Weapon styles and shapeshifting/summoned weapons

magpie

I posted this here http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/387743/#Comment_387743 as the answer to a question, but I might as well share it here as well.

Things seem to be a bit complicated with shapeshifting and magically created weapons and weapon styles. So far my findings in v1.2 seem to point to these rules:

1. All magically created melee weapons and all shapeshift forms that do not explicitly carry a two-handed weapon (flint and fire salamander) benefit from single weapon style IF you do not have a shield equipped before shifting/summoning.

2. If you do have a shield equipped, you'll use sword and shield style instead.


3. Flint and fire salamander use the two-handed weapon style instead of the single weapon style or sword and shield style. The fire salamander also seems to benefit from/need the spear proficiency.

4. If you equip a weapon in your shield slot, you'll still use single/two handed weapon style, BUT you will get an extra off-hand attack.

This is all based on me testing in v1.2. I might have misinterpreted or overlooked things of course.

nano

This is some great research! Some questions:

MMM gets no benefit at all from weapon styles, correct? I've read that having an offhand when casting this will give you a ranged "melee attack" so I wonder whether two-weapon style is a factor. Also, no benefit from proficiencies?

In general, is the off-hand attack is based on your two-weapon style + specific weapon proficiency?

Do you keep bonuses from your offhand? For example, Drizzt's scimitars. I'm guessing the main hand is overwritten.

Does flind form benefit from halberd proficiency or is salamander the only one? Ogre and morning star?

magpie

nano said:

In general, is the off-hand attack is based on your two-weapon style + specific weapon proficiency?

OK, I looked into it some more, and the interesting thing is that with shapeshifted/summoned weapons your thac0 does not drop for dual wielding. In principle your off hand attack will have the same thac0 as your main attack, and that will be the same as when you didn't dual wield. Pretty good! However:

nano said:

Do you keep bonuses from your offhand? For example, Drizzt's scimitars. I'm guessing the main hand is overwritten.

thac0 modifiers affecting the off hand weapon keep affecting your off hand attack with shapeshift/summoned weapons. This includes proficiency and magical +thac0. As far as I could see damage and proc on hit don't. Didn't check +AC and stuff yet, but shields do keep contributing their AC bonus, so who knows.
EDIT: haha, wow. Drizzt's defender scimitar does keep giving its -2 AC, whether wielded as main or off hand, but you get a mysterious +2 'bonus' to AC as well, negating it

nano said:

MMM gets no benefit at all from weapon styles, correct? I've read that having an offhand when casting this will give you a ranged "melee attack" so I wonder whether two-weapon style is a factor. Also, no benefit from proficiencies?

no proficiencies or weapon styles, and it works the same as the other shapeshift/summoned weapons when dual wielding. However, the maximum amount of attacks is 5, and a off hand attack with thac0 based on a melee weapon will probably be worse than your usual MMM attack.

nano said:

Does flind form benefit from halberd proficiency or is salamander the only one? Ogre and morning star?

Flind actually benefits/needs halberd proficiency as well, yes! I got confused because of the +1 of the halberd originally. Ogre doesn't use it at all. So it seems so far it generalizes to `two handed weapons use proficiency'

nano

magpie said:

nano said:

In general, is the off-hand attack is based on your two-weapon style + specific weapon proficiency?

OK, I looked into it some more, and the interesting thing is that with shapeshifted/summoned weapons your thac0 does not drop for dual wielding. In principle your off hand attack will have the same thac0 as your main attack, and that will be the same as when you didn't dual wield. Pretty good! However:

thac0 modifiers affecting the off hand weapon keep affecting your off hand attack with shapeshift/summoned weapons. This includes proficiency and magical +thac0.

Okay, let me see if I understand: two weapon fighting does not affect the offhand attack, but specific weapon proficiencies (eg dagger) do? Does two weapon fighting affect the main attack (ie if you only have one pip you should have a -2 penalty to your main hand)?

That's an interesting observation about the AC bonus. How about the fire resistance from the other scimitar? I know @_Nightfall_ mentioned that you can keep the damage resistance from Defender of Easthaven so I would assume that's the case as well.

For MMM, if it works as you said for melee weapons then that means you don't get any benefit from damage/proc. Does it deal the meteor's damage (fire etc.) or the base damage of the weapon?

I just realized this means you could be pretty awesome dual wielding and then casting Chill/Ghoul Touch.

magpie said:

nano said:

Does flind form benefit from halberd proficiency or is salamander the only one? Ogre and morning star?

Flind actually benefits/needs halberd proficiency as well, yes! I got confused because of the +1 of the halberd originally. Ogre doesn't use it at all. So it seems so far it generalizes to `two handed weapons use proficiency'

Hmm, so the flind is non-proficient by default? I guess these forms are really bad for a mage because of the huge nonproficiency penalty. On the other hand it means a fighter/mage with specialization will probably do better with the flind than the ogre.

Thanks for your research. I don't mind looking up some of this stuff myself but I figured they were questions worth sharing.