A:EftP - Why can't my fighters hit?

[VCH]

I'm really getting tired of not being able to hit anything but the lowest level monsters in a dungeon. My characters are now level 17 and the only reason I am getting anywhere on Torment is because my mage and priest do reliable damage to enemies.

 

I have chest armour on my two fighters with -15% to hit penalty, and also the penalty that comes from duel wielding, but no other penalties. Oh yeah, and I'm playing on Torment.

 

I realize that Torment is supposed to be hard, and I wouldn't mind it if my fighters did only minimal damage to enemies, but I can't stand not hitting at all. The game really sucks, and is boring at times because my fighters are nothing more than meat shields, waving blades in the faces of their enemies.

 

So, what I'm asking for is directions to posts, or advise on how to maximize hit chance.

 

Here are my combat stats (both fighters are the same):

Click to reveal..

[Randomizer]

I always had problems with hitting the boss monsters too with a fighter. Part of it is spells have a different base percent to hit than weapons. But all the better monsters need a higher chance than the lower monsters.

 

You can reduce the dual wielding penalty with traits and another level of dual wielding skill. Otherwise increase strength since that does more than melee weapons and/or blademaster.

[Jerakeen]

I think missiles must have a different base to-hit as well. My casters, with nothing in bows or dex, still seem to have an unreasonably high hit rate with them. On Normal, mind you, but the difference with melee is very noticeable. My dedicated archer can only rarely hit the broad side of a barn with her sword.

 

That build looks about right to me; maybe Torment is just that awful.

[Cairo Jim]

I noticed your Dexterity is quite low. While Strength does help in giving damage and helps to add to your weapon skills, Dexterity is quite well needed, as it gives a bonus to hit, and to avoid being hit.

 

End of story, add more points to dexterity. If you start over again, make sure to balance your skill points between Strength, Dexterity, and whatever weapon bas that character is using.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Cairo Jim

I noticed your Dexterity is quite low. While Strength does help in giving damage and helps to add to your weapon skills, Dexterity is quite well needed, as it gives a bonus to hit, and to avoid being hit.

This is 100% false. Dexterity does NOT help with melee weapon accuracy: Strength does. The tooltip in the first version of the game that claimed Dexterity helps with melee accuracy was a mistake.

[waterplant]

I've been using armour with lower, or zero, to-hit penalty. Your armour % is reasonably high anyway so you could downsize to chest armour with lower protection but a bonus resistance (fire or whatever). I don't use any other armour with a to-hit penalty (greaves etc) with the exception of chest armour.

 

By level 13 I was able to nail most boss foes.

[Fael]

Less defense, more offense. Melee skill, Blademaster (which is way too low), and Dual Wield will all help you hit. By this point in the game, I was up to 95% hit chance against most enemies (though I wasn't playing Torment). But I also didn't have nearly the left-column investment you did.

[Cairo Jim]

Thuryl, I do honestly beg to differ. I am ready to be proven wrong, but I do , although self proven, do believe based on looked up (on SW mostly, and somewhat self tested) that Dexterity makes to hit and avoid being hit.

 

If you want to settle this, just try raising your Dex up as much as you can. Being as low as it as you've displayed, I think you'll only be able to hit lower level critters until the Dex is raised to about 8 or 9 before you can get the occaisonal decent hit in.

[Randomizer]

I agree with Lilith. I tested and compared the to hit versus monsters by looking before and after just raising strength, dexterity, or melee weapons with a monster that I had less than a 95% chance of hitting.

 

In melee:

strength +5%

dexterity 0%

melee weapons +1%

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Cairo Jim

Thuryl, I do honestly beg to differ. I am ready to be proven wrong, but I do , although self proven, do believe based on looked up (on SW mostly, and somewhat self tested) that Dexterity makes to hit and avoid being hit.

OK, I literally just spent the last five minutes booting up my laptop, opening up Avernum to a save file where I'd levelled up and hadn't yet allocated stat points, and testing it. Increasing Str increased the displayed hit rate for melee attacks by 5%. Increasing Dex increased the displayed hit rate for melee attacks by 0%. That's zero, zip, nada, nothing, a big ol' goose egg.

Strength increases melee accuracy. Dexterity does not. Are you happy now or do I have to post screenshots to prove it?

[Kreador]

Cairo Jim, the one part of your statement that is correct is that raising Dex makes it harder for the monsters to hit you.

[Alorael at Large]

Dex affecting accuracy is also something that even Jeff admits is a tooltip error and fixed. It doesn't.

 

—Alorael, who on the other hand now demands evidence that the displayed hit percentage reflects real hit percentage. Who knows? Maybe that's wrong and it's reversed after all!

[Matchstk]

Your Blademaster and Melee Weapons skills are underdeveloped. Bump those up a bit and you'll start hitting them.

[VCH]

So should I take some points out of endurance and put them into strength, and also take points out or hardiness/parry and put them into melee skill?

 

 

As I said above, I have trouble hitting not just bosses, but the midlevel characters in a dungeon—for example, SLITH WARRIORS.

 

I would appreciate it if someone that played on TORMENT posted a screen-shot of a ~level 17 character's stat sheet.

 

 

[Slawbug]

STRENGTH.

 

Ignore the other suggestions. Points in Blademaster ahead of Quick Action and even Dual Wielding is a great idea too (Quick Action is relatively worthless), but what you really need is this.

 

STRENGTH.

 

Randomizer pushes Endurance more than anyone else and even he never suggests putting more than 1/4 of your freely assignable points into Endurance.

 

STRENGTH.

 

Strength gives +5% to hit per point, AND does other very useful things -- it increases your damage.

 

STRENGTH.

 

If you are hitting Slith Warriors at 50% now, changing 3-4 of those stat points from Endurance to Strength and maybe a few of those traits (it could be other sources, but it looks like you've bought some Improved Endurance) will increase your hit rate to the 65%-80% range. That's substantial. Ignore the other suggestions, just increase

 

STRENGTH.

[Lilith]

The best guideline for Endurance, by the way, is generally to put just enough in it so that the outdoor encounters you're currently fighting won't kill your front-line character in the first round. Everyone else can get away with even less.

[VCH]

Thanks for the advise; I'll give it a try.

 

I tend to increase things sorta in parallel to each other. That has worked in the previous games, but apparently not here.

 

——————————————————————

 

It works! This game is super easy now. I feel so powerful!

 

I am now hitting Slith Warriors at 85-95% after taking 4 points out of endurance and putting them into strength, and also transfering all quick action and dual wield points over to blade-master.

[Slawbug]

BEFORE:

"The game really sucks, and is boring at times because my fighters are nothing more than meat shields, waving blades in the faces of their enemies."

 

AFTER:

"It works! This game is super easy now. I feel so powerful!"

 

Thank you, VCH, for being willing to try something new. <3 I intend to cite this post every time somebody else complains that the game is too hard and then refuses to listen to simple advice about stats.

[Student of Trinity]

If the game is really hard unless you do something as counter-intuitive as neglecting most of the nice, shiny skill tree in favor of a few critical things, then this is just bad design, because it makes the game harder than it needs to be for newbies.

 

If it's only hard on Torment, such that only expert players who understand the needed counter-intuitive strategies can survive, then I guess that's okay. But to my mind, the ideal game design would be such that what Torment required was an exquisite balance of skills, rather than an obsessive focus on the right few.

[Randomizer]

Jeff primarily balances the game for Normal difficulty. Any balancing for Torment is based on a very few insane min/max powergaming reports so there isn't as much leeway in what works at harder levels.

 

As Slarty pointed out years ago for Geneforge 3, what works fine as a strategy for Normal difficulty can easily fail on Torment. Blades of Avernum was the last game where fighters had difficulty always hitting. Starting with Avernum 4 it was always possible to hit without poorly constructed characters.

[Slawbug]

It is true that there are some skills that are sad wastes of skill points (Sniper, Quick Action, etc) but those do not make as huge of a difference. I'd wager it's even possible to succeed on Torment with sub-optimal (but still decent) skill distribution.

 

The problem is the stat points. A melee fighter who does not put most of his stat points into strength WILL NOT SUCCEED as a melee fighter.

 

This is heightened for AEFTP even compared to Avadon because Jeff reduced the to-hit bonuses from other sources to 1% per point instead of 5% per point. Personally, I think this change was long overdue, as PC hit chance has been 100% irrelevant outside the first hour or two of play in most other SW games. However, it does require that people pay attention to hit chance, which they aren't used to doing. Additionally, this made the incorrect tool tip message (also not new: it has been around in some form since Geneforge 1 in 2001 -- ten years!!!) a much bigger problem.

[*i]

Quote:

Additionally, this made the incorrect tool tip message (also not new: it has been around in some form since Geneforge 1 in 2001 -- ten years!!!) a much bigger problem.

Why Jeff doesn't just take the extra minute to fix this is beyond me.

[Kreador]

Originally Posted By: *i

Quote:

Additionally, this made the incorrect tool tip message (also not new: it has been around in some form since Geneforge 1 in 2001 -- ten years!!!) a much bigger problem.

Why Jeff doesn't just take the extra minute to fix this is beyond me.

He did fix it in A:EftP 1.01.

[*i]

Good to hear. Since I already finished 1.0 to my satisfaction, I hadn't bothered to upgrade.

[VCH]

Yes, this whole not being able to hit thing is completely new. In the last few games you never miss.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

The problem is the stat points. A melee fighter who does not put most of his stat points into strength WILL NOT SUCCEED as a melee fighter.

I'm now seriously wondering if the best front-line character on Torment might be not a fighter, but a priest who invests every single stat point in Endurance and does nothing but heal and buff (neither of which is Int-dependent). On Torment, you want someone healing or buffing practically every round in serious fights anyway, so losing out on one offensive character isn't a big deal. The one catch is that it'd be difficult to get access to Hardiness, which kind of helps with survival on the front lines.

[Slawbug]

Interesting idea.

 

It wouldn't really be that hard: buy 2 points in Melee when it's available, and train Hardiness up boosting Melee as necessary. Priest Spells can sit at 8 for a while while you train Hardiness and Parry.

 

There is one other catch, which is that your SP will be half of what you're used to. If you are really spamming heal every round, I'm not sure that will be enough to last through serious fights.

 

Either way this strikes me as sort of like playing through Final Fantasy 1 with a party of four white mages: you can do it, but it just isn't any fun.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

There is one other catch, which is that your SP will be half of what you're used to. If you are really spamming heal every round, I'm not sure that will be enough to last through serious fights.

There's always potions, which as usual are supplied in greater numbers than you'll ever really need.

Quote:

Either way this strikes me as sort of like playing through Final Fantasy 1 with a party of four white mages: you can do it, but it just isn't any fun.

You know what else isn't fun? Consistently losing my first one or two characters before I even get a chance to act, to outdoor encounters that I could win if only I could keep them alive for a round.

[Randomizer]

I have to agree with Lilith, on Torment difficulty for outdoor encounters, the lead character needs to be able to avoid and survive damage. The only problem are the few fights where knockbacks occur shoving your meatshield to the side.

 

I ran a party of two mages and two priests where the lead mage had parry and hardiness to 12 and lots of endurance. The mage wasn't as useful in dealing out damage, but he survived. I can see now that swapping a priest that could use better armor without penalty would have worked better.

[VCH]

It would be nice if my characters weren't doing the conga every time they entered combat in the outdoors. In other words, why can't we set some sort of standard formation, say a square with two characters a couple spaces back?

[waterplant]

Agreed. Enemies have staggered formations which makes some avoid AoE attacks. My party forms a nice orderly queue for spellcasters to hit.

[Superba]

@VCH

 

With two default Berserkers the first part of the game is much easier (v 1.0) and Strenght is the place to put their points, I agree with House of. In terms of effectiveness of the warriors, as I recently found out in AEFTP, a default Berserker is way better than my habit to choose Custom option at the beginning; the hit improvement comparing to Soldiers is dramatical.

Wiht Avernum 5 and 6 and in Avadon I used to customize the characters because Custom option worked better than defaults.

In AEFTP it seems different to me, maybe beacuse foes resistance in first part of the game is (was) oddly high.

So I completed AEFTP on casual and normal with different parties and different character types, only they were all Custom ones.

Torment was on the contrary not that hard as it could have been because I tried the Berserker default characters. I can't say what makes Berserkers so good but they can hit really hard from the beginning, so I decided to play Torment with three Berserkers (placing 2/3 of the points on Strenghth and Endurance) and a Hedge Wizard. It works.

[Slawbug]

You can duplicate any of the default builds using Custom, so a Berserker is certainly not "way better" than the Custom option. Some of the default builds are fine in this game, but others waste points.

 

How far are you, Superba? Your lack of magic will probably give you trouble later in the game...

[Superba]

Grah-Hoth completed, difference is as demons before Grah were killed more easily than other playthroughs, it was really hard this time with Grah hall army.

From now on I think to invest some points in Priest spells for at least two of the Berserkers to get Divine Retribution and buy level 2 of it, 'cause to my experience this is a really effective weapon which works well at any level and with any caster.

However, Berserkers are doing great at level 32, the three of them with dual wielding - level 10 (2) and level 12 (1) -. There's a lot of good special blades too, so the only dificulty with them is to choose the ones which work better with different opponents, i.e. the flame blade, the frozen one, the oozing blade and Demonslayer I switch continuosly.

[Soul of Wit]

Meatshield leads the conga line...

 

...I've been to that wedding reception.

 

If you're going to try the Priest/meatshield as a leader, don't forget to use traits that boost mana. There are at least three energy/mana boosters.

[Slawbug]

Uh, Divine Retribution will be pretty much worthless if you aren't investing heavily in Intelligence (v1.01) or Dexterity (old version only). Neither of these is practical for a melee fighter.

[Soul of Wit]

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