Posted August 14, 2019
After having watched a couple Battlespire speedruns, one of which had the commentator (who I believe was the runner) complain about their 10 WIL character not absorbing spells, I decided to test to see how the Spell Absorption advantage works.
It appears to be solely dependent on your WIL. At 10 WIL, 0 of 5 spells were absorbed, while at 75 WIL, 4 of 5 were. (75 INT and other stats around 50 for these tests.) This means that, if you are going to take the Spell Absorption advantage, you need decent WIL (in particular, you should not use it as a dump stat). Note that INT appears to have no effect (or at least not enough to overcome having only 10 WIL).
Now, I don't believe WIL has much of an effect if you *don't* have Spell Absorption. Therefore, dumping WIL is something you can get away with, provided that:
* You do not have the Spell Absorption advantage, and
* You do not care about skills that depend on WIL. (With Restoration being PER dependent in Battlespire and other magic skills not being important, this is a reasonable course of action to take.)
(By the way, poison immunity does not protect against the poison status ailment (and Cure Poison doesn't cure it, it's worth noting), so you are probably better off specing for spell absorption rather than elenemtal immunities; even Critical Weaknesses aren't as bad as they sound, I believe.)
As for why I tagged Arena in this topic, I remember that game behaving the same way. If you're playing Arena as a Sorcerer, it's a good idea to raise Willpower since that affects your chance of absorbing spells (and, contrary to what the manual says and unlike in Battlespire, you *can* absorb spells when your SP is full). Hence, one build would be to focus on Willpower, Agility, and Endurance (in some order), and rely on spells to fortify yout Intelligence when enemies are providing you with more SP than you can hold.
As for other TES games:
* I haven't checked Daggerfall, but I seem to remember the Spell Absorption advantage only working against your own area spells (making it useless for its intended purpose, but allowing a powerful exploit to work).
* In Morrowind, WIL has nothing to do with spell absorption, but it's still useful for Atronach birthsign characters, as it affects the success rate of spells.
* In Oblivion, WIL now only affects SP regen, which if you have the Atronach birth sign, is irrelevant. In other words, this stat went from vital (as in, good choice for a main stat) to useless for Sorcerer/Atronach builds over the course of the series.
* In Skyrim, this whole discussion is moot, as stats have been removed from the game entirely, so there's no Willpower stat to speak of.
* (Anyone know about Redguard?)
It appears to be solely dependent on your WIL. At 10 WIL, 0 of 5 spells were absorbed, while at 75 WIL, 4 of 5 were. (75 INT and other stats around 50 for these tests.) This means that, if you are going to take the Spell Absorption advantage, you need decent WIL (in particular, you should not use it as a dump stat). Note that INT appears to have no effect (or at least not enough to overcome having only 10 WIL).
Now, I don't believe WIL has much of an effect if you *don't* have Spell Absorption. Therefore, dumping WIL is something you can get away with, provided that:
* You do not have the Spell Absorption advantage, and
* You do not care about skills that depend on WIL. (With Restoration being PER dependent in Battlespire and other magic skills not being important, this is a reasonable course of action to take.)
(By the way, poison immunity does not protect against the poison status ailment (and Cure Poison doesn't cure it, it's worth noting), so you are probably better off specing for spell absorption rather than elenemtal immunities; even Critical Weaknesses aren't as bad as they sound, I believe.)
As for why I tagged Arena in this topic, I remember that game behaving the same way. If you're playing Arena as a Sorcerer, it's a good idea to raise Willpower since that affects your chance of absorbing spells (and, contrary to what the manual says and unlike in Battlespire, you *can* absorb spells when your SP is full). Hence, one build would be to focus on Willpower, Agility, and Endurance (in some order), and rely on spells to fortify yout Intelligence when enemies are providing you with more SP than you can hold.
As for other TES games:
* I haven't checked Daggerfall, but I seem to remember the Spell Absorption advantage only working against your own area spells (making it useless for its intended purpose, but allowing a powerful exploit to work).
* In Morrowind, WIL has nothing to do with spell absorption, but it's still useful for Atronach birthsign characters, as it affects the success rate of spells.
* In Oblivion, WIL now only affects SP regen, which if you have the Atronach birth sign, is irrelevant. In other words, this stat went from vital (as in, good choice for a main stat) to useless for Sorcerer/Atronach builds over the course of the series.
* In Skyrim, this whole discussion is moot, as stats have been removed from the game entirely, so there's no Willpower stat to speak of.
* (Anyone know about Redguard?)