Generally, would you rather have a -1 THAC0 bonus, a +1 damage bonus, or a -2 weapon speed bonus?
JDow
Member Posts: 71
- Generally, would you rather have a -1 THAC0 bonus, a +1 damage bonus, or a -2 weapon speed bonus?29 votes
- -1 THAC0 bonus58.62%
- +1 damage bonus24.14%
- -2 weapon speed bonus17.24%
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Comments
If you're in a party and using AI to control your attacks then a weapon speed bonus will be little benefit. However, if (like me) you normally play solo and typically micro-manage fights to avoid the opponent retaliating even in melee then a weapon speed bonus may be the clear winner (not always even there though as if you actually want to use something like a staff it's easy to get a weapon speed of 0 anyway).
I partly also chose the speed bonus to help highlight that leveraging weapon speed advantages tends to be under-appreciated as a potential strategy.
Edit: To elaborate, better Thac0 means that you hit more often - which equivalates to both doing more damage and hitting faster.
The benefit of +1 THAC0 depends on your chance of hitting. If you already have a 90% chance of hitting, then the extra 5% hit rate doesn't grant you much more than you already have. If your hit rate is only 5%, then +1 THAC0 will double your damage output.
I did some rough calculations and found that, for a level 7 fighter using a +2 longsword with specialization and 18/51 STR, an extra point of THAC0 is more useful if the fighter's hit rate is 55% or less. Any higher than that, and +1 damage is more useful for damage output.
If you do more damage, however, then the THAC0 is more useful, since THAC0 grants a percentage bonus to damage output. If you deal 40 damage per round, an extra 10% hit rate will get you 4 more damage. If you only deal 10, an extra 10% hit rate will only buy you 1 more damage.
In fact, if you deal at least 20 damage per round, an extra point of THAC0 will always be more useful unless your hit rate is already 90%, since THAC0 bonuses can't increase hit rate beyond 95% due to the existence of critical misses.
In a nutshell: If your damage is strong or your THAC0 is weak, then +1 THAC0 is more useful. If your damage is weak or your THAC0 is strong, then +1 damage is more useful.
The THAC0 bonus is more useful in nearly all cases for several reasons:
1. The only characters that deal very little damage (spellcasters) also have poor THAC0. Even if +1 damage is more useful for these characters, the impact is small.
2. A well-constructed fighter can easily reach 20 potential damage output per round, but reaching a 90% hit rate is extremely difficult until ToB. Since most of your damage comes from fighters, the THAC0 advantage is more important for the party overall.
3. If your hit rate is 100% because the target is disabled, it's unlikely that you'll be unable to kill it before the disabler runs just because your damage output is lower, because disablers last far longer than they need to. Damage output is more useful in these cases, but since the battle is probably already won by this point, the actual benefit is small.
4. The toughest enemy spellcasters have low HP, which means victory doesn't depend on damage output.
5. The toughest enemy non-spellcasters, who have high HP and therefore require strong damage output to beat, also have low AC, which means achieving a high rate is very unlikely.
Generally speaking, the only times when +1 damage is more useful than +1 THAC0 is when you're dealing with enemies that are already easy to beat. Against the tougher critters, +1 THAC0 is more important.
But I find higher damage numbers per hit more satisfying, so I usually favor +1 damage. It's not optimal, but I enjoy it more.
I would go with a +1 THAC0 bonus otherwise, as damage doesn't mean anything if you can't hit the enemy.
PnP: -2 Speed
IE: +1 damage
Of all the options (Speed, Thac0 and Damage), Thac0 is the only one that improves naturally.
Imho, if I was using a thief, I'd definitely take the THAC0 bonus, since they are such awful fighters and miss so readily. Even a half-orc assassin can use all the help he can get to actually land his backstabs. I seem to roll terribly when trying to backstab though.
so back in the exploit days, when cromwell made you an item he would take your recipe pieces after the cut scene of him hammering, not before, so what i would do, is get my mage to low health ( so that a simple whack from a summoned skelly would kill them, now that i think of it, it was vanilla because i used to use the club wielding skellies )
anyways, mage low health, and then because of the cosmetic attacks and the fact that the skellies had a terrible speed factor ( probably 10 ) they would finally hit on the 3rd animated attack, so just before i would talk to cromwell, i would have my talker standing directly beside him, and force attack mr skelly to attack my wizerd, after 2 cosmetic attacks i would talk to cromwell start the item making process and then during that little period between chatting with cromwell and the little cut scene he does the skelly would kill my mage
but after the cutscene was done, the item was made, but the pieces were on the ground with the rest of my mage's goodies, so then i would revive, rinse, lather, repeat if need be to get more copies of cromwell items (having 3 maces of improved disruption can be very usefull
but now adays i dont know if this exploit can be done or not, depending if it was fixed in the EE
so for a thief dmg or thac0 boost. as i prefer to hit for -5dmg than to fail completely the backstab i would go probably for the thac0 boost with my rogues, that if are not some F/T or FMT benefit of it also in the regular mlee or ranged fighting as their natural thac0 is sub optimal compared to the one of a dedicated fighter.
but as i use mostly toons that can cast and can attack and very rarely plain fighters so i perform a lot of cast and attack in the same round speed factor is really useful for me cause it determines the number of attacks possible after my toon has cast the spell, a fast attack leaves also to a fighter more time to move and relocate after performing his apr and before the next round begins, so allows better placement of my forces on the battleground.
+1 dmg has its advantages but as @semiticgod explained in most of the situations a thac0 boost works better. let me add that with an enemy at low health, i hit from death, often that +1dmg does not matter much while to fail an attack can mean having that enemy attack at least once more.
i don't vote cause i prefer thac0 or speed range depending on the toon class and role and on the party composition and leveling strategy, in a party of 3 probably also not fighters have good enough thac0, in a party of 6 i expect much more hits dodged by the enemy.