I have been playing around with using magic casters that are completely oriented towards dealing magic damage through spells.

They got maxed out intellect and i am using a mod for practically unlimited memory slots.
One caster is pyro/geo and the other is water/air, and they have every possible skill book learned.
By using cheat commander i have given them rather decent gear for their level (14) that further boosts intellect and related elemental skills.

The fire spells seem to be dishing out okay amounts of damage, but frankly the other 3 schools i find rather lacking in damage.
Its not that they are horrible but compared to my 2handed strength warrior and my finesse huntsman the two magic damage dealers severely lag behind.

The biggest problem is when they have to deal big single target damage (not aoe), especially for Air and Water.
And frankly a lot of the spells have really short casting range even with the far-out talent.

The damn touch spells cant even reach enemies that approach my casters in melee because they have to make those few extra steps which usually costs 1AP (perhaps i also need Pawn...).
And many point-blank AOE spells have rather small radius that is even easily blocked by objects or LOSight.

Anyway so far i have payed very little attention to source-spells because the source points are a somewhat limited resource that is not always available, even with all the corpse draining and source stealing (i definitely dont want to run to source fountain after every tough fight).

However it occurs to me that geo/water/air might be more balanced around their source spells doing the majority of the damage, while the basic spells are just for cleanup?
Frankly that seems like a lame concept but perhaps it works and i won't be starved for source-points?

during the act1 (when you first get them) you also have a source fountain in the Armory. so you have infinite source between combats and you can use them in every battle.
during the act2 you also have an easy access to a fountain in the meistr's cellar. so again you can use them in every battle.
during the act3 it's a bit more complicated. there is no fountain, but there are plenty of corpses and spirits. also there are very few battles you really need to fight. so I guess again you can use source spells in every battle.
act 4... not really sure if there is a fountain(even in DE it was the fastest act to finish), but I usually tend up eating corpses\spirits\steal source during combat anyway...and with apotheosis I had no problem casting source spells every combat.


depending on a character I usually either go All-In (3sp on turn 1) or have some party members use 1sp spells and save for skin graft.

and yeah, I think source concept is dumb(especially since you have infinite time between combats). imho it would've been better if there were no source. just "once per combat\rest rule" much like daily spells in trpgs like D&D