[DF] Some ideas to make damage dealing casters more effective in DF games

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by starslayer

To build a damage mage just make sure they have hang spell, moderately high skill in both hang spell and the spells they want to hang, and a willingness to sacrifice there versatility to become much more deadly in combat.

For instance lets assume 'fireball pete' wants to be very good at launching fireballs.

He takes fireball and hang spell at skill 21. All other spells are at the 15,16 range.

After every rest he takes 35 minutes to cast fireball, charge to 9 points, hang spell, rest, repeat.

When he enters combat he can freely bring forth 7 fireballs at 9d/fireball- of course all of his spells are at -7 until those hang spells are exhausted, so he won't be doing a lot of utility casting in the meanwhile, but 9d/turn at range he will be doing a LOT of damage, quickly.

It is also possible to do this with suspend spell tied to a trigger word like 'shazam-1', in which case they still keep there utility, but it will be 1 fireball every other turn as they have to shout out 'shazam-1' 'shazam-2' 'shazam-x' to load the next 9d fireball (or other useful spell), and there is still a limit for how much time the wizard has to prepare.

With that said- I really like your spells because they provide a way for a wizard to not have to use a D&D style 'fire and forget' cast system.

True, metamagic offers new options, but in DF, only wizards get it, and so Elementalists, that should have access to blasting spells too, are SOL. Also, well, recreating the prepare-fire-forget of D&D includes one of the things I hate the most from that system, the need to have spellcasters with precognitive players

Originally Posted by SCAR

Have you looked at the Magical Bolt Wizard Power-Up in DF11.p37
It's a Power rather than a Spell, and swaps a few things around (target gets a Dodge, but DR doesn't apply), but it seems to fill the basic requirement.

I don't see anything wrong with your ideas, and they're for DF, but I'm not sure they feel right.

Spell Potency seems like a specialist form of Magery since they both add +1 to the damage of the Spike spells.
Magery with the Concentration Only Modifier costs 5 points, plus Spell Potency is [10] points, which equals a level of Magery but does less.
These would allow you to stake bonuses above any Limit on the number of levels of Magery though!

Spell Potency might just be a little too costly?

The Spike Spells look good, I'm not even going to contemplate how they might balance with other spells that's a big can of worms on these forums!

I like Magical bolt, but I wanted something that worked from the spell angle, and that wasn't exclusive to the wizard. As for being too costly, well, limitations usually give you back less points than what you usually think they should, since they're priced conservatively, as players will try to minimize the bad effects.

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

As you are basing this on Striking ST +1 [5], may I suggest instead basing it on Striking ST +1 (One College Only, -40%) [3]? +1 [5] feels too expensive.

Everything else looks excellent.

Well, technically, since I have only created a single spike spell per college, adding one college only would be equivalent to adding one spell only. Now, that's available as a magic perk. If I had 3-4 spike spells per college, then yeah, since college would be available for Magical Potency.