Difference between revisions of "Category talk:Spell Cost"

I understand that "base cost" is a dangerous phrase because of it's associates with the effect base costs set in the editor.  However, that is not the only thing called "base cost" by canonical sources - almost everything except the CS refers to the unscaled spell cost as the spells "base cost".  For an example, on page 66 of "Oblivion: The Official Game Guide" there is a chart of spell "Base Cost" vs mastery level.  I think a lot of other sources have used that nomenclature too.  On the other hand, no other source is even close to the importance of the CS when your target audience is modders.  Other terms can be used, but they need to be pretty clear, and "spell cost" as the CS calls the unscaled spell cost it is not particularly clear.  I'm going to try editing the page in a second to change the terms again, further away from "base cost", and to add rounding, and maybe tweak a few more things.   

edit: On the differing formulas between the game and the CS: yeah, there's strong evidence.  Create a spell in the construction set, set it to autocalculate, give it an effect that sets its base cost to a little below a mastery level theshold.  Now create an identical spell, but give it some additional really cheap effects.  Script effects are the classic, but say, fortify fatigue 1% for 1 second works too.  Make sure autocalculate is on for both spells, then compare their prices and mastery levels in the CS and in-game.  The difference is that the game makes all effects cost at least 1, both for unscaled cost purposes and for scaled cost purposes.  The CS does not.  Also, there's some evidence that the game itself may use different formulas in the spellmaker for base cost, and the spellmaker occaisonally seems to get the mastery levels wrong, but I haven't investigate that and can't say anything definitive about it.