chromatic orb
FrdNwsm
Member Posts: 1,069
I was just reviewing some offensive mage spells, with attention to first level ones. Some are useful only early on, when critters are low level. Sleep, color spray fall into this category; blindness probably also, since you want to use it on an opponent that is likely to fail it's save. Why you would choose to use this spell instead of color spray or sleep is beyond me, but I guess it's an option; maybe you don't know the others.
I totally avoid any spell that needs a wizard to close to within melee range; shocking grasp, burning hands, vampiric touch and all that sort of thing. If a mage wants to risk melee they should have been a warrior. Then I read the description of chromatic orb. The target gets a save against the secondary effects ... at +6? Really? I seriously thought this was a typo, and am still wondering. By the time the spell starts to have decent damage, the critters are going to start having decent saves also, and giving them +6 seems to make this spell seriously inferior to magic missile at higher levels.
Does anyone actually use this spell by preference? (Obviously if you don't know any better offensive spells, and have no choice, that's a different story).
I totally avoid any spell that needs a wizard to close to within melee range; shocking grasp, burning hands, vampiric touch and all that sort of thing. If a mage wants to risk melee they should have been a warrior. Then I read the description of chromatic orb. The target gets a save against the secondary effects ... at +6? Really? I seriously thought this was a typo, and am still wondering. By the time the spell starts to have decent damage, the critters are going to start having decent saves also, and giving them +6 seems to make this spell seriously inferior to magic missile at higher levels.
Does anyone actually use this spell by preference? (Obviously if you don't know any better offensive spells, and have no choice, that's a different story).
0
Comments
Most of the time, magic missile is going to reliably do more damage throughout the game. But, even at its maximum damage with five misslies, in late game it is mostly used to do what it was used for at first level - interrupt enemy spells.
Chromatic orb will also get the job done as far as spell interruption. But, at maximum level, it has a small chance to petrify the enemy and trivialize what could have been a lethal battle. The six point penalty to the save can be mitigated somewhat if the caster casts greater malison first, and has a divine friend cast doom.
Some people like to take the gamble on destoying a great enemy like Firkraag with a single first level spell. The penalty for losing the gamble is doing insignificant damage to the enemy - not that bad, really.
All that said, I like to play it safe with magic missiles myself. I've never used chromatic orb enough to ever actually see the extra effect proc, but some people swear by it.
Still I agree with you that the spell is inferior to Magic Missile, which is just a very good spell disrupter. Sleep and Color Spray only work against enemies below certain levels (level 5 I think). Blindness does not have that drawback. It also lasts quite long, making it a very effective spell against stronger individual opponents. Sleep and Color Spray are better against groups of weaker enemies.
Blind on the other hand is an amazing spell, in part because it lasts for 8 hours (might even be more, I just know it's functionally forever) and in part because it reduces the sight radius of whoever is hit so low that they can pretty much only see people that are in melee combat with them. This obviously shuts down mages or any ranged character very effectively, but is possibly even more important on nasty melee guys (sarevok, bears in the early game, etc) as you can blind them, then just take 2 steps back and shoot them full of arrows. Or darts. Or whatever! They'll start running around randomly and attack the first person they see (the first person they get close enough to), but even then they'll be dealing with crappier thaco and armor class values (unsure of what these are, but +4/+4 or something I believe) and you can easily just take another two steps back to move out of their sightrange again.
Long story short, blind is frikkin awesome and is overshadowed only by powerword: blind (small aoe and no save! And lvl 8 spell so blasts over many spell protections!) much later.
Again, temperment and play style make a difference here. I tend not to like all or nothing spells; blind does nothing if the target makes its save. In my initial post, did mention Blind as a spell that would tend to be more useful early in the game.
Level 1 spells are anyway not that useful.
For my sorcs, i tend to take sleep (great for half of bg1 but replicable by wand), MM (interruption), spook (huge malus to saves), shield (really useful for solo play, against mages and ranged attackers) and chromatic orb.
Blind is also a good choice. Identify and friends are rather useless (save a 1000s gold over the course of the game).
That way, I get the "long shot" roll for an instant win, but I still get the reliable damage of my magic missiles. One favorite of mine is to put lower resistance x2 and greater malison into a major sequencer, then chromatic orb and magic missile into a minor sequencer. If the "long shot" gamble doesn't work, then, by the time I am high enough level as a mage to cast those two sequencers, I will have boohoodles of magic missiles to follow up my initial gambit.
There is a certain amount of that present in D&D systems, namely that damage from certain spells, such as fireball, varies with the level of the caster, but there is no effect on the saving throw per se.
Minor sequencer is a 4th level spell, that lets you cast two 2nd or lower level spells at the same time. The other sequencers come at higher levels, and the "major" spell sequencer is a 7th level spell that allows three spells of 4th level or lower to be cast simultaneously (thus the critical BG2 spells lower resistance and greater malison can be instantly cast together). The 9th level spell chain contingency effectively acts as a sequencer that can instantly and simultaneously cast up to three 8th or lower level spells, including the dread Abi-Dalzim's horrid wilting times 3.
I guess I didn't realize that some people posting in "philosophical" topics in the BG1 forum might have never played BG2 and have not studied nor played with high level BG2 arcane magic.
I'm not saying that those two spells are just as efficient as a fighter, but they have a point, I think.
Anyways, regarding the original question, as most are have said, MM is usually the better spell. I love using Larloch's Minor Drain to interrupt casters though as it strikes noticebly faster. If you are observant, you can shut down an enemy mage using it by interrupting just about any other arcane spell. Not superb if soloing since you get what, 2 dart throw for free, but with a party, you can just massacre any non-script casting mage.
Spook scales nicely btw, and Shield is a decent choice until Spirit Armour, especially for a Bard.
Chromatic Orb's popularity makes me wonder how many people just restart the tougher fights until the baddie fails its save.
It's also the only first level mage spell an Avenger gets, so you probably will use it a lot.
It's a forum devoted to BG1; having played BG2 is not a requirement to comment. And you know what they say about making assumptions ...
(One thing of note however....Blindness is SUPPOSED to be a 2nd level spell (the difference between Glitterdust and Blindness was glitterdust blinded a group but only lasted a few rounds, while Blindness only affected 1 target but was permanent until dispelled). They switched it to first level in BG because back in the first vanilla game they realized after the fact that there were no 1st level illusion spells and rather then add some (like spook or reflected image), they just switched Blindness and Protection from Petrifaction's spell levels...and then never bothered fixing it in BG2)
I can't stomach using vanilla chromatic orb because of how poorly implemented it is. (a 1 HD hobgoblin only has a 15% chance to fail the save...and it just gets MUCH worse from there as the enemies get higher (and it's a save vs spells, which is most enemies best save), you need 2 other spells just to break even, which makes BG's CO absolute %^$& in terms of spell use efficiency).
Though the PnP accurate version is a damn nice spell, right up there with Spook as a spell that simply becomes MUCH more useful the higher level the spell gets.
(The main differences are the PnP verison are:
The Orb is a thrown magical weapon, not a spell, meaning it's primary effect ignores magic resistance (Doesn't apply to the Silver or Black Orbs which have purely magical primary effects) and is thrown as a touch attack, rather then an attack roll (touch attacks are made as if the targets base AC was 10...i.e. it ignores body armor or the bonus AC of tough creature hides making it very likely to hit vs powerful or heavily armored creatures). (To simulate this, I gave the orbs (which are treated as a 1 charge thrown weapon, like Melf's MM) a +4 hit bonus base, and +1 hit per 2 levels until level 20..not 100% accurate since weaker enemies are more likely to be hit....but then again..they're also the enemies you can kill effortlessly and shouldn't be wasting a single target spell on anyway so it was deemed acceptable (I applied this change to all spells that are supposed to be touch attacks, not just CO))
You get to choose which effect the Orb has at the time of creation (the list of choices based on your caster level), depending on it's color, and aside from the White orb (the lvl 1 orb, which is 1-4 damage and blinds for 1 round with no save) never really becomes obsolete since the orbs give you access to to a wide variety of spell effects (the white orb only becomes obsolete because of it's short duration (too short to really impact the enemies ai targeting) and the fact that the level 2 orb also causes blindness but for a longer duration for a flat save). And unlike the BG verison, none of the effects have a save bonus/penalty....they either have no save or a regular save, but you do have to actually hit the creature with the orb.
As per PnP rules, because Chromatic Orb is a dual-school spell (Evocation/Enchantment) any specialist with access to either school can use it, and no specialist loses both schools.
By my estimation by the time your mage is high enough levels to get the good effects, even 5 magic missiles doesn't put that much of a dent in the toughest enemies so you might as well throw go for the gamble + a few points of damage. Certainly a step up from throwing sling bullets.
CO is useless, save for troll killing:
- if you want direct damage/interruption, use MM
- if you want a save or die spell, use blindness, it will work more often.
I always take it on my sorcs though; for the fun factor (i like the death animation) and to kill trolls (i usually don't take melf acid arrow)
It's a fun spell.
I usually run mostly MM, but still have a spot or two for an orb.