Question about Elf spellcasters

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I have heard that there are limitations to the level of advancement that elven spellcasters have!

Like they can't go past Level 6 in preist or mage spells. Like Aarie can't go to Level 7 spells unless she is using a scroll.

I haven't been able to verify for myself and I haven't been able to find a spot in the BG2:SoA book that would talk about it.

Help please!

 

No, as far as i know it has nothing to do with being elfish...

Aerie cant cast high level spells because she is multi-classed. But a single class elven mage will have just as many spell levels as a human one.

 

What you're thinking of is the class advancement rules from 2ed (I don't know 3ed rules or beyond). Demihumans were limited in how far they could advance in levels. Those rules were not put into play in the PC games.

As for Aerie, it's her multiclass that holds her back, not her race -- morsmordre is right.

 

In AD&D (first edition) Intelligence and Wisdom also limited the max spell level you could cast. For example you needed to have 18 Wisdom to cast level 7 cleric spells.

In BG2, the only thing limiting which level of spells a character can cast is how many experience points that character has.

 

Really? Your mage doesn't get extra spells for having a higher intelligence? I'm not too sure how that works - help me.

I always thought gnomes made the best mages because of their 19 intelligence. Am I wrong? How exactly do wisdom and intelligence factor in? I'm sure you get less spells per level if your INT is like 5, right?

 

All I know is that you need at least 8 int. to cast spells from scrolls...

 

Intelligence affects the number of spells a mage can learn. From these learned spells, a mage can memorise only a certain number (ie the ones that you need to rest to re-memorise); how many, and at what spell level, is dependant on the mage’s level. AFAIK, wisdom only affects the limited wish spell.
As an aside, because a sorcerer doesn't actually learn spells per se, intelligence is not a factor.

[ October 02, 2003, 00:18: Message edited by: Splunge ]

 

In PnP, IIRC, real high intelligence scores made mages "immune" to illusion spells. For example if an enemy mage cast mirror image or blur, you would be able to separate the real mage from the illusionary ones because you would be able to find the flaws in the illusion. Also, IIRC, the higher your intelligence score was, the higher level illusion spell you were "immune" to.

Intelligence is important because of the success factor. The higher your intelligence, the better chance you have of the spell casting correctly. It is also a factor used in determing the mage's lore score.

From my experiences, gnomes can only be illusionists; they cannot be a vanilla or any other type of specialist mage.

This is partially true. Under 2E rules, your intelligence also determines what the maximum spell level you can attain is. This is why Imoen and Nalia cannot cast, from memory, 9th level spells. You must have an 18 intelligence score to cast them. The number of spells/level is dependant on the mage's experience level.

 

Correct, but this isn't in the game. The only thing directly influencing how many spells per day can be cast is experience points. The only advantage a gnome with 19 int gets is an advantage in learning spells (of course, there's enough int boosting potions in the game that this is a moot point.)

 

In some 2ed rule expansions (Player's Option: spells and magic) Intelligence gave mages more spells just like Wisdom gave clerics more spells. This makes sense to me. I guess they didn't want to put such stuff in the computer games, though.

The weird thing is, there's really no pre-requisite of importance to a sorceror in the computer game -- no matter his INT, he gets 9th and 10th level spells, so why put his INT over the required 9? I'd put it somewhere more useful from a powergaming perspective, like DEX, CON or even STR.