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Old 01-06-2020, 04:58 AM   #19
Rupert
 
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
Default Re: Alternate Take On Magery Advantage

Quote:
Originally Posted by Refplace View Post
Lets look at missile spells.
Concussion ACC 1; 1/2d 20; 1d (cr)/2 FP - explosion, HT-3 in 10y to avoid stunning.
Stone Missile ACC 2; 1/2d 40; 1d+1 (cr)/FP.
Fireball ACC 1; 1/2d 25; 1d (burn)/FP.
Explosive Fireball ACC 1; 1/2d 25; 1d (burn)/ 2 FP - explosion,
Sunbolt ACC 2; 1/2d 75; 1d-1 (Impaling)/FP. Can Blind, immune to Reverse Missiles.
Ice Sphere ACC 2; 1/2d 40; 1d (cr)/FP.
Ice Dagger ACC 3; 1/2d 30; 1d-1 (Impaling)/FP.
Acid Ball ACC 1; 1/2d 20; 1d (acid)/FP. I'm calling acid damage corrosion here.
Lightning ACC 3; 1/2 50; 1d-1 (burn)/1 FP -Surge, metal Armor special, HT-1 per 2 HP or stun.
Explosive Lightning A CC 3; 1/2 50; 1d-1 (burn)/2 FP -Surge, metal Armor special, HT-1 per 2 HP or stun.
Ball of Lightning Guided missile with Move = Skill/5 1d-1 (burn)/ 2 FP - explosion.

IMO the classic fireball really is not the most effective missile spell but we have a lot of variety here and though range is shorter than arrows, Sunbolt is pretty good at long distance.
Some of those are very clearly better or worse than others. Stone Missile wins on raw damage, has decent range and Acc, and Lightning has the handy ability to bypass metal armour, very good range and Acc.

You've got Sunbolt doing impaling, but it's actually tight-beam burning ("burns like laser light"), so it has great range and Acc, and neat secondary effects but it's great for damage. Ice Knife probably wins on lightly armoured targets, as it does impaling and has high Acc.

Note that range and Acc are only good relative to other missile spells (and bows and pistols for Acc). At low TLs missile spells primarily bring ranged AoE damage (only because very little else has such a thing), and alpha strike damage. Their damage over time isn't very impressive even compared to a non-cinematic archer unless the caster has very high skill levels (to lower energy costs on 2-3d spells) or a very large energy reserve of some sort - and an archer with the same sort of point value can have a very high ST plus a very high Bow skill (and the mage needs to pay for the spell skill and the Innate Attack skill as well).

At high-ultra TLs the mage needs help (in terms of missile spells and such, that is - a lot of their other spell choices are still useful), either in the form of better spells (if you want to keep the feeling of mages being self-contained while non-mages use equipment), or magic-enhancing gear (if mages use technology to improve their effectiveness just like everyone else).
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