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What's the Strongest Spell in BoE?


Ircher

BoE Spells  

9 members have voted

  1. 1. What's the most powerful BoE spell in your opinion?

    • Shockwave
      1
    • Avatar
      2
    • Revive All
      0
    • Major Haste/Major Blessing
      5
    • Capture Soul/Simulacrum
      1
    • Daemon/Major Summoning
      0
    • Divine Thud
      0
    • Wound
      0
    • Curse All/Slow Group
      0
    • Bless
      0
    • Other
      0
  2. 2. What's your favorite spell in BoE?

    • Capture Soul/Simulacrum
      1
    • Scry Monster
      1
    • Wall of Blades
      0
    • Avatar
      2
    • Major Haste/Major Blessing
      2
    • Divine Thud
      1
    • Revive All
      0
    • Words of Recall
      0
    • Major Summoning/Daemon
      0
    • Wound
      1
    • Cure Disease/Restore Mind/Major Cleansing
      0
    • Scare
      1
    • Curse all/Slow Group
      0
    • Magic Map/True Sight
      0
    • Mindduel
      0
    • Dispel Barrier/Unlock Doors
      0
    • Bless
      0
    • Other
      0


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What is the most powerful spell in BoE in your opinion and why?

 

Please try to vote in the poll. It isn't hard, and can give me an overview of this stuff while your posts give me a good analysis. I can tell right now that the BoE community is extremely small.

Edited by Ir the Great
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What about avatar?

 

For the casting pc, Avatar provides:

  1. Heals 200 hp (pretty much revive unless you have critically low hp)
  2. 2-3 Turns triple ap, tons more double ap
  3. Provides high blessing
  4. Completely invulnerable to attacks for 4 or so turns
  5. Martyr's Shield for 5-8 turns

Avatar I'd say is the most powerful one and definitely my favorite!

 

Granted, it does take 12 sp and only works for the caster, but it does literally make you like a god for a 4 or so turns.

 

Wound is great since it is darkness damage.

Shockwave can be used effectively against large groups of monsters provided they don't have immunity to magic (think x wound (magic damage not darkness though) spells for the price of 3 where x is the number of enemies hit).

Mindduel is useless imo which is why I did not include it in the poll for the first question.

Revive is very useful -- Cures all poison and fully heals the target.

Revive All heals like 150+ hp to the entire party, so that's great.

Summoning is more annoying than effective. Especially those enemy spellcasters who spam Major Summoning and Daemon when they could just cast avatar every few turns making them far more dangerous! Although, casting avatar even every 4 turns is op -- Monsters have so many spell points and don't have to fight multiple fights. Speaking of which --- Does Wound work on temporarily invulnerable monsters?

 

By the way, is Divine Thud suppose to be magic damage? The animation has always made me think it was cold damage.

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Shockwave can be used effectively against large groups of monsters provided they don't have immunity to magic (think x wound (magic damage not darkness though) spells for the price of 3 where x is the number of enemies hit).

You're wrong - shockwave deals unblockable damage (what you're calling "darkness" damage).

 

Summoning is more annoying than effective. Especially those enemy spellcasters who spam Major Summoning and Daemon when they could just cast avatar every few turns making them far more dangerous!
Of the summoning spells, Capture Soul and Simulacrum probably have the greatest potential. With luck, you can get them to summon monsters that would never be summoned by any of the other summoning spells.

 

Does Wound work on temporarily invulnerable monsters?
Invulnerable monsters take one-tenth damage, and Wound does at most 7d4 damage, so technically it can if your level and intelligence is sufficiently high; however, it won't be very effective (that's a maximum of 2 damage per hit!).

 

By the way, is Divine Thud suppose to be magic damage? The animation has always made me think it was cold damage.

Divine Thud does magic damage. Your confusion is understandable though, as magic, unblockable, and cold damage all used the same animation. (However, I believe I changed magic explosions to be yellow at some point.)
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You're wrong - shockwave deals unblockable damage (what you're calling "darkness" damage).

 

Of the summoning spells, Capture Soul and Simulacrum probably have the greatest potential. With luck, you can get them to summon monsters that would never be summoned by any of the other summoning spells.

 

Invulnerable monsters take one-tenth damage, and Wound does at most 7d4 damage, so technically it can if your level and intelligence is sufficiently high; however, it won't be very effective (that's a maximum of 2 damage per hit!).

 

Divine Thud does magic damage. Your confusion is understandable though, as magic, unblockable, and cold damage all used the same animation. (However, I believe I changed magic explosions to be yellow at some point.)

 

At your last point:

 

Magic Damage sometimes uses the Shock animation (See Wall of Shock for instance). Perhaps we could use that for magic attacks?

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Magic Damage sometimes uses the Shock animation (See Wall of Shock for instance). Perhaps we could use that for magic attacks?

No, that's already used for magic attacks. The thing here is that there are two completely separate sets of "boom" graphics - static boom graphics, such as the one you call a "shock animation", and animated boom graphics. Here they are:

 

booms.png

 

The top row is the static booms, which are, in order: fire, magic/unblockable, poison, physical, cold. Subsequent rows are the animated booms, which are, in order: fire, teleportation, cold/unblockable, magic. (And magic used to be the same as cold/unblockable, but since that boom inverts nicely, I added it as an extra animation and now use it for magic damage.)

 

Static booms are normally used for things like terrains and fields that damage you, as well as attacks with weapons. (The "shock" boom is also used for assassination damage, for example.) Spells, however, use the animated booms, as do spell-like effects such as breath weapons.

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I realize this is mildly scenario-dependent, but Capture Soul and Simulacrum give you some pretty incredible options -- nearly free high level magic users, meatshields that don't die easily, basilisks, null bugs (easily the best solution to rakshasas), and so on. I can see an argument for Major Blessing too. Shockwave probably should not be on that list.

 

Also, I didn't mark "Other", but the actual strongest spell is not on the list. It's "Bless". No, really, it is, since it doesn't cap bless levels, so enough layerings will make you quasi-invincible (and give you supercharged attacks) for essentially forever.

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I realize this is mildly scenario-dependent, but Capture Soul and Simulacrum give you some pretty incredible options -- nearly free high level magic users, meatshields that don't die easily, basilisks, null bugs (easily the best solution to rakshasas), and so on. I can see an argument for Major Blessing too. Shockwave probably should not be on that list.

 

Also, I didn't mark "Other", but the actual strongest spell is not on the list. It's "Bless". No, really, it is, since it doesn't cap bless levels, so enough layerings will make you quasi-invincible (and give you supercharged attacks) for essentially forever.

 

Try Avatar. It better than bless!

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I realize this is mildly scenario-dependent, but Capture Soul and Simulacrum give you some pretty incredible options -- nearly free high level magic users, meatshields that don't die easily, basilisks, null bugs (easily the best solution to rakshasas), and so on. I can see an argument for Major Blessing too. Shockwave probably should not be on that list.

 

Also, I didn't mark "Other", but the actual strongest spell is not on the list. It's "Bless". No, really, it is, since it doesn't cap bless levels, so enough layerings will make you quasi-invincible (and give you supercharged attacks) for essentially forever.

 

well, invincible against physical attacks, anyway. it doesn't do much of anything against elemental damage

 

 

Try Avatar. It better than bless!

 

Actually, it's not: there's a cap on the amount of blessing you can get from Avatar, but no cap on the amount you can get from certain other blessing spells (at least in the old Mac version; I don't know what its status is in the current version of OBoE.)

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well, invincible against physical attacks, anyway. it doesn't do much of anything against elemental damage

 

 

 

 

Actually, it's not: there's a cap on the amount of blessing you can get from Avatar, but no cap on the amount you can get from certain other blessing spells (at least in the old Mac version; I don't know what its status is in the current version of OBoE.)

 

Avatar does have a cap of a static 8 for Bless, but anything past 8 only increases duration. Trust me, bless already lasts for a long time.

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Actually, it's not: there's a cap on the amount of blessing you can get from Avatar, but no cap on the amount you can get from certain other blessing spells (at least in the old Mac version; I don't know what its status is in the current version of OBoE.)

Avatar does have a cap of a static 8 for Bless, but anything past 8 only increases duration. Trust me, bless already lasts for a long time.

Bless is capped at 8 globally, unless there's somewhere that still directly accesses the status effects rather than going through the apply_status function.
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For singletons, probably Protection, followed by Antimagic Cloud. Avatar looks nice on paper, but the invuln doesn't last very long, and it is quite expensive.

 

The problem with singletons, though, is that they can only do one thing at a time. Even Minor Bless is astonishingly powerful, when you have all six PCs casting it on only one of their number.

 

Edit: I happen to like small parties though, due to logistics (and characterization!) being easier.

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Avatar does have a cap of a static 8 for Bless, but anything past 8 only increases duration. Trust me, bless already lasts for a long time.

That is definitely not true in original BoE, as I explained when going through the code here:

 

http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/13484-code-dissection-munchkin-style/#entry165138

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For singletons, probably Protection, followed by Antimagic Cloud. Avatar looks nice on paper, but the invuln doesn't last very long, and it is quite expensive. The problem with singletons, though, is that they can only do one thing at a time. Even Minor Bless is astonishingly powerful, when you have all six PCs casting it on only one of their number. Edit: I happen to like small parties though, due to logistics (and characterization!) being easier.

 

I like singletons -- huge parties are too much hassle. Btw, Avatar costs 12 sp; protection costs 10 sp, so I don't get why you think avatar is expensive when its only a 2 sp difference despite a multitude of extra effects. Does protection last longer, because the win32 code (probably the CBoE code for Windows) sets invulnerability to 8?

 

That is definitely not true in original BoE, as I explained when going through the code here: http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/13484-code-dissection-munchkin-style/#entry165138

 

This is looking at the CBoE code (specifically, the old win32 branch which I'm pretty sure is CBoE).

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Most powerful spell in general: Major Blessing. For 8sp you get both blessed and hasted, meaning all your guys are harder to hit, your warriors become much better in combat, and your mages can cast 2 or 3 spells from next turn onwards. It's almost always the first spell I cast in combat. Plus, in the Exile series you can usually get it early in the game.

 

Though I must admit Bless is also a good candidate for the reasons mentioned by previous posters, plus the fact that it's so cheap and available to starting PCs.

 

If I went by level:

Mage L1-3 - Sleep Cloud. Incredibly useful early in the game since it can affect several targets and they rarely resist.

L4 - Slow Group. Having your enemies lose every other turn is extremely useful. Also, you often get it before Major Haste and it costs less SP.

L5 - Major Haste. Like Major Blessing, but weaker. Still very good.

(Dispel Barrier for singletons)

L6 - Antimagic Cloud. Makes fighting certain monsters much easier.

L7 - Major Blessing. Explained above. Not bad even for singletons, at least before you get Avatar.

 

Priest L1-3 - Bless. Explained above.

L4 - Curse All. Good for making lots of melee opponents helpless, helps your fighters kill off tough enemies.

L5 - Bless Party. Like Bless, but better.

(Flamestrike for singletons)

L6 - Revive. Others have already said why.

L7 - Avatar. Ditto.

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L4 - Slow Group. Having your enemies lose every other turn is extremely useful. Also, you often get it before Major Haste and it costs less SP.

Looking at the code, it appears they do get the same total amount of action points while slowed, just distributed differently. Which is actually kind of weird...
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