Massive fatigue spells

[Jazzepi]

Fatigue works like this.

Your mages can cast ANY SPELL regardless of it's fatigue cost as long as they are at least within one magic level of the spell. If master enslave is S8, and you have an S7 mage, they can cast it once by using a single EXTRA gem in the process. That extra gem is in addition to any of the gems cost to cast the spell in the first place.

Your battle mages can never use gems during the casting process to elevate themselves more than one level. This is not something you have to give a command for, just provide the extra gems in the caster's inventory and they will use them automatically (hopefully).

Note that when you cast a spell with massive fatigue cost, like master enslave at the listed level for the spell, it takes you directly from whatever fatigue you are at to 200. A unit with 99 fatigue can cast master enslave and not die.

Now, if you want to *spam* a spell like master enslave from a single caster you have to do thing differently. You have two options.

1. Get the caster's level in astral magic so high that it makes the cost in fatigue manageable. You can use boosters like ring of wizardy, starshine skullcap, crystal coin, ring of sorcery. You can also cast spells while in combat such as Power of The Spheres, or Light of the Northern Stars.

When you're using this method, for each level above and beyond the spell's required level you divide the fatigue cost by that much.

So, if you are casting master enslave and it requires S8 to simply cast it at 800 fatigue here is the progression on cost reduction.

S9 = 400 fatigue (divide 800/2)
S10 = 266 fatigue (divide 800/3)
S11 = 200 fatigue (divide 800/4)
S12 = 160 fatigue (divide 800/5)
S13 = 133 fatigue (divide 800/6)
S14 = 114 fatigue (divide 800/7)
etc, etc

Magic scales also play a factor in this, with drain increasing the fatigue cost, and magic bonus scales decreasing it. I don't have those numbers in front of me. They are in the instruction book.

In addition to casting spells to boost one's skill in astral magic, you can also use gems to boost the battle mage's skill by one during the act of casting for the explicit reason of fatigue reduction. I do not know how reliable this is, or how the battle mage AI figures out when to use a gem verus when to not use a gem, but I have used it before. Note that by doing this it is possible to use up to an extra +2 gems for any casting of a spell, 1 to raise the level of the caster to make it possible, and 1 to raise the level again to reduce fatigue.

2. Do some tricks with communion slave + communion master. I have no idea how this works, but there is a really good thread on it.

Jazzepi

[Folket]

Jazzepi, a S7 can't cast master enslave since they can only use 7 gems per casting, while they would need 9. One to raise path and 8 to cast.

[Jazzepi]

Is there some hard limit on the # of gems a caster can use during a spell? This is the first I've heard about it if there is.

Jazzepi

[Cor2]

I thought i read somewhere that even when scripted a mage would not cast a spell that would put them above 200 fatigue. Is that not true?

[Jazzepi]

A single spell can't put you over 200 fatigue. Go try it out in a practice game.

Jazzepi

[llamabeast]

Yep, that's not true Cor. To my mind the manual is quite unclear on this stuff.

[Folket]

You can use as many gems as you have path. S1 mage can use 1 astral gem, S2 2 astral gems, F3 3 fire gems and so on.

[thejeff]

A mage can't use more gems than he has levels in that path.
So an S8 mage can only use the 8 gems to cast Master Enslave and none to reduce fatigue.
A S7 mage can't cast it at all.

IIRC, a mage can only use 1 gem to boost his path to actually be able to cast the spell, but can use more to reduce fatigue.
Eg., Assume a S8, 4 gem required spell. An S7 mage could use 4 gems for the cost, another to reach S8, and 2 more to reduce fatigue, reducing fatigue to 133.

I suspect the AI will happily use gems to reduce the fatigue from high cost spells, even if it remains above 200.
Eg., Assume a S8, 5 gem required spell. An S7 mage could use 5 gems for the cost, another to reach S8, and 1 more to reduce fatigue, reducing fatigue to 250, which would be capped at 200.

(Edited to fix examples. Thanks Folket)

[Folket]

You examples are flawed. S7 mages can't use eight gems.

They can use one gem to raise path. Then six other gems to cast spell or reduce fatigue.

[Chris_Byler]

I thought the "can't use more gems than your path level" restriction didn't include gems that are part of the cost of the spell and only applied to gems used to raise power/reduce fatigue. This would allow the S7 caster to use the 8 required gems, plus up to 7 more gems for increased power/reduced fatigue (of which there must be at least one "extra" gem, or he wouldn't be powerful enough to cast it at all).

Unfortunately the manual section on "Using magic gems in combat" (p.89) does not address this issue; spells with an inherent gem cost aren't mentioned at all.

Maybe someone could test this: give an S1 and S2 mage 10 pearls each, script them both to cast immediate Returning, see what happens.