I don't understand what the big deal is about Spell Focus spells

[ClosetDancer]

I completed my second playthrough of Hong Kong using a pure mage character (maxed out Willpower and Spellcasting). I don't understand why "Spell Focus" spells are made to look special and stand out from any other spell in the game. At their respective levels they can be quite powerful, but there are normal spells at higher levels that are just as powerful, if not more so.

For example, Spell Focus Fireball II does around 12 damage and has an AOE radius of 3 tiles, but Fireball III does 20 damaged, while only having a radius of 2. Spell Focus Strip Armor can strip 3 armor and give your character an extra AP on the next turn, but Strip Armor III removes 5 armor per hit.

Don't get me wrong, I can see how powerful something like Spell Focus Strip Armor can be, but I just didn't see the Spell Focus spells in general as being so powerful and special that they merited their own spell category apart from the normal spells.

Am I missing something?

[Honzou]

They are just "special" spells. Of course the regular tier 3 spells can do more dmg, but they don't have the "special" conditions that focus spells have. Also the focus spells are balanced that way to avoid making focus spells the most broken thing possible in this game.

[gkathellar]

They're unusual - not better, but they have slightly altered stats. Fireball 2 does slightly more damage than Spell Focus Fireball 2, but has a smaller AoE. That's all.

[ClosetDancer]

When look at the name "Spell Focus" for a category of spell, I guess I was expecting something that significantly altered the gameplay mechanics for magic from Dragonfall. Like maybe having a "focus" in fire magic makes all of your fire spells do more damage or something. So I guess I'm kind of underwhelmed by them just being "slightly different" spells, lol.

Oh well, thanks for the input guys.

[GunTzu]

Spellfocus: Strip Armor 2 looks like it might strip armor for the rest of combat. The other srip armor spells only do it for a 2-3 turns. This would make it invaluable for boss fights.

[baardvaark]

Yeah, they're kind of underwhelming, though the strip armor focus was kind of neat. Can you have more than one focus spell? I thought the idea was you could only have one, but now I'm not so sure.