I have a mage with 75.3 Magery and 79.8 Eval Int. She has no extra Magery or Eval skill on her spell book or jewelry. She has been making runebooks for other characters on the account (Inscription 69.8, should that be a factor) and marking runes to fill them. So she is using the Gate (lvl 7, "23.3%" success) and Mark (lvl 6, 58.3% success) spells a lot. Gate is succeeding every time, while Mark stutters often, as I would expect with not even a 60% stated success rate.How could Gate be so much easier to cast than Mark? (Note that Polymorph, another lvl 7 spell, stutters a lot.)
Not sure about this, but I would increase the success chance in magery overall. I find it pretty annoying that a GM mage fizzles at all. 100-120 shouldn't be about spell success but about power.
Well, use a mage -29 like everyone. Magery flies with that. It deducts from your magery skill and you cast lower circle spells to raise it.
She has such a wand and uses it when in a pure training session. However, making runebooks and marking runes was something she is quite capable of with her current skill levels. My characters on this new (to me) shard use their skill to help each other.
Just noticed this thread while searching for another one of mine. I figured out the answer a long time ago. She was gating from a Runic Atlas. These make gating act as if you were casting with a Gate scroll, lowering the skill necessary. I don't know if this works the same on Siege (and other Siege ruleset shards) because these places actively discourage quick traveling by anyone other than high-skill mages. I.e., only Gate works -- not Recall or Sacred Journey.