interesting findings about speed weapons

[subtledoctor]

I added an IWDEE-specific change to my mod recently, and I though you IR guys might find it interesting. IWD has a bunch of "speed weapons" like Belm. Depending on random drops, you can get TWO "Long Swords of Action +4," each of which gives a +1 bonus to APR. Imagine two

Belms, and both +4... crazy. Some balance-minded players on the Beamdog forums actually complained, because these are much more powerful than they were in vanilla IWD, when you couldn't dual-wield two weapons.

 

My response was to edit these weapons to SET base APR to 2, rather than giving bonus APR. My intent was, the APR effects wouldn't stack, so you would only get 3 APR even when wielding both at the same time.

 

The results, however, are much more interesting.

 

Turns out, the "set APR" equipping effect does NOT set the *character's* base APR... it sets the *weapon's* base APR. Equip a Long Sword of Action (LSoA) in your main hand, and you get 2 APR. Add a short sword in your off-hand, and you get 3 APR. Switch them: short sword in main hand and LSoA in off-hand, still 3 APR. All of this is expected.

 

But when you dual-wield two LSoAs, you get 4 APR. Unexpected! I can only conclude that you are getting 2 base main-hand APR plus 2 base off-hand APR.. Which in turns means that, when you have a short sword in main hand and LSoA in off-hand, you were actually getting 1 main-hand APR and 2 off-hand APR. The game doesn't tell you this - it only shows your total APR, it doesn't tell you how many attacks come from each hand.

 

Let's add weapon specialization into the mix. Say you have GM in short swords, with BG2EE rules, so an extra +1 APR for GM. Now: equip a short sword in your main hand and a LSoA in your off-hand: you get 4 APR total. Again, I think this is really 2 main-hand plus 2 off-hand.

 

Switch them: LSoA in main-hand and GM short sword in off-hand. Now your total APR drops to 3. My conclusion: APR bonuses for weapon specialization do not work for off-hand weapons.

 

I find this all to be fascinating, and I think this system is more fun and balanced than vanilla. Another thing my mod does is give daggers 3/2 base APR... my intent was that a RR-modded thief could get 5/2 APR when dual-wielding daggers, but in reality they get a full 3 APR! Which is great.

 

The immediate practical upshot that IR might care about, is that this change means you can limit cheesy abuse of off-handing Belm in BG2. Just switch it to set base APR to 2, and it will only give you extra attacks with itself, not with the FoA or Crom Faeyr.

[Demivrgvs]

Wow, this would be great, but does it apply only to EE engine?

[Fiann of the Silver Hand]

Do you know if the ToBEx component affecting (APR + off-hand) is included in the EEs?

Attacking

TobEx makes the following changes to the standard attack action:

With X/2 attacks, the attack that occurs once every two rounds now always occurs every two rounds (rather than a random probability of the attack taking place every single round)
With 3/2 attacks, the attack that occurs once every two rounds now always uses the offhand if an offhand weapon is present (rather than the offhand never being used)

Option: TobEx gives the option of making all attack animations genuine statistical attacks.

 

[subtledoctor]

I happen to be playing IWDEE at the moment, but I have a BGT game I can test on at home.

 

I have to think it works the same though - I don't think Beamdog changed the "set APR" opcode. Or, actually they did, but I think it was only to adopt the TobEx fix to cap APR at 10, instead of wrapping around and giving you 1 when you go over 10. Something like that.

 

Anyway I'll test this in BGT in the next day or two.

 

(If anyone (kreso??) wants to test before me, the procedure would be simple:

 

1) install the "IWO" component of my Might & Guile mod

 

2) build a fighter with specialization in short swords but only proficiency in daggers

 

3) - test dual-wielding 2 short swords: should get 5/2 APR

- test 2 daggers: should get 3 APR

- test main-hand short sword and off-hand dagger: should get 3 APR

- test main-hand dagger and off-hand short sword: should get 5/2 APR

[subtledoctor]

@Fiann that's very interesting, I didn't know TobEx did that. But I'm not sure it explains this - with 2 daggers each setting base APR to 3/2, my APR shows as 3. With 3 APR there are no half-attacks, so would the behavior you posted even matter?

 

Unless each 3/2 base APR is calculated separately (applies to the weapon, instead of the character, like I said), in which case... does that mean you would end up getting 1 main-hand plus 1 off-hand in round one, and then 1 main-hand plus *3* off-hand in round 2?? (Because both of the half attacks would wait til round two?) That would not be ideal. Testing is definitely called for.

[Fiann of the Silver Hand]

It's been a while since I did any mechanics testing. I do remember I used this in conjunction with ToBEx. Not sure if it will help, but just in case.

 

ITM Extended Header

 

0x0014 THAC0 bonus

A successful hit will always occur if any of the conditions below is true

• This field is set to 32767
• The target creature(s) is STATE_HELPLESS
• The target is affected by time stop

[subtledoctor]

1) install the "IWO" component of my Might & Guile mod

 

2) build a fighter with specialization in short swords but only proficiency in daggers

 

3) - test dual-wielding 2 short swords: should get 5/2 APR

- test 2 daggers: should get 3 APR

- test main-hand short sword and off-hand dagger: should get 3 APR

- test main-hand dagger and off-hand short sword: should get 5/2 APR

I just tested this in BGT (with TobEx - I don't have a non-TobEx install handy) and the above behavior is exactly what I'm seeing.

 

I didn't have time to do further testing - which would involve 1) eliminating 'fake' attack animations via TobEx, and 2) set in-game feedback to maximum and auto-pause every round, to inspect the timing of attacks and their to-hit rolls, in order to try and determine exactly which attacks are made with which hand.

[Jarno Mikkola]

I just tested this in BGT (with TobEx - I don't have a non-TobEx install handy) and the above behavior is exactly what I'm seeing.

This is easy to fix, "You can forcefully disable TobEx from running by renaming TobEx.dll in your game directory."

[geg_Ma3gau]

 

It's been a while since I did any mechanics testing. I do remember I used this in conjunction with ToBEx. Not sure if it will help, but just in case.

 

ITM Extended Header

 

0x0014 THAC0 bonus

A successful hit will always occur if any of the conditions below is true

• This field is set to 32767
• The target creature(s) is STATE_HELPLESS
• The target is affected by time stop

 

What does STATE_HELPLESS include? stun, hold and sleep?

[Jarno Mikkola]

Helpless, aka state.ids: 0x00000020 STATE_HELPLESS ... many spells set this intentionally, like web ... at least, should.

[Fiann of the Silver Hand]

 

What does STATE_HELPLESS include? stun, hold and sleep?

 

 

According to IESDP, opcodes 39, 109, 157, 175, 185.

[geg_Ma3gau]

 

 

What does STATE_HELPLESS include? stun, hold and sleep?

 

 

According to IESDP, opcodes 39, 109, 157, 175, 185.

 

Im not the modder and im not sure what does that mean but i think yes hold and sleep should be in.

[Fiann of the Silver Hand]

Those are unconsciousness, web, and three hold effects. Stun (45) and Stun 90 hp (21) aren't listed as setting helpless, which seems wrong.

[subtledoctor]

Maybe lack of coffee, but I'm struggling to understand what that has to do with opcode 1 and weapon APR...

[Demivrgvs]

Maybe lack of coffee, but I'm struggling to understand what that has to do with opcode 1 and weapon APR...

Speaking of which, which is your conclusion? Does 'set apr' work the same on both original and EE games? Can it really be used to eventually "fix Belm" or similar stuff?