NPC Spellcasters
Liches, shamans and evil mages actually cast now. What each one knows is read off its skill.
Most of the classic monsters had the Magery skill but carried no spellbook, and in this engine an NPC can only cast what its book holds. The result was an army of silent liches: the mage in front of you never cast anything.
We hand out the book now. A spellcaster receives one the first time it sees a player, and the book is destroyed along with it — nobody farms free books off corpses.
Who knows what
| Magery | Spells known | Circles |
|---|---|---|
| 80 and above | five or six | first five |
| below 80 | three to five | first three |
The list is built from the skill rather than from a list of names, so a creature added later gets its share automatically. The first two spells are always damaging ones: Fireball and Lightning for a master, Magic Arrow and Harm for a weaker caster. Chance fills the rest. Without that rule a lich would mostly throw curses, since only five of the forty spells in the first five circles do damage at all.
Rhythm
A caster does not chain spells. A master casts every three seconds, a weaker one every five; if its turn has not come it gives up on the spell, closes in and swings instead.
Its mana is refilled when its turn comes round. Otherwise a caster that spent its mana would wander about empty-handed for minutes; today the price it pays is time.