Greetings,

Although not a spellcaster myself, i have noticed that some of my comptriots use the sane spell's they did when they were of less adventuring experience. Some (like a fine Amnish cheese), improve over time whilst others are cast aside as quickly as a club of minor bruising +1 (causes no permanent damage, just minor bruising that dies down after contact with a pack of cold peas).

Let me provide you with an example. Yound Nalia's magical missiles have increased in number from one to five and, even with her vast conjuring experience, are still a valuable part of our arsenal.

Conversely, her ability to through enemies into a temporary period of sleep is now useless due to the increasing resiliance of our foes. The question i put unto your noble minds is this: which is the best simple spell for high-power mages and which stink beyond belief after you slay your first few goblins.

Just thought I'd throw that thought up in the air and see how it lands. Your opinions on these enchantments would be met with interest.

Yours conversationally

Ingo Amaral (Ranger of repute and occasional ponderer of things of little importance)

Chromatic Orb!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
to me, the most powerful lvl 1 spell.

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but later when your mage levels up, be careful shooting it at those monsters with valuable loots...high lvl chromatic orb will petrify the enemies, and most of the time the loots gone with the petrification (once I chromatic orb petrifying the big red dragon, and all the loots were gone but tons of gold)

Well obviously anything that allows a negating saving throw is useless when you come up against harder enemies.

So the only attacking spells which are wise picks are Magic Missile (no saving throw, up to 25 dmg) and Burning Hands (saving throw halves, up to 23dmg/2)
Chromatic Orb can do wondrous things at higher levels but only if the traget doesn't save and IIRC it doesn't petrify but only stun enemies at higher level.
Larlochs Minor Drain is a guaranteed hit but not very strong. However it is perfect to interrupt a spellcaster or finish an opponent who was reduced to 1hp by other means (e.g. "Harm")

Some of the defense and other enchantment spells like "Friends" or "Protection from Evil" are useful throughout the whole game.

The main problem with high level enemies however is their magic resistance which will often negate your spells. This is another advantage of magic Missile which checks for resistance with every hit. So your chances of bypassing the Resistance with one of the missiles are quite nice.

well, Chromatic Orb DOES petrify enemies;
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with the mage in higher levels, it'll be used along with lower resistance and greater malison...that's how one time I was able to finish off the big red dragon while he's just barely injured.

yip, you're right
While the Game Manual only describes Chromatic Orb up to lvl7 where the stunning occurs ingame it actually is able to petrify (lvl 10-12) and even instantly kill (lvl13+) enemies. Also there's no save against the damage which makes it rather useful again (16max dmg).
With hard enemies however you need a lot of luck (as there's a +6 saving bonus on effects) to make Chromatic Orb your substitute for Finger of Death.

well...in many, many situations, this game is all about chance=luck.

I don't think Chromatic Orb in terms of "substitute" for such spell as figer of death, yet to me, it certainly is more "useful" than finger of death. that is, by the time my mage is able to memorize finger of death, I would rather put other spells than finger of death into the precious, limited lvl 7 spell slots (Mordenkainen's Sword, Spell Sequencer, Warding Whip and so on...), while I can have an army of Chromatic Orb down there in lvl 1 slots! as I mentioned in my previous post, facing tougher enemies, Chromatic Orb doesn't work alone, which adds to my "chance" and "luck."

almost forgot about another nice "sideeffect" of magic missile (which BTW is my lvl1 spell of choice). As every missile counts as one attack it takes down stoneskins pretty quickly if no counterspells are available or working. With the fivefold attack you can have a lvl20 wizards stoneskin down in just two rounds. Not even Mazzy with Tugian can do it that fast.

Faceman, we just have different picks for the most powerful lvl 1 spell.

I have strong bias toward Chromatic Orb becuase I love it since BG1...Chromatic Orb and Greater Malison together can help us taking out the most fearsome enemies without resorting to summoning tons of monsters in BG1. and in SoA, it just getting more and more powerful.

yip,
I played BG2 before I even knew BG1 and if you start it at lvl8 Magic Missile is a pretty decent spell compared to the measly lvl1 MM Dynaheir gets in BG1. And Chromatic Orb sometimes did it for me but IMHO has too many strings attached (not to mention my bad luck that always lets me down when I'm in trouble).
After all I think that MM and CO are the only aggressive lvl1 spells worth keeping after long time. Add a few PfE and that should be it.

chromatic orb is good when it gets to stun and such like. Petrification is still good because spells like that dont usually work on the big big guys and its good for taking some little *@#~ers out of the game