Actually most of the people i group with since i got the lvl 44 song all
have 2000 mana which seems to be the upper limit, more int or wis doesnt
seem to help. Our necromancer keeps getting more and more int, but she is
still stuck with only (hehe, only) 2000 mana (after much testing). So i
could play the song but it wouldnt help her total mana... so to me the song
is completly useless. This is all feedback from the casters, i cant
actually determine this myself obviously.
Gendal Concorden, lvl 50 bard of Tunare
and the newly minted Enoch, lvl 19 necro :)
>Seems I'm arguing about this everywhere I go.
>
>People have this mistaken assumption that more mana = more
>spells. That is not the case. The amount of mana a caster
>has determines the number of spells he can cast without
>resting/meditating. The mana regeneration rate determines how
>many spells he can cast over a given period of time. You can
>have 100 mana or 1000 mana, if your mana regeneration rate is
>unchanged you will still cast the same number of spells/hour.
>Thus, more mana is advantageous in a single fight; it is not
>advantageous over the long term (if you use that advantage in
>a single fight, you pay for it with longer downtime).
>
>e.g. Your party tries to take and hold a room. The cleric
>has 500 mana. You attack and are only able to clear the first
>half of the room before the cleric is out of mana and must
>meditate. The cleric meditates. By the time he is at full
>mana, the portion of the room you've cleared has respawned.
>
>The typical reaction to this type of scenario is "damn, we
>could've done it if we'd only had more mana." This is not so.
>Say the cleric had 1000 mana. You attack and are able to
>clear the entire room, with the cleric finishing OOM. The
>cleric meditates. By the time he is at 500 mana, the entire
>room has respawned, and now the scenario is identical to the
>previous. More mana lets you take the room once where you
>could not before (single fight), but it does not enable you to
>hold the room (long term).
>
>So I would say the use for the song is if you can forsee a
>situation where you need additional mana for a single fight.
>Start singing it before, let the casters top off, then start
>the fight. That should let them get one or two extra spells
>in for just this one fight (after they've cast the first few
>spells, you don't need to keep the int/wis boost up). Having
>the effect last longer would be more convenient, but not
>advantageous.
>
>--
>John H. Kim
>kim@...
>
>