Category:Spell Tiers: Difference between revisions

Difficulty and power of spells is determined by the tier they are in, with higher tiered spells being more powerful but more difficult to cast. Spells go from first to fifth tier. According to GM Zeyurn, "The hard and fast rule is that the Tier of a spell is whatever the Highest Tier prereq of the spell is, +1." The current design mandate is to make spells equivalent across tiers regardless of guild or magic skillset placement.

The potential power and versatility of a spell is, by design, partially derived from its "tier" on a given guild's spell progression list. The tier of a spell generally indicates how complicated the spell pattern is in terms of in-game understanding, and therefore a higher-tier spell will be harder to cast and harder to put more mana into than a lower-tier spell.

Generally, lower-tier spells have lower minimum mana preparation requirements but take more mana investment to reach their maximum capacity (the spell cap). Higher-tier spells tend to require more mana to power, but require less mana to reach their maximum effectiveness while requiring more Primary Magic skill to reach said cap.

For illustrative purposes, a Tier 1 spell such as the Moon Mage spell Telekinetic Throw (TKT) requires only 1 mana to cast but doesn't cap out until 54 mana, while the Tier 4 Moon Mage spell Partial Displacement (PD) cannot be powered with any less than 9 mana, but only requires 33 to cap out. It requires several hundred fewer ranks of Primary Magic skill to cast TKT at 54 mana, however, than it does to cast PD at 33 mana.