Ambrosia Software Web Board: Spell Damage - Ambrosia Software Web Board

While I was playing Cythera the other day, I began to wonder how much damage each spell does. Interestingly enough, that information is not available on Slayer's Guide. I discovered that you can cast spells on yourself, so I created a strong character through ACE! and ran a few tests myself.

Death Strike is by far the toughest non-broken spell in the game that I can find. From my tests, I found that it consistently does 200 hp damage. That is enough to kill any of the enemy characters in one hit!

Mystic Arrow did around 10 hp damage most times, but I observed it doing anywhere from 10-25 damage.

Fireball did somewhere in the range of 20 to 40 in the few tests I did with it. I did not test the splash damage of Fireball, so I don't know if it does full damage or a reduction of the original damage.

I did not get around to testing Lightning yet, but I always thought it did more damage than Mystic Arrow and less than Fireball. Anyone know about this?

Also worth mentioning is that I tested on my own character with no immunities or resistances. Most enemy characters have at least some sort of resistance, as detailed in Gandreas' list of monsters here.

I'm certain immunities negate all related damage, but I wonder to what degree the resistances work. Are they static (such as 5 hp damage negated) or are they some percentage based on total damage (for instance, 25% of total damage removed)? I'm sure that only Gandreas can answer these questions, so we may never know the answers.

Back on topic, has anyone done their own tests with spell damage? What have you found to be the most useful spell in combat?

This post has been edited by The Wizard: 11 January 2011 - 06:32 PM

I never used the Mystic Arrow or Lightning much, primarily just due to the slowness of combat that way (having to wait for your character to glow purple) which can be annoying if you’re taking on a dozen polyps. I’m pretty sure Death Strike was meant to kill anything that moves, which, seeing as no in-game enemy has more than 200 hp, is what it does.

Seems like I always needed my mana for non combat spells, so I usually only used the strength one, the defense one and death blow for demons. I typically got the best results from lightning when I did use magic however, or earthquake when I needed a laugh.

Since Timon could (barely :P) survive a Fireball splash, I'd guess maybe the splash does half damage?

This is an interesting thread, I've never tried figuring this out. I guess I assumed the amount of damage would vary from target to target. For example, does carrying a shield lessen the damage? What about training in shield? (I've always wondered what training in shield does.) Also odd helmets?

Oh yeah, my general rule of thumb was that the more mana it took to cast a spell, the more powerful it was.

This most likely doesn’t apply to the fireball though, since it prolly charges extra mana to do some splash damage. Lightning always struck me as somewhat pointless, seeing as the Fireball and Death Strike actually do something ordinary weapons can’t (splash and instant death).

I don't recall using spells very much during combat, due to the high mana costs associated with the most effective spells. I didn't really think of Death Strike as an offensive spell and so didn't use it as one. I think that when engaging the daemons in the Second Stronghold I would use lightning or fireball to damage one, and I also seem to recall using fireball on large ruffian groups occasionally. I may have used Mystic Arrow as a supplement during combat as well.


Regarding shields, I'm not sure if they reduce damage; they might just increase one's chance of blocking an attack.

If we are ever to make Cythera™ the tabletop RPG, this is definitely something we need to know.

I experimented a bit with Fireball (not extensively, just a few tests), and it seems that the damage is equal to all within its range, however I haven’t tried this out very much so I’m not sure.

I was playing Cythera the other day, and I'm wondering if the splash damage for Fireball is really splash damage at all. I used it on a group of ruffians and the one I hit directly with it was wounded, but one of the adjacent ones died! So now I'm wondering if Fireball damage is recalculated for each target that gets hit. By that I mean that the ruffian I selected to send the Fireball toward had a chance of sustaining any of the 20 to 40 damage. Then the game, independent of how much damage the original target sustained, finds all ruffians in adjacent tiles and recalculates for each one the amount of damage they sustain as though they were the initial target.

That seems the most logical explanation to me. Although, ruffians may have slight variations in total hit points, (I don't know if this is true since Gandreas' monster list does not indicate that) so that may explain part of it.

EDIT: I'm adding the relevant part of Gandreas' list for ruffians:

(Full list here)

--------------------------------------------------
Name: Brigand Size: M Behave: Chaotic
Body: 12 Reflex: 8 Mind: 15

Health: 20 Damage: 15 Armor: 2
Special: Body based attack
--------------------------------------------------

Given this information, I can only assume that my initial estimate of 20 to 40 damage for Fireball is incorrect. If all ruffians really do have only 20 hit points, then Fireball must be able to do less than 20 as well. However, adding another layer of complexity, I'm not really sure if a "Health" of 20 translates to 20 hit points. Total hit points are also affected by "Body." "Armor" may also absorb magic-based damage in addition to physical damage. Honestly, I'm not sure. "Damage" doesn't even necessarily correspond to hit point damage either. The game may use a different scale for determining "Damage" and then calculate how much the total hit points will be reduced by based on attributes like "Health", "Body", and "Armor." So confusing. . .

One thing I think I've figured out is the "Size" attribute. Given the monsters on the list, a size of "M" seems to denote monsters that take one tile, like all of the people, most animals, and the hero/heroine themselves. "L" is for larger, two-tile animals, like the gators in the swamp, titans, and unicorns. "S" is for tiny monsters, like asps. The only anomalies on the list are that "Slime" (by which, I assume Gandreas is referring to Ooze) are listed as "S" while I would think they should be at least "M," and "Child" is listed as "L." I have never seen a two-tile child; I think that should be "M."

This post has been edited by The Wizard: 29 January 2011 - 05:05 PM

I hate to double post, but I wanted to make another note about the Fireball spell. I have noticed that it does not actually damage only immediately adjacent tiles; it seems to have a fairly large radius, actually -- maybe 5 or 6 tiles around the original target. If you are within this radius, you also will receive damage. I have sustained about 45 points of damage from it once, so I know it can do at least that much.

I thought there was a maximum number of people/creatures it could damage. I noticed that if there were a lot of bad guys close to the target, my followers farther away might be spared.

BreadWorldMercy453, on 03 February 2011 - 10:27 AM, said:

Yeah, I haven't counted how many units it damages, but it does have a limit. If you're far enough away, it is really good at reducing mobs of enemies.

This topic seems the most appropriate place for me to post this. I made a very simple table of monster stats based off of Gandreas' original list. As I was finding the graphics for each item (many of which should be credited to Slayer for his hard work on Slayer's Guide), I noticed that it is actually a unique character graphics list. That is, there is one item for each unique graphic in the game. It has led me to the conclusion that the "Rocky the Flying Chicken" save files distributed by Selax are not flying chickens at all. Rather, I think that's the graphic for the bird, which is where I put it. If you look at the chicken graphic, the colors and sizes are completely different.

To the best of my knowledge I have included all of the unique graphics that there are. The two that had me puzzled were Thrall and Wench. I placed the only remaining graphic for a woman that I could find, the woman in the purple dress, in as the Wench. I couldn't figure out why that graphic should be classified as such, but Selax pointed out that it may be because Apis is a barmaid at the Two-Tailed Rat.

The one that has me really confused is Thrall. I can't think of any other unit graphics or any units that fall under that category. Maybe I'm just being dense. It has chaotic behavior, so it's probably an enemy, and it deals a lot of damage relative to other units (except for a few like Sabinate, demons, Alaric, and unicorns for some strange reason). It is possible that this graphic was removed from the actual game, just as the bird graphic only exists in hacked or bugged games. If so, then another strange graphic may be floating around in the Cythera data somewhere. If not, then I must be missing something. Can anybody think of another monster graphic not on the list?

This post has been edited by The Wizard: 05 February 2011 - 10:53 PM

How about a golem?

Wow. I don't know how I missed that one. I guess I was just being dense.

Pretty cool, Wizzy!

What's the difference between flying and swimming? And what does "Immune to Death" mean? o.O

Units with the "Can Swim" attribute can go over land and water with no adverse affects. However, they must be immune to poison to travel over swampy ground, and they must be immune to fire to travel over lava without suffering damage. Units with the "Can Fly" attribute can go over land, water, poison, and fire without any trouble.

Selax and I believe that "Immune to Death" was meant to denote immunity to "Death Strike," but that is either incorrect or the functionality is broken because I have used Death Strike to kill Demons before. Anyone else have a theory on this?

Maybe immune to traps?


Edit: or runes?

This post has been edited by Two Jacks: 06 February 2011 - 08:41 PM

I used to be able to kill demons and liches with death strike, but I’m starting to think this was a bug with my system, because under Sheepshaver (OS 8.1) I haven’t been able to do any damage at all to them with the spell.

Death Strike is very affective against liches and demons, but it's not always a one-turn-kill as Wizzy's opening post implies. Buzzy, remember that Death Strike only works if you're one space adjacent to the target. Could the problem be that you were too far away?

Well, that would prove that they are immune to death though, since death strike is supposed to deal 200 damage and liches and demons have a lot less than 200 HP.

It only works if it hits.

Unfortunately, BW is correct that Death Strike doesn't kill everything in one hit as I had initially believed. It does come close though! I can at least critically wound demons each time I use it. This does, however, mean that the damage dealt by Death Strike is not a constant 200. It must have some degree of variation. That makes no sense, though, because I used Death Strike on myself a lot and each time it did exactly 200 hp of damage. This could be explained, I suppose if we assume that the "Resist Magic" attribute negates a variable amount of damage. That is, if Death Strike really does do 200 damage, the amount absorbed by the "Resist Magic" tag may sometimes be enough to absorb enough of that damage for a unit with 100+ hit points or whatever the case may be to survive. I'm now thinking that the Delver engine calculates most damage randomly. I offer you an old post by Gandreas himself on his old Delver Boards:

Quote

Full post here

So, it looks like weapons are in a classification based on how much damage they can do, but only a random amount of that damage is actually used by the game in combat. Thus, weapons with a higher classification are better because there is a greater probability that the random amount of damage will be higher than a weapon of lower classification. I can't say any of this for certain; the Delver engine confuses me.

This post has been edited by The Wizard: 09 February 2011 - 09:53 PM

I was just in the Cademia Sewers and I killed 36 ratilizards with one fireball! There seems to be no limit on the number of enemies the splash damage will hit so long as they're in the radius. Another possibility is that there is a pool of potential damage the fireball can inflict and it will strike as many nearby units as it can until the pool is used up. Ratilizards would take very little damage before dying, so you could kill a lot of them before the spell lost its potency.

The Wizard, on 28 February 2011 - 12:39 AM, said:

That's what I had always assumed, but I’ve been able to kill a lot of people at once with it, so it would have to be a very large pool.