Why wouldn't I make all my party members sliths?

[Ghaldring]

I'm starting to think that humans are tremendously underpowered in this game. I came to this conclusion when I realized that sliths don't get an extra 4 hp over humans. They receive a larger health boost.

 

Firstly, the health bonus they receive for leveling up and/or boosting endurance is greater than a human/nephil. This means that the hit point discrepancy between human/nephil and slith is larger at higher levels and higher endurances.

 

The drawback of a slith is that they are always about one or two levels behind humans, which translates into extra hitpoints, spell points, and 10 skill points.

 

But the innate bonus sliths receive to hitpoints reverses the reduction that occurs due to the lower level.

 

Sliths also get 4 free points of pole weapons by lvl 16, which translates into about 20 skill points, and makes it far easier to access battle disciplines, especially for spellcasters. They also receive 20% to poison, acid and fire. When you think about it, this is awesome. That's the equivalent of ten points of poor man's hardiness (hardiness also reduces physical damage).

 

So sliths essentially gain on skill points and health points, and receive innate damage reduction. All they miss out on about 10 energy points, which is trivial in comparison to what you gain as a slith.

 

Nephils get a bonus to missile and bows, but I find bows/missiles inferior to pole weapons. They also receive a bonus to gymnastics, but ask yourself this. Which would you prefer on torment: A minor bonus to dodge, or an extra 10-20 health points? Dodge becomes worthless about half way through the game, but 10 hit points could mean the difference between life and death.

[Sudanna]

Nalyd can't think of any reason not too. It's what he does.

[Ghaldring]

A case has been made for nephils because they get a boost to bows (although I find them really weak, especially on non-warriors), and gymnastics (which boosts initiative). And they level up slightly faster than sliths.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

A case has been made

Oh, sure, don't give me the credit or anything.

(Well, okay, it's been received wisdom that nephilim are the best race ever since A4, so it's not exactly a new idea.)

Besides, sliths were clearly the best race in the Exile series as well, so A5 isn't the only game with racial balance problems.

[Alorael at Large]

Archery is much better than polearms for casters. Sliths make better front-line fighters, but I get frustrated when the casters move first in combat order.

 

—Alorael, who wonders if the experience penalties should be removed and humans should get some other bonus. More skill points, so you get flexibility instead of a particular strength?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: "The" is my middle name.

Archery is much better than polearms for casters. Sliths make better front-line fighters, but I get frustrated when the casters move first in combat order.

I actually prefer letting casters move first. Fighters are more likely to have mental effects put on them, and it's a good thing if you can have a priest go before them to cure them before they get their turn.

[Randomizer]

I usually have the casters cure mental effects at the end of the round, but that may just be the way dexterity and quick action work in my party.

 

Nephils are better for the extra levels if you are going for spellcasters. Sliths tend to make better fighters and the polearms are superior for melee fighting.

 

You can use either for a singleton game.

[Alorael at Large]

I've always found it easier to get my fighters to move before everything else, then have the enemy move, then have my casters move. That way my fighters can attack, get charmed, and get cured, then do it again.

 

—Alorael, who has found the important thing is to make sure the order is never casters, monsters, fighters.

[Ghaldring]

I guess my skepticism with the notion of nephil being the best race is that I haven't had good experiences with archery, despite investing in it. I currently have a nephil swordsman/bowman with decent dexterity and bows, and he can't hit squat. Even after being blessed, his arrows connect for about 9-14 damage. I'm guessing that being a nephil must give me a few extra points of damage, and +20% to hit. Since enemies in the game tend to have several hundred, if not thousands of hit points, such a bonus seems trivial.

 

As for the initiative, eh, I'd rather my priest and mage move after my warriors.

 

I'm still not sure about this, which is why I'm challenging someone to prove me wrong.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

I'm still not sure about this, which is why I'm challenging someone to prove me wrong.

I don't think either of us is actually wrong; I think we must just have different strategies. I'm very patient and incredibly miserly with resources like spell points and items, so I have no objection to plinking away at enemies for 10 rounds. Even if you have to top up someone's HP with Minor Heal every round, you end up spending less spell energy than you would by throwing around Smite spells.

I should add that I have a bit of an unusual party configuration: one slith fighter, two nephil archer/priests, one nephil archer/mage/priest. This means I almost always have access to more healing than I need. When priests have nobody to heal, they may as well do something useful by firing some arrows. You don't even need to invest many skill points into Bows; you can rely on the free ones you get for being a nephil, and maybe invest some more later on just to get battle disciplines.

Extra accuracy is more of a concern than extra damage when it comes to the Nephil missile bonus: my slith also has a bow, but doesn't really invest any skill points into improving bow skills, and is lucky to have a 50% hit rate with it against most enemies by the middle of the game. The Nephil bonuses are enough to keep accuracy at 95% against most things, even on Torment.

[Ghaldring]

It would be interesting to know how powerful you could make a nephil archer. How much damage and % hit do the bow, sharpshooter and dexterity skills provide to bow attacks?

[Men are from Slars]

Dex, Bows and Sharpshooter contribute EXACTLY the same amount of damage and hit chance to shooting a bow, as Str, Poles and Blademaster contribute to swinging a halberd. The differences are:

 

POLE WEAPONS

* Average damage of 2.5 per point in a skill

* Investment of about 30 skill points in Quick Action gives about a 1 in 3 chance of an extra hit on the same enemy you hit first

* Can't use shields

* Must move next to an enemy to attack it

* Poles skill costs 4, 5, 6... 2 more per point bought!

 

BOWS

* Average damage of 2 per point in a skill (not counting Heartstriker)

* No Quick Action bonus

* Can use shields

* Can shoot at an enemy without moving

* Bows skill costs 2, 3, 4... 2 less per point bought!

 

If you factor in the Quick Action bonus, this means a comparably trained Halberd user will deal about 66% more damage than a Bow user, all skills being equal. But note that this is inconsistent and that in most individual rounds the Halberd user's output is only 25% higher. In contrast, the main point in favor of bows is that you can shoot without moving. Halberd users with 10 AP (from Haste, equipment or whatever) can't usually make two attacks in the first round of combat. Bow users always can. Halberd users might lose an attack as well after they kill an enemy and have to target a new one. Or, if you are fighting a boss who moves around a lot, this may happen nearly every round! So during those rounds, the Bow user will deal on average 17% more damage than the Pole user. And of course, being able to shoot from anywhere provides more flexibility, particularly for characters that aren't tanks.

 

This would hand the prize to Bows straight out in my mind, if it wasn't for one thing: Blademaster is an amazing skill in A5 because of its impact on Battle Disciplines, and Elite Warrior is an amazing advantage. I still like bows better, especially for spellcasters, but it makes having one or two melee fighters a reasonable proposition. One is probably still optimal, but two is reasonable.

[Alorael at Large]

The other thing to consider is the chance of parry/riposte. Parry chances are much lower on ranged attacks, I believe, and you definitely can't get a riposte from range. That actually means bows hit slightly more often and you won't get killed by trying to attack.

 

—Alorael, who notices that swords apparently just don't make the cut. Poor weapon without a racial bonus.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Introns in my boots

—Alorael, who notices that swords apparently just don't make the cut. Poor weapon without a racial bonus.

Swords aren't so bad. For one thing, you can use a shield. For another, there's the Flaming Sword, which is useful but unreliable. Against some enemies you can output better damage than a halberd; against others you'll do no damage at all and have to swap to another weapon.

[Men are from Slars]

You know, I almost pre-emptively responded to the Flaming Sword comment which was inevitably going to follow Alorael's comment.

 

The Flaming Sword, while certainly useful, is a pretty poor argument in favor of melee. All it does is give you a zero MP Bolt of Fire that uses sword relevant skills rather than mage relevant skills, and which can only target enemies you are standing next to. The mage relevant skills are a little cheaper to increase (and can be bought very early from Shanker), which I think balances out the Quick Action possibility somewhat. The zero MP is nice but not terribly relevant, especially given Magical Efficiency. That leaves us with one big disadvantage, the targeting disadvantage.

 

So the "best" sword, the one that is always held up to explain why swords are useful in A5, is -- not categorically, but on the whole -- inferior to the weakest direct damage mage spell.

 

That makes me want to use swords. Riiiight.

[Lilith]

Fighters aren't really damage-dealers anyway. Their most important job is to stand around and parry attacks.

[Alorael at Large]

If that's true, though, you're still better off with the archer. Archers can use shields (oddly) and are less likely to take damage from ripostes.

 

—Alorael, who usually does most of his damage with his fighters. Properly buffed, they're a better source of damage against tough foes than a few of the heavy-hitting spells. Mages shine against enemies who hit hard but aren't terribly hard to take down.

[madrigan]

To return to the original question, you wouldn't make all your party members sliths because you had an idea for a non-slith character that you wanted to try. "Why wouldn't I make all my party members sliths if I was min-maxing?" is a different question.

[Men are from Slars]

Properly buffed nothing. Every single buff in A5 increases spell damage by just as much as it increases weapon damage.

 

The issue with hard enemies on Torment is their gross reserves of HP, which can make magic impractical if you don't either (a) have lots of SP, or ( run back to town after every couple of fights. Or © use the SP-replenshing cheat as a timesaving shortcut and pretend you run back to town.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Introns in my boots

If that's true, though, you're still better off with the archer. Archers can use shields (oddly) and are less likely to take damage from ripostes.

It's pretty hard to put in enough skill points to get Riposte by the time you reach Muck and still have decent archery.

[Alorael at Large]

I wasn't saying your archers should have Riposte. They make better tanks because they are less likely to get hurt while on the offensive.

 

—Alorael, who agrees that a buffed casters has a higher damage output per turn than a buffed fighter. Fighters can keep going indefinitely, though. HIs casters always end up empty before they end up unbuffed.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Introns in my boots

I wasn't saying your archers should have Riposte. They make better tanks because they are less likely to get hurt while on the offensive.

Okay, so whose job is it to lure out that swarm of 8 chitrachs that's coming toward your party and get them to cluster in one place so that your spellcasters can blast them with area effects? You can't have all your characters attacking from range, or the enemies are just going to close in.

[Ghaldring]

Wow, this turned out to be an excellent thread. Thanks Alorael, Thuryl and Slarty, you've done quite a bit to convince me that archery might not suck as hard as I originally thought.

 

A couple of things, though:

Slarty:

Quote:

BOWS

* Average damage of 2 per point in a skill (not counting Heartstriker)

 

So a level 16 nephil character would receive a bonus 4 to bows, which would translate to an extra 20% to hit, and + 8 damage? That's not bad, although an extra 8 (or even 16) damage seems minor when you consider that many of your foes have thousands of hp.

 

Quote:

* Poles skill costs 4, 5, 6... 2 more per point bought!

 

The fact that pole weapons cost more skill points to train in means that the bonus sliths receive to them is more valuable. Granted, the nephil receives the same number of bonus skill points, but half of these are wasted due to being allocated to throw weapons.

 

Quote:

Halberd users with 10 AP (from Haste, equipment or whatever) can't usually make two attacks in the first round of combat. Bow users always can.

 

What you neglected to mention here is that bow users also reduce damage output by being able to use that initiative to hit the opponent with a curse/weaken/stun battle discipline before said opponent runs up and hit your PCs.

 

Quote:

* Can use shields

 

Yes, that's another clear advantage. Being able to soak up damage is vital on torment.

 

Given that you're wielding a shield, what would you equip in your other hand? Since later in your post you assert that one handed weapons are cack in regards to attack strength, I'm guessing you equip a one handed weapon with defensive/resistance/stat bonuses (ie. bonding knife, shielding knife)?

 

Also, is a bow wielder who is not wielding a one handed weapon still able to parry/riposte? I remember that you could parry/riposte in Geneforge, even if you had a thorn baton/wand/bare hands equipped. I'm not sure if this still applies in A5.

 

Quote:

This would hand the prize to Bows straight out in my mind, if it wasn't for one thing: Blademaster is an amazing skill in A5 because of its impact on Battle Disciplines, and Elite Warrior is an amazing advantage.

 

I'm not sure I follow you here. While an archer can't train in Blademaster because they don't have the pre-requisite skills, it's not like an all out melee warrior who is min-maxing would either, considering that you need to invest in both melee and pole, which is wasteful.

 

You can get oodles of Blademaster with Divine Blood (which also gives you a bonus to magery and sharpshooter, how convenient!) And even a dedicated archer can still select Elite Warrior as a trait, you really can't go wrong with extra parry and blademaster.

 

 

But let's assume that bows are preferable to pole/melee weapons. Does the minor bonus nephilim receive to bows trump the significant damage resistance bonus, and minor health bonus, that the slith receive?

[Ghaldring]

Thuryl:

Quote:

You can't have all your characters attacking from range,

 

But you can have all your characters attacking with ranged weapons. Unlike D&D, I don't think Avernum mechanics penalize you for attacking monsters point blank with a ranged weapon.

 

Personally, I think it's a pity that Jeff doesn't incorporate more sophisticated mechanics for ranged attacks, as seen in Fallout. Distance and lighting should effect ranged accuracy.

[Alorael at Large]

You can parry even when unarmed, and I look at skill costs the other way: for a given number of skill points, the nephil will have a higher skill with bows than the slith will have with spears. Without QA, sliths have a lower base damage output and no shield.

 

—Alorael, who foregoes melee and polearm training to get Blademaster to get Riposte for archers. It's a lot of skill points that can do better elsewhere. Parry takes care of most of the damage blocking needs.

[Student of Trinity]

It's been a while since I played A5, now, so I don't remember just how I built characters. But what I distinctly remember was that archery never did much damage for me compared to melee. Must it just have been that I didn't pump my archer's archery as much as my slith pole-armer's pole-arming? Or could some differential in available equipment have something to do with it? There are a lot of cool melee weapons to pick up, and a bunch of other gear that boosts melee skills. Not so much for archery as I recall.

[Ghaldring]

Alorael:

Quote:

Without QA, sliths have a lower base damage output and no shield.

 

But with bows, you need to sink skill points into dexterity. Dexterity is only good for bows, whereas strength increases your damage with melee weapons, as well as allowing you to wear heavier armour.

 

But then, I don't know how much strength is needed to wear the heaviest armour in the game.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

But you can have all your characters attacking with ranged weapons. Unlike D&D, I don't think Avernum mechanics penalize you for attacking monsters point blank with a ranged weapon.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I do equip every character with a bow, even if the slith doesn't use his very often. But the prerequisites for Parry and Riposte include melee skills. And if you're going to invest in skills for close-range weapons, you might as well actually equip some.

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

I'm not sure I follow you here. While an archer can't train in Blademaster because they don't have the pre-requisite skills, it's not like an all out melee warrior who is min-maxing would either, considering that you need to invest in both melee and pole, which is wasteful.

That depends on what you're optimising for. My preferred skill progression involves aiming for Riposte as soon as possible, which means spending most of my fighter's skill points for the first 25 levels or so unlocking Blademaster and Parry. Obviously this doesn't optimise for maximum damage per round, but that's not really what I'm concerned about.

Quote:

But let's assume that bows are preferable to pole/melee weapons. Does the minor bonus nephilim receive to bows trump the significant damage resistance bonus, and minor health bonus, that the slith receive?

For me, the advantage of using a Nephil is that if you don't have the skill points to spare, you can mostly neglect Bows skill and still have a fairly accurate missile attack. Damage resistance is good, but it's easy enough to get an extra point or two of Endurance; raising your Slith's bow skill enough that he can reliably hit things will probably end up costing more than raising your Nephil's health to the point where dying isn't a major issue.

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

But with bows, you need to sink skill points into dexterity. Dexterity is only good for bows, whereas strength increases your damage with melee weapons, as well as allowing you to wear heavier armour.

But then, I don't know how much strength is needed to wear the heaviest armour in the game.

For the most part, you can safely ignore dexterity even on missile-based characters.

Actually, if you have Elite Warrior, you can mostly ignore strength too, since it raises the encumbrance limit by an amount that increases every level. Just get it high enough to unlock all the hidden skills you care about and then forget about it.

[Student of Trinity]

Is Riposte really that good? It was great as a benefit from high Parry in Geneforge 2, but I don't think I've ever got much of it in A4 or A5. It costs a lot to get it. 25 levels of less melee damage seems to require some patience.

So why bother?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Is Riposte really that good? It was great as a benefit from high Parry in Geneforge 2, but I don't think I've ever got much of it in A4 or A5. It costs a lot to get it. 25 levels of less melee damage seems to require some patience.
So why bother?

What else are you going to spend your skill points on? On Torment, everything takes forever to kill anyway, so a few extra dice of damage won't help you win any fights. If you manage to max out both Parry and Riposte, you're fending off 75% of melee attacks. Seeing as my strategy for dealing with large numbers of enemies is basically "send out the fighter as bait, wait for enemies to cluster around him, then send in spellcasters and blast everything into oblivion", being able to fend off melee attacks is the single most important thing he has to do.

In hindsight, I'd probably have delayed getting Riposte by a few levels to put some more points in Endurance earlier on. But on the whole it worked out pretty well for me.

Besides, all the prerequisite skills are useful on their own. Parry and Blademaster are universally acknowledged as great. You do have to waste a few skill points cross-training whichever close-combat skill you're not using to get to Blademaster, but the trainer in Tranquility can help with that, the points aren't completely wasted since they go towards battle disciplines, and you will want to unlock Blademaster sooner or later. Having so much fatigue removal that you can re-use Battle Rage as soon as it wears off is pretty amazing. Once Parry and Blademaster are available, getting enough of each to open up Riposte is a no-brainer.

By the way, while we're talking about difficult-to-unlock skills, has anyone worked out a Lethal Blow build? I seem to recall someone doing calculations for Avernum 4 and concluding that if you built towards it for the entire game to the exclusion of everything else, you could probably get one or two points in it by the very end without the aid of knowledge brews.

[Randomizer]

Since A5 seems to use the same cost structure for skills as A4, I assume Lethal Blow works the same way, but you can buy knowledge brews earlier to help unlock it. It still doesn't seem that cost effective, because the extra damage isn't that helpful later in the game especially on torment.

 

Assasination in the earlier games was better because you could get it early and see results where you could easily destroy weaker monsters.

 

I never went with Riposte because the damage wasn't significant with my playing style. Parry was well worth it after Jeff nerfed bladeshield battle discipline during beta testing.

 

I still don't use archery much because I never can seem to dedicate points to build up decent damage. I use it on occasion to save spell energy, but not that much.

[Men are from Slars]

Thuryl hit the nail on the head. This is the problem with the rising-cost skill point structure: for all the attack skills, every point you train matters less than the previous point, because you are increasing your damage output by tinier and tinier percents. Whether or not the enemies have huge HP totals due to Torment, increasing your average damage output before armor from 80 to 82.5 is not particularly important.

 

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

The fact that pole weapons cost more skill points to train in means that the bonus sliths receive to them is more valuable. Granted, the nephil receives the same number of bonus skill points, but half of these are wasted due to being allocated to throw weapons.

Unless you are planning on buying both skills anyway, there is nothing inherently better about receiving the higher cost skill as a bonus. The better skill to receive as the bonus, is the one that helps you more. For a pole fighter this is pole skill, for an archer it's bow skill.

 

Also, it isn't quite half if you are going by effective skill point cost. This table relates the skill point value of the poles or bows/throws racial bonuses, activated to a +4 level, given different levels of purchased skill:

 

Code:

Poles    B/Ts     Slith   NephilBought   Bought   Value   Value0        0        18      204        0        26      200        4        18      364        4        26      36

 

Quote:

Quote:

This would hand the prize to Bows straight out in my mind, if it wasn't for one thing: Blademaster is an amazing skill in A5 because of its impact on Battle Disciplines, and Elite Warrior is an amazing advantage.

 

I'm not sure I follow you here. While an archer can't train in Blademaster because they don't have the pre-requisite skills, it's not like an all out melee warrior who is min-maxing would either, considering that you need to invest in both melee and pole, which is wasteful.

 

You can get oodles of Blademaster with Divine Blood (which also gives you a bonus to magery and sharpshooter, how convenient!) And even a dedicated archer can still select Elite Warrior as a trait, you really can't go wrong with extra parry and blademaster.

Right, this was more or less my point. Since Elite Warrior is useful even for a dedicated archer, a pole attack is worth considering for your DT/EW character; a Slith DT/EW will have a quite usable pole attack without any skill point investment at all, freeing you up to do, for example, Thuryl's riposte ridiculousness.

[Ghaldring]

Slarty, do you think that spending all those skill points to access riposte is a sound min-max strategy?

 

And is the bonus %hit and damage the nephil receive to ranged attacks more valuable than the inherent damage resistances the slith receive (on torment mode, that is)?

 

By the way, what sort of party did you use to beat Dorikas/General Redmark?

[Randomizer]

Sliths receive a flat 10% bonus resistance to fire at the start. Nice at the start, but not worth it later. Now the health bonus makes up for the level that you will be behind nephils and 2 levels that you will be behind humans by the end of the game.

 

Sliths and nephils receive an increase in their combat skills of 2 at the start and 1 every 8 levels (Jeff reduced it from 6 because of battle disciplines).

[Ghaldring]

Sliths receive a 20% bonus to fire, acid and poison.

[Toby-Linn]

A good reason for not making all your party members sliths is that you probably wouldn't have all the quests available to you.

 

I'm not sure whether it happens in Avernum 5, but as an example - in Avernum 3 when I created an all human party I missed out on several quests from a Nephil village.

 

Also, in my current Avernum 3 party (which includes all 3 races) I miss out on several quests from humans cause I do have a Nephil and Slith in my party.

[Dikiyoba]

Can't you temporarily leave behind your nephil and slith and get those human-only quests? (Of course, for roleplaying reasons, Dikiyoba could see why you wouldn't want to.)

[Toby-Linn]

Isn't the only way to leave them behind is to delete the characters and then add them back in?

 

That seems sorta messy to me...

[Dikiyoba]

You can leave your characters behind in certain places and pick them up later. There should be a room in Fort Emergence where you can do that, and probably other places as well.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Toby-Linn]

Oh of course, I've never used that option.

 

I suppose I could do that. Thanks for the suggestion!

[Men are from Slars]

Ghaldring is correct about the slith resistances. And no, I don't hold those resistances to be particularly valuable. You take weapon damage A LOT more often than you take fire, acid, or poison damage. The resistances are nice, but don't make a big difference. If you are min-maxing skill points, the bows bonus is slightly better. Now add in the fact that Sliths lose about 2 levels compared to nephils AND act in a different order in battle due to gymnastics -- which can be extremely irritating -- and the case is closed.

 

But like I said, it isn't totally crazy to use a slith, nephils are just more compelling.

[Ghaldring]

Slarty:

Quote:

Ghaldring is correct about the slith resistances.

 

Of course. I found them in one of your previous posts.

 

Quote:

And no, I don't hold those resistances to be particularly valuable. You take weapon damage A LOT more often than you take fire, acid, or poison damage.

 

I'm not so sure I agree with you here. Fire, acid and poison damage play a significant role in A5. Sliths would benefit when fighting slimes and fire breathing monsters (lava bats, fire lizards, dragons), and weapons which drip venom or acid.

 

Quote:

The resistances are nice, but don't make a big difference. If you are min-maxing skill points, the bows bonus is slightly better. Now add in the fact that Sliths lose about 2 levels compared to nephils AND act in a different order in battle due to gymnastics -- which can be extremely irritating -- and the case is closed.

 

You've almost sold me on the usefulness of bows, but I'm still doubtful.

 

My lvl 13 nephil is currently killing goblins in Tranquility. He has bows 7, melee 5, blademaster 3, and dexterity 2. The Yew Bow and Radiant Blade (+10% to hit) are equipped. Yet his chance to hit is only 54%, while he always hits with a melee attack. What gives? My combined melee and blademaster skill is only one higher than my bows skill, yet I'm hitting far more often with melee than bows.

 

Note that the Radiant Blade adds the 10% bonus to hit to both the Radiant Blade, as well as ranged attacks. I've tested it.

 

By the way, the 'Elite Warrior' trait adds a +5% chance to hit on ranged attacks for my nephil. Is that normal?

[Earth]

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

My lvl 13 nephil is currently killing goblins in Tranquility. He has bows 7, melee 5, blademaster 3, and dexterity 2. The Yew Bow and Radiant Blade (+10% to hit) are equipped. Yet his chance to hit is only 54%, while he always hits with a melee attack. What gives? My combined melee and blademaster skill is only one higher than my bows skill, yet I'm hitting far more often with melee than bows.

Hitting percentage raises when you get better bows. My party has bows between 7 and 10 and sharpshooter between 11 and 13 and all have best/near best bows and hitting percentage is high. Against Giants and Ogres I had better hitting % than against smaller enemies (not to mention Skeletons since those blocked hits very well).

[Men are from Slars]

You didn't list Strength. Strength : Dexterity :: Swords : Bows. Also you didn't list base weapon bonuses (which = the min damage listed for the damage range in the weapon info box). Add up

 

Sword Bonus + Str + Melee Weapons + Blademaster

 

and

 

Bow Bonus + Dex + Bow Skill + Sharpshooter

 

If the Radiant Blade has a listed +10% to hit effect, then add +2 to the sword listing. Now multiply each by 5%; that's the bonus to-hit you'll get with each. I'm guessing the sword has a higher bonus, and you also pumped strength up a few points.

 

You obviously don't have Divinely Touched, which would give you an extra 20% at that level. Getting a few levels of bow skill (presumably you haven't spent skill points on any, since you have 4 for race plus 3 that you could have paid cash for) would get you another 10-20%. And why would you ever not be blessed?

[Ghaldring]

Wait, so Strength adds to the % hit. It doesn't say that in the ingame description! "Influences how much you can carry, and how much damage your blows do in combat."

 

But I'll take your word for it, so with no further ado:

 

Sword:

Sword bonus (minimum damage) = 16

Strength = 7

Melee = 5

Blademaster = 3

10% to hit enchantment from sword = 2

 

Overall %to hit = 165.

 

Bow:

Bow bonus = 5

Dexterity = 2

Bow skill = 7

Sharpshooter = 0

10% to hit enchantment from sword = 2

5% to hit from elite warrior (?) = 1

 

Overall %to hit = 85%

 

Edit: Whoops, I forgot that armour substracts from hit chance. My armour subtracts 15 + 5 + 5 = 25

 

Overall % to hit = 60%

 

That's close to 54%. But where has the other 6% gone?

 

Quote:

And why would you ever not be blessed?

 

I'm not blessing myself on purpose, so I can hit less often and thus know the %to hit factor quicker.

 

 

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

That's close to 54%. But where has the other 6% gone?

Monsters have Defense and Dexterity too. That's why they're more likely to get initiative later on.

[Ghaldring]

They are pretty lame monsters if they only have a point of dexterity.

[Nioca]

Plus, I think there's an inherent accuracy level as well. I say that because early on, people with minimal skill with a weapon and a weak weapon can still land several blows. So it's actually that you're underestimating the hit chance without deductions.

[Men are from Slars]

The default accuracy level, if all your stats and your enemy's stats are zero, is 50%, I believe.

 

Oh -- I forgot about Luck. Luck gives you +2% per point both to hit and to dodge. Do you have 2 points of Luck, Ghaldring? That plus a 2 Dex goblin would get you your result.

 

The in-game descriptions, BTW, are notoriously AWFUL. That is to say, many of them are accurate, but some of them aren't, and all of them are vague. They are not reliable -- do not rely on them!

[Ghaldring]

No, I don't have any luck on that character.