From:	Mongoose m0ng005e@*********.com
Subject:	Spellcasting...so how do I do this?
Date:	Fri, 12 Mar 1999 15:21:34 -0600

:The really smart thing is to have a really good sorcery skill and a good
:willpower. Then cast your spell at like Force 1 or 2 and throw most of
:your spell pool dice and sorcery dice into it. Sure your opponent might
:need 2's to resist your 2D mana bolt, but if his Willpower is like 4,
:even if he gets all 4 successes you still only need to score 3 to kill
:him since he can't downstage the damage with only 1 success to his
:advantage. Then, since you only cast it at force 2 you have no problem
:shaking the drain.

Might I point out that in many cases, drain from higher force is NOT
harder to resist? Take a manabolt- for force 1-5, the tn for resiting
drain is still 2 (ones always fail, drain is 1/2 force, rounded down). If
you have "manbolt 5", there is no point in casting "manabolt 2",
unless
you would be risking physical drain.
Low force spells only really help on drain if there are positive drain
code modifiers. This could come into play when casting physical or area
spells at "d" dm,age, also, due the the "over D / +2" drain.
If there is a negative modifier, even high force spells have minmal
drain- you can cast a force 7 stunbolt (any dmage), and the drain tn is
still 2!
The main advantage of low force spells is that they are easy to learn,
and a starting mage can have many of them.

Mongoose