Playing a Mage to Level 11 in 40 Minutes-ish

[Garrie]

If you are looking for mileage per mana, it is crazy to attack a single orc. The point about lightning beam is that for 4 mana you can damage a row orcs after you line them up in a corridor. That means for a cLevel 5 mage, 4 mana does 36d6 total damage to a dozen orcs nicely lined up.

There are two different scenarios here:
1. damage per mana
generally it is amazing how good the hp/mana ratio is for magic missile. it even beams on a pretty reasonable basis once you level up a bit (afaik)
2. one-shot kills
if you are facing something like, acid hounds coming around the corner - you don't want to take them on in a group, you want to kill each one the first action you get as they come around the corner. Baring monster resistances (no good acid bolting water hounds) generally your most recently gained offensive spell has the best potential damager per action but you have to consider it has the least likey chance of succeeding.

Ideally, the only things you are fighting that you need to kill in a single action, you are totally overpowered for. What this means is, if you can't reliably kill (fire/acid/lightning) hounds in a single action (especially as a mage) you are better off running away from them, earthquaking the level so they can't get to you, etc.

I really wish there was a mage spell which created 1 block of wall. It would be a pretty easy way to quarantine a pack of elemental hounds (up until etheral anyway!) - earthquake is nowhere near as reliable (how often does it leave a convoluted path between corridor sections).