hexxat better with crossbow or shortbow?
Ruscoe
Member Posts: 126
shes got super high dexterity, I got a feeling that factors in to something. tips?
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Her 20 DEX means she'll get -3 THAC0 with ranged weapons by the way.
Moving on... If you have Viconia(who is a decent slinger) or your charname is ranged, then I'd say forget shooting arrows and go for backstabbing, Cheetah her and just jump in and out of battle, slaughtering half of the enemy team within the first few rounds. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's just my impression of her
The only one even less effective in damage dealing is Vic on sling duty but who contributes quite a bit to total damage through her summons which is not reflected in the stats.
Overall you'll get more damage with a melee/backstab approach (but with a lot more micromanagement because she is flimsy) or after the next patch if it fixes the dagger strength issue and you go that way. I'm happy with the current low maintenance point and shoot approach wielding melee for the few fights where it will make a difference that is important.
+8 Strength + 1D4+5 damage (infinite +2 pouch plus base sling bonuses) and +7 to hit or so from Sling and Ammo gives 14-17 damage a round (28-34 with haste), is decently likely to hit, and keeps her out of trouble. She also can switch off the Pouch to just use the Sling's base +5 bullets, letting her contribute against most targets.
Compared to that, Tuigan's sitting at three attacks at 4-9 with a far lower bonus to hit. It's far more valuably given to Mazzy, who's piling on the Grand Mastery bonus for every shot and can't leverage the same Strength that Hexxat can for slings (and with haste 16-38 just isn't as good as using the sling anyway).
Since Viconia's a cleric not a pathetic waste of space pure class thief, she ends up with 6 THAC0 instead of 10, so she doesn't need to stack the early +5 from Everard.
Meanwhile Hexxat, who doesn't have much worth doing during combat, unlike Viconia who can very valuably pull out the buffs and attack spells, just plinks along with her infinite ammo cheat.
If you're cheap, of course, slapping the infinity pouch on Viconia and just going with Everard's without ammo is perfectly viable, but you get plenty of +2 bullets or better just thrown at you, more than enough to outfit a sometimes slinger like Viconia.
Also I believe we're talking about early game equipment, hence Everard's +5 from merchants, not some high-end shit found on the lowest levels of the Watcher's Tower which is where we find Erinne. So when you give +5 to Hexxat, you'll end up with Viconia wasting time with some +2 slings until you are able to get something better, since even with 18/00 she is a pathetic melee AND you will waste Hexxat's potential as a backstabber. That's basically how I feel. And d'nae call me cheap ye bastard or I'll antagonize ye'r petty self
Of course it's all a matter of personal taste, I'm on my first playthrough on Enhanced Edition, and a first one played for many years, so I don't actually remember all the equipment we could consider here.
EDIT: Shooting +2 bullets from a +5 sling counts as +5 right? Or did I mess something up?
Aside from Everad there's a +3 sling somewhere in chapter 2 IIRC and with Hexxat in the party you should invest in 2-3 potions of master thievery and go on a shopping trip. After that you'll have more magical ammo for all shooters than you can ever fire so you don't need the pouch for the +2 bullets (which can't be upgraded before ToB anyway).
I don't have Mazzy in my evil party, that's why Gexxat is the only arrow shooter.
My hexxat also killed demogorgon...