Lvl.1 cleric spell ** Doom ** : casting time?

Ignatius

Expected behaviour: Doom casting time = 1 round

Current behaviour: Doom casts much quicker, probable casting time = 1

Is the manual wrong, or is it the spell implementation? Depending on the answer, it either makes Doom a must have for any cleric, or a rarely used / long-casting time spell.

RedWizard

Instead of it being 1 round as showed in description, casting time is pretty much instant (1) just like Sleep,Mirror Image etc.

Avenger_teambg

Looking into this.

Medillen

I'm not sure who would have the definite answer to that, but I guess the best i can come up with is @Jalily

Roller12

Doom was always cast time 1. its a pretty mediocre spell.

TJ_Hooker

Roller12 said:

Doom was always cast time 1. its a pretty mediocre spell.

It's actually pretty phenomenal for a first level spell. It's pretty much the only one besides armor of faith that actually stays useful at higher levels.

lansounet

It's the description pulled from BG2 (because it wasn't in BG1) that is faulty apparently.
Casting time is 1 and it's a very good spell (when it lands).

Ignatius

It is an awesome spell and yes, I believe it's always been with a casting time of 1. If it stays so, then it is not a bug reporting but a manual error report.

hook71

@CamDawg

Could you shed some light on this?

CamDawg

Yeah, the casting time should be one round, which even the BG2FP misses. I had already submitted a review and patch for casting times, including this--Death Ward, Earthquake, and Wraithform are also wrong.

TJ_Hooker

CamDawg said:

Yeah, the casting time should be one round, which even the BG2FP misses. I had already submitted a review and patch for casting times, including this--Death Ward, Earthquake, and Wraithform are also wrong.

Roller12

TJ_Hooker said:

Roller12 said:

Doom was always cast time 1. its a pretty mediocre spell.

It's actually pretty phenomenal for a first level spell. It's pretty much the only one besides armor of faith that actually stays useful at higher levels.

its 15 years past game release and people still dont realize one can only cast one spell per round, so all the phenomenal lvl1 spells compete with lvl7 spells, and are not so phenomenal anymore.

this spell is barely worth casting even at casting time 1, with one round its a complete waste. Here are a couple of good lvl1 ToB level spells: bless, aof, sanctuary, remove fear.

TJ_Hooker

Roller12 said:

TJ_Hooker said:

Roller12 said:

Doom was always cast time 1. its a pretty mediocre spell.

It's actually pretty phenomenal for a first level spell. It's pretty much the only one besides armor of faith that actually stays useful at higher levels.

its 15 years past game release and people still dont realize one can only cast one spell per round, so all the phenomenal lvl1 spells compete with lvl7 spells, and are not so phenomenal anymore.

this spell is barely worth casting even at casting time 1, with one round its a complete waste. Here are a couple of good lvl1 ToB level spells: bless, aof, sanctuary, remove fear.

Yeah I'm well aware of the 1 spell per round limit. Here are some reasons where I would use it:
-Near the beginning you don't have access to all those awesome high level spells
-Sometimes the enemy just doesn't warrant blowing a high level spell, but is just powerful enough to be worthy of a quick de-buff
-If you're in you're under heavy fire you sometimes just want something with a quick cast time that won't get interrupted
-Great when utilizing the cast-and-attack strategy; you can fire it off in a flash and get back to attacking without missing a beat, but you'll now be fighting a character that's more likely to miss, more likely to fail their save. This especially applies for characters in melee; you want the quick cast time to avoid getting interrupted, and these characters will often be rangers/paladins, who don't have access to high level spells.

Roller12

@TJ_Hooker
Dont need to be top spells, as soon as the cleric hits level3, he gets access to Hold Person, which paralyzes groups, or Chant, granting about the same bonuses as Doom, but affecting everyone on the battlefield.

Doom would be a great spell if it wouldnt be resisted, would warrant a one round cast time too, but as for now there are almost always spells with higher priority to be cast first.

TJ_Hooker

Roller12 said:

Doom would be a great spell if it wouldnt be resisted, would warrant a one round cast time too, but as for now there are almost always spells with higher priority to be cast first.

I'm not sure what you mean by resisted, as AFAIK doom doesn't allow a save. But yeah a lot of my use for it depended on it having a cast time of 1. If it takes a round then you're probably better off with one of the other spells you mentioned like chant.

Roller12

@TJ_Hooker
Doom is no-save, but stopped by magic resistance, golem stuff, Aec'letec and everything. So for more difficult encounters even Bless can be more preferable since it always works and can even be prebuffed.

imho Doom is fine as it is now. But, granted, i'd love to see a "1round cast/ignore MR" version.

Ignatius

@Roller12: there are many other things to be done in a round than casting a spell, and I disagree that lvl.1 spells compete with lvl.7 slots - simply because a) the number of spells you can memorize is limited, and b) for a large part of your adventures in the trilogy you won't even have access to lvl.7 spells. Doom is cheap, you can cast it early as an opener to soften an ennemy before an AoE is cast by someone else, or later in combat to soften a powerful figther. -2 thac0 and -2 saves is no small thing. Chant is nice but takes a full round to cast and is caster-centric, for half the penalty of Doom; it obviously depends on the circumstances but in general I find a cast time 1 Doom much more useful; Hold Person is save-or-else, hence better cast after Doom . In any case both of these spells are lvl.2.

As for lvl.1 Bless, it does not impact ennemies.

I'll grant you though that as you advance through the trilogy, more and more creatures will be immune to Doom. But they will be immune top a lot other spells as well.