Weapon/damage type vs. Creature type

DanEl

Is there any way in-game to know which weapon/ damage types are better suited vs. particular creatures?

e.g. I remember reading somewhere that Skeletons have a 'resistance' per se to arrows but have a weakness vs. blunt weapons.

Or is it a matter of having a working knowledge of the PnP rule books?

Cheers in advance

TJ_Hooker

You can usually see in game. If you attack skeletons with slashing or piercing weapons, in the dialogue box it'll show something like:
(10-8)=2 damage
If most of the damage is being subtraced like that, it means that the enemy is resistant to that form of damage.

Besides resistances, a creature may have bonuses or penalties to their AC vs certain kinds of damage. If you're fighting humanoid enemies that are wearing armor, they'll have the same modifiers as you would have wearing that armor. For example, when you equip plate armour, you'll see in your character record that you have an additional -3 vs. slashing (a bonus vs slashing). So if you see an enemy wearing plate armor, you'll know that they'll be a little harder to hit with slashing weapons.

In general you don't have to worry about it much. In BG, I think the only enemies that have major resistances to certain kinds of weapon damage are skeletons and a couple kinds of slimes. Besides that, I wouldn't worry about swapping out weapons to match encounters.

However, something to note is that overall, blunt is the best kind of damage to have. It is the least resisted, and only one kind of armour (splint) is extra effective against it.

DanEl

Thanks for that, I've never noticed that so I'll keep a closer eye on the dialogue box (I think I have everything checked to come up... I'll review that as well)

DanEl

By the way, how do you see what type of armor enemies are wearing? Just from the graphics?

TJ_Hooker

DanEl said:

By the way, how do you see what type of armor enemies are wearing? Just from the graphics?

Yeah. You can't actually know exactly, because groups of armour have the same appearance (leather and studded leather will look the same on an enemy, as will chain and splint, as will plate and full plate), but you can make an educated guess. Like I said, I wouldn't worry about it to much. As in, I don't right away swap all my characters with slashing weapons to something else everytime I see a guy wearing plate.

ZanathKariashi

Plate and full plate have almost identical extra bonuses, full plate just has an additional 1 better vs each category and 2 better base AC, so it's not a huge deal over all. Chain is a hell of a lot more common then splint, so 90% of the time if someone appears to be wearing chain, it probably is chain. Leather and studded leather do have slight differences in appearance, but it's extremely minor and hard to tell. They have almost identical stats however, save studded is 1 base AC better, so again it's not a huge deal.


I can tell you now, after scouring every creature possible in the whole saga, nothing is resistant to blunt specifically. If they are, they have a general resistance to all physical damage. And nothing is immune to the damage type itself (though they might be immune to attacks by non-magical or magical weapons), unlike Missile (Piercing) which is the most common resistance and immunity in the game. Slashing tends to do worse vs hitting heavy armor then piercing, but does better vs actual damage resistance then piercing does.

However, as above, Blunt is just a ridiculously safe to use damage type. It deals a little less damage, usually, but is more likely to hit targets in almost any armor, and will by-pass most damage resistance or at least be equal to the others, and nothing is immune (though in this respect, slashing is almost as good, since clay golems are the only enemy to specifically require magical blunt to damage, and slashing works perfectly well vs anything else as far as damage immunity goes, where as piercing or missile immunity are much more common)

Thord

It is worth reading the text when in battle all the way through the game. Later on there are a few characters immune to some damage types and/or spells which is shown in that text.