Magic Duel Bug

[Lucid]

Someone in one of my games had 14 S1 mages setup to magic duel 3 grand lemurs. Only 3 of them cast the spell. Oddly, some of them (3) actually cast magic duel despite having gems etc. Even more oddly, some of them started casting magic duel: "XXX prepares to cast magic duel" then cast body ethreal. Anyone know what is happening here? Since I have no idea what is causing it, i wanted to check in before posting in the bug thread.

[Morsigil]

Interesting. Were the lemurs killed after the first 3? I presume not.

[Paper Rat]

Is it possible, that magic duel is not instant, and while a magic duel is in progress no additional magic duels can take place, so surplus duelists just go off-script?

[wilson.max]

When a caster starts preparing one spell but actually casts another, it means there were no longer any valid targets for the spell by the time it is cast. (You typically see this with buff spells when all units within range have already been buffed.)

[Lucid]

Originally posted by Morsigil:

Interesting. Were the lemurs killed after the first 3? I presume not.

They were not

[Lucid]

Originally posted by wilson.max:

When a caster starts preparing one spell but actually casts another, it means there were no longer any valid targets for the spell by the time it is cast. (You typically see this with buff spells when all units within range have already been buffed.)

Hmm, how could that be when none of the grandlemurs were killed? Any ideas?

[zhraia]

The lemurs did not die from the 3 mages that cast magic duel. It's like if the mages had finished preparing to cast magic duel, 3 picked a target and the others did not get a target so they went off-script, regardless if the first 3 was successful or not. It seems to be a drawback of having everyone cast spells at the same time, since you don't want mages targeting dead mages with magic duel.

The obvious way around this would be to count the number of enemy astral mages and script your mages so only have a similar amount cast magic duel every round, and have the other mages cast other stuff, it would be quite tedious and mess with your scripting.