Mysticism's Animated Weapon -- a reassessment

Rock

I have thought that Mysticism's Animated Weapon (AW) summoning spell was quite weak, and inferior in almost every way to Magery's Blade Spirits.  The Spirits seem to do significantly more damage, and they only take 2 control slots each, which means a mage can have two at once.  For whatever reason, AW takes 4 slots. AW is a level 3 spell; Spirits is a level 5 spell.  What use is AW?  Well, for a mage, no use at all. The only advantage AW has is casting speed, 1.25 seconds vs 5 sec.

But I just realized something, which leads me to a theory and a reassessment. The online description for AW includes:

Damage is determined by the caster's Tactics and Anatomy skills.

I.e., it is not the spell of a magic user, but a warrior!  Sure it needs a mystic to cast it, but so does Mysticism's weapon buff spell, Enchant. Since I have no reason to assume otherwise, consider that AW's damage buff skills behave statistically like a physical weapon's.  With no Tactics, the AW is only doing 50% of its rated damage. (For a human with 20% Tactics from JOAT, it would do 70% of its rated damage.) However, a warrior gains 50% damage at 100 Tactics, and 70% at 120. Perhaps AW is not so wimpy after all.

Both warriors and mages can enhance AW's damage with Anatomy.  (Mages can take Anatomy as a substitute for Wrestling; the combo of Eval.Int. + Anatomy provide weapons defense.) Each 10 points of Anatomy provides 5% more damage, with an addition 5% damage at 100.  With the combo of Tactics and Anatomy, a warrior can more than double base AW damage.  A mystic mage with Anatomy can have it do a little more than full damage -- -50% due to no Tactics, yet +55% due to 100 Anatomy.  Should such a mystic mage use AW instead of Blade Spirits?  Probably not, but AW "sux" for him a lot less than one who took Wrestling instead of Anatomy.

I do not know if the Damage Increase property affects AW.  Its description does not mention DI, but if it behaves statistically like a weapon, it might.

(I'm sure a lot of you already knew about the relationship between AW, Tactics, and Anatomy, but since this gave me a different perspective, I thought I'd share.)

Let's quantize AW damage, assuming an average base damage of 12 per hit.

Anatomy  Tactics   ±   Damage  Note
   0        0    -50%    6     non-human
  20       20    -20%    9.6   human
   0       50      0%   12     non-human
  20       50     10%   13.2   human
   0      100     50%   18
 100        0      5%   12.6
 100      100    105%   24.6
 120      120    135%   28.2

(Lines 5 and 6 do not include human JOAT, so human damage would be slightly higher.)

Rock

(Darnit, the edit timer expired.  The damage table would be improved with an additional column, Human, that factors in the 20 ghosted JOAT skill for Anatomy and Tactics.  JOAT Anatomy can add 10% damage, while JOAT Tactics can add 20%.)

Assume AW has an average base damage of 12 per hit.

Anatomy  Tactics   ±   Damage  Human
   0        0    -50%    6      9.6
  50        0    -25%    9     11.4
   0       50      0%   12     13.2
 100        0      5%   12.6   15
   0      100     50%   18     19.2
 100      100    105%   24.6   24.6
 120      120    135%   28.2   28.2

Actual damage would be reduced by the foe's damage resistance to whatever type(s) of damage AW does..  For example, 50% resistance would cut the above damage values in half.  If the foe can parry, some hits will do no damage at all.  As in my first post, the underlying assumption is that Anatomy and Tactics affect Animated Weapon in the same manner they affect physical weapons. I do not know if that is true, however.