Elemental Princes +2 weapon?

wdarkk

The Adventurer's Guide lists the elemental prince summons as striking as +2 weapons. That seems fairly pathetic for an "ultimate" Druid summon, considering that the regular elementals you can summon as early as level 14 strike as +4. Is that really the case?

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Raduziel

It's quite hard to compare PnP to BGEE.

I play AD&D for seventeen years and I never had a campaign where every single character of the party had a full set of magical items (boots, rings, amulet, armor, shield, weapons, etc). And the few magical items that we had was nothing compared to Crom Fayer, for example.

Tone down the weapon enchantment resistances would require a tone down to the availability of weapons through all the saga.

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wdarkk

Is the adventure guide actually accurate there, though? I think I see a few other errors in the summon section, and I don't have a high-level druid to check with yet.

SirBatince

I feel like the real issue here is that chan and zulman are garbage compared to sunnis. I even changed the spell to always summon sunnis in my game. screw randomness

Khyron

subtledoctor said:

The design problem identified here is not that the princes' weapons have a too-low enchantment; it is that that matters at all.

The PnP lore has, as an example, one of the nine rulers of Baator - basically demigods - being killed by a backstab with a simple dagger +2. If Bioware has a bunch of enemies in here that require higher enchantments, it's both wrong and annoying. And this, bad design.

Now that I say (type) it out loud, this would make a good candidate for a Tweak mod: "Revised Weapon Enchantment Resistances."

This.

This needs to become part of the Tweaks Anthology.. preferably several years ago.

wdarkk

Doesn't 2E have a thing where weapons lose bonus as they get further from their plane of origin? You might need a weapon that's +4 on Faerun to have a +2 weapon in the Throne of Bhaal.

Also, Demiliches might still need +4.

EDIT: I had a friend check, and it is a +4 minimum. At least people who aren't paladins, fighters, or rangers can do more than one damage at a time.

JuliusBorisov

Have just checked in the NearInfinity.

Attacks by Chan, Sunnis and Zaaman Rul all strike as +3 weapons (their weapons' enchantment is 3), while attacks by Fire Elementals strike as +4 weapons.

Filed a public ticket for now - https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/35213

wdarkk

JuliusBorisov said:

Have just checked in the NearInfinity.

Attacks by Chan, Sunnis and Zaaman Rul all strike as +3 weapons (their weapons' enchantment is 3), while attacks by Fire Elementals strike as +4 weapons.

That's not as bad, but still weird it's lower than generic summons.

How many things require +4 to hit anyway? Demiliches (2), Mel, ?

Arunsun

wdarkk said:

JuliusBorisov said:

Have just checked in the NearInfinity.

Attacks by Chan, Sunnis and Zaaman Rul all strike as +3 weapons (their weapons' enchantment is 3), while attacks by Fire Elementals strike as +4 weapons.

That's not as bad, but still weird it's lower than generic summons.

How many things require +4 to hit anyway? Demiliches (2), Mel, ?

Even Melyssan takes only +3 weapons IIRC...

I know I forget one or two but basically the only ones I can name right now are the demiliches, the death shade and the demon lord in Ust Natha. These last two take +5 weapons! +5 weapons are normally reserved to demigods, archdevils and the likes in lore.
The only few people that have a legit +5 weapon lore-wise in BG are Melyssan, Demogorgon, and maybe the ToB Bhaalspawns, and arguably The Winged since she is a former high ranking celestial general.
I mean, even Drizzt only has +3 scimitars and he is a legendary hero.

JuliusBorisov

wdarkk said:

JuliusBorisov said:

Have just checked in the NearInfinity.

Attacks by Chan, Sunnis and Zaaman Rul all strike as +3 weapons (their weapons' enchantment is 3), while attacks by Fire Elementals strike as +4 weapons.

That's not as bad, but still weird it's lower than generic summons.

How many things require +4 to hit anyway? Demiliches (2), Mel, ?

Enemies that can't be hit by a +3 weapon:

- The Ravager
- Demilich (only 2 of them, Kangaxx and WK's one)
- Aurumach Rilmani (WK's last fight before Demogorgon)
- the werewolf woman person (Annath) in Umar Hills (you need +5 for her)
- The end game Solar (you are not supposed to fight her)

(credit goes to @SomeSort and @sarevok57 here and to @Demivrgvs here)

@Demivrgvs here says you might be alright with +3 weapons against:

- the Demon from the Underdark
- the Devil Shade from the Deck of many things

kjeron

Now that there is an opcode for it, it would be simple enough to patch all natural-attack-weapons to provide the HD-appropriate "strike as +X" to any creature that uses them.
4HD = bypass immunity to normal/silver/cold-iron weapons
6HD = bypass immunity to +1 or lower
8HD = bypass immunity to +2 or lower
10HD = bypass immunity to +3 or lower

Would have to omit the partial HD limits, but whatever. Just about any (non-ammo) weapon without a proficiency could be updated with these effects, excluding FIST and MFIST variants of course. It does make the Monks progression look pathetic though. Polymorph's could go either way, using the casters HD, or having unique weapons with preset enchantment levels.

wdarkk

Also Melissan if you're using Ascension.

sarevok57

JuliusBorisov said:

wdarkk said:

JuliusBorisov said:

Have just checked in the NearInfinity.

Attacks by Chan, Sunnis and Zaaman Rul all strike as +3 weapons (their weapons' enchantment is 3), while attacks by Fire Elementals strike as +4 weapons.

That's not as bad, but still weird it's lower than generic summons.

How many things require +4 to hit anyway? Demiliches (2), Mel, ?

Enemies that can't be hit by a +3 weapon:

- The Ravager
- Demilich (only 2 of them, Kangaxx and WK's one)
- Aurumach Rilmani (WK's last fight before Demogorgon)
- the werewolf woman person (Annath) in Umar Hills (you need +5 for her)
- The end game Solar (you are not supposed to fight her)

(credit goes to @SomeSort and @sarevok57 here and to @Demivrgvs here)

@Demivrgvs here says you might be alright with +3 weapons against:

- the Demon from the Underdark
- the Devil Shade from the Deck of many things

from the looks of it, the Lesser Demon Lord ( underdark demon ) requires +5 or better weapons to hit, and i couldnt find a devil shade from a deck of many things, but the Death shade from the deck of many things from what i can tell is immune to no weapon ( just lots of resistances ) and it has 21 lore ( lol )

tbone1

I have to say that BG always struck me as a Monty Haul game; meaning magic items are all too freely available. Varscona, for example, should probably not be in the hands of a fighter under level 9. Gauntlets of Dexterity are too readily available. In all my years of PnP we found one (1) (.5 x 2) tome/manual, and that was the price for a resurrection spell. BG2 is in some ways worse, though playing higher level PCs makes it more necessary and less grating

Borek

Yeah the Ust Nathia Demon Lord definitely requires +5, i tried several +4's without luck, ended up having to use Carsomyr despite lack of any proficiencies on 1 run because nothing else i had would hit it and that character wasn't a spell caster lol.

ThacoBell

I enjoy the monty haul nature of the bg games. So many fun and cool items to use.

sarevok57

ThacoBell said:

I enjoy the monty haul nature of the bg games. So many fun and cool items to use.

indeed, and even then, bg1 for example where in theory you can get a +2 long sword at level 1, even though it's +2, mechanics wise it's not overwhelmingly more powerful than a +1 longsword, it's only +1 to hit/ to damage

so it's not like this impressive items are game breaking when you get them early

tbone1

You know those robes that Thalantyr sells at High Hedge? Those might qualify, since nce they provide big help to mages.

wdarkk

How hard would it be to make a mod that changes their weapon bonus? I've never made a mod for this game before, but I have for others.