Your math is off. On average, the difference between a target always disbelieving and hit by True Ephing Bolt vs. a non-disbeliever hit by regular Ephing Bolt is 3.5 points of damage more against the disbeliever.Ferretmonger wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2019 6:53 amDoing the math, which isn't really that hard in this case, shows that if the target known that if you're attacked by and Illusionist you might as well go ahead and always automatically disbelieve all damage spells being cast, since the True versions of the spell has its base damage lower than its illusory counterpart, meaning that even if you lower your MD to 2 you'd still walk away "winning" with much less incoming damage than if you would believe all damage spells, since you'd be automatically ignoring all spells with the Illusion keyword, as in the example above where two full rounds of weaving/casting just goes up in smoke.
I used anydice.com to put my statistics together. Use output [explode d8] to make the dice explode.
Assume an MD of 8 on the target and the Illusionist has WIL 7, Spellcasting 9 (basically the example character in the back of the PG).
When doing the calculations, percentage is how often the given damage step is likely to appear. We'll simplify things by not rolling the damage step but simply use it as is and multiply it by the percentage of time it appears. Summing it up across the different damage steps for the attack should yield the average damage output per round.
Ephing believer
percentage of time / damage step / average damage
- .4167 / 0 / 0
- .3802 / 10 / 3.802
- .1329 / 12 / 1.5948
- .0487 / 14 / 0.6818
- .0215 / 16 / 0.344
True ephing non-believer
percentage of time / damage step / average damage
- .0208 / 0 / 0
- .2917 / 8 / 2.3336
- .4383 / 10 / 4.384
- .1584 / 12 / 1.9008
- .0630 / 14 / 0.882
- .0277 / 16 / 0.4432
This assumes a crit-failure results in no damage to the target. The numbers become significantly worse, as well, if the target MD is higher.
The benefit is realized in that first round for the always disbeliever when the first ephing bolt vanishes. Three rounds later, disbelieving is now a detriment if the Illusionist switched to True Ephing. If the fight doesn't last that long, then the whole question is moot anyway.
edit: for spelling