Chicken wrote:I just retried to make sure, and I stand by what I said. Maybe my use case is atypical, but I tend to focus wizards exclusively on fighting skills when they're young so they don't die when they run out of MP (which generally seems to work, since they typically die when I give into the temptation to start getting those spells up, or else later by sheer carelessness). Anyway, when I saw this reply I took a level 9 wizard with spellcasting 3, conjurations 1, fire 0 (yeah, that's ridiculous, and it certainly isn't a very reliable wall! Yet, it makes a big difference when you have a halberd on the other end!) and started casting Conjure Fire. It lasted anywhere from 4-9 turns, usually 5 or 6. But when "the fire gets new energy", I repeatedly get only 2 or 3 turns more --- casting it when it still had 1-2 turns left! Which means that the fresh casting is good for precisely ONE TURN more, instead of five.
I should add that even if I am just ridiculously unlucky every single time I ever screw up and get this message, or always have characters too unconventional to be worth thinking about, it STILL is extra code to maintain and extra worry for the player to try to figure out this mysterious mechanic, and that alone ought to be enough to kill it.
Note: I just took the same character's conjuration up to 6, and now the "renewed" flame lasted 4 turns in two tests. But that was after waiting *12 turns* for the original casting to die down to the smallest flame icon!
1. It doesn't matter how long you wait, you get the same (random) bonus to duration whether the flame cloud is new or old. 13 turns is near the maximum in the second example for your casting based on the numbers you gave, and 4 is slightly below average for the extended amount. (The average number of turns for the numbers you gave is roughly 8-9 initial, and 5-6 extension)
2. A fresh cast gets a larger "base" bonus (aka not effected by spellpower) so if you have poor spellpower, (as in both of your examples) you will probably get close to the minimum for both the initial cast and the extension (which is 5 and 2 turns iirc) The higher your spellpower the less significant this difference becomes.
Added complexity is a valid argument for removal, the two options you give either result in a fair sized nerf for conjure flame (it could probably withstand it) or a fair sized buff for it (being able to restore a full-duration conjure flame without having to wait for some critter to possibly slip in is pretty powerful) So the question is, is the change in balance worth the reduction in complexity.
Another small piece of information which is rarely, but sometimes relevant, is that you can renew a neutral flame cloud to make it "yours" giving it the ability to kill things to give you XP, or be walked through (or converted to a fire elemental) with Qaz's abilities (I'm not sure that's super relevant, but it's something to note.)