HP Scaling (Caster rolling solo = no go?)

DiscOH

DiscOH

Adept
I realize that every game is different, but what is HP scaling like where you play?

I've always found spellcasting entertaining, but the limited charges on a wand (which seems to be the majority of damage for a any spellcaster) seems to rule out any chance for extended questing.

As a sample build (level 11) I'm looking at
36 spells, (4/4/4/4/4/4/4/4/4)
300 point elemental burst
8 damage per wand blast * 36 (288)

I've heard evocation is more or less entirely garbage, so do celestial casters have to attach themselves to a martial to do anything of value?

600 damage doesn't seem like much for an entire day.
 
How useful any build is will depend a lot on where you're playing and what the Plot team sends out. Our chapter does a pretty decent job of sending out a wide variety of things to fight so that just about everyone feels like what they've spent build on and what spells they've memorized feel useful at some point or another.

On a related note, though, if you can get a Sleep or Confine or other "make the monster unable to defend itself" effect so you can use a Killing Blow on it, in a technical sense you don't really ever "need" to attach yourself to anyone barring strange build choices like not getting any weapon skills, although it makes adventuring significantly safer if you get a group together with a lot of variation in skill.

ETA: A lot of higher-level characters can "go solo" regardless of class, but the general consensus is that such a thing tends to be a result of them having amassed a great deal of magic items rather than their skill and spell choices.
 
Evocation is generally pretty garbage. Your wand is where a good source of damage will come from. Especially if you can find a greater wand, you can add up to another 3 damage. You can really put monsters into the ground with your wand.

As Sage pointed out, a lot of celestial casters focus on other things. Disarm is a devastating first level spell when you're fighting things that don't have claws. Pin and Bind and Confine are game changers. Many monsters possess the ability to rip from binding but, it still takes time. Which is time they can't do anything else. Prison is one of the better game spells period because of it's versatility.

Alliance isn't a game that's meant to be played solo. Even if you could, you very rarely get a chance to have encounters by yourself. If you're walking alone it might happen but, for most things plot needs to have groups. There's a finite amount of npcs and plot runners. So the break up kind of requires you handle more then one pc at a time.

Some classes can survive solo. But, celestial casters role tend to be to wait for an opportunity to turn the tide of a battle. IE: We're getting killed really badly, and now were out numbers, the Celestial Caster needs to shut down a bunch of guys quickly.
 
I guess a more accurate question is:

How many mobs does 600 damage tend to eat through at level 10? 1 monster? 10 monsters? 600 monsters?
Obviously mileage will vary between a boss mob (>1,000 health?) and a standard grunt. I don't expect estimations to be accurate.

Are mages' damage contributions negligible in a given day of adventuring? Are controller casters the only viable option?
 
A 100 build fighter has 30 body. And often times armor, let's say 20 for simplicities sake.

So you're looking at 50 effective body as far as you're concerned. No single celestial evocation spell will kill them. However, a great many of the other celestial spells will end said fight.

Disarm will often end the fight, especially if you have friends. Prison will for sure end the fight. Pin and Bind (or maybe just bind) will end the fight. Shatter will end the fight, Sleep will end the fight. (Most of these spells are situational. Celestial casters are kind of the masters of making situational work)

Wand damage is a really great source of damage because it's particularly hard to defend against. You have so many charges that if you miss with one, you haven't wasted anything too valuable. It's hard for anyone to fight well while being pelted with 8's. Which will give your fighters the edge. If the thing you're fighting has defenses such as a dodge, them using it against your wand isn't a big deal. Especially if you can follow up with something stronger after they've run out of defenses.

Most people of the celestial casters I know who are into evocation as a concept will just focus on their wand. With a wide memorization of non evocation spells.
 
I've heard that lots of locations will just add immunities to everything if controller mages answer threats too quickly, and I'm a bit shy from trying to win an arms race against somebody who can literally write reality (staff).

What I'm hearing from this conversation is that mages are intentionally alpha strikers, and there isn't really a middle ground where you can sustain damage for more than a few minutes per day.
 
Most combat is PvE, and the scaling will vary wildly depending on your campaign / plot staff. Some examples:

- One campaign might focus primarily on PC-statted opponents, like the example Chris gives above.
- One campaign might have a ton of "bruiser" enemies, where they have lots of high stats/immunities/resistances, due to a very low NPC to PC ratio. For example, their average 10th level foe might have 2x Dodge, 2x Resist Magic, and 150 Body Points and expect to face 5 PCs at once.
- One campaign might tend towards "specialist" enemies, where their average 10th level foe might have 40-70 Body Points and only 1 or 2 specific defenses. In some fights Evocation will be near-useless ("half damage from spells") and others it will be great if you know what you're doing ("double damage from <Element>" visible based on makeup/costuming). In this campaign perhaps the NPCs are statted to face only 2 PCs at once.

That said, in all of the above, you'll find some commonalities:

- Some of your spells will miss. When you're starting out, depending on your throwing arm, a LOT of your spells will miss. So your 600 theoretical damage goes down by anywhere from 20% (if you're a great shot) to 70% (if you're a really crappy shot).
- Some of your spells will get negated by defenses. If the enemies have a smart caster buddy, they'll have Spell Shields of their own up, which negate the first spell cast.

Hope this is helpful.

Edited to add - The game really is a "group game". If you can immobilize a foe for a few seconds so your fighter buddy can hit them a few times, you've added a lot more damage than a single Evocation spell. On the other hand if you can get the enemy's attention with a "big" Evocation spell like Dragon's Breath, hit or miss, you might allow a friendly Rogue to get behind them and finish them with backstabs. Or you may want to wait until your local Templar with sword/shield and lots of armor/self-healing gets their attention so you can get an easier throw to land your attack.

-Bryan
 
DiscOH said:
I've heard that lots of locations will just add immunities to everything if controller mages answer threats too quickly, and I'm a bit shy from trying to win an arms race against somebody who can literally write reality (staff).
Click to expand...

You're looking at the plot / player relationship the wrong way. The goal of plot isn't to "beat" the players. As you pointed out it would fairly easy to do. Instead the point of plot members and npcs by proxy is to provide an enjoyable experience. I can't speak to either of the coasts but, in the Midwest, I can't think of a time I've ever seen plot change what was going on because some casters memorized a certain way.

As Bryan pointed out there's often weakness built into the monster that can be exploited to your benefit as a caster. Fighters and rouges have a harder time doing that.
 
One of the best things a Celestialist can do is act as a flat out damage multiplier for his allies. Disarm/Enflame/Bind/Pin/Confine/Web/Sleep are all effective one-shots if you land them and have a couple people handy to put stick to the monster. Then you get into the really good stuff. Being able to give yourself and others the ability to throw carriers.

Elemental Blade and Magic Blade are both incredibly handy for monsters with immunity to be bypassed or vulnerability to be exploited, and those are very common with elementals. Turning your 'I swing 5's' buddy into 10's vs the ice elemental you're fighting is incredibly efficient. It's why I've always got a couple of them on scrolls for myself, because my celestial-casting rogue puts down 12's from behind normally, double (or in rare cases quadruple) that makes me a murderhouse.

Plus, if you have friends, then you can kick off a Magic Storm and keep it up as long as you can get packets, so long as they keep the enemy off. I've pulled guard for someone doing this for an hour, just raining down packets to defend a doorway. Probably 3600 or more damage out of that 1 9th level spell before they finally had to move. Definitely a highlight of their weekend, and only possible because we had people running interference for them.
 
Muir said:
Elemental Blade and Magic Blade are both incredibly handy for monsters with immunity to be bypassed or vulnerability to be exploited, and those are very common with elementals. Turning your 'I swing 5's' buddy into 10's vs the ice elemental you're fighting is incredibly efficient. It's why I've always got a couple of them on scrolls for myself, because my celestial-casting rogue puts down 12's from behind normally, double (or in rare cases quadruple) that makes me a murderhouse.
Click to expand...

Remember that while some chapters may have LCO (local chapter only) Elemental Blade or Magic Blade battle magic scrolls, they are not available Alliance wide. If you do decide to go the scroll route, memorizing non-scrollable spells in those levels makes you niche, but very useful when those niches come up.
 
I always forget those were LCO since I switched to the activated item, good catch Ben.
 
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