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Why is the defender called +5?
It's (only) a +3 weapon!

It's one of those BG mysteries. I guess it's considered +5 because of the +2 AC bonus. What's even wierder, is that it has no enchantment level though it is considered magical.

What do you meant with enchantment level?

The enchantment of a weapon is the amount of magic it have. Bonus to THAC0 and Damage does not automatically makes the weapon enchanted - it could just be from good craftmanship that grants the bonus and not from magical means.

There are no enchanted weapons in BG1, since there is no creature that requires enchantment to hit. The Defender does become a +5 enchanted weapon in BG2.

You can trace the origins of +3 and +5 defender weapons back to pen and paper dungeons and dragons. The premise of these weapons was that before each round of combat, the weilder could decide how many +'s to give to hit and damage rolls and how many +'s to give to AC. The idea, I've always believed, is you can use the weapon to deliver a finishing blow or parry with the weapon to give you an oustanding AC thus saving your hide.

Rightily-dightily there Ned.

The Defender weapons could shift their total pluses about from to hit and damage, and AC. In fact there was a +6 defender in 1st Edition D&D, which seems a bit sick to me.

So...Drizzt's scimitar defender is indeed a +5 weapon, but it is frozen with 2 pluses in AC, and 3 in to hit and damage.