What's the best spell out there, I'm greatly anticipating on being a mage and I was wondering what is the most powerful spell or where I can get the long list of spells and their descriptions. Also I would like to know when a mage has a spell does he memorize it forever and can use it whenever, or is it just one shot spells you can perform only when you have a certain scroll or something of the likes...

Well it depends... Imprisonment is obviously by far the most POWERFUL spell... but since u cant LEARN it in SoA it is quite useless... my favourite learnable offensive spell in SoA is Abi-Dazlams Horrid Wilting [img]smile.gif[/img]

You like Abi-Dalzims? Disintigrate and Chain Lightning are far better!

<font color="gold">I agree partly with Goulum.
The Horrid Wilting is maybe more powerful, since it has bigger chance of succeed, but I still lean over to Disintegrate.
It's so funny when the whole foe turns to dust! :D

Now, Atellus, it really depends os what kind of spells you like. Cause there are many strong and different offensive and defensive spells out there. ;) </font>

When a Mage learns a spell, it gets put in his/her spellbook. It will be in there forever (although if you install ToB you'll get an option to remove it, but it doesn't fade away by itself after a certain amount of time or so). But you can't just cast it whenever you want. You have to memorize it first. For each spell level, a Mage has a certain number of memorization slots. For example, a 3rd level Mage has two slots for first level spells and one slot for second level. This means that he can memorize and cast two first level spells and one second level spell. He can learn, i.e. write in his spellbook, more than that, but only cast two 1st/one 2nd per day. It's all in the manual, BTW. ;)

EDIT: And there's also a list of spells, complete with full descriptions, in there. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 04-02-2002, 09:58 AM: Message edited by: J'aran ]

It's not easy to say what the 'best' spell is, because they all do different things in different situations. Certainly ones that have no saving throw (like Abi Dalzim) are better than ones where the opponent is likely to take no damage.

There are others where there is no saving throw, where it only halves the damage such as Dragons Breath, Comet. I really like Melf's Minute Meteors, as they pretty much always hit and cause at least some damage.

Then you have the 'environment altering' spells that make other spells more powerful such as Time Stop, Improved Alacrity, Lower Resistance and Greater Malison. The first two allow you to cast your spells more quickly, and cause more damage in a shorter amount of time. The latter two reduce or eliminate your opponents' saving throws/magic resistance, thus making your other magics more effective.

It's also hard to go past defensive magics such as Sprirt Armour, Blur, and Stoneskin. These can really save your butt! Use these with Tenser's Transformation, and your mage will become quite a powerful warrior.

I think abi dazims is better than disintegrate as it can affect more than one person. Time stop and improved aclarity used together are an amazing way of fireing off a whole arsenal of spells and i would say these are the best spells in SoA... dont even get me started on ToB :D :D :D