Discussion: The best weapon in the Game

[lompo]

Originally posted by gnomethingy
One more I think is rofholmes axe.. buy it at the copper coronet and its basicly a +3 throwable mace of disruption

I think you mean Azuredge. great thr.axe but only for good aligned char.

[bullions27]

RE:

Well if you want to get technical with this subject there are a couple of things to consider with each weapon:

a) Thac0 bonus, b) total damage done by weapon, c) speed factor (trivial if you use haste a lot and are high level), and d) miscellaneous quirks or perks. Personally none of the items in the game are overly difficult to get so it's not really a factor.

Anyhoo, I'm sure the typical BG fan will know what the formula is to hit anything in the game (Thac0 - AC = to hit roll).

I'll use the Celestial Fury as an example since it's a popular weapon and it also has some bonuses. The sword is thac0 bonus 3, 1d10+3, 5% of 20 additonal electrical damage.

Fighter A has a Thac0 of 20 and he is facing Fighter B with AC 10. Normal strength and normal dexterity with no bonuses. Fighter A uses Celestial Fury.

Thac0 17 - AC 10 = Fighter A needs 7 or higher to hit.

Critical Damage = max. damage x 2
Average Damage = (min. damage + max. damage + bonuses) / 2

Using above equations we get:

crit. damage = (13 x 2) = 26
avg. damage = ((4 + 13 + 0) / 2)) = 8.5

for the Celestial Fury. Now,

x = to hit roll = thac0 - AC
y = hit %
z = normal hit %
critical hit = constant 0.05 unless you have points into unique weapon styles)

Using basic math,

1 - (x/20) = y
y - 0.05 = z

z(avg. damage) + 0.05(crit. damage) = total damage

This will total out to 6.40 total damage. In addition, the Celestial Fury has a 5% chance of doing that electrical damage. This is for every hit. 5% of the 65% hits will give you 3.25 number of times it will do the electrical damage which turns out to be a total of .65 more damage.

So the Celestial Fury does roughly 7.05 damage per swing. Using formulas above we get these stats for other weapons.

Carsomyr = 9.75 damage, 13.5 against CE target
Crom Faeyr = 17.2 damage
Flail of Ages = 7.45
Stonefire / Frostreaver = 6.90
Blackblood = 6.75
Equalizer = 3.5 ~ 7.7

Of course this doesn't take into consideration of stuns, slows, but does with poison done over time and such. This was probably brought up in an earlier post and if so ignore this all together.

[Bruce Lee]

critical hit does not mean max damage * 2 but damage rolled twice.

[bullions27]

RE:

Critical Hits in AD&D is damage x 2. It's in the PnP system and should be in game as well.

[Thrar]

it is certainly not maxdmg * 2.
as there often occur odd numbers, not the whole damage can be doubled. i never thought about that they might just roll 2 times, could b. my assumption was that maybe only the roll, or roll+weapon bonus, or roll+STR bonus r doubled, and STR/weapon respectively added later.
gonna write down how much dmg my fighters do, maybe that gives a clue.
drow dont have physical resistance, do they? they will b the ones i try on...

[bullions27]

Re:

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by odd numbers. Critical damage in AD&D is max damage of weapon * 2. So if Celestial Fury is 1d10+3 that means it max damage is 13 plus strength bonus and then the result is doubled. Added damage like + elemental damage or random effects do not apply to this. It is not weapon swung twice. Otherwise on a critical hit it would state in the game with two equations (if you set option to see to hit rolls) when you critical.

[Glod]

On crits I should double check but I belive its all staight up damage that gets doubled ( not side effects like elemental/poison/etc) but including str/proficiecy/etc bonus. This double the max damage business is not how I thought it worked. Pretty sure I've seen different damages for crits in identical situations (but guess I'm not 100 percent).

That chart for numbers giving damage should really assume something about the str bonus of the wielder (for example assume girdle of frost giant str for any reasonable comparison with Crom). It looked like you assumed no str bonuses, though if thats the case then Crom would be doing a lot more than 17.2 damage per swing on average. With the 7 to hit from str and the 5 from crom you'd only miss on critical misses in your hypothetical. When you balance that with critical hits you'd come up with something very close to normal hit damage 14[str]+8[avg of 2d4+3]+5 (electrical) = 27 for Crom.



My top 3:
1. Crom -- you pay for it, but then the best always costs more =)
2. FoA -- great against tough meleers due to slow, great against mages due to elemental damages. Plus, the upgrades in ToB make this just do silly piles of damage.
3. Celestial Fury -- stun of course
4. Carsomyr mostly for the MR
5. gonna go outside the standards for this and name one I haven't seen mentioned yet... sling of seeking. Jahiera uses this plus a str girdle to do some great damage despite being a sort of second tier fighter. When a missile weapon hits in for 17.5 on average its a beautiful thing (with +2 bullets, 2stars in sling, stone giant girdle).


Edited to add:
I just ran a test on criticals (poor minsc was my test dummy). I'm pretty certain now damage on a critical is just 2 times a normal damage roll including all skill/str/weapon bonuses. It doesn't affect bonus elemental/poison damage of course. I know I've seen odd amounts of damage before on criticals but I now suspect that it was probably on creatures who are partially resistant to weapon damage. In my test all of the 20 or so crits were even amounts of damage and the total damage from the biggest crits required that all the str/etc bonuses got doubled.

[UserUnfriendly]

Glod, try this...get sling of everard, or any +4 or higher sling, like avoleen, and put high + bullets in it...it will exceed sling of seeking. any sling with bullets will add str modifier.. try avoleen with watchers keep +4 bullets...whoo hoo...

[Glod]

Hrm. Love those undocumented features.

The description of the sling of seeking clearly states that most slings dont give str bonuses, but in fact it seems they all do, even the non-magic ones. Bleh now I'm going to feel guilty unless I go hack out the str damage on the other slings when I use them. This makes slings way better than any other missile weapon for any normal situation (i.e. when you don't need elemental attacks), and in fact better than many melee weapons, especially once the bag of plenty comes along. So with the rules as they are I'll replace my #5 SoA weapon with sling of arvoreen.

[bullions27]

It looked like you assumed no str bonuses, though if thats the case then Crom would be doing a lot more than 17.2 damage per swing on average

Actually I did factor in strength bonuses if the weapon used gives the bonus. The damage shown by the weapons are done by a Fighter with no inherent strength bonus.

[bullions27]

If a character rolls a "natural" 20 to hit (that is, the attack roll before modifiers are applied is a 20) then a critical hit occurs and damage for that attack will be doubled.

Well I stand corrected. Be that as it may, it doesn't throw off the math.

[island007]

Hi,

Your formula is correct, however your assumptions are biased making the final computation skewd. You should assume the fighter will at least have the frost giant girdle for all calculations other than the Crom Fayer. This will change the value of "z" for most weapons, some drastically others marginally. Also, the additional damage will increase the value for the dmg avg and etc.

With that one ajustment the Celestral Fury will do total damage of 17.05 slightly less than the Crom Fayer, but drastically better than how you presented it. Plus you may stun them.

Thanks

[Glod]

I'll agree with island on that. For anything that you're comparing with crom you should use frost giant girdle as the default str (though of course crom lets you wear one of the defensive girdles but I would count that as a side advantage akin to stun or dispel etc).

I dont see how you got such a low number for Crom if you were factoring in its str effect. As I mentioned in the earlier post, Crom hits for 27 on average (just using str bonus and weapon damage) and you'd only miss on a 1 in that scenario. Did you omit the to hit bonus from str?

I'm think its a good idea to run numbers like that to get a basic sense of the damage tradeoffs for different weapons but we need some clear and reasonable background assumptions. I might go with something like level 13 ftr (about middle of game expwise also the late option dual-classing level) vs AC -4 (slayer's ac I think) and 2 stars proficiency. That actually works out to almost the same to hit as your example =) but gives a better motivation to why you chose those numbers rather than doing level 1 fighter vs naked bonusless ac.

So with these assumptions ... (level 13 ftr, 2 stars, ac -4, 21 str), and assuming no resistances.

Avg damage per swing is:
Crom 28.75
FoA 17.05
CFury 16.35
Carsomyr 20.25 (24.75vs CE)
Stonefire 16.3
Arvoreen 15.6 (assuming +1 bullets and 17 dex).
Impaler 22.0
Staff of Magi 10.85

Realistically the 2h weapons would be about 2 points higher since you'd likely have 2h weapon proficiency slots.

[Willa_Ly]

Do any of you guys (gals?) think that the impailer is any good?
1d6+3+10.

[bullions27]

RE:

But why would you add a STR bonus if the weapon is not supposed to have one? Rather then factor in a strength Girdle, why not just make Celestial Fury STR 25 to even out Crom Faeyr? The 25 Strength is a bonus to the Crom Faeyr. This makes it unique. It's like giving Crom Faeyr the ability to Stun and double damage to undead so it's on level ground with Celestial Fury and Daystar.

My computations are based on a regular Fighter with no strength bonuses, one slot proficiency for weapon in question, and against an AC 10 opponent. Increasing any of those variables would change the results but the percentages between comparisons will remain the same.

As for the Crom Faeyr, I did the calculations wrong. I forgot to add in the +8 to hit bonus with Crom Faeyr. Damage is actually 22.3

By the way, your results are pretty much the same as mine except we gave our subjects different variables (adding in misc. items and numbers).

[island007]

To give a more realistic comparrison. Your free to do what you want. I never placed much value in Mauler's Arm; however under your assumptions it becomes a tier 1 weapon. Don't get me wrong, I like Crom Frayer. I always make it and put it in the offhand of 2 weapon weilding fighter. Normally I have Celestral Fury of Fail of Ages in main hand.

Thanks

[Glod]

We should be trying to compare the value of the weapons in "real world" (yeah yeah BG isnt the real world =P) conditions not in a vacuum. Implicit in the "best weapons in SoA" question is "for use in SoA". You're computing damage per attack for a peasent attacking another peasent. What is more useful is the question "what are the damage per attack numbers under circumstances that are likely to actually prevail during the use of the weapon in SoA?". The "best weapon" will likely go to one of the best damage dealers who will in turn likely have good str (either naturally or through glove/belts/potions/spells). Now there is no 1 set of numbers that suffices for the range of battles fought in SoA but we should be shooting for some kind of plausible middle ground numbers.

The overall results of the 2 sets of assumptions are quite different for comparisons with Crom (or Angurvadal if we did that). Your damage formula is slightly off since criticals are straight double damage and the hit chance variable you compute is .05 too low (if x is to hit roll needed then the formula for chance of hit is y = 1 - (x-1)/20 [ for 0<x<21] ... for example an 11 to hit means a 50 percent chance which is 1 - (11-1)/20 = 1 - 10/20 = .5 ). Correcting for those things and using your stated assumptions the number for Crom is actually 26.75 per swing (misses only on a 1 which is almost cancelled out by the double damage on a critical except the electrical damage isnt doubled 27 = 14(from str) + 8 (from 2d4+3) + 5 (electrical) per hit). Meanwhile the correct number for celestial fury would be 6.125 meaning that Cfury does just under 23 percent of the damage of Crom. The ratio of damage between celestial fury and crom in the peasent vs peasent model is about 2.5 times as large as it is with the one I gave. There are situtations where chance at stun is better than 75 percent more damage, there are a lot fewer where the chance to stun is better than 336% more damage.

[bullions27]

RE:

You're computing damage per attack for a peasent attacking another peasent. What is more useful is the question "what are the damage per attack numbers under circumstances that are likely to actually prevail during the use of the weapon in SoA?".

The calculations are for weapon comparisons. If you change one variable you must do so for every other variable so it doesn't really matter if Peasant fights Peasant, or Fighter STR 20 fights Fighter STR 20. Weapon A will always do more damage than Weapon B because that is how their stats were figured so really, it doesn't matter whose hand is wielding it. Example, Peasant A and Peasant B uses Celestial Fury +3 on Troll C. They then switch to Cuthroat +4 on Troll C. None of the variables change but Celestial Fury will ALWAYS do more damage than Cuthtroat. Now we change variables keeping in mind when changing one you must do for the other. Fighter A with Frost Giant Girdle and Fighter B with Frost Giant Girdle uses Celestial Fury on Troll C. They switch to Cutthroat later. The Fighters will do more damage than Peasants but regardless Celestial Fury will ALWAYS do more damage than Cutthroat. That was the point of my calculations; to rank weapons.

The only variable I didn't factor in is armor defenses like Plate, Chain, Leather or natural resistances which can affect Thac0.

As far as how I handled critical damage... I did make a mistake in stating Critical Damage = 2max.dmg. It should actually be min.dmg + max.dmg of weapon.

And I used 0.0.5 because only on a roll of 20 on a d20 (constant) do you get a critical hit and 1/20 is 0.05 (unless you want to factor in Weapon Styles which is still a Miscellaneous variable).

[The Z]

1) Silver Sword
2) Crom Faeyr
3) Celestial Fury
4) Daystar
5) Equalizer
6) Carsomyr
7) Wave
8) Flail of the Ages
9) Soul Reaver
10) Dak'kon's Zerth Blade

[Glod]

First, it is not just a question of which weapon does more damage, but how much more damage. We are weighing the damage per swing vs. other special features of the weapons. Your numbers had Crom squashing the nearest competion by ridiculous factors in damage per swing, giving the impression of a much bigger pure damage advantage from Crom than really exists.

Second, you're wrong about the idea that the weapons will always come out in the same rank. Even excluding STR affecting weapons there are to hit vs damage tradeoffs.

Consider a +1 katana vs a +3 dagger in the hands of a fighter (base thaco 8) with 3 stars prof in both weapons and 17 str.

Case 1:
vs mage (AC 4)
katana does 9.5 per swing
dagger does 8.5 per swing
Katana Wins.

Case 2:
vs fighter (AC -8)
katana does 3.8 per swing
dagger does 4.25 per swing
Dagger Wins.

You can also create big differences with STR affecting weapons depending on what you assume to be str without the weapon.

Finally, I stand by my correction to your hit chance variable (y). It is off by 5 percent.