference between a lucky and unlucky eagle's splendor will let you leave this range.

The information you get about SDC(unless you want to spend minutes calculating) and VSB(do you want to spend time learning them ?) during the game is limited.
Therefore it's always better to assume that casting the same spell twice will yield better chances for success than debuffing first.


That was for the "show". Now to the "actual" discussion:

~0.11 to ~0.89 would be more precise than ~0.13 to ~0.87, but this doesn't matter much.

Your mathematical model simplifies a lot. Some things you omitted in order to simplify:

- SDC-VSB has a bigger range than 1-20.
- Not all values for SDC-VSB appear equally often.
- the treatment of criticals.

But this doesn't mean that you cannot get something somewhat close to reality, but I have to comment your last concluding sentence. If x is lower than 0.16 you have a chance to succeed of 85 percent or higher with casting the spell directly (victim gets a d20 roll), in this case casting a debuff beforehand doesn't make sense.
If you also consider that omitting the critical treatment made the area near 0 and 1 more important the 50 percent you got for your special situation of having another arcane caster with GSF enchantment while your sorc doesn't have it will shrink even more.

According to the manual Emotion:despair allows a saving throw, so you might not get as much as you want with the M+E+S combo, 2 SoH will already yield a better result.
Without debuffing chances are high that you'll get the desired effect after the first cast of SoH and can stop thereafter while you'll have to cast at least 3 spells with the combo. A simple chaos spell will usually help more than the debuffing.


About costs:

Level 4 includes the very powerful spells "stoneskin", "improved invisibility" and "emotion: hope", so you need 12 level 4 spells including in order to protect your standard party perfectly.
You just can't cast enough of those spells.
Level4 spells are therefore very valuable for the sorc, more valuable than level 5 spells for example. Sorcs with decent cha always get at least 4 spells of a new spell level when they reach it, so high level spells aren't very rare for them.

Like already mentioned, you don't need to cast three spells in a row to get better results than with your combo, casting the spells without debuffs usually yields the same results.
SoH has a faster casting time than the debuffs, so you get your result faster.

You're always assuming that you have another wizard (or sorc) in the party. For the direct combo it doesn't matter who casts "malison" or "emotion:despair", since the secondary wizard can scribe "malison" you need the sorc only for "emotion:despair", a spell which reduces saving throws only if a will save is failed according to the manual. Enemies who you want to have lower will saves will usually save against this spell.

 

Wow, that's a lot of detail, kmonster.

I won't diss Malison, but I never bother using it. Oh, I suppose that it might be worth the trouble if I was trying to weaken an uberstrong single target like the Guardian. But my experience is that when using a area effect effect spell against a mob of enemies, you'll always get a pretty fair return for the "value" of your spell. And if the spell is a Will save based spell, you'll do quite well, since when you're talking about "mobs" of enemies, those mobs are almost always going to be made up of tank-ish monsters who will not have good Will saves. Maybe if you were trying to hit a mob of clerics with a Chaos spell, you might get a lot of successful saves. But when you're facing a lot of big, dumb, ol' tanks, you're likely to be getting more failed saves and lots of tanks effected by your enchantment spell.

Beyond this point, I've never really worried all that much about the enemy's saving throws. I just cast my spells and let fate handle the rest.


I suppose if you're playing a party with a couple of nuking mages, it wouldn't hurt to cast a Malison or an Emotion Despair at a mob of enemies in preperation of the other mage's spell. But since I rarely play parties with more than one mage, I don't worry about it.

Interesting thread. JT, let the commentaries continue!!!

 

Very interesting description. Here is one conclusion drawn from what you wrote: Enemies have some number from 2-20 that he must reach on a d20 in order to make a saving throw.

There are two problems here. The first is that the first quotation and the first clause of the second quotation are contradictory. The second is that both DC and SB can be exactly determined. It follows that DC-SB can be exactly determined.

Taking into account DC-SB range, however, increases the advantageous values for GSF treatment. Since you brought both up, factor in both then report your conclusions, stating precisely the assumptions in each case. Until then, the simplified model remains a good approximation.

That is the number for a party of 6. It is obvious that there are well more than 12 arcane spells if the party has 2 sorcerers and a wizard. If the party is limited to one sorcerer, however, then he requires 5-N L3 spells, where N is the number of Robe of the ? Archmagi that can be worn by the party for Ghost Armor, and a number of L2 spells, along with at least one L6 spell. A cleric needs 6 L2 spells. He will also need at least one L8 spell for Holy Aura. If we assume 1 sorcerer for a "standard" party and "perfect" protection, then the sorcerer will have no debuff spells besides L5 and SoH (which doesn't get any focus bonus). Obviously we do not assume that every character in the party has all buffs.

The results, outside of what actually happens during a battle, is a probability. Unless M+E does not change the required roll for the enemies to make a save, one cast of a spell will obviously yield worse results. This is true of two casts of a spell as well.

I assumed no such thing: 1. Bards can cast Malison and E: Despair as their L3 spell. 2. The topic explicitly assumes that the party has a cleric. Assume that the sorcerer is the only arcane caster in the party and make a speed comparison; you will come to the same conclusion.

[edit]Ah yes, crucis, your mention of nuking spells reminded me of a point I missed earlier:
Return: Malison and Emotion: Despair affect saving throws for any number of spells that require saving throws cast within their duration, whereas multiple castings of a single spell only affect that particular spell. Web, Stinking Cloud, Grease, Slow, Bane, etc.

[ January 27, 2007, 02:47: Message edited by: Mokona=Modoki ]

 

One minor point to make about Emotion Despair vs. malison is that it also reduces the affected targets' to hit and damage rolls by 2. Not huge, but it's there nonetheless.

Mokona, your point regarding malison and Despair vis-a-vis enduring spells is a good one. And I suppose particularly in HOF, it would be a very useful thing to have your enemies' saving throws reduced by a smidge when you're creating a big nasty kill zone with a combo of spells like Grease, Web, Entangle, Stinking Cloud, Acid Fog, Spike Stones, Firey Cloud, Cloudkill, and so forth. Think of it. If you've created a kill zone with a bunch of those spells, there are going to be LOTS of saving throws being required for evading the various effects or taking half damage, etc. And when you have a bunch of characters in that kill zone, the number further increases. I think that a pretty decent argument can be made that adding a Malison to the kill zone combo isn't a bad thing at all with that many spells and saving throws in play.

Something else to remember in relation to kills zones, is that in normal mode, the spell durations aren't going to be as long, but the enemies will be dying faster. But in HOF, with the monsters having so many more HP, it really pays big time to keep the monsters stuck in the kill zones as long as possible. That's one reason that using undead or elementals as magnets in the middle of a kill zone works so well. But adding a Malison, which BTW has a duration of 2 rounds/level, can't hurt either. And I'd add it relatively early to the kill zone to get the benefit asap.


Getting a smidge off topic, one of the best places that I found for setting up a truly nasty, nasty kill zone in HOF was on the 2nd level of the goblin warrens after you've defeated the baddies that great you at the entrance. All those baddies in the tunnel to the right can be a pain, but I found that setting up a grease/web combo first, then using a character with freedom of movement to lure them into the area, then hitting that are with every other nasty kill zone spell ends up creating the kill zone from the Nine Hells. The tunnel is narrow enough that grease covers it completely. And the baddies just keep on trying to bull their way thru.

I suppose in a PnP game, the DM would have the monsters not be quite so dumb. But in a Crpg, those dummies just keep on charging into the mouth of hell and kill zone chews'em up and swallows'em whole. My tanks usually just wielding their favorite ranged weapons and target either the weakest or any target that is about to or has managed to get thru the kill zone. Of course, any enemy that actually has managed to survive my kill zone from hell, is probably a near-death wreck by the time they've gotten to the my side of it.


Some people may not have the patience to use my kill zone techniques in HOF, but they are a decent alternative to constantly using mobs of summons or constantly using Wail of the Banshee to nuke every enemy that dares to approach.

And, yes, you can use them in normal mode. It just takes a while before you've managed to build up enough of an arcane arsenal to create a worthy kill zone.

 

Responses to various comments:


@TrueBlueAussie:

Magic Missile maxes out at 5d4+5, = 17.5 average. This is about the same damage you could deal out each round with a good bow once your BAB hits +6, except that the bow misses sometimes, and magic missile never does. Good point about the multiple chances to disrupt.

Sleep affects (average) 5HD of monsers per casting. And it doesn't kill them. And it is worthless after chapter one. Better to simply pump AC on one guy enough to let him tank a handful of 1HD critters.

Cat's Grace: Unfortunately, in IWD2 the heavy armors are junk. In fact pretty much all the armors are junk. The path to good AC starts with max DEX, Cat's Grace, and Mage Armor. Cast's Grace lasts all day and the Dex increase directly boosts AC and Reflex saves. 50% chance of a +4/+5 bonus, increased to 75% if you cast Luck first. The game provides essentially no Dex booster items in normal.


@crucis:

Grease: 1/4 the area of Skull Trap, which is already annoyingly small at times.

PFE vs PFECircle: First level slot vs third level slot, both last 10r/level. Use PFE on the tank(s) in ordinary battles, and PFECircle on the whole party before the really big ones.

Web: The enemies that make their Reflex saves will zip on through your magical kill zone. FYI, Web/Slow/etc aren't the only way to set up a kill zone; DG tank and/or Animate Dead work well also.

Flame Arrow: I rated it so low because at 3rd level the standard is 1d6/level to *everybody*, not just one target. In fact, 3/4 of the time it will even be less than that amount. When hitting just one target is important, a carefully aimed Lightning Bolt or Skull Trap will get the job done.

And, "The only way I could get the table to line up was with the CODE tag, but unfortunately that uses a tiny font. So here it is twice, and read whichever looks better to you. Sorry."


@Da Rock: The problem with the Death Armor "combo" is the crap damage it deals. Ditto for Red and Blue Fire Shields.


@Ulfgar Prigor:

Ray of Enfeeblement: Thanks for the correction. BUT is there any target where Orb isn't a strictly better choice?

Identify: If you ignore Knowledge:Arcana, you'll have to rest constantly for enough ID spells, or go bankrupt at the stores, or use the BOH bug. So realistically somebody is going to invest at least a little in K:A, and the ID spell will be a backup. The amount you invest in K:A will determine just how often ID gets used.


@Mokona=Modoki (no offense, but is your name a typo?):

Charm Person remains useful so long as there are humanoids. Great vs barbarians.

Pro:Evil: Huh? It lasts 1 minute/level according to the manual.

Eagle's Splendor: Thanks for the correction. That boosts it to an "A" in my opinion.

Sleep/Burning Hands: I don't have much patience with the chapter-one-only spells.

Shield: Too bad it's caster-only.

Beltyn's Burning Blood: Never thought of the anti-caster angle. But it gets a save *every round*.

Confusion: Only 3 less DC than Chaos, not 5. At least according to the manual.

Cone of Cold: Why the hate? Move over to the flank, or stand behind a boneguard, and blast away. There are a lot of cold resistant enemies, but most aren't.

Protection from Electricity: *Really?*

How do you know that about Feeblemind vs Dominate Person? Anyway, most of those monsters you listed can't spellcast, or aren't worth feebleminding. The only really nasty ones are I+M, and by the time you get a Feeblemind to stick on them, they will be done buffing and ready to kick your ass, so you might as well just throw Skull Traps at them.


The Malison debate: People aren't looking at this properly. If you compare compare Malison + X to X + X, Malison probably looks bad; instead compare Malison + X + X + X + Y + Z to X + X + X + X + Y + Z, and you'll see the power. For example, lead with Malison then throw down many Fireballs or Chromatic Orbs.


Sorcerers in general, how many to have: I try to make these ratings just as valid for a party with one sorc as for a party with five sorcs, but I will say that (within limits), the more sorcs you have the more powerful your party is. This is true even in normal. For example, build a party of Clr + Sor + X + Y, where X and Y are anything you like, just not high level sorc/wiz/cleric/druid. Then compare it to a party of Clr + Sor + Sor + AC Tank...

Levels 6-9 coming later (even though level 9 spells not really relevant in normal without squatting)

 

It's usually been big enough for me (grease, that is). And I *LIKE* the fact that Skull Trap's area is smaller than Fireball. It makes it easier to use in proximity to your party. There are plenty of other AoE spells with huge AoE's. It's nice to have one with a smaller one for situations where smaller is better.

Aside from the fact that I almost never take PfE or PfECircle with any mage, I just use PFEC most of the time after a certain point because its duration becomes so long that I can cast it before entering a new area without worrying abut whether I'm going to be beginning a buff-wrthy big battle or not.

That's why adding in Grease and/or Entangle is a nice thing. Spike Growth is good for this purpose as well. I have no problem with using summons as targets in the middle of a kill zone, but it does help to use ones that are immune to your primary damaging spell (i.e. AD for Cloudkill or Fire Elementals for Firey Cloud).

And yes, the occasional monster will leak thru a kill zone. Big deal. I don't require perfection. If my kill zone can stop and kill 90% of the incoming mob, I'm happy. Frankly, it usually takes care of more than 90%. It takes one incredibly lucky monster to get thru a Grease/Web combo, particularly if you add in Acid Fog, or Entangle, or even a Symbol of Hopelessness. Add in enough immobilizing spells and there's almost no way that any monster will just zip right thru unless he's wearing a Freedom of Movement item.

That's the thing, isn't it. If you use a Skull Trap, you have to "carefully aim". And even then, it's no guarantee. Oh, sure, you can put it well in front and just let the baddy walk into it. But sometimes, you don't have enough lead time to catch the baddy when he's coming towards you, if you want the Skull Trap to not be right on top of your party. Flame Arrow, being a single target attack spell, takes that entire calculation out of the equation. Just target and cast it, and be done with it.

And as I've said, I'm not fond of Lightning Bolt, since it requires that I move my mage to the front of my party so that I don't accidently zap a party member.

And indeed yes, by 3rd level most of the AoE spells are 1d6/level. But there are simply times when you want to target a single enemy without placing others in close proximity at risk.

Sorry, must have missed that. My bad.

 

Added 6th level spells to the first post.


Could someone who knows how to find these things out write up a spoiler for the elementals? I'd especially like to know their resistances and damage.

 

Shades/(greater) shadow conjuration are quite useful since they become stronger and in the last chapter in normal they end up being able to take much pain. Should be a C to them all.

Cone of cold is quite useful. I for one use it a lot, but it's not an incredible spell so it shouldn't be A+, just A or A-. It's not too easy to use, although I don't find it too hard either. I usually see chaos being a slightly better spell in that spell lvl. All other A+ spells are spells you almost can't live without.

Mass haste OTOH is a spell that really makes a difference to the outcome of a battle. Even the few times when I lvl-squatted I had to stop squatting at lvl 12 just to get it. It should really be an A+. It's probably the 4th best spell in the game regardless of spell lvl (the others being WotB, symbol of hoplessness and mass dominate).

 

Evil Protection spells: You can read about spell durations in terms of rounds in Da Rock's miniguide. If you are curious as to how long a particular spell lasts but don't want to use a hex editor, you can use Near Infinity instead. One of the rows is how long a spell lasts in rounds. The divine and arcane versions are different. The cleric version's description says it lasts 1 min/level, which is 3 rounds. The arcane version says it lasts 2 rounds/level. Magic Circle says it lasts 10 rounds/level. These descriptions match the value given in the .spl file as loaded by Near Infinity. They are not the same.

Feeblemind: Feebleminded enemies do nothing at all, regardless of whether they are fighters or casters. It's temporarily removing the enemy from the fight. All the enemies that are immune to Dominate are also immune to Charm, and there are some additional enemies that can't be Charmed but can be Dominated (but you'd want to Dominate them instead of Feebleminding them).

Confusion: It's a L4 spell with no saving throw penalty. Chaos is a L5 spell (+1 DC) with +4 saving throw penalty. That's effectively a 5 difference in DC unless the penalty actually affects the roll, which I don't think is the case.

Mass Haste: Yes, the spell is incredible and a must have for every party, but since it's a mass buff with a respectable duration, I don't think it's necessary to have a copy for every sorcerer in the party (at least until you run out of good L6 spells to take, which isn't that hard).

Elemental resistances:
Air: 20 cold, 10 electricity
Fire: 100 fire
Earth: none
Water: 100 fire
They also have some magic [element] resistances, but I don't know if anything actually does those kind of damage. Air has 10 magic cold resistance, and Fire has -128 magic fire resistance. The damage from your spells belong to the normal elemental damage types. The fire elemental has a fire weapon whereas the water elemental has a blunt weapon, I believe.

@JT:
My name is not a misspelling. It's the name of a character from the series Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle.

[ January 27, 2007, 02:16: Message edited by: Mokona=Modoki ]

 

I know it's not an arcane spell, but I like to think that Greater Command is one of the uber-great spells in the game. With a casting time of 1, it's a great spell to cast when you're in a hurry. (Holy Word is also a great, fast casting spell, but some party members may be non-good and thus can be affected by your own spell.)

Such fast spells like these are really useful in ambush situations. You may not be able to temporarily disable all of your enemies, but even if you disable a good portion of them, you've increased your chances of survival and victory greatly.

 

In ambush situations mirror image is the spell to use. It gives enough time to cast some other offensive or defensive spells (like invisibility circle) so you can move away and start over.

 

Bah! My prefered tactic in an ambush situation is a quick casting of Holy Word or Greater Command to temporarily stun the enemy. Then I can either move to better ground, withdraw, or go on the offensive.

 

@Mudde:

Here are the monsters you get from the Shades tree:
C. Level | Summons
---------|---------------------------------------------------------------
7-11 | Salamander (Summon Monster 5), Yeti (SM 5)
12-16 | Cyclops (SM 8), Scrag (SM 7), Umber Hulk (SM 6)
17-21 | Frost Giant (SM 9), Greater Werewolf (SM 9), Red Abishai (SM 8)
22-26 | Greater Feyr (SM 9), Remorhaz (SM 9)
27-30 | Cornugon (Cacofiend 7), Glabrezu (Summon Fiend 8)

You won't be XL17 until almost the very end. And they'll have only 20-60% of normal HP.

Cone of Cold: The + and - indicate how many of your sorcs should get the spell. IMO you should pretty much give Cone to all of them just so they'll have the option of casting it when needed. I guess it isn't *too* important, but a sorc without it or Chaos is going to often end the day with unused 5th level slots.


@Mokona=Modoki

Feeblemind: Really! Nice. I'll have to test that. Do they fight back when attacked? Do you get the helpless enemy bonus?

Confusion: According to the description, it has a penalty of 2 to the save.

Elemental resistances: Don't they have physical resistances? It seems to me the Air Elemenal lasts forever in combat. Maybe it just has good AC...


Added 7th-9th spells to the first post.

 

Aymbol of hopelessness should be an A. Even though it can't be helpen by GSF feats it usually takes out most enemies in normal mode in just one casting. I find it a lot more useful than anything else in that spell lvl. Horrid wilting is good, but not spectacular. Symbol of hoplessness is.

 

Confusion: The manual is describing SPPR709. That spell has cast speed 10 and a +2 save penalty. However, there is no way to cast this spell as far as I know. The spell that sorcerers, wizards, and bards have is SPWI401, which has cast speed 4 and 0 save penalty.

Gate (Conjuration)--*D- Look at the list of L9 priest spells. Then, look at the list of L9 sorcerer spells. Now try to say that you want a sorcerer to cast this spell in any situation except the most dire emergency with a straight face.

[ January 27, 2007, 21:43: Message edited by: Mokona=Modoki ]

 

I agree with M=M. Gate is at most a *D spell. I've never had a sorc use it and probably wouldn't even in a party without a cleric. The clerics are forced to use Gate since SM9 is a bit worse.

 

@Mokona=Modoki
I'll answer to your statements from your post directed at me one after another without quoting.

1) Your conclusion is right but can be misunderstood. Keep in mind that neither SDC nor VSB are static, so RRS isn't static either.

2)DC and SB can be obtained, but who does it ? You ?
I never heard of someone thinking like "If I cast chaos at this monster it will need to roll a natural 7 to save." during the game.
It would have been been better and less space-consuming quoting both phrases together with the explaining sentence you omitted between them instead of quoting the 2 phrases around this sentence in the wrong order.


3) You turned the integer function into real function in order to be able to calculate the characteristics, but you didn't go back to the integers afterwards. Looking at the edges is a must afterwards since you were calculating with negative probabilities. (If x is 0.05 the chance for a spell to fail with malison isn't 0.05-0.1 for example, it's still 0.05.)
We are working with integers, so looking at the high or low values at the edges seperately isn't a problem.
I'll translate your real values back to integers for you.

The x range between .16 and .66 (which is the range from 0.2 to 0.65 since x has 0.05 steps) can be translated to a RRS (against the sorc spell) range from 8 to 17, the opposite is RRS 2-7 and 18-20 where malison+spell could yield better success chances.
But if RRS against the sorc spell is 18-20 it is 20 against the spell from the difficulty +4 partner and doesn't improve with malison, so casting the spell twice has in fact better chances for success. (The discrepance comes from the fact that you ignored that the chances for a spell to fail cannot be lower than 0.05 and even allowed -0.15.)
RRS 2 means SDC-VSB is 2 or lower, and if SDC-VSB is low enough, malison becomes uaseless.
So even in you constructed case you have only better chances for success with malison if the the victim's RRS is 3-7 opposite to 8-20 whereas 2 can work both ways, that's far away from 50 percent I'd say.

But this specially constructed case doesn't deserve so much attention anyway. It rather looks like an attempt to hide the results you got in the general case by constructing a special case where the odds might be more in favour to you and giving this case more attention. (common rhetorical method)

Your calculation for the comparison of casting the spell twice in a row instead of malison first is the important one.
You calculated that M+spell is better if x is outside 0.13 to 0.87 (0.11 to 0.89 to be more precise) range, that's only when RRS is 2,3 or 19,20. But like in your special case 2 can work both ways again and at 19,20 casting the spell twice yields better chances for success how you'll find out with manual recalculation.
So you have the result of malison being better unless RRS is 3 or sometimes if RRS 2 whereas casting twice yields better results at all the other RRS (4-20, 2 partial) values.
Very disappointing.


4) This doesn't change the fact that the level 4 sorc buffs are extremely powerful and using them will make the game considerably easier, more than saving a spell for malison.

5)One cast of a spell won't obviously yield a worse result, like I already made an example in my first post. Casting M+S (a spell like dominate person) will only yield a better result in about 1 of 10 attempts, and this only if SDC-VSB isn't out of the borders.
E even allows a save, so even both spells won't affect 2 of 10 attempts.
So the correct sentence must be:

"Obviously one cast of a spell will yield the same result as M+E+S nearly all the time."

If you use mass effect spells for enemy hordes the numbers are somewhat better, but you'll still have to be lucky to get one additonal enemy affected.
2 SoH will nearly always yield better results than M+E+SoH.

6)This doesn't change what I concluded about situations with several arcane casters. It doesn't matter who casts malison and who emotion:despair (unlike you want to construct a GSF combo again), so malison isn't more useful for the sorc than E.

E for debuffing future spell targets? Imagine two casters talking:

C1: Help, monsters !
C2: "I'll cast SoH, if they fail their will saves they're toast !"
C1: "Wait, cast E first, it's easier to save against but if they fail their will saves their chances to fail their will saves will increase a very little bit !"
C2: "If their roll is too low for E isn't it also too low for SoH without E ?"


Using debuff spells sounds like advanced strategy, softening the enemy for the spell before you cast it, but it's just "needlessy complicated", like Nale from OOTS.

This reminds me on the Nale turns Elan against Haley in OOTS 393:

E: That's silly. You can't really exspect me to believe something so-
N: "Needlessly complicated ?"
E: Oh, Right !