Voidsword and Voidhammer in BG2
bob_veng
Member Posts: 2,308
At some point in SoD you can choose between the Voidsword +3, Voidhammer +3, 80x Void-tipped Arrow +3, and 80x Bullet of Darkness +3.
The Voidsword/Voidhammer gets imported. Properties are: ordinary+3 bonuses, no STR bonuses apply, magic damage instead of physical and drain 1 STR (save vs. spell negates, can't drain the last point)
Has anyone tried using these weapons here? I didn't make the weapon but the arrows instead because it seemed a bit useless. Arrows turned out great for the final SoD boss...but could the weapon be worth it in the long run? What's it good for?
Penetrating stoneskin? Is it good against some tough physical-resist and physical-immune enemies (and which are those)?
Can you orient a build around using the Voidsword for example? Kensai maybe vs stoneskinned dragons? Backstabbing stoneskinned mages? Another damage type for monks?
What are your thoughts about this weapon and is it worth choosing over the ammo in the scenario where ammo will be useful in SoD?
The Voidsword/Voidhammer gets imported. Properties are: ordinary+3 bonuses, no STR bonuses apply, magic damage instead of physical and drain 1 STR (save vs. spell negates, can't drain the last point)
Has anyone tried using these weapons here? I didn't make the weapon but the arrows instead because it seemed a bit useless. Arrows turned out great for the final SoD boss...but could the weapon be worth it in the long run? What's it good for?
Penetrating stoneskin? Is it good against some tough physical-resist and physical-immune enemies (and which are those)?
Can you orient a build around using the Voidsword for example? Kensai maybe vs stoneskinned dragons? Backstabbing stoneskinned mages? Another damage type for monks?
What are your thoughts about this weapon and is it worth choosing over the ammo in the scenario where ammo will be useful in SoD?
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Comments
19 str is +7 damage. This is almost the same as the base damage of a +3 long sword. Even with specialization the str to hit can easily be half your damage.
Never having used it, do you also miss out on the hit bonus? That one is also huge - unless you hit on each attack anyway, it is at least a 15% damage boost and can easily go up to 30%.
There are higher girdles plus Crom Faeyr out there.
if it doesn't have a str bonus then an ordinary non-magical sword is better 95% of the time.
casting a strength spell on a low strength character or drinking a strength potion is powergaming to you? i have news for you: it's not.
Such a weapon is not meant to be your main weapon. It's more like "the weapon that will do great job in every situation your main weapon does not work"
Besides, the more powerful mages tend to have Stoneskin and PfMW or AI up at the same time, so you need to Breach them anyway.
that's a pretty rare situation i think.
edit: the only such fight i can think of is the red wizard enclave first room; mages there aren't dangerous by themselves but there's many of them and you want to finish them off quickly
Shouldn't it be 1-8+3 or is it locked at 12 dmg base to balance out the lack of STR modifier?
I tried to google the sword to look it up myself, but didn't find the answer oddly enough.
in the OP is everything there is to know about the sword
you're right, an assassin won't be able to consistently deliver 12 damage, or reliably perform an 84dmg backstab on his own, but he will with the Headband of the Devout.
he can do more with gauntlets which are multiplied.
if he's a kensai/thief he will also do okay with it because kensai bonus is multiplied.
IMPORTANT
i have just tested the sword and have seen that it's not only the strength bonus which isn't applied:
- proficiency bonuses also aren't applied
- kensai damage bonus isn't applied
- gauntlets' bonus isn't applied
- bless & chant bonuses aren't applied
- kai doesn't work!
so it can safely be said that the voidsword actually applies a spell effect and doesn't work like a weapon at all
But still, the situation where you can hit a mage with stoneskin and no PfMW is... everytime you meet a mage with SCS without making your presence known:
They have stoneskin because it is a long duration spell, but no PfMW.
will someone test the void weapons in 2.2? my version of the game isn't current.
I gave it a few whirls and can confirm your earlier assessment. No bonus dmg from STR, no bonus hit from STR, no nothing. APR does seem to work normally, though.
The damage is pitiful and the STR drain cannot actually kill anyone (stops at 1 STR). So, all you essentially get is a 7.5 average damage magic attack that doesn't work against undead. Not entirely useless, but nothing special at all.
Personally I just don't see where I would be using this. Mages you can hit that only have SS up, where you're not content with any other elemental weapon being enough to interrupt spells? No idea. Golems maybe?
that's bugged.
edit: as of now this weapon is absolutely pathetic and if it is working as intended (with the description being wrong) it should really be made into something usable
but it's 99% not working as intended. surely all the other conceivable bonuses were supposed to apply.
so yeah. flavor.
You are mistaken. It "confers" -1 STR to wielder. Thats unrelated to it's STR draining on-hit ability.
But yeah I do think excluding it from all thaco bonuses apart from STR as well makes it less attractive.
I should also turn your attention to the fact that this sword is seriously bugged. No sort of damage bonus applies to it, not proficiency not anything. It's not correctly described as-is. But probably the behavior is wrong and description tells what's the desired behavior. There's a problem in the fluff part too, it feels incomplete and inadequate because it talks of a powerful weapon with one drawback when that's hardly the case - it's got a whole list of drawbacks one worse than the other
@batoor, you don't have the whole picture...what if i told you that this is a weapon with which you will ever only be able to do 4-11 damage, even as a lvl20 kensai and even kai doesn't work?
I was mostly thinking about a possible way to use it mainly for ''fun'' That is making enemies encumbered to the point where they couldn't move.
Anyway, in BG2 there's probably some niche uses but nothing to write home about. Unlikely to matter in any substantial way.
The thing is -.you can pick really fancy +3 arrows over it that nail the final sod boss
Though of course those arrows (or the bullets) are not available in BG2. Still, I think you're not losing anything by not having the sword/hammer in BG2.