Spell Strengths Histogram
People often ask how they can make their spells cast faster, or have the effect last longer, or increase the strength of a spell. This is an attempt to explain the relationship between spell methods and the magic.spells.* skills.
Spell methods are the methods listed with the command spellcheck and are the skills used to cast the spell. However, as well as listing the spell methods, spellcheck also lists a spell type, this is one of defensive, miscellaneous or offensive. Each of these spell types has a skill in the magic.spells.* tree.
The "strength" of a spell in this discussion means many things. It may mean the amount of damage an offensive spell deals to the target, the amount of damage a defensive spell can protect from, the duration of a spell effect etc.
It is my perception that both the achievable strength and casting speed of a spell is defined by the relevant magic.spells.* skill. Within this achievable strength, the spell methods in the magic.methods.* tree (and in some rare cases skills in other parts of the skill tree) may either act as a pass / check, or may influence the amount of the maximum speed and / or strength you get. Casting speed appears to be less variable, but may also be influenced by the spell methods.
I have attempted to show this in the chart below. It considers a spell cast with the same ma.sp.* on each occasion, but with different levels of combined methods skillcheck. The spell is considered 20 times for each of low, medium and high methods. The bars show, for each methods value, the number of casts where the spell strength achieved falls within a given 5% band of the spell's potential strength. For low methods, there is a broad spread with a flat, low peak. For medium methods, there is a medium spread with a moderate peak, and for high methods the spread is much narrower, and the peak much higher. This is an attempt to show my understanding of how spell methods and ma.sp.* affect spell strength. My understanding may not reflect the actuality of the underlying code.
Spell Strengths Histogram
Note: For the purpose of this chart, consider that "low" means that each skill is in the "slightly more likely to succeed" category, "medium" indicates that all skills have achieved "most certainly succeed" and "high" reflects skills that are substantially higher than those that spellcheck indicates will guarantee casting success.
It is possible that other skills may also determine the strength or effectiveness of the spell, or some aspects of it. Spells where this is perceived by myself or others to be the case include Myrandil's Vicious Seizure (abjuring), Grisald's Reanimated Guardian (healing), Floron's Fabulous Mirror (scrying), Journey of the Heavenly Storm Dragon (channeling), Endorphin's Floating Friend (binding) and Kamikaze Oryctolagus Flammula (convoking). There may be other spells that fall into this category. Some of this information may be out of date.
The number of hands appears to be related to normal skillchecks. The ability of the hands to hold on to a person seems to be a test of the caster's magic.methods.spiritual.abjuring skill against the target's fighting.defence.dodging skill.
The fierceness of the skeleton warrior appears to be related to the caster's magic.methods.physical.healing skill.
There appears to be a skillcheck of the caster's ability in magic.methods.physical.scrying against one of the skills in the targets faith skill tree, various faith.rituals.defensive.* tms have been reported, and it is possible that the skillcheck is against faith.rituals.defensive rather than one of the leaf skills.
Channeling skillchecks are made to determine the success of control of the dragon as it moves from target to target.
It is perceived by some that the binding bonus at time of casting influences the ability of the shield to withstand impact.
The ability to merge casts of the spell is believed by some to be determined by the caster's magic.methods.mental.convoking skill.
The casting speed and strength of spells depends caster's skills in both the spell methods and the spell type. These all need to be advanced to achieve the maximum effect of any spell. For most spells there is a point at which advancing the spell methods will have little further effect, and those spells become stronger by advancing the spell type skill. For some other spells their effects can be further strengthened by advancing specific spell methods. In all cases, advancing methods beyond the point at which casting becomes totally reliable will improve the spell strength.