POLL: Scales, Magic Paths, and Dominion

[Nikolai]

Dueling a S9 is a far shot. Impossible with less than S3, and not worth I think. Pythium, Rlyeh, maybe Arco? Who would waste S3s on a 10% chance?

I often take S4 or S5 with my god, and just use it to hilt early, then keep him/her hidden and casting. If I had native S9, I would not worry about duel AT ALL.

By the way, my friend says it is impossible with less than S4, and with S4, the best you can hope is murder/suicide. Is that true?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Sunray's Virtual Library

# Magic Duel : each side gets to add his astral skill to a (not open ended) d6. Ties result in the death of both mages.
A +3 differential gives you a 1 to 6 odd. +5 gives you a 100% chance of killing the opponent but you still die about 3% of the time, and you have to be 6 levels higher to always win and never die.
Magic Duels use base astral levels, spells and items do not seem to have any influence.
There is no saving throw. This is an area effect spell (1 square), so you better disperse your astral mages. Mages without astral magic are unaffected.

4+d6 -> 5 to 10
9+d6 -> 10 to 15

[Ironhawk]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
4+d6 -> 5 to 10
9+d6 -> 10 to 15

Ah! Didnt know that Mind Duel was NOT open ended. Huh, unusual to find something not OE in the dom world.

[Velusion]

Ironhawk said:

Ah! Didnt know that Mind Duel was NOT open ended. Huh, unusual to find something not OE in the dom world.

Also - in larger games being able to cast Arcane Nexus and Wish is very, very handy.

[thejeff]

But you still don't need 9S to cast Arcane Nexus or Wish. That's what boosters are for.

Do people really take 9 in any path for any reason other than the bless?

[Tuidjy]

> Do people really take 9 in any path for any reason other than the bless?

Not I. In any case, S5 is the highest I have taken. By the time you can cast Wish
repeatedly, you usually can afford to empower to S6, and making three S boosters
is trivial at that point.

I have also never played a MP game with any path higher than six. High blessings
are a great trick - just not my cup of tea. I always play rainbows, but with my
favorite nations, those rainbows are also titans ;-)

[Kristoffer O]

Do people really take 9 in any path for any reason other than the bless?

I do! I wanna feel like a God

Edit: And it has come to my knowledge that a great many people like my ideas So now you'd better boost your pretenders to thematic levels, and not just utility levels!

[SelfishGene]

I should have but forgot to add a poll for the least powerful 9-path as far as casting/rituals/globals go. Many off the off-paths like Nature and Earth can summon large numbers of effecient troops if you have high magic in that particular path.

Generally though i'd say 9-Water or 9-Nature are the least useful 9 paths you could take as far as non-bless strategies go; except that, without some Water, you'll miss a way to easily enter the sea, and having that 9-Water is a great gurantee for an easy late game solution. 9-Nature is kind of less impressive but there are at least 3 great Nature globals. 9-Fire or 9-Air are less useful global spells, but even they have some pretty impressive if rare globals; and both are excellent at battle magic.

[DrPraetorious]

Thetis blessing is a sick joke, and in MP I found exactly one use for it.

I cast it and let R'lyeh think I was using it to survive under water (I wasn't, I had enough WB items to keep everyone alive). He wasted some huge number of astral pearls bringing it down after I cast it at minimum strength .

That was a pretty unusual circumstance, however. The spell is basically a trap for the unwary.