Spell Failure

[Korumak]

Heres my situation.  Originally I made a character with the Quick fighter kit.  because of thus it sent my three other stats into overdrive, and dropped my Int, Cha, Will to the low 60's.  Frankly me and the melee combat system simply don't agree with each other so the character selected a 'various' job and worked on his levels at.
So recently he has begun to follow magic, (ok temptation was to great to play with it). (plus i needed the PP) So like in D&D low int, means spells blow up on you. I also get that the spells don't do much damage, after all the spell levels are level one, untill I get issue resolved.
So I been working on beefing his stats till they get around 80, figuring at least that should cure the spell failure issue.

Is my reasoning flawed, or is there some other mechanic at play?  I'm still blowing 2/3 spells.

My other Question is or perhaps a suggestion of the wish list, is with the current number system, I don't know what "Average is" my only guess was to create an alt, with no particular skill set, and ended up with roughly 80's.  So perhaps some kind of list showing what the limits are point wise, whats "Average" and when "Big jumps" are going to occur.
I don't want to have a "Maxed out" character, just one that isn't suffering drawbacks.
[Talking Game play wise not RP wise thats a different subject]

[Bonifarzia]

I am not perfectly sure if my understanding of game rules for casting spells is up to date, but last time I played around with different low end characters, the chances to fumble were not quite that serious. Keep in mind that the most important factor for this probability is the spellpower, which you can chose with a slider at the bottom of the info window, the small one with the health bars and attack buttons. In case that slider is at 100%, you should expect a high chance to fail, unless you reached some advanced ranks in the magic ways. The spellpower can also be specified when casting a spell via the command line (or a shortcut), for example

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/cast 0 energy arrow This will use 0% of spellpower regardless to the settings of the mentioned slider. I have the feeling the chance to fail at 0% spell power tend to zero as you gain some basic training in the corresponding way skill, and that the effect of mental stats is less important here. I should also mention that raising your physical and mental stats will lower the gain of progression points when defeating NPCs, so be careful there. The current skill range goes up to a maximum of rank 200, and stats can be trained up to rank 400. Don't let the numbers scare you. There is absolutely no need to reach high end ranks to have fun playing. A more interesting number for you could be rank twenty, the requirement for using spells of the second realm. This information is not in the player guide, but it tends to be relevant when getting started with magic. I hope this helps a little and does not contain any serious spoilers.

[Korumak]

Well for a while i had been spending PP to beef up my basic stats, not taking them over 80 at first, and yep it was blowing spells that bad.  And yes i knew about the mana boost, as i wanted to compare the different damage levels of the spells i was using so I kept it at 0.  I noticed once I got those 3 scores up to 80 i was still blowing 1-2 spells out of four but it was a remarkable improvement, so i slowly began to creep them up to 100, and that seems to make the difference, though i am not there yet to know if my theory proves true.  I'm blowing one out of 4 spells now.  So I figure 100 has to be the magic 0 spell failure number.  Also we are talking basic realm one spells.  I'm holding off proceeding down the skill raising track till i get my head wrapped around the spell system and stats.

Thats the kicker see I come from an AD&D world where all the Stats are nicely layed out so you knew OOC where to adjust the numbers for the game system.  That gave you a better idea to RP character by the stats. (had a lot of fun with a character with a 3 INT, got quite a following too.)  Just were kind of running blind here knowing at what stat level does what happen etc.  Granted its understandable with the Adjustments being made.  I had hoped someone would have gotten a 'official line' of what the Dev's where aiming for, mostly so i could get my head around where there pointing things at.

Its kind of the same thing with a Skill level of 400.  I mean really at 400 you can do what exactly.  Do things at 400% efficiency.  Doesn't really translate in to well 'layemens terms' very well.

[Karlyle]

First of, I would like to say this is NOT D&D, nothing against that game .... but the game mechanics are different in PS.
As stated by Boni previously, stat max is 400, while skill max is 200.  The higher you raise your stats the less PP's you get from NPC's.  I would suggest raising magic skills instead of more stats.  This will increase the number of spells cast effectively.  The higher skill level you have in a particular way of magic, the better those spells and more effective they will be.  [like real life, you can be a very smart person, but without any knowledge in a certain field ... you're still not able to do much] I hope this answers your question.

[Gilrond]

There are also known bugs with some spells which fail on most mobs except for rats and few other types. For example Icy Ground and Choking Gas.

[Gilrond]

for example

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/cast 0 energy arrow This will use 0% of spellpower regardless to the settings of the mentioned slider.

I'd just rephrase it a bit - it'll use base spell power, with 0% boost. If you do /cast 100 <spell> you'll get 100% of the boost (that doesn't mean twice as much power, just 100% of available boost). The higher is your skill, the less boost is left for the spell, so using boost becomes pointless as you progress.

[Caraick]

I'm not sure I would necessarily describe it as a "boost", as that's implying that the spell itself is going to be cast, no matter what, and only receive on optional "boost" if the caster chooses to give it.  Increasing the spellpower increases the potential power of the spell, creating greater mana consumption, and also a greater increase in the percentage of a failed cast.

[Gilrond]

implying that the spell itself is going to be cast, no matter what, and only receive on optional "boost" if the caster chooses to give it.

That's correct. Doing /cast 0 <spell> (same as /cast <spell>) uses the base power, without the optional boost. What you called cast no matter what.

Increasing the spellpower increases the potential power of the spell, creating greater mana consumption, and also a greater increase in the percentage of a failed cast.

That power goes for the boost, the consumption of the base part is calculated regardless of it.