I just did some random testing and found that Aganazzar's Scorcher has more damage potential than any other spell in the game.
No, seriously. Aganazzar's Scorcher, the level 2 spell.
The idea came to me when thinking about the Reflection Shield. I've had a confused clone attack my Charname with a dart while both were using the shield, and the darts bounced back and forth between them until the clone vanished. After confirming that the shield did not, actually, reflect Arrows of Detonation (which would have been awesome), I thought a bit about the other means of reflection in the game.
People may be familiar with the Cloak of Reflection trick, in which two Cloaks of Reflection (via a clone or importing a character), or the Cloak of Reflection and the original Cloak of Mirroring, could be used to bounce Lightning Bolts off against each other indefinitely. I found the trick was wonky and could be broken for a save game, unable to ever restart, and lost interest in it for a while.
The reason these were useful is because the projectile doesn't just damage the target; it has a slight area effect. Bouncing it multiplies the area of effect.
I thought about what else could be bounced, and what other projectiles had this sort of area of effect. I remembered the scorcher projectile, and thought it would be amazing if you could bounce it, but, alas, there is no spell or item that bounces that projectile.
But since it's a spell, it can be bounced via (Minor) Spell Turning. And because it's a level 2 spell, a spell turning effect can bounce it between two characters multiple times. Plus, it can be packed into a Minor Sequencer.
So, I did some tests. I tried using Aganazzar's Scorcher, which deals 3d6 (10.5) damage and hits twice, in a Minor Sequencer and against Minor Spell Turning and Spell Turning. I placed a fighter with high HP and 50% fire resistance in between two characters bouncing the scorcher projectile and took note of how much damage they took.
The most dramatic results came from casting a double Aganazzar's Scorcher Minor Sequencer from two mages against one another. Both had Protection from Fire and Spell Turning active. What happened to the fighter in the middle?
This fighter had 123 HP, and 50% fire resistance. The reaction began, and soon the fighter dropped down to 7 HP. I took note of the number and used CTRL-R to keep the fighter alive.
She then dropped down to 17, 30, and 22 HP. Finally, she died before the auto-pause could kick in, so I raised her with CTRL-R. She died twice more, instantly, without her fire resistance to help her.
I doubled the first four HP losses, plus the first death, since they occurred with 50% fire resistance, and counted the two other instant deaths as equal to only 123 HP, since the fighter had no fire resistance at the time. I put the numbers together. How much damage did this setup do?
It did more than 1,324 damage. It seems like Spell Turning bounces the spell more times than it's technically supposed to, and so the damage multiplies by some ridiculous number.
Testing found that using Minor Spell Turning had a similar but smaller effect. It could deal a couple hundred damage with two level 10 mages.
Unfortunately, it won't bypass magic resistances or spell level immunities, and fire resistance is the most common resistance in the game. But for anything not immune to the normal Aganazzar's Scorcher spell, it's a near-guaranteed kill for everything in between the two spellcasters.
