snow maiden's reaver broken... differently... now.

Ichthyic

OK, so the patch now properly reflects the damage the sword SHOULD do with proficiencies and strength bonuses.

but...

in reality, the real problem with the sword was that in actually never added proficiencies or strength bonuses into the damage on hit, and the info on the screen was actually properly displaying this fact before the 1.4 patch!

so, you fixed the cosmetic... but forgot to actually FIX THE SWORD.

compare it to any other +2 sword and you'll see the difference when you hit something immediately.

no strength bonus, no proficiency bonus.

man, was SO looking forward to using this against fire salamaders and giants in HOF. I tried it out, and watched my 20 strength, 5 proficiency paladin hit for... 6 cold damage.

*cry*

maybe an easy fix would be to add a point of physical damage to it? maybe make it 1d3 physical, 1d8 cold? would that allow the strength and proficiency damage to add in then?

Ichthyic

I tried just adding empty damage dice to the base via an item editor, but that doesn't work.

basically, there is no way to apply strength bonuses to added effects, and there is no way to make the primary damage of a weapon anything other than one of the physical types.

AFAICT, the engine itself simply does not allow for a real elemental based weapon to function properly.

anyone have an idea for a workaround? basically the only thing I can think of is simply to add a point of physical damage to the base, then at least you would get your damage bonuses for physical output, if not for cold.

really though, someone should write a script that does a strength check for bonus dice for effect damage.

I don't have the patience for it, but it can't be that hard.

hmm. the other idea is to make a guesstimate of who would be typically using this, and make the cold damage flat, but closer to what you would get with say, the bonuses from full proficiency and 20 strength?

20 strength is an easy mark for any fighter to reach fairly early on in the game, and the bonus damage would make the reaver still useful against anything weak to cold through the entire game.

yeah, think I'll go with that.

so, let's see...

max ability bonuses, and 20 strength, that would be +15 damage.

so basically, I can add 15d1 cold damage to the reaver under the effect tab, and let the normal 2d4 + 2 be variable on top

so the sword would do 19 to 25 pure cold damage, period.

that *feels* about right for about the level an average person would be when they would actually find this sword useful (when you first start facing creatures weak to cold damage).

that's the best I can think of. a regular bastard sword would still do more damage, and have a chance at crits (which this won't*) against anything not weak to cold damage. to make up for the lack of crits, this then has the 2% instant kill chance.

so.. slightly below average damage output, but not hugely underpowered like it was.


*well, actually you will still get crits on 20 rolls, but you don't get any bonus damage.

comments?

AlexT

The Snow Maiden's Reaver worked the same way in the original Icewind Dale i.e. it dealt only cold damage without adding the strength and proficiency bonuses.

This is not something that the EE has changed.

Ichthyic

what you said has nothing to do with it having not been a true elemental weapon all this time.

like I said... it is a simple limitation of the game engine. nobody ever added the ability to make primary damage on a weapon elemental instead of physical.

I'm not saying it was bugged (actually it IS now... the patch shows the INCORRECT damage output for it, whereas before it was actually correct), I'm saying it NEVER worked like it should have, not ever.

clear?