I always liked Isaac's Lesser/Greater Missile Storm spells in Neverwinter Nights 2. I thought it was so awesome watching the spell just light up a single target with up to 10 missiles. I thought that having a similar spell in GSIV would be awesome.

940 - Elemental Concentration
Through dedicated Elemental Mana Control wizards have learned to further harness their understanding of elemental lores and bolt spells. A very dedicated wizard should be able to focus lore dedication and manipulate elemental bolts to allow multiple bolts from a single cast. Bolt spells can be controlled to allow multiple casts upon a single TARGET and reduce or even completely remove a target’s ability to EBP against the bolt spells cast at them.

Duration - 30 seconds
Self-Cast Only
Does not work with 518
Does not work with 515
Creature must be player's current TARGET
Only functions with bolt spells
Always guaranteed a 2nd bolt if initial cast hits your TARGET

Benefits of this spell Only works against single target that is TARGETed
You can increase your EL ranks of 1 specific lore of your choice. Every 5 ranks of EMC nets you 1 phantom lore rank of your choice. For example; You'd cast the spell as INCANT 940 FIRE to give phantom fire lore ranks towards fire bolt spells for 60 seconds.
Every 2 ranks of EMC reduces EBP of TARGET by 1%
When a bolt spell is cast, it has a chance to be automatically cast again based on your EMC ranks. The bolt spell will be cast over and over again until the target is dead, you fail to maintain control or you run out of mana.
Initial bolt cast costs base mana.
- Second bolt cast costs: base mana - (base cost/2)
- Third bolt cast costs: base mana - (base cost/4)
- Fourth bolt cast costs: base mana - (base cost/6)
- Fifth bolt cast costs: base mana - (base cost/8)
- Sixth bolt cast costs: base mana - (base cost/10)
- Seventh bolt cast costs: base mana + 2
- Eighth bolt cast costs: base mana + 4
- Ninth bolt cast costs: base mana + 6
- Tenth bolt cast costs: base mana + 8
- etc...

Each bolt has a chance to be cast again based on your EMC: every 2 ranks of EMC (capped at 200) gives 1% increased chance to having a follow up bolt cast.
Initial successful cast guarantees 100% of a second bolt to be cast
- Second bolt cast has (EMC/2) - (3+(3/2)) = % to allow third bolt to be cast
- Third bolt cast has (EMC/2) - (5+(4/2)) = % to all fourth bolt to be cast
- Fourth bolt cast has (EMC/2) - (7+(5/2)) = % to allow fifth bolt to be cast
- Fifth bolt cast has (EMC/2) - (9+(6/2)) = % to allow sixth bolt to be cast
- Sixth bolt cast has (EMC/2) - (11+(7/2)) = % to allow seventh bolt to be cast
- Seventh bolt cast has (EMC/2) - (13+(8/2)) = % to allow eighth bolt to be cast
- Eighth bolt cast has (EMC/2) - (15+(9/2)) = % to allow ninth bolt to be cast
- Ninth bolt cast has (EMC/2) - (17+(10/2)) = % to allow tenth bolt to be cast
- etc...

We'll say we have Frank the Glass Tank. He's a level 100 wizard and has 1x EL:F and fully 2x EMC.
EL:F = 100 ranks
EMC = 200 ranks

Frank casts 940 with INCANT 940 FIRE
He's granted 40 phantom ranks to EL:F that can apply to his bolt spells (EMC/5 = 40) and now has 140 EL:F for any bolt spell under 940 duration against his TARGETed creatures
Any TARGETed creature's EBP is reduced by 100% (EMC/2 = 100).
He must use TARGET for the spell to function against the creature he's casting his bolt spells at.

Frank is out and he sees a Giant Wood Stump lumbering towards him!
Frank would TARGET stump
Frank would then INCANT 906 or maybe he likes to PREP 906/CAST STUMP or if he was going to use Minor Steam, he could even EVOKE 903 for example.
(In this case, Frank is going to cast 906 at the stump)
Frank would then cast 906 at the stump. As long as the spell hits his target, there is a chance it will cast over and over again until the stump is dead or it happens to EBP or save AS vs DS or if Frank runs out of mana.
We'll say that Frank is successful and kills the stump, it took 6 bolts that all triggered from 940 being active. His total mana cost would be: 30 mana to kill the stump (not counting the initial 40 mana to cast 940)
1st cast = 6 mana (base cost)
2nd cast always guaranteed IF the first bolt hits the target = 3 mana (6 - (6/2))
3rd cast = 4 mana (6 - (6/4))
4th cast = 5 mana (6 - (6/6))
5th cast = 6 mana (6 - (6/8))
6th cast = 6 mana (6 - (6/10))
If a 7th cast was needed & triggered = 8 mana (6 + 2) (total cost = 38 mana, 4 less than casting 906 7 individual times)
If an 8th cast was needed & triggered = 10 mana (6 + 4) (total cost = 48 mana, equal to casting 906 8 individual times)

If he were to cast 906 6 different times to get the same death on the creature it would take him 36 mana and a minimum of 6 seconds if he had Rapid Fire active or 18 seconds without Rapid Fire.

This spell does multiple things for wizards:
You gain phantom lore ranks in a lore of your choice that applies to bolt spells only - this increases the DF of bolts you're casting.
You can reduce EBP by 100% with enough EMC ranks
You get multiple casts of a single bolt spell as long as you have enough EMC ranks and you've had a successful strike on the target.
Mana cost for 7-8 casts under the duration of this spell will be lower than actually casting the same bolt spell 7-8 different times.

If you think the mana costs are a little low or % for follow up bolts is too high, tweaking a few numbers can fix that. With my wizard that's only 100 EMC, he'd be lucky to get multiple bolts to trigger with the spell on a constant basis. So the spell wouldn't really be ideal until you hit cap or focused heavy on EMC before cap. I'd like to think this spell is more so designed to assist closer to cap or post-cap wizards the most. They'd have the TPs to invest in more EMC and receive greater benefits from the spell.

-Drumpel

>I don't believe there should ever be a way to totally negate EBP (or any other skill / spell, for that matter, yes - to include fumble rolls). Don't mind it being 95%, 99%, whatever - but there's always a small chance for greatness. Or disaster. Minimizing is ok, eradicating. . .

I could see it being at 95-99%. Leave a small chance in there as one would get for a fumble using a CS based. Folks are asking for something that could allow bolting to be more inline with how CS doesn't have to deal with EBP, but only has that 1% fumble failure instead.

>I think the biggest hangup is likely to be the scaling on a skill that every wizard trains in (should train in). Not saying change it, and not suggesting anything to change it to, right now. Just pointing out the reality that we have passed the stage where the 'desired unlock' is simply 'to be.' We tend to backslide, but very little has been implemented of late that is like this. It frustrates the hell out of some of us - consider the 5 ranks EL:W unlocking the mana pool discussion. And yet - we continue to require discrete training outside of the 'core training' paths. And there's a reason. Just do not advocate for MoC, please!

Sure thing, we'll just change the EMC requirement to be MOC and now we're all set! Yeah!

Kidding aside, I don't like any X amount of lore in a specific element to unlock a bolt or give a simple, what appears to be, basic function all wizards should be allowed to have at a base level. Putting unlocks for things tends to make people think you need to train your wizard in all sorts of minimum levels of each lore type to be functional by gaining access to all bolt spells or even the basic level of storing mana in your enchanting mana pool. There are already restrictions in place for being able to earn mana for your pool: you need to know spell 925 before you start storing mana.

Being able to train lores 3x would solve so many issues of these problems. We're not going to get 3x lores, so they need to stop doing this. Otherwise you baiscally have all wizards training a very similar layout that makes no one different (aside from the freaks like me that strictly has his wizard training EL:E). I don't wish to get derailed on this area again, so we'll just leave it as this and keep focused on spell ideas here.

>I think the mana costs are a bit low - I'll have to check the scaling a bit.

I would like to think that if you spend 40 mana to cast the 30 second duration spell, the first couple of possible followup bolts would cost a few mana points less and then scale up from there. You're basically blasting a single target with one bolt spell in that split second (think spell 950, but focused on just one target). As the number of bolts you toss out increases, so will the difficulty to cast more and eventually the mana cost will also make a jump.

Just think if you tried casting out 510 at a target with this spell. Maybe you hit the target 6, 7, 8, 9 times but you're getting low endrolls where you're not doing much damage. Your ability to keep tossing out more and more of 510 is going to degrade and the cost of the mana will jump more and more. Maybe you get lucky and kill the target and it only costs you 22 mana (cast 3x) or maybe you get unlucky and you get it cast off 10 times before the target dies and you blow through 101 mana. That'd be 1/3 of my wizard's mana on just one creature. Oy vey!

I see the spell as kind of a gamble. You basically blast out bolts as long as you are allowed: until the creature dies, you run out of mana or fail to get a follow up cast. Sometimes it could be mana beneficial to you, other times it might break even and others you may spend more mana than you wanted.

>Like it coming together! So - change the EBP mod somewhat and cap it at some value, stay openminded about the mana costs (they probably will need to be close to double what's shown here, maybe 1.5x) and be ready to shift away from EMC to something else - and let's see what the Dev team says.

EMC. Elemental Mana Control - seems to fit with the spell. You're controlling the elemental mana to improve your bolt spells. I'd like to see something not tied to lores as a requirement to utilize a spell well. Not all wizards train more than 1x in lores and probably don't focus towards 2x until well past cap. I figure EMC is a nice, key skill a lot of try to focus well on since it gives access to more MANA SPELLUP uses, is tied to a few other spells and also boosts your mana regen.

The other idea I thought maybe behind on this spell idea would be for someone that doesn't maybe train in EL:F, but they could get some phantom ranks for their 906/908 bolt spells because they're up against creatures weak to fire. But, phantom lore ranks don't need to be a requirement, I just thought it would be nice to further fluff bolt spell damage with a DF jump.

-Drumpel

>You gain phantom lore ranks in a lore of your choice that applies to bolt spells only - this increases the DF of bolts you're casting.

It's interesting, but the subsequent casts would need to be instant like with 240 or 950 to achieve cast time parity with the other pures. Also, DF isn't the issue. 950 works not because of just a slew of bolts at once but because of the massive boost in AS/CS, as 240 also provides. If you run into an unlucky creature with excessively high DS, this is otherwise a good way to blow all your mana without a cap also, and it still wouldn't be dead. This has happened in certain areas.