mages hate casting spells in melee range?

[Gunnar]

I had a Sauromancer with level 7 death underwater, with lots of shades with him.

I put the shades in a bad position, and the enemy go close to him. The entire battle, which lasted very long because of shades, he was on the front line (melee range). He was invulnerable so he was never damaged, but he spent the entire battle trying to hit people with his staff, with very little fatigue. He shared a tile with 2 shades. He was always bordering a tile with 2-3 enemies. No other amount of enemies in melee range

He is scripted to cast spells. But he did not cast any in melee range.

He could have cast:

Hand of Dust
Hand of Death
even Drain Life...

If he just spammed hitting these spells, he would have killed a lot of enemies. But instead he stood there failing to hit people with his staff


Are these range 1 spells useless, except for mages with "combat caster"?

[Alias]

Innate casters won't care.

Combat casters maybe don't care?

The touch spells of 50% cast duration are supposed to be cast by everyone in melee, but Ive never been able to successfully script a cast of, say, Fists of Iron.

[DasaKamov]

Was the Sauromancer being hit by enemies in combat, but not damaged? The Dominions 5 manual does state that chance of Spellcasting being interrupted when the caster is hit in combat as 25% + Percentage of Max HP taken in damage (and gives the example that "a caster who loses half their HP from a single strike has a 75% of interrupting the spell being cast").

I wonder if the game doesn't take into account attacks that cause the mage to lose 0% of their HP, and applies a flat 25% + 0% chance to interrupt the spell. (Or, perhaps this is working as intended).

[Zonk]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

I wonder if the game doesn't take into account attacks that cause the mage to lose 0% of their HP, and applies a flat 25% + 0% chance to interrupt the spell. (Or, perhaps this is working as intended).

Actually, it doesn't say 'when hit in combat' but "when damaged while casting a spell". (page 87)
The most obvious reading IMO is that 0-damage hits shouldn't count.

But, like you, I wonder how it actually works - I remember hits doing no damage disrupting spells, but I might simply be wrong.

[wilson.max]

In addition to the chance of spell interruption, there's a high chance that a caster in melee will not even attempt to cast a spell, and will melee instead. (Unless he is an Innate Caster, like a demi-lich.) IIRC Dom4 documentation claimed that the chance was 50%, and I haven't been able to find documentation in Dom5 for what the chance is supposed to be, but it seems to be lower than 50%. I'd guesstimate that casters will attempt melee instead of spellcasting 80+% of the time.

[DasaKamov]

@Zonk; I agree with you in principle -- I'm just wondering if Damage that is countered by armor/spells still counts as "Damage", but only "0 HP Damage".

@wilson.max: I had remembered that in Dom 4 as well, but I couldn't find where the Dom 4 Manual had mentioned that, so I didn't bring it up. It stands to reason that Dom 5 would have a similar "the mage is too worried about saving their own skin to cast spells in melee" mechanic, I would think.