If you get grandmastery in 2H, you get 3 APR so that's 6 with IH. Add some nice gauntlets and you hit 7 APR. With a weapon like the Ravager, that's not bad at all, but of course it doesn't match DW's potential 10 APR under IH (2 of those made with a low-damage +2 weapon, but anyway).
There's also one other thing I think we're missing from the 2H vs TWF: It is mentioned ingame that magical 2H weapons are supposed to be more powerful than their 1H counterparts. I don't think it's random that Staff of the Ram is so crazy, or that the Ravager has no save for the decapitation (which, if I remember correctly, Axe of the Unyelding does, making its vorpal effect substantially less powerful). They are meant to be more powerful. Carsomyr unfortunately fails a bit in that department. Good against magic but it doesn't deal as much damage as it should in the grand scheme of things.
I still consider TWF more powerful of course. That's just the way the math works out, but that is in my most humble opinion a design flaw that was even made worse by the inclusion of +APR weapons (which are of course 1-handed...).
Still, I want to run "the ultimate" 2H character at some point just to prove that you can still annihilate everything and everyone with them. I'm not quite decided though. Could be a kensai, but they don't get to max their APR unless they dual to thief.
I think it's worth noting that while 2-handed style is superior under ideal conditions... you really only have the option to create the circumstances for an ideal build with Charname. A balanced party is usually not going to have three people capable of wielding speed weapons in their off-hand with Grand Mastery in their main-hand- you'll either have characters like Anomen who can never equip a speed weapon or characters like Sarevok who are very hard to re-spec into dual-wielding. In addition, the only way to make good use of the Scarlet Ninja-To is with a Fighter/Thief (dual or multi) taking Use Any Item- if you didn't build this character, you only have two speed weapons to split between your party members.
Another thing to consider is that with Improved Haste on a dual-wielder you will "waste" two attacks per round on the off-hand. Since Belm and Kundane are +2 (and the Scarlet Ninja-To is +3), this can reduce your effective APR to 8 against certain enemies. This is still pretty great, but given that you can reach 7 with a two-hander with an equivalent build as @kaffekoppen pointed out, you really should consider the damage and effect potentials of the individual weapons over an extra attack per round. I'd rather have 7 attacks with Ravager +6 than 8 with almost any other single-hander in the game.
A lesson I've been learning while soloing is that damage per round isn't everything - the reach of a two hander combined with the speed factor reduction will let you hit a lot of enemies without any fear of retaliation. Something worth keeping in mind.
Oh and 2H crit twice as often, but I still don't get why anyone in their right mind would place the second pip in 2H style. You get a -2 to speed factor. That's it.
Speed factor is important if you're trying to abuse the range of the two handers with some hit and run. It's not too bad, really - the others offer bonuses you can get anywhere (AC, missile AC, thac0) but unless you're a kensai the second pip is your only source of speed factor.
@Mitchfork On the other hand, a lot of NPCs are Rangers, Paladins, or multiclass fighters who are limited to specialization and have a very easy time being set up for two weapon combat. And while access to speed weapons is limited, I would make the argument that dual-wielding two good one-handed weapons is still superior to wielding a single two-handed weapon once you take relative damage into account.
And no two handed weapon wielder with 7 APR is going to beat a dual wielder with 8 APR in damage, especially once strength is taken into account. Compare average damage per hit for two handers: Carsomyr 12.5, Gram 11, Ravager 11.5, Ixil 9.5, Staff of the Ram 18 (but good luck getting full APR when you keep knocking the enemy out of reach); to the average damage per hit of one handers: Angurvadal 13, Foebane 14, Spectral Brand 13, FoA 19.5, Club of Detonation 18 (not counting the fireball) Storm Star 13 (not counting the chain lightning), Crom Faeyr 13 (not including 25 STR). Then factor in that the dual-wielder gets to add their strength bonus an additional time thanks to the extra attack, and any damage bonuses from weapon mastery, and that not every enemy needs +3 or better to hit, even in ToB.
Ravager is worth talking about because it has the vorpal effect with no save that works on the majority of enemies. Carsomyr is worth talking about because dispel on hit is handy (assuming they don't have PfMW up) and it's convenient to have a good weapon that exactly one party member can use to free up options for other characters. As for the rest? There are a half a dozen one-handed weapons that outdamage the best two-handers out of the box. One-handed weapons are generally powerful, while two-handed weapons are niche at best.
@kaffekoppen Increased crit rate sounds nice, but it effectively amounts to a 5% chance to get another hit's worth of damage in. Even with the attack penalty, dual-wielding has much better odds of getting another hit's worth of damage each round.
@Kaigen Of course, I wasn't saying that dual-wielding was bad (or even worse than two-handers in general). It's just that you're going to be using both in most party configurations, so I think most of the number-crunching parts of this discussion are really only useful for extreme powergaming (which is fine) or solo play where you're trying to squeeze everything you can out of one character.
I would also struggle to call Carsomyr a niche weapon- very nearly any encounter in the game that's not a trash mob is going to benefit from level 30 dispels being whacked around. It's certainly more specialized than other weapons but anti-mage tactics enjoy a large amount of use in BG2.
@Mitchfork Fair enough, but if you want to talk about weapons you have to build your PC towards to use, I think Carsomyr would be near the top of the list. The one NPC that can use it doesn't need it because he has oodles of powerful dispels at hand, so in order to really leverage its benefits you need to roll a Paladin yourself or a Fighter/Thief to use it with UAI.
@Kaigen: It's still a bonus. It's not much, but all TWF gets is to make up for THAC0 you'd otherwise have lost. 2H actually gets a small boost.
About Carsomyr, I think if you're going for a Fighter/Thief, it makes much more sense to go for quarterstaff specialization instead. Staff of the Magi is great for dispelling, exactly like Carsomyr. You can use its invisibility effect to escape and restealth on top of that. Then you can switch to Staff of the Ram and go for those huge backstabs.
DW with FoA and The Equalizer + GWW. Provided The Equalizer hasn't been "fixed", the bonus dmg and thaco adds to your main-attack as well, which is a potential extra +3 thaco and +6 dmg on the already deadly FoA. The best bit is you can already use this combination in SoA. 'Not to mention The Equalizer looks awesome and it's quite a journey to forge it. (Added immunity to 2 of the most annoying statuses ain't bad either.)
I find the Ravager both cheesy and immersion-breaking. I mean, decapitating a dragon?
I believe that the equalizer has been fixed, which is unfortunate as using it as on off-hand for the boost was the only really good use of the item and one of the only potential competitors for speed weapons.
@Mitchfork Fair enough, but if you want to talk about weapons you have to build your PC towards to use, I think Carsomyr would be near the top of the list. The one NPC that can use it doesn't need it because he has oodles of powerful dispels at hand, so in order to really leverage its benefits you need to roll a Paladin yourself or a Fighter/Thief to use it with UAI.
This is a nitpick, but the Dispel on hit has an advantage that his regular dispels don't - namely that it's easy to accidentally dispel your own party's protection spells in the middle of a chaotic battle if you're just blasting the spell, where as the hit from the weapon will only hit the target. Many a battle I have accidentally lost because another character carrying protections got in the way of Keldorn's spells before I could extricate them. Now that of course speaks to my poor play, but it's still something to bear in mind given that one cannot always assume ideal battle formations or that melee characters engaging the same enemy will not also be using protective magicks.
On the flip side, the disadvantage to dispel on hit is that you can't maintain any debuffs on the enemy while you're attacking it. While mages are pretty easy to dispatch if you can keep their buffs off, there are other enemies that are much easier to deal with at less than their full strength.
DW with FoA and The Equalizer + GWW. Provided The Equalizer hasn't been "fixed", the bonus dmg and thaco adds to your main-attack as well, which is a potential extra +3 thaco and +6 dmg on the already deadly FoA. The best bit is you can already use this combination in SoA. 'Not to mention The Equalizer looks awesome and it's quite a journey to forge it. (Added immunity to 2 of the most annoying statuses ain't bad either.)
I'm kind of tired of FoA +5's big drawback. Somehow I'm not quite happy keeping it a +4 either. On the other hand, Foebane +5 is just amazing. It does do less damager per hit but it does *good* damage per hit, allows haste and heals you. If you're fighting certain beings (that you meet a LOT in ToB), it does does a lot of extra damage too.
My current fighter/thief is going for the Spectral Brand +5 / Scarlet Ninja-To combo. Because it only costs 2 pips, I can also afford to backstab with a quarterstaff and play with halberds just for fun. So I feel like I'm getting the best of both worlds. The best APR weapon with a +5 backstabby mainhand *and* I get to GWW with the Ravager +6. Looking forward to getting there!
I find the Ravager both cheesy and immersion-breaking. I mean, decapitating a dragon?
It's a bit cheesy perhaps, but I don't find it immersion-breaking. I think it's also a super cool weapon for a blackguard.
@tennisgolfboll You mean Clay Golems? Because that's pretty much it. I agree it's annoying to have to switch weapons, but it's not that common an occurrence.
I cant stand not going blunt because some enemies are immune against slashing. I hate those kind of game mechanics
Non proficiency penalty is so small for fighters that I keep a blunt weapon (not training in it) around to deal with clay golems. Actually, I think I put in one star at creation. For fun purposes, I'm building a halberd specializing berserker, even if 2-weapons are better. The blunt weapon will probably be FoA for him, unless I choose to have an NPC use it.
Perhaps relevant to this thread in some way is my discovery that Defender of Easthaven is now +3, meaning - it now hits with 1D6 + 4 (THAC0 +3 of course).
That makes the DOE an even more potent weapon than it was before as it can now hit things like demons and the bigger golems.
Perhaps relevant to this thread in some way is my discovery that Defender of Easthaven is now +3, meaning - it now hits with 1D6 + 4 (THAC0 +3 of course).
That makes the DOE an even more potent weapon than it was before as it can now hit things like demons and the bigger golems.
My understanding is that functionally Defender of Easthaven was always a +3 weapon. The item description however gave the impression that it was a +2 weapon.
Anyone else find it odd that the highest damage per hit weapon isn't two handed? While it's not really necessary for the game or anything a large elemental damage plus halberd, spear, or two handed sword would be nice (or equivalent damage boosting effect).
In the Baldur's Gate games combat may be poorly balanced, but they're adapted from 2nd Ed D&D and the concept of class balance as we know it today didn't really exist back then. Not every class or combat style needed to be equivalent in usefulness. If balance was required then your DM was able to mix things up.
Well, pen and paper roleplaying is different. With the way we played it, combat wasn't even that frequent so the out-of-combat skills were usually much more important than they are in a computer game.
Comments
Vorpal effects are not, unless EE has amended them, death magic, and still function normally.
If you get grandmastery in 2H, you get 3 APR so that's 6 with IH. Add some nice gauntlets and you hit 7 APR. With a weapon like the Ravager, that's not bad at all, but of course it doesn't match DW's potential 10 APR under IH (2 of those made with a low-damage +2 weapon, but anyway).
There's also one other thing I think we're missing from the 2H vs TWF: It is mentioned ingame that magical 2H weapons are supposed to be more powerful than their 1H counterparts. I don't think it's random that Staff of the Ram is so crazy, or that the Ravager has no save for the decapitation (which, if I remember correctly, Axe of the Unyelding does, making its vorpal effect substantially less powerful). They are meant to be more powerful. Carsomyr unfortunately fails a bit in that department. Good against magic but it doesn't deal as much damage as it should in the grand scheme of things.
I still consider TWF more powerful of course. That's just the way the math works out, but that is in my most humble opinion a design flaw that was even made worse by the inclusion of +APR weapons (which are of course 1-handed...).
Still, I want to run "the ultimate" 2H character at some point just to prove that you can still annihilate everything and everyone with them. I'm not quite decided though. Could be a kensai, but they don't get to max their APR unless they dual to thief.
Another thing to consider is that with Improved Haste on a dual-wielder you will "waste" two attacks per round on the off-hand. Since Belm and Kundane are +2 (and the Scarlet Ninja-To is +3), this can reduce your effective APR to 8 against certain enemies. This is still pretty great, but given that you can reach 7 with a two-hander with an equivalent build as @kaffekoppen pointed out, you really should consider the damage and effect potentials of the individual weapons over an extra attack per round. I'd rather have 7 attacks with Ravager +6 than 8 with almost any other single-hander in the game.
And no two handed weapon wielder with 7 APR is going to beat a dual wielder with 8 APR in damage, especially once strength is taken into account. Compare average damage per hit for two handers: Carsomyr 12.5, Gram 11, Ravager 11.5, Ixil 9.5, Staff of the Ram 18 (but good luck getting full APR when you keep knocking the enemy out of reach); to the average damage per hit of one handers: Angurvadal 13, Foebane 14, Spectral Brand 13, FoA 19.5, Club of Detonation 18 (not counting the fireball) Storm Star 13 (not counting the chain lightning), Crom Faeyr 13 (not including 25 STR). Then factor in that the dual-wielder gets to add their strength bonus an additional time thanks to the extra attack, and any damage bonuses from weapon mastery, and that not every enemy needs +3 or better to hit, even in ToB.
Ravager is worth talking about because it has the vorpal effect with no save that works on the majority of enemies. Carsomyr is worth talking about because dispel on hit is handy (assuming they don't have PfMW up) and it's convenient to have a good weapon that exactly one party member can use to free up options for other characters. As for the rest? There are a half a dozen one-handed weapons that outdamage the best two-handers out of the box. One-handed weapons are generally powerful, while two-handed weapons are niche at best.
@kaffekoppen Increased crit rate sounds nice, but it effectively amounts to a 5% chance to get another hit's worth of damage in. Even with the attack penalty, dual-wielding has much better odds of getting another hit's worth of damage each round.
I would also struggle to call Carsomyr a niche weapon- very nearly any encounter in the game that's not a trash mob is going to benefit from level 30 dispels being whacked around. It's certainly more specialized than other weapons but anti-mage tactics enjoy a large amount of use in BG2.
About Carsomyr, I think if you're going for a Fighter/Thief, it makes much more sense to go for quarterstaff specialization instead. Staff of the Magi is great for dispelling, exactly like Carsomyr. You can use its invisibility effect to escape and restealth on top of that. Then you can switch to Staff of the Ram and go for those huge backstabs.
Carsomyr has some MR that could be nice though.
The best bit is you can already use this combination in SoA. 'Not to mention The Equalizer looks awesome and it's quite a journey to forge it. (Added immunity to 2 of the most annoying statuses ain't bad either.)
I find the Ravager both cheesy and immersion-breaking. I mean, decapitating a dragon?
My current fighter/thief is going for the Spectral Brand +5 / Scarlet Ninja-To combo. Because it only costs 2 pips, I can also afford to backstab with a quarterstaff and play with halberds just for fun. So I feel like I'm getting the best of both worlds. The best APR weapon with a +5 backstabby mainhand *and* I get to GWW with the Ravager +6. Looking forward to getting there! It's a bit cheesy perhaps, but I don't find it immersion-breaking. I think it's also a super cool weapon for a blackguard.
That makes the DOE an even more potent weapon than it was before as it can now hit things like demons and the bigger golems.
I don't think there was ever any real doubt that TWF is better. Except if you want to backstab of course.
http://www.gog.com/forum/baldurs_gate_series/for_anyone_with_the_merchant_joluv_in_their_copy_of_bg2