Combat Spells

[Old Coach]

Do the spells Bless, heroism, and berserk work correctly with the new system? The description for berserk, for instance, says that it gives you a bonus +24 to hit. Is this added to finess, or does the description need to be changed.

[Derakon]

I tweaked the effects of the spells, but clearly didn't remember to update the descriptions. Sorry about that.

Heroism gives +15 to finesse and prowess each. Berserk reduces finesse by 15 and increases prowess by 60. Bless increases finesse by 30. These are in addition to their usual effects on AC, HP, and device skill.

[Old Coach]

I will try to cast heroism and bless and see how that affects the weird crit chances I am seeing when I use the hammer of Aule.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Old Coach

I will try to cast heroism and bless and see how that affects the weird crit chances I am seeing when I use the hammer of Aule.

Coach, I don't mean to rain on your parade but I'm kind of halfway through rewriting the critical hit code, so don't worry too much about analysing the current version exhaustively.

The basic issue is that critical hits in the old system were quite rare for everyone (before wielding Deathwreaker or Grond), but also made quite a lot of difference to damage (like doubling or tripling it). Under the new combat system there will be a much greater spread of commonness. Very high finesse chars will critical a lot, but with tiny dice weapons and minor crits which don't add much; very high prowess chars will not critical very often (they'll do lots of damage without them), but their occasional crits will probably be devastating.

Something like that. However it ends up, the actual benefits and probabilities of crits will be different to how they are now.