Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Direct Connect: scod.game-server.cc
NWN List
Announcements
Welcome to the forums of Sigil: City of Doors. | New update 5/28/18 - read the update notes here!
Welcome to Sigil: City of Doors. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Multi-Quote Post on Multi-Quote Post off
Add Reply
Game Mechanics: What Damage Stacks On What...
Topic Started: Sep 6 2013, 06:15 PM (197 Views)
MadPorthos
No Avatar
Playtesting Gremlin
Tester
Hi, Madporthos here. Its been a while since I frequented the baazar, crafted or enchanted but several times in the past week or two I have run into those who had a bit of confusion over what sorts of materials, damages and enchantments or spells to use together.

One thing that I learned previously on this server is that too often things so not work as intended, not due to Sigils developers, but rather due to flaws in the base game. Knowing these flaws can save you alot of hassle. To that end I did alot of play testing a few years back, trying to help and some of the fruits of that I'll share here.

First off, its important to remember that most of what I am talking about is weapon damage, not spell or other effect damage, though many spells do try to put varying damage on weapons as additional properies and traits.

In most cases, when a weapon hits, it will do its base damage with a descriptor of what kind of damage it is such as 1d8 slashing damage. This damage is added to by high strength bonus, as well as any magical enhancement bonus (E.B.). Both such bonuses will count as damage of that physical descriptor type as regards damage resistance- slashing due to such being the weapons physical 'type'. So a +5 sword, weilded by a paladin with 18 strength and no other factors, would add +5 slashing from the magical E.B. and +4 physical, from strength.

The problem with stacking tends to rear its ugly head at about this point in the formula. When additional damage is of the same type descriptor as the weapons base and there is both added damage from enhancement bonus and some other physical source, certain stacking restrictions come into play. The NWN2 game engine will not allow multiple bonuses of the same type to stack and to its reckoning the damage coming from enchantment bonus will be the same Type as you would see from the property +1-6 slashing. They wont stack, but worse it may not be clear why... to the average person encountering this,they expect to see both sources added in or at least expect that if the variable damage bonus, for example +1-6 slashing, rolls less than the weapon's E.B., the enhancement bonus at least would be done. This wont happen though, because when comparing two bonuses of the same type to figure which one is used, the game engine will take the larger and it will decide that the value of a damage range is its average roll. In the case of +1-6, this is 3.5 - meaning that on a weapon up to + 3, having a +1-6 bonus of the same type actually is worse, replacing the bonus damage from E.B., while on +4 weapon or greater they do nothing at all, because the +4 is a higher amount.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Agony_Aunt
Member Avatar
Get a Life
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
MadPorthos,Sep 6 2013
06:15 PM
One thing that I learned previously on this server is that too often things so not work as intended, not due to Sigils developers, but rather due to flaws in the base game.

Well, we do occasionally drop the ball on some things :D

Good post though MP. +1.

Just a little clarification, you say on a +4 it won't do anything. What it should say is it will make minimal difference. A roll of 5 or 6 will still nudge the damage up a point or two. The bell curve will be slightly skewed.

However, if I understood our conversation the other day correctly, the 1d6 will not multiply on a critical, but the base EB will, so indeed, in this case, if correct, once you have +3 enhancement, the bonus damage is worthless on crits.
Stepped down as admin, but still lurking.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Tomekk
Member Avatar
Dark Soul
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
A good example is the falchion Whitefang. It has +5 EB (slashing), Bonus damage: Slashing and +2d6 slashing. The engine recognizes the 2d6 as highest, and thus ignores the EB and bonus damage enchantments completely from the damage roll. Which is why when designing items, you should just define them as phyisical damage bonuses or differing damage types.
"From the realms below we ride,
And in terror they run and hide,
From the shadows of old we rise,
Awakened, from the dark!

Over the ancient ruins we fly,
Where the old kings go to die,
And the new kingdoms rising high,
Awakened, from the dark, dark slumber!"
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
MadPorthos
No Avatar
Playtesting Gremlin
Tester
Actually, agony that roll of 5-6 will never ever count on that +4 item, the +4 from the eb is what will count and I think it will multiply on critical. It seemed in testing that the metric for which bonus to add was not decided by actual roll, simply by average of what COULD be rolled. What this means then is shown in example below:

Long sword +3 used by 18 strength weilder, has +1d6 slashing on it.
Damage will be base 1d8 + 4 from the strength plus roll of 1-6. The +3 from the enhancement bonus will be thrown out cause its lower than the average of the 1-6 (3.5). We can tell this is happening in testing because the lowest it should be able to roll in testing is an 8 damage if eb was still being added or being chosen vs the variable in a dynamic way. What actually happens is this will roll as low as a 6 because its doing 1d8+4+1d6.

The break point in this case is +4 enhancement.
+4 longsword w. 18 strength weilder and 1d6 slashing bonus. Damage will be 1d8 + 4+ 4 because now the +4 enhancement bonus slashing is higher than the 1d6 slashing's average roll. It does not matter if it COULD roll a 5-6, the variable 1-6 slashing is discarded for the actual enhancement bonus w higher set damage. In this case we could tell that the random damage was never being added in because it never pushed the maximum damage up for the weapon in testing. 1d8+4+1d6 should at least some of the time, over hundreds of swings at a practice dummy, allowed a hit for 18 damage (8+4+6). It did not. It would always max at 16, and the minimum tended to be 9.

Meticulous though it was, this sort of testing with bows, crossbows and thier ammunition revealed the exact same sorts of issues. It also is what lead to the seemingly bizarre fix we use with the special planar materials for weapons and on occasional rare weaponry.

To get bonus damage to count along side enhancement bonuses/spells it must be of a different physical type from the weapons base damage descriptor. So you need to do blugeoning OR piercing bonuson a slashing weapon, piercing or slashing bonus on a bludgeoning weapon and slash or bludgeon on a piercing weapon.

In the particular case of missile weapons people are often very messed up by this. They have an enhancement bonus from a magic bow, might choose to use +1d6 piercing arrows, plus have some bonuses from a class like arcane archerbor specialization. They are really surprised when thier damage just doesnt add up, expecting again that a piercing arrow will be an advantage used with thier bow or crossbow.

The same issue as with the longsword crops up for these missile weapons - +3 and below on the bow/crossbow means the minimum damage actually decreases, because the enhancement bonus is discarded in favor of the higher average piercing bonus. This would look something like 1d8+1d6. At. +4 it reverses,the 1d6 no longer counting but the enhancement bonus now counting ... 1d8+4. Once again this can be confirmed by using a practice target and watching the damage minimums and maximums. The longbow or light crossbow using piercing ammo with less than a +3 enhancement bonus will see alot of 2 point minimum shots despite all. Though it might be fortunate to manage 14 point shot. Used with a +4 weapon, the ammo ceases to count because the integer value of +4 is greater than the average of the 1-6 bonus. The result, minimum damage may be 5, but 12 points damage limit. So you see, piercing just isn't.

This whole matter tends to be further obscured by times when Mighty bonuses dont seem to stack, or conflict with what should be the arcane archer bonuses, and the like.

Also, its not clear if the variable bonus damage, when it is counted over the enhancement bonus to damage, is multiplied in a critical hit situation.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Agony_Aunt
Member Avatar
Get a Life
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Thanks for the clarification. Seems like whoever wrote that part of the engine was under the influence of some pretty rocking drugs then. :D

Well, if i ever get a year or two spare, ill rewrite the combat engine to work correctly. Straight after i spend a year or two recoding the whole spell casting engine :D
Stepped down as admin, but still lurking.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Ninefingers
Member Avatar
Greybeard
[ *  *  *  *  * ]
Agony_Aunt,Sep 6 2013
09:25 PM
Thanks for the clarification. Seems like whoever wrote that part of the engine was under the influence of some pretty rocking drugs then. :D

Well, if i ever get a year or two spare, ill rewrite the combat engine to work correctly. Straight after i spend a year or two recoding the whole spell casting engine :D

Best get a move on!
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
MadPorthos
No Avatar
Playtesting Gremlin
Tester
Ninefingers... I love your avatar/.gif picture. Insane!/
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Ravel's Heart
Member Avatar

Dungeon Master (Emeritus)
MadPorthos,Sep 6 2013
04:04 PM
Also, its not clear if the variable bonus damage, when it is counted over the enhancement bonus to damage, is multiplied in a critical hit situation.

Isn't there a console command that shows all modifiers on every roll?

At work now, so I can't look it up but something like dm_enablecombatdebugging?

[Edit: http://gameofthrones.net/resources/57-tech...e-commands.html]
"What can change the nature of a man?"
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
MadPorthos
No Avatar
Playtesting Gremlin
Tester
Two issues with this...

-I'm not a Dm and didnt have the help of one when first testing this (though Ceremorph later confirmed, probably using Dmcombatdebugging whatchamacallit ).

- Some factors the game Thinks its counting do not actually add up or tally correctly in final rolls. Example of this is character sheet listing multiple bonuses on weapon, but once the actual engine rolls are done you can see that some of the factors were striped out,didnt stack or are simply missing, suchas a report that a weapon did 25 damage (10 physical, 5 cold,6 electric). The end damage is different than its own displayed tally and its unclear why. In these odd cases, we occassionaly had a dm even scratching thier heads trying to figure or reproduce what we screen shotted/got as results.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Fully Featured & Customizable Free Forums
Learn More · Register for Free
« Previous Topic · General Discussion · Next Topic »
Add Reply