I am very confused about the archers called shot ability.

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A 16th level archer should induce all the effects, right? Do the effects wear off when the called shot ends? If archer is anything like the wizard slayer then nearly every hit should have an affect just as long as the target doesn't use a spell starting with "protection from xyz weapons". How come the game isn't more clear about how stuff in general works?

Jarrakul

unavailable said:

A 16th level archer should induce all the effects, right

Yes.

Do the effects wear off when the called shot ends?

No. Each effect has its own duration. From what I can tell, it looks like the THAC0 penalty lasts for 20 seconds, the save penalty for 15 seconds, and the Strength penalty for 10 seconds. Each of these durations are from the time the hit is applied.

If archer is anything like the wizard slayer then nearly every hit should have an affect just as long as the target doesn't use a spell starting with "protection from xyz weapons".

So long as Called Shot is active, this is correct.

How come the game isn't more clear about how stuff in general works?

That, I can't answer. Some of it is because players were simply assumed to be familiar with 2nd Edition D&D rules (a dubious assumption at best), but stuff like Called Shot? I think the original devs must've assumed that the details weren't all that important.

SomeSort

Yes, Called Shot is cumulative so that unlocking a new tier does not overwrite the old tier, but adds to it. At level 16, you get all effects.

Each effect has its own duration. Obviously the damage is instant. I forget how long the THACO, Save, and Strength penalty last exactly, but it's somewhere on the order of 8-10 seconds. I believe the save penalty lasts slightly longer than the strength penalty. I know this information exists somewhere on the internet, but I forget the exact specifics.

Each shot has its own timer. If the Strength penalty lasts for 12 seconds, say, and you hit the enemy once every 6 seconds, then after the first hit the enemy has -1 strength. After the second hit the enemy has -2 strength. After the third hit, you're adding another -1 strength but the first -1 strength is expiring, so the enemy has -2 strength still. (If you instead have a critical miss, then the first debuff expires and no new one is applied, so the enemy goes down to -1 strength.)

Yes, provided the enemy isn't immune to your hits, (Protection from Magic Weapons, say), and provided they aren't immune to the effect in question, (I've been told Ravager is unaffected by Strength Drain, for example), Called Shot is going to be carrying a lot of water while it's active.

(At the most extreme, if you have an Archer with Tuigan Shortbow for 5 APR and Improved Haste to bump that up to 10 APR and you drop a Called Shot and you don't suffer any critical misses, you can stack about -16 points worth of strength drain on a single target, provided they're not immune.)

The game has a long and truly epic history of not being the slightest bit clear about how stuff works, but overall the EEs have done a great job at *dramatically* improving documentation. I think it's actually one of their biggest contributions overall, the in-game descriptions actually (finally!) match the in-game effects. Obviously there are areas where they still fall a bit short, such as here with Called Shot, but things are so much better compared to the days of Vanilla when the game manual is devoting pages to things that literally don't exist in the game, (saying Wisdom gives you a bonus to saving throws, for instance).

unavailable

Okay, thanks.