What does the Breakable flag do? Does it even do anything outside of the original BG1?

Thunderburp

Hi!

A second question as part of the project described in this solved question.

What is the purpose of an item ability's breakable flag?

Is the following correct? (likely not at all)

1. In the original edition of BG1, how it works is hardcoded. Any weapon with a magical flag unset attacking with an ability that has its breakable flag set, may break, and if it does, it'll be replaced with whatever is in the Replacement item field
2. In the original edition of BG2, this flag does nothing
3. In EE 1&2, this flag does nothing and instead an item that breaks is replaced through an on-hit effect with a low probability. (IIRC, there isn't any in BG2EE.)
4. Whenever the breakable flag does nothing, the replacement item field only comes into play when an item ability with charges reaches 0 and its Charge depletion behaviour is set to Replace with used up (2)

Or maybe the breakable flag works in all game opuses and editions, but then why would BG1EE use on-hit effects...

Testing this in-game sounds time consuming and bothersome, hopefully the BG community already invented that wheel to save my butt?

Maurvir

My guess is that it is related to the iron shortage plot. You always have a random chance of breaking non-magical metal weapons or armor and having them replaced with "broken" versions.

Interestingly, if you play with EET, this randomly happens in the BG2 part of the game as well. I guess some of that contaminated iron made its way south after all.