How do attacks per round work, exactly?

golingarf

If you have a high weapon speed (meaning a slow attack) it will take until later in the round for your first attack to be made, and then the remaining attacks will be made in quick succession. But is there any limit to how quickly these attacks can occur? For example, if your weapon speed is 9, meaning you have to wait until almost until the end of the round to attack, but you have, say, three attacks, will the other two occur both at once, or will you lose out on one?

Also, what happens when you have multiple attacks and cast a spell? If you have 10 attacks per round from energy blades or GWW, and you cast a spell that has casting time 8, I seem to recall that you cannot make 10 attacks all at once before you are able to cast your next spell. Can you only make two because that's how may decirounds are left? Or is there some other logic to this?

Is it *ever* possible to have more than 10 APR? If you use the true grandmastery option from the G3 tweak pack, it is in principle possible to have 11 APR with grandmastery in darts and improved haste. But will you actually be able to make all of them?

FinneousPJ

If you have many attacks and a low weapon speed, the attacks will be moved earlier in the round, practically increasing your weapon speed (AFAIK). As you can see, this quickly makes the weapon speed stat obsolete for dedicated melees.

AFAIK -- BG2 has separated spell casting and attacking, which is quite exploity. You can cast a spell and immediately attack normally.

No, it's limited to 5 x 2.

golingarf

Interesting that it moves your attacks earlier, I hadn't known that. What if you cast and attack then? I assume you will actually not get all the attacks - but if you have ten attacks and cast a spell with casting time X, will you get 10-X attacks that round? And what if you have 5 attacks and cast a spell with casting time 5 - can you still use all five attacks that round or will you only get about half of them?

Shin

golingarf said:

And what if you have 5 attacks and cast a spell with casting time 5 - can you still use all five attacks that round or will you only get about half of them?

More or less yes. Spending time casting a spell will not speed up your attacks after that to make sure you get them all in before the round is over, but you can view it as having 5 attacks per round means you attack roughly once per 1.2 seconds, and so you will start attacking at that frequency from when you stop casting and start attacking.

FinneousPJ

I'm not sure I understand the question, but it has always seemed to me like the "melee round" and "spellcasting round" are separate in BG. In other words, you can cast a spell and immediately launch a full 10 attack flurry without delay - you don't lose your action, like you should.

jackjack

And me with my poor 1-2 APR Bard

Shin

FinneousPJ said:

I'm not sure I understand the question, but it has always seemed to me like the "melee round" and "spellcasting round" are separate in BG. In other words, you can cast a spell and immediately launch a full 10 attack flurry without delay - you don't lose your action, like you should.

Yes, that's another way of looking at it, you can start attacking at full speed as soon as you stop casting. But, assume you have 5 attacks per round and you spend 5 seconds of a round casting a spell (leaving 1 second remaining of that round) before you start attacking - all of your 5 attacks won't be compressed into that one second in order to get them off.

kryptix

Shin said:

FinneousPJ said:

I'm not sure I understand the question, but it has always seemed to me like the "melee round" and "spellcasting round" are separate in BG. In other words, you can cast a spell and immediately launch a full 10 attack flurry without delay - you don't lose your action, like you should.

Yes, that's another way of looking at it, you can start attacking at full speed as soon as you stop casting. But, assume you have 5 attacks per round and you spend 5 seconds of a round casting a spell (leaving 1 second remaining of that round) before you start attacking - all of your 5 attacks won't be compressed into that one second in order to get them off.

I'm pretty sure it just starts a new melee round instead and gives you 6 seconds to attack 5x...

Shin

Aye, that could very well be.

scriver

kryptix said:

Shin said:

FinneousPJ said:

I'm not sure I understand the question, but it has always seemed to me like the "melee round" and "spellcasting round" are separate in BG. In other words, you can cast a spell and immediately launch a full 10 attack flurry without delay - you don't lose your action, like you should.

Yes, that's another way of looking at it, you can start attacking at full speed as soon as you stop casting. But, assume you have 5 attacks per round and you spend 5 seconds of a round casting a spell (leaving 1 second remaining of that round) before you start attacking - all of your 5 attacks won't be compressed into that one second in order to get them off.

I'm pretty sure it just starts a new melee round instead and gives you 6 seconds to attack 5x...

As far as I know, BG does not have individual turn counts for each character. That would be kind of contrary to the purpose of turn based combat. And practically eat computing power. Your turns end and starts at the same time as everyone else's. One of your characters getting a new turn would mean all other characters, yours and enemies alike, would have their turns end early too.

Oh, and for the record: In DnD lingo, "turns" are commonly used for each period of six seconds, while "rounds" are used for a series of ten turns (that is, one full minute). Just to avoid confusion.

Cantab

Got to say...have completed bg, bg2, iwd, iwd2 and all possible expansions/EE 1-3 times each... Still have no ideas how the 'rounds' work

golingarf

scriver said:

As far as I know, BG does not have individual turn counts for each character. That would be kind of contrary to the purpose of turn based combat. And practically eat computing power. Your turns end and starts at the same time as everyone else's. One of your characters getting a new turn would mean all other characters, yours and enemies alike, would have their turns end early too.

Nope, there is a separate round for each character. If you don't believe me, turn on "end of round" under the auto-pause options and see how annoying it is.

It certainly seems that there is not a distinction between melee and spellcasting rounds, judging from when the game pauses with that option turned on. I'm not entirely sure though. It's hard to judge exactly when the attacks are occurring since there's no way to auto-pause on decirounds.