Nordom's Crossbows - STR or DEX?

SoulReaver

Perhaps someone who can check the guts of the game can answer this question:

There are various ways to upgrade Nordom in the game - one upgrade increases his STR (among other things), while another decreases it in order to give him higher DEX.

Since Nordom only uses crossbows, is his THAC0 and/or Damage even affected by his STR score?

I don't think they would be under D&D rules and it wouldn't really make sense from a logical perspective either but then I see no ingame text or anything suggesting that his crossbows would be an exception to "higher STR=better damage and chance to hit" rule.

Can someone confirm?

Tresset

I would suggest you forget the minor boosts you can get by upgrading his STR or DEX. I would always go for the INT boost as it is the only way to get the Twisted Gear of Enoll Eva, which is the only way to learn what I am told is the most powerful spell in the game: Enoll Eva's Duplication.

But to answer your question: As far as I can tell, STR does not affect Nordom's fighting ability at all so it is kinda pointless to boost it. DEX, on the other hand, would help him with his THAC0 but not his damage.

SoulReaver

Tresset said:

I would suggest you forget the minor boosts you can get by upgrading his STR or DEX. I would always go for the INT boost as it is the only way to get the Twisted Gear of Enoll Eva, which is the only way to learn what I am told is the most powerful spell in the game: Enoll Eva's Duplication.

But to answer your question: As far as I can tell, STR does not affect Nordom's fighting ability at all so it is kinda pointless to boost it. DEX, on the other hand, would help him with his THAC0 but not his damage.

The upgrades aren't mutually exclusive - you can get one, two or all three of them. You just have to be the right class and have high enough stats while talking to him.

When you say that "as far as you can tell, STR does not affect Nordom's fighting ability at all" - how did you determine that? Is it something from the game's data files?

Tresset

SoulReaver said:

When you say that "as far as you can tell, STR does not affect Nordom's fighting ability at all" - how did you determine that? Is it something from the game's data files?

Well, yes and no. I did look at his crossbows in NearInfinity (a tool for viewing game files) and they apparently do not add a strength bonus to damage. For the most part, though, I just assume that it works the same way as it does in Baldur's Gate where STR does not add a bonus to damage for crossbows. Since Nordom cannot use anything other than his crossbows, I would then assume his strength is pretty much irrelevant.

I didn't know you could upgrade him based on your class multiple times though. I still haven't finished my first ever playthrough of PST.

Dizavid

I can confirm STR does effect his combat. Going from a STR of 14 to 16 gave him a damage bonus of +1. The only other stat effected during this was CON, which I'd imagine isn't what made him go from +0 to +1 damage. Minor, but makes a difference in if you want to skip any -STR to get that bonus up or take on the others. (Note: Playing on Android, assuming Enhanced Version.)