Sling of Everard

[CamDawg]

Sling of Everard has two bugs. It allows strength bonus on ranged attacks, which differs from other slings, and is easy to fix.

 

The second bug is trickier--the sling is supposed to do +2 damage in addition to the damage from its bullet, and this is how it's coded. However, it does not require ammo, and if used this way does 1d4 + 2 damage. This is less than it does with regular bullets (1d4+1 normal +2 from the sling = 1d4+3) which Baldurdash adjusts.

 

The problem lies in that whatever + damage we assign to the ammo-less sling gets applied to any ammo it may use. So we could set the sling to do 1d4+3 without ammo, but then that +3 damage will get applied to any ammo that gets loaded, contrary to the description. BD takes the +3 approach, but I think the introduced bug is worse than the original and I've excluded the fix (as does devSin). I'd love to hear thoughts on inclusion or alternative fix ideas. It's included but commented out below.

 

// sling of everard is allowing strength bonus
COPY_EXISTING ~wasling.itm~ ~override~
 READ_LONG   0x64 "abil_off"
 READ_SHORT  0x68 "abil_num"
 WHILE ("%abil_num%" > 0) BEGIN
   SET "abil_num" = ("%abil_num%" - 1)
   READ_BYTE ("%abil_off%" + (0x38 * "%abil_num%")) "type"
   PATCH_IF ("%type%" = 2) BEGIN // ranged
//      WRITE_SHORT ("%abil_off%" + 0x26 + (0x1a * "%abil_num%")) 3 // damage bonus
     WRITE_SHORT ("%abil_off%" + 0x26 + (0x38 * "%abil_num%")) 0 // no strength bonus
   END
 END
 BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

[devSin]

How is this any different than any other no-ammo launcher? If you fire acid arrows from the Gesen bow, for instance, you get the bow bonus, the ammo bonus, the lightning damage, and the acid damage. A limitation of the engine, maybe, but I don't think it's a bug.

[SConrad]

(19:42:10) (SConrad) I think the best would be to leave it as it is, since I don't think it's a terrible crime to have the non-ammo version do 1d4+2, instead of three. It's the penalty for not using any ammo. OTOH, I can see 1d5+2 being an alternative, even though it's not 'quite there', but still better than 1d4+3.

[CamDawg]

How is this any different than any other no-ammo launcher? If you fire acid arrows from the Gesen bow, for instance, you get the bow bonus, the ammo bonus, the lightning damage, and the acid damage. A limitation of the engine, maybe, but I don't think it's a bug.

 

It's not that the damage gets doubled up with ammo, as that is consistent with other ammo-less items, it's that the sling does less damage without ammo as a regular bullet.

[Kish]

Well, this is really ugly. I suppose that's to be expected for the only ranged weapon in the game which has one + for the weapon and another for the phantom ammunition.

 

We should probably do as SConrad suggests and use 1d5+2, since it will mess up the sling's use of external ammunition to make the phantom bullets do 1d4+3.

[CamDawg]

Consensus, anyone? For now I've included the STR fix in alpha 3 but not implemented anything for the damage.

[devSin]

I've changed it locally, but it doesn't make me very happy.

 

Make sure different base damages stack appropriately (1d5 + 1 sling and 1d4 + 1 bullet may not stack as expected) before including this.