8th Ed. Storm of Magic, The Great Leveler

[Scalenex]

The Great Leveler takes 35 to cast

Lets pretend circumstances actually show that it will aid your cause to lose a Slann to get the spell off.

Assume you have Dominance so you can attempt the casting

Assume High Magic is ascendant for +3 to the casting roll to add to the +4 for a Level 4 Wizard

Assume you have an Engine of the Gods giving you -1 to High Magic casting difficulties.

Maximum six dice to cast a spell, even with everything in favor you need to average 4.5 on each die on your roll to cast the spell. Unless you are the world's greatest Yahtzee player, this spell is nigh-impossible to cast.

Am I missing something or did GW not think that one through?

 

[Caneghem]

The Great Leveler takes 35 to cast

Lets pretend circumstances actually show that it will aid your cause to lose a Slann to get the spell off.

Assume you have Dominance so you can attempt the casting

Assume High Magic is ascendant for +3 to the casting roll to add to the +4 for a Level 4 Wizard

Assume you have an Engine of the Gods giving you -1 to High Magic casting difficulties.

Maximum six dice to cast a spell, even with everything in favor you need to average 4.5 on each die on your roll to cast the spell. Unless you are the world's greatest Yahtzee player, this spell is nigh-impossible to cast.

Am I missing something or did GW not think that one through?

It's intended to be cast irresistibly I think, an act of desperation. Double 6 and it'll go off.

 

[Gonzoyola]

It's been quite a while since I played, but isn't SoM rules that you have to equal the casting value of the spell to get IF?

 

[Spiney Norman]

A few things to unpack first.
1. If I remember correctly cataclysm spells ignore the rules for IF, a double six while casting causes a miscast as normal but does not cause the spell to be cast with irresistible force, you must always beat the casting value of the spell to cast it and your opponent can always attempt a dispel.
2. The rules for SoM were designed when most slann were rocking around with a discipline that gave them a free dice for every spell they cast, which allowed them to roll 6 dice from the pool plus their free one for 7 dice total if they wanted too. That discipline is sadly no longer with us.

My memory is somewhat hazy, and I don't have the brb faq to hand, but didn't they faq the power scroll so that it lowered the casting value of a spell? That might be one possible answer.

The basic problem with the great leveller has always been that it requires domimance to cast and is only really useful to cast if the game is going south and you are significantly outnumbered (in which case you are somewhat unlikely to have dominance). I've played perhaps half a dozen SoM games with my lizards and have never been in a situation where it would be beneficial to cast the spell and I have dominance.

 

[Gor-rok]

Engine of the Gods -1 to cast only works on BRB lores, not High Magic, so not even that will help. Power Scroll does halve the casting cost of an unboosted spell now, if you really want to use your arcane item on that. I think I'd rather just try not to get that far behind in the first place.

 

[Scalenex]

What about Powerstones? Can they be used to circumvent the six dice maximum? Even if you never wanted to use the Great Leveler a Powerstone would be useful for any Dominance spell.

 

[rychek]

A few things to unpack first.
1. If I remember correctly cataclysm spells ignore the rules for IF, a double six while casting causes a miscast as normal but does not cause the spell to be cast with irresistible force, you must always beat the casting value of the spell to cast it and your opponent can always attempt a dispel.
2. The rules for SoM were designed when most slann were rocking around with a discipline that gave them a free dice for every spell they cast, which allowed them to roll 6 dice from the pool plus their free one for 7 dice total if they wanted too. That discipline is sadly no longer with us.

My memory is somewhat hazy, and I don't have the brb faq to hand, but didn't they faq the power scroll so that it lowered the casting value of a spell? That might be one possible answer.

The basic problem with the great leveller has always been that it requires domimance to cast and is only really useful to cast if the game is going south and you are significantly outnumbered (in which case you are somewhat unlikely to have dominance). I've played perhaps half a dozen SoM games with my lizards and have never been in a situation where it would be beneficial to cast the spell and I have dominance.

Too true. The Great Leveler is a beast to cast. The slight upside though is that your opponent can't use a dispel scroll on a Cataclysm spell either.

 

[Demelain]

Storm of magic rules lets you use 12 powerdice to cast a single spell.

 

[Scalenex]

Storm of magic rules lets you use 12 powerdice to cast a single spell.

Could you cite a page number for that? I thought there might be a SOM like that but I couldn't find something that said that.

 

[Anton_S]

Granted, The Great Leveller can be a game winner in the right circumstances, but 95% of the time you don't really want to cast it anyway.

Some Cataclysm spells simply aren't worth attempting and there are plenty of other examples of that too.

Anyway, you should be rocking with all the signature spells in SoM. You get up to 24 cataclysm spells to choose from that way and one set will always be at +5 to cast.

 

[Demelain]

Storm of magic rules lets you use 12 powerdice to cast a single spell.

Could you cite a page number for that? I thought there might be a SOM like that but I couldn't find something that said that.

I cant find it either, i was sure it was in there, and i have been playing it like that for while. guess i was wrong.

 

[Demelain]

is anything stopping you from using the power scroll to halve the casting cost of the spell?