Essence Orbs Q

[Good Canisters]

I play an Agent in GF 3 on torment, and I have a question about Essence Orbs. How come I can't break 200 damage with a single orb, on any enemy with 16 Battle Magic, 14 Spellcraft, 2 to Essence Orbs, while blessed? How much is magic affected by diminishing returns?

[*i]

I believe there may be an overall damage cap of 200 from attacks. I don't know for sure for this specific game.

[Good Canisters]

That is reassuring, but I've finally hit 203 after I added a point to spellcraft. I read from a topic long ago about people hitting 300-400 per orb with Essence Orbs, and they said they had skills similar to mine. I just can't see how it's possible.

[*i]

Apparently the damage cap was not in this game.

[Good Canisters]

Maybe there isn't a damage cap, but diminishing returns does quite well.

[Delicious Vlish]

Find a target weak against magic damage. There will be moments your mighty essence orbs will only do one measly point of damage. At other times, maybe 150 or so.

 

Every now and then, when properly blessed and buffed, and facing the right sort of foe, you cause great pain.

[Randomizer]

That was one change in Geneforge 4 where you get to see the amount of damage that is being resisited. You find that against magic resistant targets most of the damage is resisted inspite of your abilities.

[Good Canisters]

Gah, then everything is to some degree resistant to magical attacks, as 203, my highest damage in one orb with bless was against a rotghroth.

[Drayk Armitage]

In G3 (and G4), Essence Orbs has a base damage of 1-20 and does 1-5 damage per level of spell strength.

 

I don't know how blessing affects damage output (I think it just adds some levels) but the setup you described (spell strength of 32) would do an average of 106 damage unblessed, in the range of 33-180. Because there are 33 rolls involved, the lowest and highest parts of that range will occur extremely rarely.

 

That's against an enemy with no magic resistance.

 

I suspect that whoever was talking about 300-400 damage output -- and it was probably Delicious Vlish -- was talking about damage per turn when hasted.

[Good Canisters]

Ah, this clarifies a lot. Thank you very much.

[Randomizer]

I think blessing adds about 25% to damage, but I'm not sure if this is in extra levels or done to the total unblessed amount. Magic resistance seems to be between 50 and 75% depending upon the creation.

[Delicious Vlish]

Quote:

Originally written by Facepalming Hecatonchire:
In G3 (and G4), Essence Orbs has a base damage of 1-20 and does 1-5 damage per level of spell strength.

I don't know how blessing affects damage output (I think it just adds some levels) but the setup you described (spell strength of 32) would do an average of 106 damage unblessed, in the range of 33-180. Because there are 33 rolls involved, the lowest and highest parts of that range will occur extremely rarely.

That's against an enemy with no magic resistance.

I suspect that whoever was talking about 300-400 damage output -- and it was probably Delicious Vlish -- was talking about damage per turn when hasted.

Yes. That is called a damage spread. I refere to it many times. How much output per turn.

When I do say per shot, I usually try to make a mention for one shot.

Damage spreads reflect your potential damage output per turn.

[Good Canisters]

Ah, excellent. That means my agent has a damage output, blessed of 480-600 (3 attacks). Against multiple enemies, essence orbs could do as much as 1500 or more damage in one turn.

 

Of course, I'll probably be more cheap, and do shoot shoot daze, hit and run, or, infinite loop hit and run