Mother Feelbright's Busy Bees

Mother Feelbright's Busy Bees
Spell information
Nickname	mfbb
Guild	Witches
Type	Offensive
Description	Sends angry bees to harm the target.
GP cost	60
Mind space	60
Thaums	12
Components	honey (consumed)
Crystal	None

Mother Feelbright's Busy Bees (commonly referred to as Bees or, by its victims, Beesargh) is an offensive witch spell which summons a swarm of bees to attack the target. The bees will then relentlessly pursue their victim for several rounds, stinging them and causing them damage in the process.

Acquisition

A witch requires 140 levels of magic.spells.offensive to learn this spell. The spell is learnt from Granny Weatherwax or Old Auntie Ogg-San.

Casting

This spell requires 60 GP to cast, and takes up 60 units of mind space. It may be cast on any living target.

Syntax

cast Mother Feelbright's Busy Bees on <target> using <amount> honey in <container>

WARNING: While the amount (and container) is optional, accidentally casting while carrying a great deal of honey can trigger a fatal backfire because you use more honey than you can handle. You Have Been Warned. If this should ever happen try to go underwater or get wet fast.

• Honey can go in any container, it is not limited to vessels that can hold liquids.
• Every 200 drops of honey weighs 1/9 lb, so you'll need a big container to carry lots of honey.
• Using honey in a vessel that has less empty space in it than the amount of honey you are using is impossible to attempt.
• If the container is closed you'll have to get the honey out of it first.
• You can nickname the amount of honey to change it without changing your alias.

Components

• This spell consumes honey. Any amount of honey may be provided.
• This spell does not require any non-consumable components.

Skills

Focus tea results

Scale       100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 300 325 350

channeling

summoning

cursing

charming

The following skills are used during the stages of this spell (primary skills in bold):

• Magic.methods.mental.channeling
• Magic.methods.spiritual.summoning
• Magic.methods.mental.cursing
• Magic.methods.mental.charming

Mechanics

Hitting the Target

Bees will automatically hit the target if successfully cast; the target does not get a defensive skillcheck.

The difficulty of casting is dependent on the amount of honey thrown and the amount of honey already on the target - the more honey, the more difficult the casting is, but the more bees will be summoned. Failures to cast may result in the bees attacking the caster. It is not currently known which skill is tested against the honey amount.

Bees may only be used on a single target per casting; it is not an area effect spell.

Some NPCs may attempt to leave the room when they spot a witch casting this spell; this can be counteracted with:

• vines, but this uses a lot of gp and the target will most likely also try to flee this spell - but vines is faster to cast so it might work where casting bees doesn't;
• or pursue, but pursuing while casting increases the chances that the spell will fail or backfire.

Some NPCs may pre-emptively start attacking a witch while she is half-way through the casting process.

Damage

Mother Feelbright's Busy Bees causes direct magical damage to the target. Once bees has been successfully cast on a target:

• All subsequent rounds automatically hit the target, with no chance for the victim to dodge, parry or block.
• Armour does not reduce the damage.
• Past research by Pokeberry indicated that CCC protected against bees while Major Shield and Minor Shield absorbed some of the damage done by the bees. Unverified reports suggests that major shield does still absorb a part of each bees attack. Research should be performed to verify the current situation.  research If this has been marked on a page, it's because there was something that probably isn't known, that the person who edited the page thinks could be found out. Perhaps you could figure this thing out, and be famous evermore. 
• Being wet does not reduce damage done by each bee, instead it reduces the amount of bees, thus the total damage done. This may look the same to an observer.

The damage itself is done over time, with a semi-random number of bees attacking at regular intervals.

The exact mechanics of bee damage are as follows:

Total number of bees

The total number of bees striking (across all rounds of damage) is, surprisingly, not random. It is affected by the following factors:

• The more honey used, the more total bees striking. This follows a logarithmic (diminishing-returns) relationship, however.
• The average of your cursing and summoning bonuses.

Bees per round

Once the total number of bees has been calculated, the actual bees that strike in a given round are randomly determined based on the 'number of bees left' - so the more damage that has already been done to the victim in previous rounds, the lesser the damage in future rounds is likely to be.

The specific formula for bees striking in a given round is:

bees this round = random[1, 0.5 * bees_left + 2] for 3 or more bees left.
bees this round = random[1, bees_left] for 2 or less bees left.

As a general guideline, this will produce a lot of bees on average per round at the start, tailing off to less and less bees on average per round as the spell progresses. An unexpectedly small number of bees in one round will result in more bees on average later. Conversely, an unexpectedly large number of bees in one round will result in less bees on average later.

Damage per bee

No research has currently been done on damage per bee; it is believed to be mostly proportional to the offensive bonus of the caster.

Bee types

Different types of bee appear to be able to summoned via this spell, possibly depending on summoning bonus. Swarms seen so far include

• Honey bees
• Bumblebees
• Zombees
• Howondalandish killer bees

Stacking

Bees can be stacked on a target, however:

• It's dangerous - as indicated above, the more honey on the target, the more likely the spell is to backfire at casting time.
• Bees can stack with bees of the same type or different type.

Defences

Water

Bees and water do not get along well.

If the target is wet when bees is cast on them, then the total number of bees that strike them will be reduced.

If the target submerges themselves in water at any point, then the bees will immediately desist attacking and the spell will end. Diving into water is therefore an effective way of saving oneself from bees, assuming such water is nearby...

If you are swimming in water you cannot cast bees.

You prepare to cast Mother Feelbright's Busy Bees on the graceful egret.
It's just too wet to cast Mother Feelbright's Busy Bees here.
Disgusted, you wipe the excess honey from your hands.
You hastily release the spell.

Mama Kolydina's Instant Infestation

If cast on (or backfiring onto) a witch with a shield of insects that happens to be bees, there's a chance that the attacking bees will switch sides and add to the defending witch's shield instead.

Quick draw

Bees cannot be cast if the caster is already being attacked by bees.

History

Bees used to be substantially different, requiring a fighting.range.thrown check to hit the target (checked against their appropriate fighting.defence bonus) and causing the target to constantly wimpy. The current version of bees was implemented as of this blog post

An additional GP cost and experience bonus occurred with every round of bee stings, which was removed in an update on January 11 2015,

See Also

• Biddy Amble's Bee Buzzer - This spell accelerates honey production, providing the component for this spell faster.
• Gammer Shorga's Helpful Undergrowth - This spell holds victims in place, preventing them from escaping the casting.

External links

• Discworld spell help: Mother Feelbright's Busy Bees
• Focus Tea Database: Mother Feelbright's Busy Bees