Default attacks per round, proficiency APR's, and max damage per round ranged.

Macadami

I had always wondered why Xzar with his throwing daggers always seemed to be attacking a lot faster than my sorcerer and it's sling. It wasn't until i read that whole str modifier poll thread that I realized different throwing weapons have different APRs.

It seems this is 3 APRs for darts, 2 for throwing daggers/axes, 1 for slings/bows/x-bows if I understand it correctly(btw if there are other weapons with differing APR's please tell me). So this means a level 8 fighter, with a theoretical grand mastery in darts would have 4 1/2 attacks per round, potentially doing 40ish damage with Darts of Acid, compared to a bow with a max of 2.5 APR's with Acid Arrows at 40ish as well, crossbow at the same APRs with Bolts of Lightning doing 60ish damage, and Slings with a max possible strength bonus of +12 and Bullet of Electricity doing 55ish damage.

Am I missing something or are crossbows and darts the clear winners here? With dart's one miss isn't going to hurt that much and crossbows being so far ahead in the damage category. Sling's fall behind the further you get from a 24 str bonus.

Is there more to this than I am seeing?

TJ_Hooker

Axes only have a base APR of 1. Bows (but not crossbows) have a base APR of 2. Also, you are unable to achieve grandmastery in BG:EE without taking advantage of some dual-class shenanigans (which some consider a bug/exploit), or changing the xp cap.

Oxford_Guy

The light crossbow of speed in BG1/BGEE is nice because it has 2 APR and a low speed rating (so fires early in the round). The Tuigan shortbow in BG2 gets 3 APR.

Bercon

The downside of darts is extremely poor thac0. With slings you can get +3 from sling and +2 from bullets, to total of +5 thac0 vs. darts with +1 thac0. Of course before you manage to acquire these powerful items, darts are better.

Pantalion

With 19 Strength, +2 sling bullets from your +3 sling is hitting for 14-17 damage each, and even 9-13 damage with a mundane Sling/Bullet combo. This is compared to 3x 1-3 damage for mundane darts and 2x 1-6 damage for mundane bows.

At higher stats and levels, Slings don't need large numbers of attacks to be effective.

[Deleted User]

Darts are a good choice for Mages, who aren't allowed to use bows/crossbows and probably don't have the strength to really get good use out of slings. High APR also means that even with their low THAC0, they have a decent chance of hitting at least once a round. For anyone who can use bows and crossbows, though, they're a better choice due to higher damage, better utility from various ammo types, and ease of use (darts really need a much larger stack size and/or the ability to automatically "reload" from inventory when the stack runs out).

With Fighters the problem is that by level 13 you're getting clipped by the APR cap of 5 before you even get hasted, which throws the advantage back to high damage, low APR weapons like slings and crossbows.

Bercon

AFAIK the str bonus on slings is a bug and will be fixed eventually.

Oxford_Guy

Bercon said:

AFAIK the str bonus on slings is a bug and will be fixed eventually.

The thread I created (http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/13405/which-ranged-weapons-in-bgee-do-you-think-ought-to-add-strength-damage ) about which ranged weapons *ought* to get the strength damage bonus seems to have generated a lot of different opinions on this subject...