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Darts and other thrown weapons gaining STR bonus to damage.

Will darts and daggers gain str bonus to damage when thrown? If not this should be fixed as on page 20 of my 2nd edition players hand book it states that "the damage adjustment also applies to missile weapons, although bows must be specially made to gain the bonus; crossbows never benefit from the users strength." If the bonus applies to thrown axes, it should also apply to daggers and darts.

Also, how will Chromatic orb work?

As per the original manual:

Chromatic Orb (Evocation)
Range: Sight of caster Area of Effect: 1 creature
Duration: Special Saving Throw: Neg.
Casting Time: 1
This spell creates a 4-inch-diameter sphere that can be hurled
unerringly to its target. The orb’s effect depends on the level of the
wizard: A 1st-level sphere inflicts 1-4 damage and blinds the target for one
round. A 2nd-level sphere inflicts 1-6 damage and inflicts pain upon the
victim. A 3rd-level sphere deals 1-8 damage and burns the victim. A 4thlevel
sphere deals 1-10 damage and blinds the target for four turns. A 5th
to 6th-level sphere deals 1-12 damage and stuns the target for three rounds.
The 7th to 9th-level sphere deals 2-16 damage and paralyzes the victim for
13 rounds. A 10th to 11th level sphere turns the target to stone if they fail
their saving throw, and slows them for five rounds if they succeed. A 12th
level sphere causes death if the target fails their saving throw, or paralysis for
four rounds if they succeed. Unless stated otherwise in the above description,
a save against this spell negates both the damage and the other effects.

Will at 10th level chromatic orb petrify? If so hello Avenger Druid!
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Comments

  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,317
    edited November 2012
    1. Not sure yet. I do however think it is highly unlikely that you are going to be seeing strength damage applied to darts. Perhaps knives. Throwing axes may already have it I'm not certain.

    2. http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/6819/errors-and-inconsistencies-in-the-current-manual/p1

    Your second point on the chromatic orb has previously been noticed. Chromatic Orb will petrify at level ten for avengers and bards.

    In my list I did not include the 12th level as something that needed to be fixed, because you can't reach it in BGEE without modding the experience cap.
  • HoratioHoratio Member Posts: 18
    Well then, can anyone tell me how I can change it so that darts and daggers get the damage they should be recieving from strength? Can I change it in a 2da? I really want to play my version of that dart thrower you meet in game.
  • WilhelmWilhelm Member Posts: 3
    A STR bonus to thrown darts seems excessive-- a level 1 character can have up to +7 damage just from STR, so one proficiency slot in darts would mean three ranged attacks per round averaging 9 damage.
  • SharnSharn Member Posts: 188
    edited November 2012
    Many 2e DM's house ruled that you can't gain str bonus on daggers and darts, I am glad they made it this way in the game, because a grand master fighter with a dart of returning did as much damage as any other two people combined who where grand master in their weapons.

    The axe was never a problem as it only had a base of one ranged attack per round, so it was fairly balanced with bows and crossbow's that gained an extra attack at the expense of str bonus. Yes, you could have a non magical bow made that applied str bonus, but it didn't gain any magical bonus, given enough time you could get a magical one, but that took an obscene amount of dedication to get and still didn't increase damage, only the to hit roll.

    This is one of the reason's I have always preferred 3.5, it got rid of all this nonsense and any weapon could be used effectively if you built your character to do so.
  • colonel_burgercolonel_burger Member Posts: 279
    Throwing axes get this bonus. I believe throwing knives and darts should as well, as if you're STR 19 you would split the dartboard in half when hurling these. This would go a long way for making them a viable alternative to bows.
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    Currently, no thrown weapons receive a bonus from Strength to either attack or damage. That's a discrepancy in the manual that I'm already aware of.

    The Chromatic Orb spell description in the manual is also not quite accurate. The description in the game itself will be up to date.
  • TJ_HookerTJ_Hooker Member Posts: 2,438
    Aosaw said:

    Currently, no thrown weapons receive a bonus from Strength to either attack or damage. That's a discrepancy in the manual that I'm already aware of.

    The Chromatic Orb spell description in the manual is also not quite accurate. The description in the game itself will be up to date.

    I'm not sure if you're talking about BG1 or 2, but I just fired up BG2 and I was getting damage bonuses with a throwing axe. It matches with what I remember, that throwing axes (and the one throwing hammer in BG2) got strength bonuses, while all the other thrown weapons did not. I do have the fixpack and tweak pack installed, but I don't think either of those change whether axes get strength damage bonuses.
  • bbearbbear Member Posts: 1,180
    The OP needs to put a question mark at the end of title. I clicked this thread thinking the game mechanic has changed and I was pretty excited.
  • HoratioHoratio Member Posts: 18
    Well, if they DON'T get the str bonus to damage then the mechanic HAS changed and it is no longer as per original Baldur's Gate.
  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,317
    edited November 2012
    I just sat playing BG1 totsc (vanilla) using throwing axes at firebead (the mage in Candlekeep in winthrops inn) with two different characters . One was a dwarf with 18/97 strength and 17 dexterity, and the other was a dwarf with 10 strength and 17 dexterity. I found that the most damage I was able to do without critically hitting firebead was 9, and that was the maximum for either character. Otherwise when I did critically hit it was 12 damage (and only one instance of 14 damage from the 18/97 strength character which I was never able to replicate with him). Considering I did this for at a good ten minutes with each character (probably closer to 12), I'm very certain that Baldur's Gate 1 (with ToTSC installed if that makes any difference) never implemented any kind of strength damage bonus for throwing axes. If they did then I'm a very, very unlucky sob.

    I did however confirm that while shorty saves are great, firebeads horror with a character that can't get that potion upstairs (due to lack of bash strength) is still really f***ing annoying :)
  • SharnSharn Member Posts: 188
    @colonel_burger

    Adding a str bonus to darts and daggers wouldn't make them a viable alternative to bows and crossbows, it would make bows and crossbows completely worthless, you would not only have more attacks then the bow and crossbow, but you would do obscenely more damage per hit as well.
  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,317
    edited November 2012
    Sharn said:

    @colonel_burger

    Adding a str bonus to darts and daggers wouldn't make them a viable alternative to bows and crossbows, it would make bows and crossbows completely worthless, you would not only have more attacks then the bow and crossbow, but you would do obscenely more damage per hit as well.

    I'm trying to think; are there even any enchanted throwing daggers in either game?

    Edit: there are a few but not many. Poisoned throwing daggers you get early on in SoA, but otherwise there is just the boomerang dagger (bridge district) until late SoA. I'm not aware of any in BG1 however.
  • colonel_burgercolonel_burger Member Posts: 279
    Firetooth and boomerang dagger.
  • colonel_burgercolonel_burger Member Posts: 279
    Go straight to watcher keep.
  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,317
    edited November 2012

    Firetooth and boomerang dagger.

    Yep. So I mean considering that to get the better of these two daggers you have to go to a specific merchant in Ust'Natha I don't see from a cross bg series holistic standpoint how throwing daggers in particular would become overpowered with this. For the record the firetooth +4 available in Watcher's Keep is a crossbow (a cool, upgradable in ToB, kind of crossbow that now that I think of it would be really cool with an undead hunter character for some reason), while fire tooth +3 is the dagger (not upgradable, still cool).
  • Oxford_GuyOxford_Guy Member Posts: 3,729
    Aosaw said:

    Currently, no thrown weapons receive a bonus from Strength to either attack or damage. That's a discrepancy in the manual that I'm already aware

    So throwing axes are nerfed now in BGEE, as well as daggers? If so, that makes me sad, for daggers I can see how the Str bonus may have made them a little OP, given that they have 2 attacks, but it didn't seem so excessive for axes and made more logical sense, as you can really get your strength behind an axe (which you can't really do with darts, for example). There's no real reason to use throwing axes now, especially as the non-magic versions are so heavy, unless you're a class that can't use normal missile weapons.

    If anything, its bows that are OP in BG1, but in BG2 they were excessively over-nerfed, so I wouldn't want that either.
  • PeccaPecca Member Posts: 2,221
    @Oxford_Guy You can easily give throwing axes str bonus via Near Infinity. There are only few, so it takes about two minutes.
  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,317
    edited November 2012
    http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/1988/bg1-2-throwing-axe-flag-inconsistency

    Looks like I was right at least for BG1 (though the one axe in BG1 might be the returning axe which I did not test). Guess they changed it for BG2 for the most part.
  • colonel_burgercolonel_burger Member Posts: 279
    @elminster You're right, my bad. You get the firetooth dagger from the Drow city. From memory you can get a decent throwing axe pretty quickly in the sewers from that dwarf with his pack of meatheads.
  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,317
    edited November 2012

    @elminster You're right, my bad. You get the firetooth dagger from the Drow city. From memory you can get a decent throwing axe pretty quickly in the sewers from that dwarf with his pack of meatheads.

    Man if I could get that +3 dagger throwing dagger I would throw it into that dwarfs gullet. Those guys for even reasonably experienced players are not necessarily easy (I have no problem with them now but when I started BG2 I did).
  • colonel_burgercolonel_burger Member Posts: 279
    @Elminster they are a tough fight yes, but die easily with confusion and skull trap spam. Pretty tough fight with SCS smarter mages installed though.... they minced me the first time I played them, now they're cake.
  • Oxford_GuyOxford_Guy Member Posts: 3,729
    Pecca said:

    @Oxford_Guy You can easily give throwing axes str bonus via Near Infinity. There are only few, so it takes about two minutes.

    Unfortunately I can't seem to get Near Infinity work on my system, also I'm not so keen on the idea of doing self-made mods to the game.
  • PeccaPecca Member Posts: 2,221



    Unfortunately I can't seem to get Near Infinity work on my system, also I'm not so keen on the idea of doing self-made mods to the game.

    That's too bad. I find modding through NI the best way to make the game just the way I want it. Fast and simple. There are so many requests on this forum which can so easily be done with NI, so I usually recommend it.
    Don't know why would it not run though. The basic is that you need Java installed.
  • Oxford_GuyOxford_Guy Member Posts: 3,729
    Pecca said:



    Unfortunately I can't seem to get Near Infinity work on my system, also I'm not so keen on the idea of doing self-made mods to the game.

    That's too bad. I find modding through NI the best way to make the game just the way I want it. Fast and simple. There are so many requests on this forum which can so easily be done with NI, so I usually recommend it.
    Don't know why would it not run though. The basic is that you need Java installed.
    I don't know why either, I have Java installed and the correct PATH set, but it just doesn't doesn't seem to work. I work in IT and am usually fine about setting things up, but I really don't know what is wrong.

    I'd probably be less p*ssed that Axes have been nerfed if bows weren't so overly nerfed in BG2, perhaps this is something that could be looked into for BG2EE?
  • ShinShin Member Posts: 2,344
    edited November 2012
    Horatio said:

    Well then, can anyone tell me how I can change it so that darts and daggers get the damage they should be recieving from strength? Can I change it in a 2da? I really want to play my version of that dart thrower you meet in game.

    You can for instance open the .ITM file of the item in question in an editor such as Near Infinity and check the 'add strength bonus' flag. Basically all melee weapons have this enabled, so you can look at any one of them for comparison.

    Edit: And no, you can't do this from a .2DA, you need to edit each item individually.
  • mjsmjs Member Posts: 742
    doesn't it depend on the damage type? thrown axes and hammer do slashing and crushing, but daggers and darts do piercing. isn't dexterity the modifier for piercing? plus i don't think even in real life strength would greatly modify damage on a thrown dagger/dart as they can only go so deep. you're never sever a limb with either. unlike axes and hammers where the greater the strength the more damage you'll do
  • ShinShin Member Posts: 2,344
    mjs said:

    doesn't it depend on the damage type? thrown axes and hammer do slashing and crushing, but daggers and darts do piercing. isn't dexterity the modifier for piercing? plus i don't think even in real life strength would greatly modify damage on a thrown dagger/dart as they can only go so deep. you're never sever a limb with either. unlike axes and hammers where the greater the strength the more damage you'll do

    No, dexterity is the modifier for the hit roll of ranged weapons (regardless of damage type, though it's true that many of them are piercing), but doesn't affect the damage roll.

  • Oxford_GuyOxford_Guy Member Posts: 3,729
    mjs said:

    doesn't it depend on the damage type? thrown axes and hammer do slashing and crushing, but daggers and darts do piercing.

    I'm pretty sure the thrown axes do piercing, not slashing damage, strangely

  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,317
    edited November 2012
    mjs said:

    doesn't it depend on the damage type? thrown axes and hammer do slashing and crushing, but daggers and darts do piercing. isn't dexterity the modifier for piercing? plus i don't think even in real life strength would greatly modify damage on a thrown dagger/dart as they can only go so deep. you're never sever a limb with either. unlike axes and hammers where the greater the strength the more damage you'll do





    I don't think the game does a fair job of representing just how effective a dart could be in combat. I see that little picture and the first thing I think of is a dart board piece lol, and even after opening their files I'm never really get any idea of its usefulness.

    It would be nice to see heavier darts, similar to what the romans used (Plumbata), incorporated into the game. Getting hit in the head with one of those would do certainly more than the damage the game allows for darts currently.
  • DJKajuruDJKajuru Member Posts: 3,300
    Skeletons with darts were pretty annoying in BG1. In BG2 I give darts to haer D'alis and edwin , but they don't really use it much...
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