The fresh mage of Belfalas

[Pete Mack]

Originally Posted by Derakon

The main effect that investing in CON in the early game has is that you spend less time in the late game looking for Potions of Constitution. That's really about it.

This is packing a lot in to one sentence. *If* you are diving, reducing the number of turns you are at low CON reduces your exposure to instadeath from breath attacks. This is the real benefit of investing in a little CON.

[Kodiologist]

I see. adj_con_mhp makes for kind of the opposite of a diminishing-returns effect, then. Weird.

A question about monster recall: how do I interpret the number after a breath weapon or spell? Is it a fixed amount of damage, or the mean damage, or the maximum damage, or something else? Does it account for player characteristics, like resistance?

[Pete Mack]

It is a fraction of the monster's average maximum HP, with a hard cap. For the base 4 elements, the fraction is 1/3 and the cap is 1600. For poison, it is 1/3 and 800. For everything else that shows on the character chart it is 1/6 and 400-550. (400 for light and dark; 550 for nether; 500 for everything else.) For unresistable elements, max damage is 200.

The actual damage is the same fraction of the monster's current HP, so when the monster's health is down to 5 stars, it is doing 1/2 nominal damage.

[Kodiologist]

I'm looking at Ibun, Son of Mîm, and he has 820 HP but can only "produce fire bolts (80)". Do spells get a lower fraction than breath weapons, or do they just work differently?

[Pete Mack]

Spells work differently. Damage is based on spell type and monster level, not HP. Ibun will give you a tough time unless you have a low fail rate on acid bolt. Mim resists everything, so you are stuck with archery or very high level spells. He will heal magic missile.

[Monkey Face]

A little late to the party here, but in answer to your original question, High Elf and Gnome are probably the best classes for mage. High Elf starts with see invisible which is nice and can also start with more mana than most other classes. Biggest drawback is slow level up (as you noted).

Gnome has innate free action which can be very useful. I can't remember, but it might also be able to start with a 3rd mana point. It's penalty for leveling up is much less than the High Elf and probably worth the extra compared to a human. Biggest weakness is lack of strength. You need to be careful not to get slowed by carrying too much.

[Kodiologist]

Innate free action does sound nice. Funny thing is, right now I happen to be wearing two things of free action (sandals and gloves) just because they had the best AC so far. I found some caestus of free action earlier, but they don't get the exemption from CUMBER_GLOVE, so I left them on the floor. :/

[Sky]

Half-troll mage is surprisingly effective. It might sound dumb, but it works.

[Pete Mack]

Cestus of free action absolutely are OK for mages.

[Kodiologist]

Oh, that's odd. Perhaps I got the message for having a total equipment weight that's too high and misread it as the message for wearing gloves.