IE quirks

SirBatince

alright after so many solo runs I have to ask behind-the-scene folks about these things in IE games. I used to think it was just randomness but there's just no way.

- Why do enemy casters only get interrupted when they feel like it? I understand why scripted casts work that way however many opponents still use "standard casting" - yet a enemy caster can either never get interrupted by anything until you reload, THEN they will randomly decide to be work as expected and get interrupted on any damage

- Why do PCs critical miss all the time whilst monsters very very VERY rarely critical miss? I know all about more APR = more opportunities to miss and yet the results aren't adding up. No matter how I try to justify it (ah just bad luck) there's just no way. This makes me want to pull my hair out on low APR classes / game progress.

- Why do 3/2 attacks is 90% of the time 1 on round 1, then 2 on round 2? It's ALWAYS this. No matter how often I pay attention to it, it's very very ever rarely the opposite. It's supposed to be random, no?

- Are we actually certain opponents don't have secret increased crit rate? It too just happens so often it makes Single Weapon Style look like a joke.

- Although I'm aware of ranged weapons having a -4 penalty at pointblank, why isn't it mentionned anywhere that there's also like 20% increased critical miss chance? I figure that's important info. Just test it by yourself

Despite all of this, the irony is that Saving Throws actually have very believable results and I got no problem with those, unlike many other roll mechanics.

semiticgoddess

1. Sometimes enemies ignore spell disruption because their script uses a different command. ForceSpell and ReallyForceSpell prevent spell disruption. Otherwise spell disruption should be 100% or 0%, unless an EE update made it a percentile roll of some sort.
2. Monsters have a 5% chance of rolling a critical miss. If you don't see it happening, it's probably because you just haven't noticed. After all, you generally pay more attention to your own attack rolls than the enemy's.
3. I think a character with 3/2 attacks will make that third attack on either the first or second round depending on the speed factor of the weapon. But it might just be always on the second round by default; I don't know.
4. No enemies have an increased critical hit chance. I'm guessing you notice enemy critical hits more often than critical misses because they're more worrisome.
5. There's no increased critical miss chance when using missile weapons in melee combat.

I'm reasonably certain most of these are flukes of observation rather than in-game behavior.

lunar

Sometimes when a caster takes a little damage, he/she may not get disrupted. The engine rolls for a 'concentration' check behind the scenes, which factors in the damage taken and the hidden luck stat of the caster, and sometimes if the roll succeeds, a caster can complete the spell while hit. I have seen it on enemies, and very rarely happened to my own casters, too. Sometimes my pc managed to cast a spell despite taking damage while casting. Heavy damage will more likely disrupt the spell casting. Sometimes, casting may be disrupted even with the caster being immune to the damage type he/she is hit with.

What I hate is, sometimes when I start to cast the spell just after the damage, it gets disrupted. When the character starts casting while still in the 'recoil from hit' animation I guess he gets disrupted, despite the damage being taken prior to spell casting. This happened me quite a few times.

Any enemy with the correct weapon and proficiencies will gain bonus to critical hit chance, just like a pc can. I especially learned this when xvarts have single weapon proficiency from some mod of mine, they crit on rolls of 19 and 20 with their short swords.

I never noticed the %20 critical miss chance when firing into melee. I hardly ever stay in melee and use ranged weapons, though. I think the penalty to hit with a ranged weapon is not -4, something more severe, like -8 in melee. While the melee attacker gets +4 to hit too. +4 damage was also applied in old bg2 engine, not sure about ee. (Ee does include +4 damage vs unarmed.)



Here Khalid normally attacks Jaheira with -1 to roll (from Jaheira's defensive ac modifiers) but when she is close to his face he gets -9 to roll instead. A net penalty of -8 is applied.

SirBatince

I see it's just years of frustration that I needed to vent. bad luck it is then.

Didn't think it was -8 for close ranged. luckily Archer gets insane thaco that can ignore it.

For some reason I find the "concentration check" most effective on Call Lightning. PCs get a decent chance to shrug off damage while casting that very specific spell, but no other?

deltago

SirBatince said:

- Why do PCs critical miss all the time whilst monsters very very VERY rarely critical miss? I know all about more APR = more opportunities to miss and yet the results aren't adding up. No matter how I try to justify it (ah just bad luck) there's just no way. This makes me want to pull my hair out on low APR classes / game progress.

This is about perception in combat.

When fighting enemies there are two cues given to the player when a character he controls gets a critical miss. The first cue is the scrolling text of the battle log. The second, and more pronounced, is the sound bite of the character calling out in frustration. When not paying attention to the battle log, this is the only indication a player may have if they roll a critical miss.

Many enemies do not have the critical miss sound cue. If they score a critical miss it will only appear in the battle log. Unless a player reviews the battle log after every fight, many of these critical misses will go unnoticed.

Not only that, but the player characters get off more attacks than those they are fighting. Just think of how many times you have used a range weapon to take down a charging monster. if all 6 party members are using bows and they fire at a creature that will take it 1 round to get to the party, that's 12 attacks to 0.

SirBatince

None of my soundsets use crit miss sounds (thank god)

but being a soloer yeah I can imagine i notice them way more than a full group