Arena talk:Magical Effects

Correction aimed at HMS Victory

HMS Victory, some of your "cleanup" obscured what I was trying to say. I changed it back where necessary. If you notice it changed back and still think it's wrong, consider more closely what I was trying to say. We can discuss it here if you like, I'm open to editing...IF the meaning is not lost and basic rules of grammar are adhered to. Thanx...Dr. Memory 22:34, 25 February 2008 (EST)

Continuous Damage Health Query

The Spellmaker Effects display box:

Continuous Damage Health
"Cause 1 to Y pts of damage to health every 5 rnd(s).  Duration
is D rnd(s).  Damage is +1 to Z every L level(s)."

In the interface box for creating the spell it asks for 3 things: Range, Increase and Strikes. There is no way to change the "every 5 rnd(s)".

The "1 to Y" is called the "range".
The interface design screen calls the variable D "strikes".  The minimum for D is 5.
The "1 to Z every L level(s)" is called the "increase".

It is fairly clear that the damage total for a hit will be: 1 to Y plus 1 to Z for every L levels. The problem is determining the nature of (to borrow a D&D term) ongoing damage.

If the hit occurs only "every 5 rnd(s)" (25 seconds), then this is a slow and expensive spell indeed. If "strikes" means the number of hits spread out over a 5 rnd fixed duration, then the spell is reasonable, but doesn't fit the Effects display box description although it comes closer to the interface box requests.

The wiki article says:

"Damage X points for a figured attribute for R rounds. Figured attributes include fatigue, health, 
and spell points."

Spell behavior

Does anyone know how the spell actually behaves? It is very difficult to judge the amount of damage an NPC monster is taking, or their level of health since there is no construction set for Arena. Or is there one? Kalevala 02:44, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Tested this by setting it to explosion. My spell's description was "Cause 1 to 1 pts of damage every 5 rnds, duration 10 rnds, +1 to 1 pts every 2 levels". Slowly, over fixed intervals (which were probably 5 rounds) I would take 2 damage. After a few minutes I moved far enough away from the spiders I initially hit so that they were offscreen and couldn't hit me so I wouldn't have to keep casting invis, but I came back at the end and they weren't dead. I started out with 124 HP and it continued until I died. I'm not going to bother changing the variables and do even more waiting just to give some more testing. 216.15.113.220 00:14, 11 August 2015 (UTC)