very wimpy backstabs?

Isilion · Post by **Isilion** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 6:15 am

I'm RPing an assissin who is now level 19 and in the underdark with Aerie (his lover) and Imoen who he saved ASAP
Recently i started noticing something weird, my backstabs almost do no damage, usually 49 or sometimes 55 or 61 damage.
It wasn't like that earlier, I'm fairly sure i've seen 70+ and 80+ non-crit backstabs before.
Let's do the math:
lvl 19: backstab multiplier 6
STR 19 (thief from BG1 with 18 STR and used a tome there): +7 damage (not multiplied)
assassin bonus: +1 damage
staff of Rhynn: D6 + 4 damage
2H weapon style bonus: +1 damage
49 - 7 (STR) = 42
42 /6 (multiplier) = 7
7 - 1 (ass) - 1 (2H) - 4 (weapon) = 1
so basically I'm almost alwats rolling ones? 55 would be 2 and the rare 61 is 3
after trying and trying and trying i just can't do any high damage backstabs anymore, and 49 is far more common than 55 which is more common than 61. This isn't just bad luck unless I'm extreeeemely unlucky.
it is as if my damage roll is not a D6 but a D3, or to be more precise a D6 divided by 2 rounded down (with a minimum of 1). 50% of 1, 33% chance of 2 and 17% chance of 3

is anyone aware of a bug like that? and how to fix it? it's very annoying that the core mechanism of my character is broken

to make things even weirder, when i test my backstab on aerie or imoen i do get 67, 73 and 79 damage.
and another odd thing this started AFTER i reached lvl 19 and during that lvl up it stead "backstab multiplier increased by: -1", which was very odd so i checked my character sheet and saw it was still 6

vaypah · Post by **vaypah** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 12:32 pm

The things you try to backstab may have resistance to the damage type you're using. Like, for example, a Mustard Jelly has 30% damage resistance to crushing attacks.
You could check the monster resistances with the Shadow Keeper to make sure this is the case.

NocturneN · Post by **NocturneN** » Sun Aug 26, 2012 6:38 am

I was just going over the patch notes for the latest ToB patch, trying to find something about my fatigue issue (described in another thread here) when I saw this:

"* Fixes the incorrect calculation of the assassin backstab modifier when importing an assassin character from Shadows of Amn to Throne of Bhaal."

I see now that you are playing SoA... but still, have you tried upgrading to ToB and patching your game? Might do the trick? Good luck.

Isilion · Post by **Isilion** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 5:39 pm

Sorry for the slow replies. Real life can be a mess sometimes

The first time I noticed the weak backstabs was on the king of the sahuagin, so I checked his resistance stats on gamefaqs but he didn't have any. Then I saw that it was for every enemy I was attacking, and calculating back showed that almost all damage rolls were a 1. Paying more attention to the numbers in the combat log I noticed it wasn't only the backstabs, it was affecting ALL attacks.

Yes, I'm still in SoA, but have ToB and the ToB patch installed.
I also have the G3 fixes and some of the tweaks.

I have now progressed a bit further and have left the sahuagin city and entered the underdark.
I have no idea what is going on, but resting solved the problem.
But now the problem has reappeared, which is annoying. resting again will fix it, but I always try to rest as little as possible to up the challenge, and try to beat the in-game played time of previous runs.
I wonder if leveling up has caused the problem.

Isilion · Post by **Isilion** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 6:16 pm

i did a quick test and leveling up has no effect
i was suspicious because each time i level up it says "backstab multiplier increased by: -2" as if the game lowers it again to 5, forgetting i'm an assassin with 7. despite that odd message my multiplier remeains 7, luckily.
i guess that's an unrelated bug then