Damage/round calculation

[Chud]

When calculating damage/round for missile weapons that give extra shots, is a "round" a shot, or a turn? So, if it tells me my average damage/round is 149 with my bow of extra shots that gives me 2 shots per turn, should I expect to deal out 150-ish or 300-ish points of damage between monster actions?

Thanks!

[Chud]

Actually this is probably a dumb question - sorry. I imagine it must be per turn, just as with multiple melee blows. Nevermind...

[Goldbug]

Actually this is probably a dumb question - sorry. I imagine it must be per turn, just as with multiple melee blows. Nevermind...

I don't think it's a dumb question at all. In fact I've wondered about this as well.

My impression is that when my @ has 2 shots per turn and I fire an arrow I only use 1 arrow and that action uses 0.5 of a turn.

[Magnate]

I don't think it's a dumb question at all. In fact I've wondered about this as well.

My impression is that when my @ has 2 shots per turn and I fire an arrow I only use 1 arrow and that action uses 0.5 of a turn.

That's right. The inspection of weapons and launchers used to show damage per blow/shot, but then fractional blows came along and the mental arithmetic got too hard, so weapons started showing damage per round. Even then the maths was still too hard so launchers started showing damage per round as well, for consistency.

[Malak Darkhunter]

This is what I don't understand, now im playing v4 but I assume it's the same, take a dagger 3d4 +0+0 does 3 blows per round avg damage round 18 vs a lance 2d8 +0+0 at 1 blow per round ag damge per round 12? Or a bastard sword 3d4 avg damge per round 12? where is the strength bonus on heavy weapons?

[Derakon]

Weight has nothing to do with your strength bonus; it is applied equally regardless of weapon weight. You can see your bonus to melee on your character sheet -- the "Fight" values apply equally to ranged and melee combat, "Melee" is melee-only (counts pluses on your weapon, basically), and "Shoot" is ranged-only.

I'd guess you're getting an off-weapon bonus to damage of 3 points, assuming your dagger is actually 1d4. Average dice damage for that dagger is 2.5, yielding 10.5 damage to be explained via off-weapon boosts and critical hits. The lance and bastard sword don't make sense though; they should be getting better critical hits (since crit quality does increase with weapon weight) but by my calculations aren't getting anything; lance average damage from dice is 9 and bastard sword is 7.5.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Weight has nothing to do with your strength bonus; it is applied equally regardless of weapon weight. You can see your bonus to melee on your character sheet -- the "Fight" values apply equally to ranged and melee combat, "Melee" is melee-only (counts pluses on your weapon, basically), and "Shoot" is ranged-only. The values you see when inspecting the weapon do take into account the quality of critical hits you get with the weapon, though, and those do vary with weapon weight. Heavier weapons get better criticals, which slightly boosts their damage output compared to light ones, all else being equal.

If heavier weapons have a boost to better criticals why do they less than their hit die? If a lance is 2d8=16+ strength then why is the avg damage per round saying 12 points of damage per round, don't get that, beased on that the calculator is saying it does less than it's hit die.

[Zyphyr]

If heavier weapons have a boost to better criticals why do they less than their hit die? If a lance is 2d8=16+ strength then why is the avg damage per round saying 12 points of damage per round, don't get that, beased on that the calculator is saying it does less than it's hit die.

You appear to be misunderstanding the notation/what it means. 2d8 means roll 2 8 sided dice and add the results. You get two numbers in the range 1 to 8 and add them, giving a result in the 2 to 16 range (average 9). Only on a perfect roll will it produce 16 damage,and that will only occur one time in 64 (both rolls coming up 8).

The average damage shown starts with the average roll result.

Then any flat bonuses (+Damage on the weapon/other items and your bonus from strength) are added.

Next, the chance of a critical and the effects of said critical are used to increase the average - if 10% of the time you will do 50% extra damage, the average is increased by 5% ( .10 * .50 = .05 = 5%). [ numbers chosen for example purposes only, I don't know what the actual numbers are likely to be and I don't feel like digging to find them out ]. That is your average damage/blow.

And then at the end, that is multiplied by blows/round to get the reported damage/round.

[buzzkill]

If heavier weapons have a boost to better criticals why do they less than their hit die? If a lance is 2d8=16+ strength then why is the avg damage per round saying 12 points of damage per round, don't get that, beased on that the calculator is saying it does less than it's hit die.

2d8= (1 thru 8) + (1 thru 8) = 9 on average, not 16.

[Malak Darkhunter]

2d8= (1 thru 8) + (1 thru 8) = 9 on average, not 16.

I was adding totals, why is a plain dagger avg 18.4 point s of damage per round at 3 blows per round? If I add 1d4x3 I only get 12 with strength bonus maybe reaching about 18 but, this is horribly unbalanced. If a lance 2d8 wich total is 16 max can only avg 12 per round with strength bonus, then it seems to me that light weapons can do more blows per round and damage. I'm not happy with this, I did a rebalance of weapon Hit die for my version of 2.7.8, I think I'm going to bring those changes into my copy of v3.3.2, i feel it worked better.

[Malak Darkhunter]

You appear to be misunderstanding the notation/what it means. 2d8 means roll 2 8 sided dice and add the results. You get two numbers in the range 1 to 8 and add them, giving a result in the 2 to 16 range (average 9). Only on a perfect roll will it produce 16 damage,and that will only occur one time in 64 (both rolls coming up 8).

The average damage shown starts with the average roll result.

Then any flat bonuses (+Damage on the weapon/other items and your bonus from strength) are added.

Next, the chance of a critical and the effects of said critical are used to increase the average - if 10% of the time you will do 50% extra damage, the average is increased by 5% ( .10 * .50 = .05 = 5%). [ numbers chosen for example purposes only, I don't know what the actual numbers are likely to be and I don't feel like digging to find them out ]. That is your average damage/blow.

And then at the end, that is multiplied by blows/round to get the reported damage/round.

So based on this your basically saying that lighter weapons gets more blows per round and have a higher critical chance obviously since their damage is being boosted because of that, heavy weapons are getting the shaft, that where this is unbalanced heavy weapons should have the higher criticals chance with a boost to their damage to compensate for their lack of blows.


My feelings on this, basic weapons need to be redone, Each weapon should be unique, with different hit die and weight and criticals, how many 2d5's do you see? Make them unique and different.

[Zyphyr]

So based on this your basically saying that lighter weapons gets more blows per round and have a higher critical chance obviously since their damage is being boosted because of that, heavy weapons are getting the shaft, that where this is unbalanced heavy weapons should have the higher criticals chance with a boost to their damage to compensate for their lack of blows.

No, light weapons have lower crit chances/effects. The light weapons big advantage is that the Flat Value items (+Damage and Strength) get applied multiple times per round.

Comparing a 1d4 (avg 2.5) with 3 blows to a 2d8 (avg 9)with one blow, and not factoring in Crits:

At +0 damage, the 1d4 does 7.5 and the 2d8 does 9.
At +1, they do 10.5 (3.5/blow) and 10
At +2, 13.5 (4.5/blow) and 11
At +3, 16.5 (5.5/blow) and 12
At +4, 19.5 (6.5/blow) and 13
etc...

THAT is why heavy weapons suck early on. They are only viable in a few cases :
1)You are getting multiple blows with them (late game)
2)You have stats low enough that you only get 1 blow even with light weapons. Of course, that means that the heaviest weapons aren't viable because you can't properly wield them.
3)You have an extremely good heavy and the only lights you can find suck.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Hhhhm thanks for the clarification, makes since but i would like to see something that makes heavy weapons a little more useful at early stages, you have to pay a lot more for them afterall, it becomes a waste of money.

Just to be curious how does O combat work?

[Derakon]

For what it's worth, Malak, my hobbit paladin in v4 currently gets at best 1.6 blows/round with really light weapons, because his starting STR and DEX weren't that great. So the weapons I've used so far:

* A shortsword with +7 damage (1.3 blows/round)
* A maul
* A halberd with the "massive" affix (4d6 weapon)

Obviously if I had my druthers I'd rather be using a light weapon that got multiple blows/round, but that's simply not an option for me. At least in v4 (where you have fewer allocation points at the start to set up your character), you aren't guaranteed to get multiple blows/round right out the gate. At least, not in a meaningful fashion. I suspect it's limited to warriors or the more physical hybrid classes with well-aligned races (e.g. dunadan rogue).

[Nick]

Just to be curious how does O combat work?

Well, say you have a 2d5 (+10, +10) weapon. You get two 1d5 rolls, for an average damege of 3+3 = 6. Then each +1 to deadliness is an extra 5% damage, so +10 would mean you add 50%, for an average damage of 9/blow.

Then if you get a critical, you get extra dice - so a basic crit would get you one extra dice for an average (3+50%) = 4.5.

So the 2 big differences are

1. The second plus adds a fraction of the dice damage, rather than a flat amount and
2. Criticals give extra dice, with the same to-deadliness addition.

Both of these mean that big dice weapons are more valuable.