Sturdy or not? Maximum damage from one hit recieved

JuliusBorisov

Recently while playing BG:EE on the insane difficulty with SCS installed I have begun to wonder how much damage an enemy can inflict in one hit.

I have Yeslick in my party with 56 HP and -6 AC, wearing a helm, so he rarely gets hit, but when he does, it seems hard. While fighting against a flesh golem in a famous cave he became "near death" from one hit - 50 HP went away in one hit, only one.

It's maximum so far but I expect even more from bosses. I think enemy thieves due to their multipliers can inflict insane damage too but this is the different story. When you see a thief becoming invisible you prepare for backstabs but coming into a fight with maximum health (and not little) it's hard to expect to be one-hitted.

Let's share stories about insane critters by enemies who confront your parties in BG:EE.

It will be fun to hear these stories but I have a practical interest too, because I want to know what to expect - having a tank in every armor available doesn't decrease the amount of damage taken when an enemy has a successful attack roll, and even if he's fully cured it's not a guarantee he won't die from one hit. Of course, the insane level increases this damage but I just can't lower the difficulty I'm used to.

Here or there you hear about "permadeath" runs, no-resurrection runs and so on. I like them. And one of the most important questions on these runs is an ability to survive. It would be great to know how much HP is needed for a tank not to die from one hit so that the question of reloading or ending run (ending this NPC's run in particular in your party) does not appear. I'm especially interested in information regarding BG1:EE.

Lord_Tansheron

Don't really have a BG:EE story, but I've been backstabbed in BG2 for ~200 damage before.

The highest number I've ever seen though was from a Pit Fiend, which due to some weird bug/mod conflict (or so I assume) put up a disease ticking for 9999 damage.

Corvino

If you're willing to stay in Slayer form for a while in BG2 you'll get a very large whack of 1-hit damage.

Jarrakul

I don't play on insane difficulty, because I don't like the way it's implemented, but I've been hit for 30 or 40 damage in BG1 SCS before. Usually from backstabbing thieves or late-game fighters (notably Seravok's acolytes and some of Aec'Latec's cultists). Drizzt actually does even more (around 40-50, if you fail your save against his bonus damage), but you really shouldn't be taking hits from Drizzt anyway. Given that insane difficulty doubles all those numbers, so you'll probably be taking up to 80 damage per hit (up to 100 from Drizzt). So you'll need kind of a lot of hit points.

Or you could have a mage cast Mirror Image and Stoneskin and just laugh at the pitiful mortals trying to damage you.

lunar

Lord_Tansheron said:

Don't really have a BG:EE story, but I've been backstabbed in BG2 for ~200 damage before.

The highest number I've ever seen though was from a Pit Fiend, which due to some weird bug/mod conflict (or so I assume) put up a disease ticking for 9999 damage.

That was by design. In pnp, pit fiends have a poison attack that instantly kills you if you fail a save vs poison. But instant death effects are coded as 'death' effects that are blocked by death ward spell or berserker/barbarian rages, so the mod designer added 999 poison damage on a failed save:which is really equal to an insta death for any creature not immune to poison damage.

In bg2 if you have a ranged weapon and get backstabbed by a high lvl enemy, the +4 to damage gets modified too, if its a critical hit it gets doubled again, for easily 100+ points of damage. (On core difficulty) so everyone should switch to melee weapons when backstabbers are around. In bg:ee having a ranged weapon equipped gives the melee attacker +4 to hit but no damage bonus, if the target is unarmed (unless monk, monks are never unarmed) +4 to damage kicks in too. That's why you can do 7-8 damage with a dagger to an unarmed nobleman or commoner.

I think flesh golems are kinda bugged, in pnp they are supposed to do 2-16 damage per hit, due to their massive strength. Bg gives them 2d8 weapons AND a 19 strength, so they do 2d8+7 damage with each hit:which is 9-25 damage. In your case Yeslick suffered a full damage of 25 which got multiplied by 2 due to insane difficulty.

Avoid fighting when fatigued, it affects the enemy's damage rolls so you suffer more damage from spells and weapons:it adds a +1 minimum damage per each certain time spent you are fatigued. So the longer you are fatigued the more chance you take maximum damage from enemy spells/attacks.

JuliusBorisov

Thanks, @lunar and @Jarrakul, this is entirely what I has been seeking:-)

It seems playing on the insane difficulty means I just will have to either resurrect a fallen NPC or to reload - it's a question of time. And if the main character can't cast Ironskins or Stoneskin (due to not having sufficient level or not being a caster) he mustn't be a melee fighter in order to survive a no-reload run. The solution can be lowering the difficulty but it will mean that in general enemies will hit for less damage thus making it more simple and the constant need to use healing potions and spells will go away...

ZanathKariashi

Enemies don't get +4 damage for attacking a ranged guy with melee, they get +4 hit.

Also fatigue doesn't stack in BG. It's a flat -1 luck penalty.

Permidion_Stark

Not wishing to derail the thread (but going ahead and derailing it anyway), I was fighting a mummy in the Graveyard of Athkatla last night and my 8th level Cavalier used Daystar to cast Sunray. The text told me that I had done 1049 points of damage to the mummy. Can that possibly be right? I thought I'd cast a spell not nuked it from space.

Schneidend

The very first pocket plane test in ToB had an enemy wiseguy casting a Dominate Person spell on Sarevok, who immediately turned around and blasted CHARNAME with a Deathbringer Assault for over 350 damage. I could not stop laughing at how preposterously lucky the AI had been. It was like a DM on a hot-streak.

"Don't worry, these stormtroopers have almost no chance to hit you...except four of them just rolled 17 or better."

Permidion_Stark said:

Not wishing to derail the thread (but going ahead and derailing it anyway), I was fighting a mummy in the Graveyard of Athkatla last night and my 8th level Cavalier used Daystar to cast Sunray. The text told me that I had done 1049 points of damage to the mummy. Can that possibly be right? I thought I'd cast a spell not nuked it from space.

I believe the Daystar version has a save or die for undead, and since undead are immune to the "auto-kill" effect, it deals a ridiculous amount of damage instead.

Permidion_Stark

Thanks @Schneidend - that would make sense.

sarevok57

I've seen sarevok deal 100 damage on a critical hit in vanilla bg to imoen once, bad times for her

lunar

sarevok57 said:

I've seen sarevok deal 100 damage on a critical hit in vanilla bg to imoen once, bad times for her

Ouch! Was this on insane difficulty? Was she chunked? I think she was.. :-(

Corvino

With regard to ridiculous damage mitigation, Dwarven Defenders do have it as a class special ability. I recently ran one who was able to deal with the Golem Cave solo at level 3-4 (levelled-up during the cave) mainly due to their damage reduction ability.

He'd chugged a potion of absorbtion, but 50% melee damage resist made him all but unkillable.

sarevok57

@lunar yep it was, I have only ever played the game on insane difficulty ever since the beginning ( the person who introduced me to the game had it set to max, and maybe that is why back in the day I was getting slaughtered senselessly but it was still fun) and yes she got chunked, even at max level imoen had 80 HP but still ka-blew-ee , it was in the palace when sarevok turns hostile and he was like; hi imoen, eat my sword its yums yums, and imoen was like; right on, no sweat homes gimme a bite, and yeah, the rest is history

Lord_Tansheron

@sarevok57: I think you just spawned a whole volume of slash-fiction.

sarevok57

well in my mind, that is how it went, but in reality imoen did get chunked as a level 10 thief by sarevok

lamaros

Playing on insane but also rolling maxHP. I don't get it? Why not just play on a lower difficulty...

sarevok57

play on a lower difficulty? eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew

Lord_Tansheron

@Iamaros: Incoming damage is doubled on Insane, but max-roll doesn't double HP. For the most part max-roll lowers the RNG factor, which is quite annoying to begin with; but it's important to use the feature in conjunction with others, like max-HP for enemies and such. That makes combat a bit meatier and slower, leaving more room for tactical decisions.

FinneousPJ

Like was argued in another thread, if you remove HP rolls you should also remove damage rolls IMO. (Simple Example) If the game is balanced around 1d10 HP vs. 1d6 damage, i.e. 5.5 vs. 3.5 average, and you only change the HP rolls, you're end up with 10 vs. 3.5, and the balance now clearly favors HP.

Lord_Tansheron

@FinneousPJ: that's the whole point, you want to slow combat down. If things keel over instantly, there is little room for tactics and everything just becomes brute force. Also, max-HP obviously *only* really works on Insane difficulty.

Schneidend

FinneousPJ said:

Like was argued in another thread, if you remove HP rolls you should also remove damage rolls IMO. (Simple Example) If the game is balanced around 1d10 HP vs. 1d6 damage, i.e. 5.5 vs. 3.5 average, and you only change the HP rolls, you're end up with 10 vs. 3.5, and the balance now clearly favors HP.

I never actually thought of it this way before. Very interesting argument in favor of random HP rolls. Although, I still prefer 4E’s flat HP gains of 5-7 depending on class or houseruling that players can either take the average or a single re-roll in other games.

FinneousPJ

Yeah, it'd be nice to have in the game the options of a) random HP rolls b) fixed average rolls every time c) maximum rolls. Minimum is an option that probably isn't needed.

Lord_Tansheron

@FinneousPJ: I'm pretty sure mods offer exactly these options; not sure if it was SCS or Fixpack or some other, but I'm certain I had these options.

Personally, I'd love a game where enemies have *a lot* more HP. I'm talking a factor of 5 at least, possibly even 10. *That* would put some meat on the table for once!

Schneidend

As much as it pains me to say it, @Lord_Tansheron, you might want to try 4E if you like long combats with sturdy monsters. I love the ruleset to death, but some of the monsters were given the most bizarrely beefy pools of HP and did not have this balanced out by any damage vulnerabilities or significantly weakened defenses.

Awong124

Lord_Tansheron said:

Personally, I'd love a game where enemies have *a lot* more HP. I'm talking a factor of 5 at least, possibly even 10. *That* would put some meat on the table for once!

That's like JRPGs, and I've never found it to make any sense other than for gameplay reasons. For me it breaks immersion because it just bugs me.

Jarrakul

On the merits of fixed hp rolls vs fixed damage rolls (and fixed attack rolls): These are two fundamentally different things, and I will explain why. First, let's just point out that no one here is attempting to eliminate randomness from BG combat. Fixing damage rolls wouldn't even do that. It would lend some predictability, but attack rolls (and saving throws) would still be random, so combat as a whole would still retain the primary source of its randomness. No one's suggesting we make attack rolls follow a fixed formula (and we could, although it'd have to be more complicated than "all attack rolls are 10s"), so why bother with damage rolls? In my opinion, it's not really worth it, and the fact that there isn't a huge clamor for this option indicates that I'm not alone. So, if we're okay with random attack and damage rolls, why are some of us not okay with random hp rolls? Well, it's an issue of short-term vs. long-term random consequences. If I get unlucky on an attack roll, I miss an attack. That's bad right now, but it doesn't stick with me. The game doesn't go "oh, you missed that attack, I guess you'll have trouble hitting things forever." If I'm doing a no-reload run I might be in some trouble, but even then I'll usually be able to recover, and once I do I'll never have to worry about that particular low roll again. For hit points, this is not the case. Hit point rolls penalize you, not for getting unlucky now, but for getting unlucky five hours ago. There's no recovering from a lot hit point roll, no getting to a point where it no longer has an impact. You will simply have fewer hit points forever. While you can deal with that and potentially win regardless, you will always be less powerful than you could've been just because you got unlucky once. And a lot of folks, myself included, don't really like that.

Basically, it's the difference between betting 5 bucks in Vegas and betting your car. Even if the odds are the same and the payoff is proportional, most people would be fine betting 5 bucks and wouldn't ever bet the car.

FinneousPJ

This is only a real concern at low levels. Once the levels are in the 10s it'll all average out. The probability distribution of 4d6 is already very close to a Gaussian.

Lord_Tansheron

Schneidend said:

As much as it pains me to say it, @Lord_Tansheron, you might want to try 4E if you like long combats with sturdy monsters. I love the ruleset to death, but some of the monsters were given the most bizarrely beefy pools of HP and did not have this balanced out by any damage vulnerabilities or significantly weakened defenses.

Thanks for the suggestion, but since there's no real way to make BG use that rule set, it's sort of a moot point. I like higher HP because it forces diversified strategies as opposed to "kill it before it does anything". I can safely ignore many mechanics because I know they'll never become relevant - stuff just keels over too fast. x10 sounds like a huge number, but when enemies die in 2 seconds it's not actually that impactful...

Jarrakul

@FinneousPJ, the probability distribution of 4d6 isn't very close to Gaussian, it IS Gaussian (as least as much as a set of finite outcomes can be Gaussian). The problem is that since we only have 4 random events, it's a very wide Gaussian. In other words, the Law of Large Numbers hasn't kicked in yet. The odds of a 4th level character rolling a 1 or a 2 on all 3d6 dice is a full 1/27. In other words, about two-thirds as likely as getting a crit on a given roll. That's simply too high for something as potentially crippling as having only 10 hp at 4th level.

Now, you're right that eventually the proportional difference lessens. You might always have 20 less hp, but that matters a lot more when you have 40 hp than when you have 120. The problem is that a) it never actually goes away, it just becomes a smaller proportion, and b) it's most damaging during the very parts of the game that are most difficult anyway.

That said, I'm not really trying to argue that random hp rolls are bad. I'm just trying to argue that they're a fundamentally different kind of risk than random attack/damage rolls.

FinneousPJ

@Jarrakul No, it isn't a Gaussian, obviously.

You are right, it is 1/27. That means that rolling all rolls better than 2 is 26/27 or ca. 96.3 %.