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Item ability stats: Alternate dice size, # dice thrown and damage bonus

Hi,

I'm currently building a Python tool to retrieve data directly from game files and mass transfer it into the Baldur's Gate wiki. One of the sluggish parts of the task will be to make sense of the data pulled from the game before it can be pushed into the wiki.

For this post, my questioning is about an item ability's Alternate dice size, Alternate # dice thrown and Alternate damage bonus, as Near Infinity calls them. What are these used for and when? IESDP doesn't seem to elaborate beyond the stat name. Near Infinity doesn't specify that they are "unused", like it does for the slightly different SPL abilities.

At least in BG2EE these stats are barely ever used, but it would be nice for the wiki to have mod pages with subpages dedicated to mod items and whatnot. So if possible, I'd like the tool to know about stats even if seldom used in the unmodded game.

The three options I see are that these 3 stats:
  • Don't do anything in the Baldur's Gate games, i.e. it's for another consumer of the Infinity Engine
  • Represent an "alternate damage" stat, e.g. 5d6+2, but I don't know when that would ever kick in
  • Their so called dice info is actually min/max level information, like in item effects. I.e. the item ability is only usable between level min and max. Not sure what becomes of the Alternate damage bonus stat then.

Anyone knows off the top of their head? :)

Comments

  • _Luke__Luke_ Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 1,535
    They should all be unused (maybe they are used in IWD2...?)

    Calling @kjeron @Bubb for confirmation...
  • igiigi Member Posts: 8
    The alternative dice are used if the target creature has bit 13 set in the flags field at 0x10 ("bit 13: Quest critical / affected by alternative damage").
  • ThunderburpThunderburp Member Posts: 51
    Oh nice, thanks! For the record, the only creature with this flag enabled in BG2EE 2.6.6.0 is a Lesser Fire Elemental spawned from the planar portal in the Five Flagons theatre.

    Still for future reference, Near Infinity calls this flag Large creature without mentioning alternate damage or quest criticality. IESDP only talks about alternate damage in CRE V1 (the version I care about), otherwise it's only quest critical.

    So it's option #2 then, and it only kicks in on special creatures. Thanks again :)
  • _Luke__Luke_ Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 1,535
    igi wrote: »
    The alternative dice are used if the target creature has bit 13 set in the flags field at 0x10 ("bit 13: Quest critical / affected by alternative damage").

    Interesting, good to know.
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