Damage calculation in Av1/Av2

[Silterethene]

Can someone explain how strength and melee/pole skill feature in damage calculation. Assuming you've a weapon doing 2-20 damage. How do your stats up the damage? What are the rolls of the dice, so to speak.

 

Thanks.

 

 

[Randomizer]

Take the damage 2-20 and divide the maximum damage amount 20 by the minimum 2 to get the number of damage dice 10 with each die doing 1-2 points of damage. Each level of strength and/or melee/pole weapon skill adds an additional die of damage, Certain other skills like anatomy will add extra damage.

 

You want a weapon with the higher die value later in the game where your strength and weapon skills can increase the number of extra damage dice more than the weapon's maximum damage. This is why a stick doing 1-4 can be a deadly weapon.

[Silterethene]

So, a weapon doing 2-20, being wielded by a character with 10 strength and 10 melee weapons skill = 30 D2 dice, thereby doing a minimum of 30 damage, notwithstanding the armor of the opponent. Is that correct? And a stick, unaided, will do a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 8 damage? Seems weird.

[Slawbug]

I think Randomizer mistook your question as being about Avernum 4. I wouldn't know, but I think A 1 and 2 use different algorithms.

 

Either way, that derivation of damage dice is wrong. If in a later game you had a 2-20 weapon, it would be the equivalent of 2d10 (min d max/min), not 10d2 -- which would produce a range of 10-20 instead.

[Silterethene]

Yeah, thats what I thought. And a stick does 1D4, right? I'm still interested to know how strength/melee/pole stats affect weapon damage, in AV1 and AV2.

[Slawbug]

I'm not sure it's even been explored thoroughly. The FAQs say they add "a little damage" per point. I don't think any of the resident mechanics analysts played much of A1-3.

[Lazarus.]

In BoA, a weapon has a bonus and a die size. A weapon description would read something like: "Does 4-16 plus 1-4 per point of strength/weapon skill" where 1-4 would be the die size, and 4-16 would be the bonus damage (4 extra dice.) Presumably it works the same way in the trilogy, but the die size isn't stated explicitly. So when it says "Weapon does 4-16" it is implied that the bonus is 4, and the die size is d4.

[karry]

I still dont get it, seems very simple in theory, but in practice result is simply not quite predictable. Just started Avernum 3, a character has 7 Str and 3 Melee, with a weapon of (2-10)+(1-5) that comes to final damage of 12-60, right ? Well then how come he always does a minimum 30 damage ? I've seen him do damage in range of 32-37, never less than 30 and never more than 40.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: karry

I still dont get it, seems very simple in theory, but in practice result is simply not quite predictable. Just started Avernum 3, a character has 7 Str and 3 Melee, with a weapon of (2-10)+(1-5) that comes to final damage of 12-60, right ? Well then how come he always does a minimum 30 damage ? I've seen him do damage in range of 32-37, never less than 30 and never more than 40.

The damage is done on a bell curve because each dice is rolled individually, and then added. You're many times more likley to do damage very close to the mean than the extremes. It's just about impossibly to do the maximum or minimum damage.

In calculator terms, you'd be doing randint(1,5)+randint(1,5)+randint(1,5)..., as opposed to 12*randint(1,5).

[karry]

That means that all weapon damage scores are completely useless to the player. It could just as well be "high damage" and "medium damage", since its no use trying to come up with exact number on the fly.

[jecowa]

Stone dagger is "2-12 -1" ; Iron dagger is "2-12" ; Steel dagger is "2-12 +2".

 

What does the "-1" and "+2" do?

[Randomizer]

Quote:

What does the "-1" and "+2" do?

These are the bonus or minus added after calculating weapon damage. A steel dagger will do 3 more than a stone dagger.

[karry]

Also, judging by the numbers, bows should do even more damage than swords, at comparable skill levels, but in reality they do about 4 times less damage. Very helpful, those damage ranges...

[Earth]

Originally Posted By: karry

Also, judging by the numbers, bows should do even more damage than swords, at comparable skill levels, but in reality they do about 4 times less damage. Very helpful, those damage ranges...

different dice I think, that was explained somewhere here too.