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For the spells in other games, see Chain Lightning (Dragon Age II) and Chain Lightning (Inquisition).


Chain Lightning is a mage spell from the Primal tree in Dragon Age: Origins.

Information[]

  • The caster's hands erupt with a bolt of lightning that inflicts 20 electricity damage on the target, then forks, sending smaller bolts of 20 electricity damage jumping to 10 nearby targets, which fork again sending even smaller bolts of 10 electricity damage to 3 nearby targets, which fork yet again, sending tiny bolts of 6.67 electricity damage to another 2 nearby targets, before finally jumping once more to 1 nearby target dealing 5 electricity damage. Targets can be hit by multiple forks. The first hit (with up to 10 targets) can bounce to the propagating creature, but all hits afterwards can not. Will not jump to friendly targets. Electricity damage also drains stamina equal to the amount of damage dealt.
  • Range: 25m
  • Conjuration time: 2s
Number of Targets (Perfectly Clustered) vs Total Damage
# Targets Total Damage Damage Per
1 40.0 40.0
2 70.0 35.0
3 166.7 55.6
4 400.0 100.0
5 620.0 124.0
6 740.0 123.3
7 860.0 122.9
8 980.0 122.5
9 1100.0 122.2
10 1220.0 122.0

Notes[]

  • With each bolt doing low damage, the strength of the spell relies on a large number of forked bolts being produced.
  • Each fork has a range of 10m.
  • Tertiary bolts (dealing 10 damage or less) can't jump to targets further than 25m from the original caster, so casting from maximum range will reduce the spell's effectiveness.
  • Bolts can't jump back to the target they immediately came from.
  • Corpses and obstructed creatures may count towards the tertiary bolt limit despite not producing a bolt.
  • Maximum damage per enemy is 120 and reached with 5 targets. The original target takes an additional 20 damage, for up to 140 in total.
  • Only enemies that are tightly clustered with four others will receive 120 damage. Otherwise, targets will generally only receive around ~50 damage each.
  • Activation base is in mana and values vary with fatigue%.
  • Electrical Damage values are displayed in the game as the color: yellow.
  • Arcane Warrior spellcasting: The spell can be cast with your weapon(s) drawn.
  • The spell description in game states that friendly fire is possible, but the spell does not hurt allies.
  • This spell does not scale with spellpower. However, there is some code in the spell script that implies the number of bounces used to increase with spellpower.
    • There is an external mod that takes care of this and other issues.

See also[]

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