Does "Luck" effectively boost your THAC0 by 1?

Kahenraz

The description says that it adds 1 to your attack roles. Although not visible from the inventory screen, does this effectively add a +1 THAC0 to the roll itself?

Grond0

Yes. Luck affects the modifier to your roll. Thus a roll that would have been described as
14 + 5 = 19 : Miss
could become
14 + 6 = 20 : Hit

BillyYank

I believe it also adds one to each of your damage dice, but it doesn't increase the maximum. So, if your weapon does 1d6 damage, it does 2 damage when you roll a 1, and 6 damage when you roll a 5 or 6. This extends to spells that do multiple dice of damage, so on a 5d6 fireball, each individual die gets that same +1.

Grond0

Slightly oddly, luck doesn't actually increase spell damage you inflict (though it does increase weapon damage as well as the to hit chance). However, it does decrease spell damage inflicted on you which can be a major benefit.

This thread gives a good summary of how luck operates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/61569/luck-what-it-is-and-how-it-works/p1

Aerakar

Interesting. Luck then would be quite useful for a backstabbing thief as it increases THACO +1 and also the average damage, e.g. 1-6 becomes2-6, or 3.5 average damage becomes 4.

BillyYank

@Grond0 , that's right. I forgot the spell damage was reversed. But if you have a weapon that does multiple dice of damage like 2d4 (I can't remember if any of them do), then you would get the +1 on each die.

@Aerakar , it's actually 4.3 (4 1/3). There's two ways to roll a six, so the average is (2+3+4+5+6+6)/6.

Zaghoul

It is Alora's NOW fixed rabbits foot (+2Luck) that really helps her shine, esp with RR allowing thieves 3 pips in TWS.

Aerakar

Zaghoul said:

It is Alora's NOW fixed rabbits foot (+2Luck) that really helps her shine, esp with RR allowing thieves 3 pips in TWS.

@Zaghoul what weapons does she come spec'ed with in BG? Dagger? Short sword? Darts? I have never used her.

Zaghoul

@Aerakar Dagger, short bow, and 1 pip in TWS ( depending on when you get her). Even without RR and 3pips in TWS, with that luck bonus and only one pip she still does pretty well.

fateless

It's a reason to go hunt down that ioun stone of luck from the squirrel if you can remember which map it's on. In the original game the stone stopped criticals on you. they may have fixed that in EE.

SomeSort

Sadly, that dagger spec is kind of a waste with Alora's +2 luck bonus. Other than darts, no weapon gets less of a bonus from luck than daggers. (+2 luck with a dagger results in +1.25 damage on average; on a long sword, that would be +1.63 damage and on a katana it would be 1.70.)

She'd be a beast with the Staff Mace, though. On a 2d4 base, +2 luck results in +2.5 average damage per hit. She'll actually wind up dealing max damage on 50% of her hits. She's not shabby with the Staff of Striking, either, and can be a beastly quarterstaff backstabber.

(Much) more on the math behind luck can be found here.

Zaghoul

I always thought the staffs needed to be adjusted for the short races cause the paperdolls just look plain OFF with them, or any of the longer weapons for that matter. One reason I could never go with those options.

SomeSort

Zaghoul said:

I always thought the staffs needed to be adjusted for the short races cause the paperdolls just look plain OFF with them, or any of the longer weapons for that matter. One reason I could never go with those options.

Not a problem with the staff mace, thankfully.

Zaghoul

fateless said:

It's a reason to go hunt down that ioun stone of luck from the squirrel if you can remember which map it's on. In the original game the stone stopped criticals on you. they may have fixed that in EE.

My druid wonders if that didn't lead to the attempted squirrel genocide campaign several years back, with folks tryin to find it?
All I remember was that the luck spell USED to mess around with my CHARNAME's weapon proficiencies.

fateless

yes. it caused the genocides of squirrels. It's been too long. but I used to be able to tell you which map to find it on. More difficult is finding all the squirrels on the map sometimes.