Dual Elementalists

[Jiokuy]

I haven't been able to find much information on this, so I figured I would post here.

so Fire/Ice and Air/Earth both impose a -4 penalty on the opposing school.

If I were to train both opposing elements at the same time for the same amounts from 0, would I avoid the penalty, get two -2 penalties, or would they both be -4?

I'm rather fond of Tornado and Ball Lightning, but LRD is invaluable for clearing spaced and kill rooms in later dungeons. It's a bit Ironic that EE can make large open spaces, but AE are the ones that benefit from them (as Earth is mostly single target).

[Blade]

One always imposes the -4 penalty on the other. It's almost never practical to train fire/ice and earth/air to high levels.

(I've done it twice and it was awesome. but it is a bad idea and those were special cases [two manuals of ice magic on mufe and red draconian ie; both ended up with fs and is])

[SchwaWarrior]

While I'm not sure about training both to a high level, I agree there is some merit in training both at least a little. My HECj relied on Fireball as one of her main attack spells, but had Freezing Cloud too as a different sort of offense/defense tactic, and Mystic Blast as another attack spell so that Fireball wasn't conflicting with the freezing vapors. To make this work I simply had Ice Magic trained up to Level 4 while Fire Magic was Level 10+, and the rest of Freezing Cloud's power was derrived from high Conjuration (12+) and Air (8+) skills.

That Red Draconian with FS and IS is wicked cool, by the way. Even if I had high levels in both I'd probably stick to one or the other just to conserve spell level points (I love to stock up on buffs too such as Phase Shift, Regenerate, Deflect Missiles and Haste, which is often even more pricey than my offensive spells ), but it's still amazing.

[evilmike]

I have had ice focused characters that use a few fire spells, and vice versa. There is even a synergy between conjure flame and freezing cloud. However, it's usually a bad idea to train both skills. Aside from the XP penalties, the spells are designed so there's a lot of overlap.

Air/Earth are different - very different schools. But even in that case, most of their big spells focus on damage. It's more normal for an earth elementalist to train earth, and then cast air spells via charms skill.

[nicolae]

What happens when your opposed schools are exactly equal and nonzero? Can this even happen outside of wizmode?

[Hydralisk]

What happens when your opposed schools are exactly equal and nonzero?

The school you trained last receives a penalty. Tried that.

[Blade]

What happens when your opposed schools are exactly equal and nonzero? Can this even happen outside of wizmode?

It doesn't matter. There will -always- be a penalty to one.

[galehar]

What happens when your opposed schools are exactly equal and nonzero?

The school you trained last receives a penalty. Tried that.

I confirm. It has always been the way to decide between 2 skills of equal level, this is one of the few things I didn't change in the 0.9 overhaul. It works well.

What happens when your opposed schools are exactly equal and nonzero? Can this even happen outside of wizmode?

It doesn't matter. There will -always- be a penalty to one.

You bet. I'd consider it a design failure if there was a way to circumvent the penalty with tedious micromanagement.