Mage - HOW to cast spell question -- right after character creation

rhaeloth

I am literally right out of character creation, I selected magic missile and shake hands, or friend human. I made the magic missile as the one to know on spawn.

I see in the book that it is selected, and my magic bar on play screen is all greyed out, without the symbol of my spell I would like to use.

I can only attack with quarter staff. I have walked out into the real world of combat, and can still not figure how to assign the spell to use it.

1. How Do i ASsign the spell, in order to use. I am Elf Mage. Right out of character creation

2. Can you confirm that the spell is limited to one use per day? (or per rest?)

3. any other TRULY... BASIC.. out of character creation input you can add to... USING ... very basic, very essential spells?

Thank you.

bill_zagoudis

open the spellbook tab memorise the spells you want(fill the boxes) and rest,the spellcasting icon will be 'clickable' after this and you will be able to cast

rhaeloth

the missle is memorized, and it does not show up on the sub bar of hot keys... which is why i posted.

rhaeloth

you have to rest till it cancels out of rest on its own for it to show up?

You have to do that EVERY time you want to cast the spell?

KidCarnival

Yes, you need to rest after casting. Low level mages spend a lot time resting.

TJ_Hooker

What do you mean by "rest till it cancels out of rest on its own"?

Zanian

Step 1. Learn spells. Either from character creation, or later from scrolls you find.
Step 2. Memorize the spells. Open your spellbook and click on the desired spell. It will go into the box to the left, and it will be semi-transparent.
Step 3. Rest. After this, the spell will no longer be transparent and you can now cast it. On your bar of hotkeys, you click the spell button and then select which spell to cast.

Whenever you rest (which takes 8 hours, so technically the spells are up to 3x/day), all your spells will be ready for use again. You get more spell-slots as you level up, so you can choose to memorize the same spell more than once, giving you more uses per rest.
You CAN also assign specific spells to the hotbar itself, by right-clicking (I think) an empty button and then select the desired spell.

rhaeloth

Thank you all for clarification - truly ammended my discontent.

rhaeloth

yeah im sorry its still not working.

I select the spells to memorize --- 2 sets missle or 1 set 1 set missle and flames...

i click rest... the magic hot bar is still blanked out default grey --- no specific magic icon.

?

1. open up spell book.
2. assign to memorize.
3. rest
4. use.
5. select.
6. rest.
7. repeat infinitely.

8. it is not initiating.

rhaeloth

please someone emergency respond. she always just runs up and does melee, no matter whether i click a highlighted or a non highlighted. SHE WILL NOT UTILIZE THE MAGIC SPELL.

TJ_Hooker

When you rest, you are resting for a full 8 hours right? If you're in a town, you'll need to rest in an inn, otherwise you'll get interrupted by guards. If you're resting somewhere else, you can sometimes get interrupted by enemy ambushes.

It could be helpful to post some screenshots. Maybe post one of your spellbook screen, and one of the main screen.

atcDave

A couple things to try; first, shut off the AI. Lower right portion of the screen, little lantern thingy; click it so the yellow outline goes away. You never want to use that. The AI is pretty brain dead. Do all spell casting and targeting yourself. Its easier and less hazardous to your health.

On the spell bar, you're just looking for the crescent moon and stars symbol to cast. Press that and the currently memorized spells should come up. Once you select one of those to cast, the moon and stars on the main page will be outlines in red until you select a target. Just click on a character or point on the map to select it as a target. You'll know you succeeded once the red outline goes away. Once you unpause, the little icon of the spell being cast will show up in the top right corner of your character portrait.
The other greyed out icons on the main page can be selected by right clicking, which will let you assign any of your currently memorized spells to it as a quick slot. I never bother with this.

rhaeloth

So i learned how to assign in spellbook, i learned how to rest without interupting it myself, I learned to right click spell bar, I learned to assign through there. But now .... My Spells that are in my spell book that successfully memorize to icon list... are greyed out (identify)... and I can not assign it.

rhaeloth

nevermind identify to the item itself -- other spells success.


mishaps.. concluded - thank you.

Jalily

You might want to play through the tutorial. It's a short, separate scenario that takes you through the basics of different class types and can be accessed through the first screen (the one with Baldur's Gate and The Black Pits buttons). Then once you start recruiting more party members, you'll be familiar with how to use them.

KidCarnival

Identify can only be used if you have an unidentified item in your inventory. You click the "Identify" button on the item info, then "spell".

ZanathKariashi

You'll also find pretty quickly that magic missile is a horrible waste of space. At low levels, sleep is God...hits a huge aoe and lasts a long time allowing you to effortless kill enemies, works on enemies commonly found in large groups (anything with 4 HD (Most plain Ogres will also fall to it) or less, though most named enemies will be higher level then that)...and gives you a lot more bang for your buck. For strong, single enemies (or after you get a wand of sleep), blind or spook are better for slots. Spook especially becomes ridiculously powerful as a crowd control as the save penalty increases as you level making it much more likely to stick then blind...though blind is useful vs tough enemies you can't kite very well since it greatly reduces their damage output and makes them easier to hit.

It's a common mistake to use a mages spell slots for direct damage....9/10 that is ultimately wasteful, since their crowd control abilities or buffs are so much more potent and useful. Wands are where the bulk of your damage spell casting comes from...wands of fire and lightening are relatively plentiful, and if you know where to look, can be acquired immediately after starting the first chapter, with enough charges to effortlessly carry you through the first 1/2-2/3 of the game (Used sparingly, and only when absolutely necessary, they can last the whole game).

While BG has no consequence (most of the time) for abusing the crap out of resting, it's not very realistic and borderline engine exploitive, and you'll likely find the game much more enjoyable and challenging to refrain from frequent resting (I usually only rest once the party becomes fatigued).

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atcDave

Bhaaldog said:

ZanathKariashi said:

You'll also find pretty quickly that magic missile is a horrible waste of space. At low levels, sleep is God...hits a huge aoe and lasts a long time allowing you to effortless kill enemies, works on enemies commonly found in large groups (anything with 4 HD (Most plain Ogres will also fall to it) or less, though most named enemies will be higher level then that)...and gives you a lot more bang for your buck. For strong, single enemies (or after you get a wand of sleep), blind or spook are better for slots. Spook especially becomes ridiculously powerful as a crowd control as the save penalty increases as you level making it much more likely to stick then blind...though blind is useful vs tough enemies you can't kite very well since it greatly reduces their damage output and makes them easier to hit.

It's a common mistake to use a mages spell slots for direct damage....9/10 that is ultimately wasteful, since their crowd control abilities or buffs are so much more potent and useful. Wands are where the bulk of your damage spell casting comes from...wands of fire and lightening are relatively plentiful, and if you know where to look, can be acquired immediately after starting the first chapter, with enough charges to effortlessly carry you through the first 1/2-2/3 of the game (Used sparingly, and only when absolutely necessary, they can last the whole game).

While BG has no consequence (most of the time) for abusing the crap out of resting, it's not very realistic and borderline engine exploitive, and you'll likely find the game much more enjoyable and challenging to refrain from frequent resting (I usually only rest once the party becomes fatigued).

I find that once you hit level 6-7 though magic missile is more useful against more boss type enemies. It rather depends on party composition and how much physical damage your NPCs can do.

I love Magic Missile for suppressing enemy spell casters. I goes off fast and disrupts their spells. Even if it doesn't do a lot of damage, it's great anti-magic magic. Or is it, magical counter battery fire?

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Frosty

If your a fighter mage, cleric mage, or Thief mage and are wearing armor you can't cast magic

riTk0MA

1) Click this button:

2) click "Magic Missile" (If you have memorized it),
3) click on enemy.

Spell must be memorized in spellbook first.
Identify spell cannot be used in battle.

atcDave

Frosty said:

If your a fighter mage, cleric mage, or Thief mage and are wearing armor you can't cast magic

Yeah, the game will also tell you that as soon as you put the armor on; you get a "Mage spells inactive while wearing armor" message, or something to that effect.

Wakukee

If you want it to go to a hotkey, just right-click. You can't use spells as primary attacks like you do in some games, you cast them once and they are done for the day, until you rest again.

ZanathKariashi

Yeah, mages are better thought of as Magic-Guns, in humanoid form. The spells are your bullets, and you can only cast each iteration of a spell once per rest, but if you wish, can put multiple copies of a spell up to your cap for that spell level (If spell casting was properly implemented to PnP-style, you could also put lower level spells in higher level slots, if you really needed a few more sleeps and didn't have any appropriate spells for the situation for that spell level...sadly BG doesn't allow that).

(Sorcerers simply have a number of spells per day per spell level (any combination of spells from each level, totaling their max per day), and don't require memorization, but they also can't learn new spells basically at will from scrolls..and they only get a small number per spell level, requiring you to think carefully about which spells will remain useful throughout the saga...sleep is god for a mage, but a waste of a slot as a sorcerer since it's pretty much useless very late BG and onwards (technically you COULD use it but by SoA, enemies that would be affected by it can be killed by thinking hard in their general direction) (Easier to let another caster handle it or prioritize getting a sleep wand).

Magic missile is ok-ish from level 5+, but there's just usually better options (though yes, it does depend on party composition, though most DnD games assume the player will be using at least 1 each of the 4 archetypes, so I also generally base my advice around it). Magic missile a mage, MAYBE interrupt one spell (enemies have a frustratingly high chance to ignore spell interruption (even a lvl 9+ MM is no guarantee), while you get interrupted by them sneezing in your general direction)....Blind a mage (does require a save, but with proper debuffing, it can be almost guaranteed), and he's harmless till the spell runs out (works for archers too, but only a handful have enough health that you can't simply gun them down with bows before they lay the hurt on you)...which likely his life/protections will before it does.

Blakes7

Maybe the guy is wearing leather armor and that is why he can't cast spells?

PawnSlayer

Magic Missile is the ONLY level 1 spell that is worth anything in late SOA/TOB. As you say, things like sleep lose all their value. But MM is a reliable damage dealer and great for interrupting enemies - against fighters it slows their progression towards you, against archers it interrupts their attacks, and against mages it removes those annoying stoneskins and mirror images and interrupts their spell casting. If the mage isn't protected by enchantments, MM slaughters them by level 5.

Oxford_Guy

PawnSlayer said:

Magic Missile is the ONLY level 1 spell that is worth anything in late SOA/TOB. As you say, things like sleep lose all their value. But MM is a reliable damage dealer and great for interrupting enemies - against fighters it slows their progression towards you, against archers it interrupts their attacks, and against mages it removes those annoying stoneskins and mirror images and interrupts their spell casting. If the mage isn't protected by enchantments, MM slaughters them by level 5.

Actually Chromatic Orb is pretty good too, as it's basically a level 1 save-or-die spell from caster level 12

Oxford_Guy

atcDave said:

Frosty said:

If your a fighter mage, cleric mage, or Thief mage and are wearing armor you can't cast magic

Yeah, the game will also tell you that as soon as you put the armor on; you get a "Mage spells inactive while wearing armor" message, or something to that effect.

You can wear elven chainmail and still cast, if a multiclass mage or bard, but there is only one suit available in BGEE and not until quite late (and you need a certain NPC in your party to get it...)

ZanathKariashi

CO requires a ton of debuffs to have a chance in hell of working on higher level enemies....it has an innate +6 save bonus, making it extremely easy to save against....and if you're going to debuff them anyway, use a proper death spell for an even better chance of working (glitterdust+GM+doom+ finger of death, is like a -14 save penalty) (CO+Glitterdust+GM+doom is only -4)....

Spook is extremely powerful at high levels because it's save penalty eventually hits -6, allowing it work on most enemies throughout the whole saga, even without debuffs. Also blind similarly makes enemies super easy, but requires save debuffs vs higher level foes, since it doesn't have a save penalty.

And of course a wild mage tends to memorize only NRD, once they get a decent stable of spells available and high enough level to consistently NOT insta-gib the party.