drain time

[beornica]

Out of curiosity, (and because I'm just too dumb to figure it out for myself) what's with the time limit you can put on spells, like drain? Say you want to drain someone's magicka 100 pts over 20 seconds. Does that mean it takes 20 seconds to drain, or can they not restore their magicka for that entire time?
Thanks for sharing the knowledge...

[fable]

Say you want to drain someone's magicka 100 pts over 20 seconds.

Then the spell you have would read Drain Magicka 5 pts for 20 seconds. That would give you the total of 100 points you want. Concurrently, they could cast a spell or a drink a potion (same effect) to counteract this, causing two spells to run at once.

[beornica]

Ooooo, I see, so it's that many points per second, is it? Why haven't I been using drain spells all along? I've been missing out! Those suckers are powerful for very very little magicka points!

[Dark Master]

I always thought that a drain spell was a straight off deduction of points for the stated time period. I always thought there were three kinds of destruction damage:

Drain - removes X number of stat points for Y seconds, so drain Magicka 100pts for 10 seconds means that for the whole ten seconds there are 100 less Magicka points.

Damage - removes X number of stat points until they are restored at a shrine or with a potion.

Destroy - lowers the maximum avaliable points, as well as the current value, ie 10 pts destroy health takes a character from 100/110 health points to 90/100 health points, these 'missing' points are gone forever and must be replaced in level ups.

DM

[fable]

You forgot the best of all, Absorb: it drains, and then gives you what it takes from someone else.

Drain is simply overpowered, in my opinion. It bypasses just about all defenses, unlike shock, poison, fire and frost damage. Some of the balancing mods price up drain spells hideously, as a result. Even so, if you're enchanting a weapon, throw a few points of Drain Health in with anything else. It can't hurt.

[JesterKing]

hey where do you find the 'destroy' spells? and yes fable, drain and absorb spells are really overdone... but hey i dont care the enemies never stand a chance against us anyways, it doesnt relaly matter how quickly we destroy npcs does it?

[Anonononomous]

Sort of off topic, but: I read somewhere that a spell of fortify willpower 100 and fortify intelligence 100 for 1 second, due to some rather sketchy math, works to restore magica, i.e it takes 30 to cast but gives back 70. Bu then I tried it in my game and it didn't work. Did I just make a bad spell, or read wrong, or was it fake?

[beornica]

Probably another fake. Stupid dorks that write those "hints". Like the time I read there was a mini quest in suran, in which you could get a potion of permanent invincibility from a guy standing on top of Desele's House of Earthly Delights. Oh, but here's a *real* tip not many people know about: There's a trapdoor in the middle of town in Balmora, and if you go down there in the very beginning of the game, before you have any legendary items, you can get them all at once, since under this trapdoor is a room full of chests with every legendary item in the game in it, including The Ebony Mail. see, I can make up stuff too!

[JesterKing]

beornica... im not sure whether or not to beleive you...AAAAAHHHHh what!?!??!?!? where is this trapdoor? or is this like that 'if you keep going forever to the east you will come to a whole hidden continent where you will be able to fight the daedra and get their weapons (like the weapons of the daedra are so great... hunters spear comes to mind.)

[Rookierookie]

Is it the place you get to when you use the command

coc "ken's test hole"

?

[Bloodthroe]

I believe it works the way DM explained...