bow damage

[sclarke]

Hi, I'm a little confused with respect to bow damage and shots/turn calculations. I have read previous posts on this but still am trying to fully grasp it.

I have the following 3 bows:

1) a Long Bow of Lothlórien (x5) (+15,+19) <+3, +2>

+3 dexterity.
+2 shooting power.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
Feather Falling. Prevents paralysis.

2) the Short Bow of Amras (x3) (+12,+15) <+2, +1>

+2 intelligence, wisdom, dexterity.
+1 speed, shooting speed, shooting power.
Provides resistance to lightning, fire, cold.
Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
Slows your metabolism.

3) the Long Bow 'Belthronding' (x3) (+20,+22) <+3, +1>

+3 dexterity.
+1 stealth, speed, shooting speed.
Provides resistance to disenchantment.
Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.

Now, using my Seeker Arrows of Acid (4d4) (+7,+14), I get the following stats (i.e. both player basic screen info & arrow inspection info):

1) Lothlórien

Shoot to-dam +19
To-hit 102, +50
Shots 3/turn

damage/round (vs. others) 677.1

2) Amras

Shoot to-dam +15
To-hit 102, +46
Shots 4/turn

damage/round (vs. others) 491.2

2) Belthronding

Shoot to-dam +22
To-hit 102, +55
Shots 4/turn

damage/round (vs. others) 579.6

'Loth' has more damage/round but less shots/turn, whereas with 'Bel' it's the opposite. How do I distinguish which is better?

Now looking at the above, I would think that 'Loth' would give me an average 3 x 677.1 = 2031.3 damage in a single turn; and 'Bel' would give 4 x 579.6 = 2318.4

So I guess Belthronding would be the better damage dealer and I can throw away the other two?

Any help welcomed.

[takkaria]

Turns and rounds are the same thing, so Lothlorien is the highest damage dealer you have. Note that the damage per round figure is not damage per shot.

[MattB]

Surely one shot at 5x should be worse than 2 shots at 3x? (Oh, unless he's a ranger...)

[Derakon]

Surely one shot at 5x should be worse than 2 shots at 3x? (Oh, unless he's a ranger...)

Right: the OP is playing as a ranger, so they have 3 shots with the Lothlorien bow and 4 with the others.

[sclarke]

Turns and rounds are the same thing

Ok thanks for that, I was slightly confused between the two. Much like when I first started, trying to distinguish the difference between lightning and electricity.

Yep I'm playing as a ranger.

Thanks everyone!

[Timo Pietilä]

Turns and rounds are the same thing, so Lothlorien is the highest damage dealer you have. Note that the damage per round figure is not damage per shot.

Maybe terms should be rewritten here. I too was unclear if "round" is one shot or all the shots in turn. When you shoot with firearms "one round" means one shot, which can make this even more confusing IE. are you talking about ammunition or time.

Also I'm not sure which way is actually more clear to player; to show damage / shot or damage / turn because you can choose to do something else than shoot after every shot unlike with melee. For multi-shot bows the "turn border" becomes unclear. You don't actually shoot twice / turn, you use half the turn / shot.

[takkaria]

Maybe terms should be rewritten here. I too was unclear if "round" is one shot or all the shots in turn. When you shoot with firearms "one round" means one shot, which can make this even more confusing IE. are you talking about ammunition or time.

Looking at the code I actually can't work out which one it is. I assumed that for ammo it would be the same as weapons, e.g. damage per player turn, but maybe that assumption is mistaken - in the case above, Belthronding has higher +dam and more shots/turn so as OP said it should be better.

[Timo Pietilä]

Looking at the code I actually can't work out which one it is. I assumed that for ammo it would be the same as weapons, e.g. damage per player turn, but maybe that assumption is mistaken - in the case above, Belthronding has higher +dam and more shots/turn so as OP said it should be better.

Round has to be turn, otherwise those damages he reported don't make any sense even multiplied with brand like it used to be in old versions. (22+4d4+14) x3 from bow x3 from slay = 414. Without brand but with four shots that is 552 which is close to his report of 579 (I'm assuming code counts criticals in).

[sclarke]

This all made sense once I enabled show_damage.

[fishjie]

Hi can someone explain the bow damage mechanics?

I'm playing v 3.3.2

I don't see anywhere where it lists shots per turn. When I examine my Long Bow of Power I see (x3) (+6, +23)

Now I picked up a Long Bow of Extra Might (x4) (+14, +14) <+1> and it says +1 shooting power.

It'd be nice if somewhere in the manual it explained how bow damage works. Am I correct in my understanding that (x4) is a damage multiplier, and its multiplied after the +damage on the bow and the +damage on the arrow is added?

So that means for an arrow that does 1d4 damage, with the Long Bow of Extra Might it would do
(15-18)*4 = 60-72 damage per shot?

Whereas the Long Bow of Power would do
(24-27)*3 =72-81 damage per shot?

Can someone clarify or point me to any official documentation thanks! I've tried googling and this is one of the results that popped up

[Derakon]

You can always wield the bow and then 'I'nspect some arrows to see how much damage you'd do on average with them. This is more reliable than trying to do the math yourself, as it takes into account critical hits and bonus effects (e.g. Arrows of Flame vs. a non-fire-resistant enemy).

But yes, the x3/x4 is a damage multiplier. Damage is basically given as (ammo dice + ammo to-dam + bow to-dam) * (bow multiplier + best relevant brand/slay modifier).

[mushroom patch]

You can always wield the bow and then 'I'nspect some arrows to see how much damage you'd do on average with them. This is more reliable than trying to do the math yourself, as it takes into account critical hits and bonus effects (e.g. Arrows of Flame vs. a non-fire-resistant enemy).

But yes, the x3/x4 is a damage multiplier. Damage is basically given as (ammo dice + ammo to-dam + bow to-dam) * (bow multiplier + best relevant brand/slay modifier).

O rly? I thought it was ((ammo dice)*(best brand factor) + ammo to-dam + bow to-dam)*(bow multiplier)...

[Derakon]

O rly? I thought it was ((ammo dice)*(best brand factor) + ammo to-dam + bow to-dam)*(bow multiplier)...

No, bows work differently from melee, for whatever reason. Brands and slays on ammo would be borderline useless if they only applied to dice damage.

It used to be that brands/slays were a separate multiplier, so it was (dice + enchantment) * (launcher multiplier) * (brand/slay multiplier). It took us a shockingly long time to realize how broken this was. There were rangers putting out 1500 damage/round thanks to brands and extra shots.

[mushroom patch]

I seem to recall that tomenet arrows work the way I described (but I might be mistaken) and that nevertheless the difference between branded and unbranded was nontrivial, like 20% more damage for arrows with good dice. Anyway, good to know. Thanks.