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Potn13 - a better way to fix it?


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As per description, "this oil will immediately burst into flame, inflicting 5d6 points of damage (save vs. breath for half)". Were it implemented truly that should mean 5-30 dmg total, with a fractions of 2,5-15 plus 2,5-15. Obviously we don't have 0,5 damage so...

 

In vanilla game it was implemented as 3d6 plus 3d4, or 6-30 total with a damage count of 3-18/3-12. This is almost perfect in the terms of total but has one "half" at 60% and another one at mere 40%. (58% & 42% if consider averages).

 

BG2 Fixpack fixes that by using 3d6 plus 2d6. This leads to exact total indeed, being 5-30, but leaves in place 60% vs 40% allocation of damage, which is the core mistake of original potion, way worse thing than 1 mere point of additional minimal damage.

 

Perhaps it would implement description more precisely if made 3d5 breath plus 3d5 no save, which would result in a slightly wrong total of 6-30 (as in vanilla game) but perfect allocation of 50%/50%?

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It's more that this is how other spells and items split their damage for odd numbers of dice in save-for-half situations, e.g. fifth level fireballs (5d6) use the same split.

 

It's suboptimal mathematically, sure, but it's also consistent with how the devs handled it elsewhere.

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Just theorizing here; would it be possible (i.e. would the engine allow it) if you swapped the values internally to a 6d5 and divided it 3d5 always plus 3d5 if save is failed (or in D&D terms 6d5, 3d5 if save successful)? That would provide a perfect division if it could be done. It seems like the die values might accept any numeric value and I have no idea if the engine only accepts classic die sizes.

Edited by Endurium
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Just theorizing here; would it be possible (i.e. would the engine allow it) if you swapped the values internally to a 6d5 and divided it 3d5 always plus 3d5 if save is failed (or in D&D terms 6d5, 3d5 if save successful)? That would provide a perfect division if it could be done. It seems like the die values might accept any numeric value and I have no idea if the engine only accepts classic die sizes.

We could do 6d5 (split as 2x 3d5), but it's still not the same distribution. The more dice involved, the less likely you are to get an extreme value, high or low (visit anydice.com for the graphical curve), plus now it's bumped the minimum damage to 6 instead of 5.

 

Like I said, it's suboptimal mathematically, but consistent with how it was done everywhere else. This is why we added the save-for-half flag to the damage opcode in the EEs.

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Just theorizing here; would it be possible (i.e. would the engine allow it) if you swapped the values internally to a 6d5 and divided it 3d5 always plus 3d5 if save is failed (or in D&D terms 6d5, 3d5 if save successful)? That would provide a perfect division if it could be done. It seems like the die values might accept any numeric value and I have no idea if the engine only accepts classic die sizes.

We could do 6d5 (split as 2x 3d5), but it's still not the same distribution. The more dice involved, the less likely you are to get an extreme value, high or low (visit anydice.com for the graphical curve), plus now it's bumped the minimum damage to 6 instead of 5.

 

Like I said, it's suboptimal mathematically, but consistent with how it was done everywhere else. This is why we added the save-for-half flag to the damage opcode in the EEs.

 

I see, and thanks for the link and the flag in EE; glad I moved on to EE modding (excepting IWD2 of course).

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