The problem with daggers (mod idea)

royalprotector

Thing is, unless you play a class that specifically allows you to put more pips into daggers, there's not much point to investing in them, with the exception that there are a few ones with interesting effects. They have the lowest damage of all the weapons, and short swords are better for backstabbing anyway. The introduction of sneak attacks in NWN makes them perfectly usable weapons for that purpose because sneak attacks are just flat amount of damages on top on the base damage, so the differences between weapons to sneak attack with are fairly low (and weapons vary more wildly, such as in how often they score critical hits and the critical hit multiplier).

I was trying to come up with an idea as to how we could make daggers more interesting in BG.

One idea I had is to add a backstab hit effect to all daggers so that every backstab would inflict extra damage (the higher the enchantment, the higher the extra damage). For roleplaying purposes it could be understood as an extra "quick stab", since it's such a small weapon. The problem is that this effect is not applied to the weapon, but to the character holding the dagger, so if you are dualwielding with a dagger in the off hand, and you backstab with a ninja-to, the extra damage would still apply. And I don't like that much.

Other idea could be to increase the damage of all daggers to 1d5. It would be on par with warhammers which I think is fair. That would tip the balance a bit.

Other things to tip the balance: all daggers have a +1 THAC0 bonus. Because they are such small weapons and easy to use, it's easier to handle them.

Also: all daggers can, more easily pierce vital spots, because again, small pointy weapons = lots of easy murder. That is, all daggers have a 5% or 10% extra critical hit chance.

I don't know how to mod but I do these things with NearInfinity. What do you think about this?

OlvynChuru

Daggers do have a major advantage in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale: taking proficiency in daggers also allows you to use throwing daggers, which are extremely good with the right character. They get both an extra attack per round and extra damage from Strength.

And while melee daggers in general might not be as good as other weapon types, specific magical daggers are really good. In Baldur's Gate 1, the Dagger of Venom +2 is one of the best melee weapons in the game, and in Icewind Dale, Spinesheath is quite good for the point at which you get it. In Baldur's Gate 2, the Fire Tooth throwing dagger is very, very good.

royalprotector

I agree with your points, although Fire Tooth is good because its base damage is 2d4 plus 3 and always grants and extra attack per round if I remember correctly.