Was melee nerfed at the engine-level?

caruga

In the BG engine(s) was melee nerfed over ranged attacks? I got the distinct impression that the miss rate for melee combat was artificially forced in some instances, but ranged attacks hit at the proper chance.

HeroicSpur

Yes, but I don't know the details.

AndreaColombo

Hopefully the devs can fill us in on this.

Drugar

As far as I know, different armours give different armour bonusses to different armour types. There's the general AC an armour provides, and extra modifiers based on type (this is shown when you scroll allll the way down on your ingame character sheet). For example, Platemail gives extra bonusses to Slashing but not so much vs Bludgeoning.

I think armour provide shoddy Piercing resistance across the board. Since there's very few piercing melee weapons, but all arrows/bolts are piercing, this explains the difference.

lansounet

I believe missiles deal missile damage. Piercing would be daggers/spears and some I'm not sure about, halberds/ninja-tos. Plate mail provides 3 vs slashing. Full plate mail is 4 vs slashing, 3 vs piercing and 3 vs missiles. Chainmail gives 2 vs slashing but -2 vs blunt. Splint mail give 1 vs missile, 2 vs blunt and 1 vs piercing.

That's just baseline armors, magical/enchanted one may grant further bonus, still seems a bit biased towards missile weapons while slashing (most melee weapons) gets most penalties against armored enemies, which might be what @caruga experiences

sarevok57

there is actually a lot of items in the game that gives you AC vs missile weapons, my fighters average at least a +12 bonus or so against missile weapons in bg 1, there seems to be lots of protection from that sort of stuff

lansounet

I think the point is about your party attacking enemies, which won't always wear magical equipment but some basic armor that usually gives AC vs melee (slashing mainly) weapons but not always vs missile weapons.

Thus at same THAC0 with say long bow and long sword, you will have better accuracy with missile on enemies wearing plate mail / chainmail, which is a lot of them.

Or maybe there's some other stuff nerfing melee vs ranged.

Ardanis

Short explanation - there is no bug, all attacks listed in charsheet are being rolled correctly. Extra swings are supposed to emulate parrying and such.
Detailed explanation - http://www.shsforums.net/topic/54572-interesting-research-on-attacks-in-the-round/page__view__findpost__p__539037

You can easily check it for yourself - go to game options and enabled to-hit rolls to display. Then go melee and you'll some swings are not being rolled for at all.

caruga

Extra swings are supposed to emulate parrying and such.

I did wonder if that might be it. Doesn't look enough like parrying to me, though.

Tanthalas

Oh, that's what you were talking about?

I thought you were talking about something like your character was forced to miss a certain amount of times, not about the animations.

lansounet

Alright that's what you were talking about... yeh even with 1 attack per round you get like 3 attack animations.

caruga

Oh, that's what you were talking about?

I thought you were talking about something like your character was forced to miss a certain amount of times, not about the animations.

I was.

pacek

Tobex mod now an option to turn off the cosmetic melee swings, it makes a real visual difference. My guess is that original devs wanted more action on screen, even if just superficial, so they went with the cosmetic animations. It really does makes it seem as though you miss an awful lot though.