Weapon Changes

[Demivrgvs]

Flails

A flail is hard to swing yes, but that should be represented by its high STR requirement and off hand penalty imo.

My point was that a ball-on-chain is hard to swing with accuracy.

Indeed it's not accurate, but that isn't going to affect the chance to hit your opponent. Much like Salk says the flail simply isn't going to hit a particular weak spot, it would just smash the opponent as a whole.

 

Halberds

P.S Have you thought about halberds? Do you still think keeping 1d10 dmg and just putting 'piercing and slashing' dmg type is enough?

Unsure. Twohander has +1.5 damage, if of slightly less effective type. Spear has -1 damage, but greater range, including thrown. So both win over 1d10 halberd, even if it has piercing and slashing type.

Mmm, I can indeed see the slightly greater appeal of greatswords because the higher precision (vs armored foes) isn't going to be critical for mid-high lvl fighters, but I'm not sure about spears being superior. "Spear vs Halberd" is much like "dagger vs short sword" (the formers deal 1 point less of dmg, but are slightly faster and have throwing specimens) and the discussion we had few days ago seemed to imply that tha vast majority of players actually thought short sword was better (you too considering you were suggesting to boost daggers ). Spear's increased range kinda close the deal, and may actually give spear a small "advantage" in terms of appeal because it ends up being uber versatile, but it's very small and I know for many players "dmg is the king".

 

Speaking of halberds and "two dmg types at once", you said that dmg type checks both AC and resistance to determine which one to pick...does it mean the weapon can be considered piercing to bypass AC and slashing for dmg output in case the target has bad AC vs piercing but high resistance to piercing dmg?

 

P.S @Ardanis, I'll reply to your PM asap, checking the entire list could take some time.

[DarkWon]

Daggers

Should they have +1 thaco, for being the smallest and easiest to operate? A rogue can then seriously consider using daggers.

 

Scimitars

Lower damage to 1d6 and increase critical chance by 5%, as in 3E. Right now these are just copies of long swords, usable by druids.

 

In my 3E campaign, I made it so daggers allow you to re-roll 1's on Sneak attack damage (using such a small weapon would be easier to pinpoint a certain artery/vertebra etc...). I don't know if something like this is possible on the BG engine, but works great in D&d.

 

Their max damage is still the same so it doesn't suddenly make Thieves overpowered, but you see a lot more Thieves using daggers now

 

I think the change to scimitar would be nice too, just to make it more unique

 

 

EDIT: Also, to Demi's comment...yes "Dmg is King!!" For example, if a weapon had 1d8 damage instead of 2d6, it would have to have significant (at least +2) increase in both speed and reach for me to consider taking it. Speed and reach are sometimes useful, damage is always useful.

[Guest Roboghost]

Scimitars

Lower damage to 1d6 and increase critical chance by 5%, as in 3E. Right now these are just copies of long swords, usable by druids.

 

I am not so fond of this. Scimitars might as well be copies of long swords in more than one way but the fact that can be used by druids is not really secondary. For me, no action..

 

I'd keep the scimitar and long sword the same (no change.) The scimitar has a 40/60 animation and usable by druids. The long sword has a 50/50 animation and gives a +1 bonus to elves. This keeps them unique enough from each other as it is me thinks. If you do want to lower scimitar damage (though), then I'd go with 1d7 and not 1d6.

[Guest n-ghost]

Speaking of diversity... maybe varieties of 'keen' ability could be useful?

 

Say, 3 damage for 1 round for simple axes, 2/2 for swords, 1/3 for daggers, 2/3 for scimitar... etc.

 

Sharp weapons could be sharp that way.

Shame if it's hardcoded.

[Guest n-ghost]

(2/2 etc means '2 damage per each round for 2 rounds' ofc)

[Demivrgvs]

Speaking of diversity... maybe varieties of 'keen' ability could be useful?

 

...

 

Shame if it's hardcoded.

Yes it is.

[n-ghost]

Crap.

 

Btw, you were speaking about halberds here... how about add +1 AC to all of them? It would be tempting to use some until you get your hands on Ravager then, and apparent OPness could be compensated by relative high speed factor.

Same could be applied for spears.

 

Also, halberds are good with armor crushing... but +1 to THAC0 would be too much, all right.

[Ardanis]

I'd rather add +1 AC to staves. Halberds are a bit too heavy and cumbersome to use in defense, no?

 

Besides, right now halberds are near as good as twohanded swords, falling behind by 0.5 damage only. Plus they can switch to piercing mode, even though I do not remember if there're creatures highly resistant to slashing but vulnerable to piercing.

[n-ghost]

An average halberd (hope we're talking about _halberds_ now, not just about some random generic polearm like bardiche) weighs something about 2-3 kilograms and it is all about huge spike atop of it, with relatively small and not often that useful 'axe' part + counterweight.

 

But perhaps BG's default version could be renamed to simple 'polearm' and defining then should come only with named weapons.