Icewind Dale's Enemy Damage is Too High?

Varlothen

As the title says I've been playing Icewind Dale at the Core Rules difficulty and feel like the enemies are hitting way to hard to be right. Skeleton archers in the shadow vale are averaging damages of 8 or 9, zombies are hitting for 12 or 16. And while I was able to beat the dungeon I feel like somehow enemies damage has been doubled from what it is supposed to be. Am I wrong? Are they supposed to hit this hard? I'm not playing on an increased difficulty so is their another option I'm missing that doubles their damage? I can't find any one else having this problem so help would be appreciated. I really don't want to change the difficulty.

wubble

You haven't got heart of fury mode on have you?

Varlothen

No, I do not have Heart of Fury mode active. When it is enabled the difficulty slider is maxed and then grayed out. My difficulty is set to Core.

When I enabled Heart of Winter just now as a test they were given separate bonus damage in the combat log. such as "10 crushing damage (5 damage bonus)" so it seems like this disparity comes from somewhere else.

Raduziel

Just passed through Vale of Shadows without rest and minimal healing (not a single potion used) in Core Rules and without HoF. Long story short: I don't think the enemy damage is too high.

semiticgoddess

Skeleton Archers should do 1d6 damage per hit with normal arrows, but 2d6 with Fire Arrows. But that would appear as, say, 3 missile damage and 3 fire damage, separately. Ordinary zombies can't be doing better than 1d8+2... monster attacks almost always use 1d6 as a base, and a normal enemy shouldn't have a STR value above 18.

Were the monsters rolling critical hits? If they were not, and the difficulty is at Core, there should be no reason for these monsters to be doing so much damage.

Varlothen

This problem appears to have sorted its self out. I'm guessing by sliding around the difficulty sliders and toggling Heart of Fury mode on and off I caused whatever issue was occurring to be reset. As testing it today a pair of plain skeleton archers were shown to be doing damage in a range of 2-7 with a crit scoring 10 damage.

For the time being I am going to resume my game. Thank you Semiticgod for the damage figures they are helpful to no for future scrutiny. Would you perhaps know the damages of more specific enemies in Icewind Dale? Such as the Tattered Skeletons for instance?

semiticgoddess

@Varlothen: Don't know. It's just that low-level critters like these shouldn't have big STR scores and should be using nonmagical equipment, and hence should have damage values from 1d4 to 1d10. Tattered Skeletons shouldn't be much different.

Download Near Infinity and you can look up all kinds of stuff like this.