Agannazar's Scorcher
semiticgoddess
Member Posts: 14,903
I just did some random testing and found that Aganazzar's Scorcher has more damage potential than any other spell in the game.
No, seriously. Aganazzar's Scorcher, the level 2 spell.
The idea came to me when thinking about the Reflection Shield. I've had a confused clone attack my Charname with a dart while both were using the shield, and the darts bounced back and forth between them until the clone vanished. After confirming that the shield did not, actually, reflect Arrows of Detonation (which would have been awesome), I thought a bit about the other means of reflection in the game.
People may be familiar with the Cloak of Reflection trick, in which two Cloaks of Reflection (via a clone or importing a character), or the Cloak of Reflection and the original Cloak of Mirroring, could be used to bounce Lightning Bolts off against each other indefinitely. I found the trick was wonky and could be broken for a save game, unable to ever restart, and lost interest in it for a while.
The reason these were useful is because the projectile doesn't just damage the target; it has a slight area effect. Bouncing it multiplies the area of effect.
I thought about what else could be bounced, and what other projectiles had this sort of area of effect. I remembered the scorcher projectile, and thought it would be amazing if you could bounce it, but, alas, there is no spell or item that bounces that projectile.
But since it's a spell, it can be bounced via (Minor) Spell Turning. And because it's a level 2 spell, a spell turning effect can bounce it between two characters multiple times. Plus, it can be packed into a Minor Sequencer.
So, I did some tests. I tried using Aganazzar's Scorcher, which deals 3d6 (10.5) damage and hits twice, in a Minor Sequencer and against Minor Spell Turning and Spell Turning. I placed a fighter with high HP and 50% fire resistance in between two characters bouncing the scorcher projectile and took note of how much damage they took.
The most dramatic results came from casting a double Aganazzar's Scorcher Minor Sequencer from two mages against one another. Both had Protection from Fire and Spell Turning active. What happened to the fighter in the middle?
This fighter had 123 HP, and 50% fire resistance. The reaction began, and soon the fighter dropped down to 7 HP. I took note of the number and used CTRL-R to keep the fighter alive.
She then dropped down to 17, 30, and 22 HP. Finally, she died before the auto-pause could kick in, so I raised her with CTRL-R. She died twice more, instantly, without her fire resistance to help her.
I doubled the first four HP losses, plus the first death, since they occurred with 50% fire resistance, and counted the two other instant deaths as equal to only 123 HP, since the fighter had no fire resistance at the time. I put the numbers together. How much damage did this setup do?
It did more than 1,324 damage. It seems like Spell Turning bounces the spell more times than it's technically supposed to, and so the damage multiplies by some ridiculous number.
Testing found that using Minor Spell Turning had a similar but smaller effect. It could deal a couple hundred damage with two level 10 mages.
Unfortunately, it won't bypass magic resistances or spell level immunities, and fire resistance is the most common resistance in the game. But for anything not immune to the normal Aganazzar's Scorcher spell, it's a near-guaranteed kill for everything in between the two spellcasters.
No, seriously. Aganazzar's Scorcher, the level 2 spell.
The idea came to me when thinking about the Reflection Shield. I've had a confused clone attack my Charname with a dart while both were using the shield, and the darts bounced back and forth between them until the clone vanished. After confirming that the shield did not, actually, reflect Arrows of Detonation (which would have been awesome), I thought a bit about the other means of reflection in the game.
People may be familiar with the Cloak of Reflection trick, in which two Cloaks of Reflection (via a clone or importing a character), or the Cloak of Reflection and the original Cloak of Mirroring, could be used to bounce Lightning Bolts off against each other indefinitely. I found the trick was wonky and could be broken for a save game, unable to ever restart, and lost interest in it for a while.
The reason these were useful is because the projectile doesn't just damage the target; it has a slight area effect. Bouncing it multiplies the area of effect.
I thought about what else could be bounced, and what other projectiles had this sort of area of effect. I remembered the scorcher projectile, and thought it would be amazing if you could bounce it, but, alas, there is no spell or item that bounces that projectile.
But since it's a spell, it can be bounced via (Minor) Spell Turning. And because it's a level 2 spell, a spell turning effect can bounce it between two characters multiple times. Plus, it can be packed into a Minor Sequencer.
So, I did some tests. I tried using Aganazzar's Scorcher, which deals 3d6 (10.5) damage and hits twice, in a Minor Sequencer and against Minor Spell Turning and Spell Turning. I placed a fighter with high HP and 50% fire resistance in between two characters bouncing the scorcher projectile and took note of how much damage they took.
The most dramatic results came from casting a double Aganazzar's Scorcher Minor Sequencer from two mages against one another. Both had Protection from Fire and Spell Turning active. What happened to the fighter in the middle?
This fighter had 123 HP, and 50% fire resistance. The reaction began, and soon the fighter dropped down to 7 HP. I took note of the number and used CTRL-R to keep the fighter alive.
She then dropped down to 17, 30, and 22 HP. Finally, she died before the auto-pause could kick in, so I raised her with CTRL-R. She died twice more, instantly, without her fire resistance to help her.
I doubled the first four HP losses, plus the first death, since they occurred with 50% fire resistance, and counted the two other instant deaths as equal to only 123 HP, since the fighter had no fire resistance at the time. I put the numbers together. How much damage did this setup do?
It did more than 1,324 damage. It seems like Spell Turning bounces the spell more times than it's technically supposed to, and so the damage multiplies by some ridiculous number.
Testing found that using Minor Spell Turning had a similar but smaller effect. It could deal a couple hundred damage with two level 10 mages.
Unfortunately, it won't bypass magic resistances or spell level immunities, and fire resistance is the most common resistance in the game. But for anything not immune to the normal Aganazzar's Scorcher spell, it's a near-guaranteed kill for everything in between the two spellcasters.
Post edited by semiticgoddess on
17
Comments
1: Load two Aganazzar's Scorcher spells into a Minor Sequencer.
2: Cast (Minor) Spell Turning.
3: Cast Protection from Fire.
4: Position them on either side of your target.
5: Use Minor Sequencer on the other.
Or:
1: Cast (Minor) Spell Turning.
2: Position them on either side of your target.
3: Use Aganazzar's Scorcher on the other.
Also, spells cast via a sequencer only count as a single spell when bouncing. That is, a triple scorcher sequencer only strikes as a level 2 spell, rather than 6 spell levels, and therefore bounces off a Minor Spell Turning spell twice instead of once.
Minor Spell Turning on both spellcasters makes the spell bounce 5 times. Spell Turning makes it bounce 9 times, and MST won't increase the bounce count beyond 9, unless perhaps you can MST right before Spell Turning runs out (testing and calculations found that a scorcher spell in BG2 bounced extra times if both MST and Spell Turning were active. Against an enemy that saves 75% of the time, the damage would be 860. The max possible damage, if damage rolls were maximum--say, you charmed an enemy with the same alignment and cast both haste and Righteous Wrath of the Faithful to add luck penalties via fatigue--you could deal 1,350 damage.
Thanks for sharing. I won't be using it (too much hassle for me personally), but would love to see a youtube clip of it in use just for fun.
I'll share something arguably more powerful.
Impending Apocalypse Combo:
First, you need to know that many spells casted via (Chain) Contingency - Target Myself will bypass Magic Resistance.
Second, Incendiary Cloud happens to be one of these spells. It deals 1d4 x level every round, capped at level 20 with 20d4 (1/2 with successful saving-throw) and lasts for 60 seconds.
Now, if you load a CC with 3 Incendiary Clouds and wear a Robe of Red Flames the average damage WITH a successful saving-throw will be:
((20.5 + (20.5 x 30 / 100)) x 3 x 10 = 799.5
This combo can be used right off the bat, since it triggers via CC and can be loaded multiple times.
Potentially it can deal 3120 (max damage and failed saving-throws) with a single CC instance.
This damage can only be reduced or negate by Fire Resistance. (Make sure to protect your spellcaster against fire before using it!
Edit: I forgot to mention that if your fire res is over 100 you will also heal while watching your enemies become fried chips.
Can still be done with plenty of spells, IC being one of them.
Edit: you can still obtain the same result with Fireball (the new Sunfire
And Sunfire is still good because of the WoL anyway.
It's only a tenth of the power of a real Death Ray Zorcher, but it's 19 times as strong as a normal scorcher loop with Spell Sequencer and Spell Turning (the maximized setup for scorcher loops without the Wand of Lightning trick), which does about 800 damage before it dissipates. A Reflect Magic loop should still be able to kill anything not immune to fire or magic or level 2 spells, including SCS dragons in LoB mode with their 2,000+ HP.
Unfortunately, Reflect Magic can't be re-cast before it expires, which means it cannot sustain the loop indefinitely. Theoretically, you could transport a Reflect Magic loop from one pair of Wizard Slayers to another pair by crossing their paths, but having that many Wizard Slayers is not really optimal.
Also, Reflect Magic is an HLA and is only available after 3 million XP. And it seems that the IWD-style Lance of Disruption spell from my BWS install does not work like the original Lance of Disruption from IWD:EE, as it cannot be reflected properly. This means there's still no way to get the scorcher loop to kill the likes of Melissan.
Long story short, the scorcher loop is possible even with Spell Revisions installed (which replaces spell turning spells with spell deflection spells), if you also have Wizard Slayer Rebalancing.