I don't know about that.

I am doing some testing with crossbows. I am not 100% sure, but, I think I can do more damage with the Heavy Crossbow of Searing and Bolts of Biting or Bolts of Lightning. (Somebody really good with numbers want to back me up on this one? ) I have both Stonefire and Frostreaver.

I got a critical hit for 74 damage and it made my eyes bug out. Not to shabby for a ranged weapon.

74 damage?!?! Off the top of my head... that should not be possible unless... unless... STR dmg bonuses are applied to crossbows too... ...

<font color="deepskyblue"><font color="silver">SixofSpades</font> - Ooooops....my bad. You're right, I was not able to wear Balduran's Cloak until after dualing over to the thief class. I also agree with you that the Wizard Slayer should be allowed to use certain miscellaneous items (such as the ones you mentioned) that seem to "fit" the class kit very well.

The guantlets I spoke of are just such an Item. I found them at Arundors Abode. They are called the Claw of Charon and automatically turn any spell below 7th level back onto the caster. It was great fun watching the drow clerics in the Underdark cook themselves with their Flamestrikes. There is a long sword that comes with the guantlets and has a chance to Cause Disease with each hit..but I preferred 2-hand swords..so I didn't use it much.

<font color=gold>Butterfingers</font> - one other note concerning the Dwarven Wizard Slayer. You gain a +1 bonus to your Save vs Magic with every 3.5 pts of Constitution. With a Con of 20, you will have a +5 bonus to save against any magic that makes it past your resistance. Then, a quick trip to Lum's Machine can raise that to a +6 bonus. ;) </font>

I decided to just stick with the plain fighter kit. I think I can make a better Wizardslayer with my Dwarf then an actual Wizardslayer.

As for con, I could become evil in hell and gain a point or two I think. But I really don't want to. I don't have ToB, so, no MoLtM for me.

Nothing, and, I mean nothing really seems to bother him. He has good gear, already has Gaxx's ring, and, with his own regen, it's insane. Also has belt of inertial barrier. In the Planar Prison, the Warden cast Abi Dalzims and did a whopping 6 damage to my Dwarf, which he quickly shrugged off and thought maybe he had drank a bad tankard of ale from Samuel before he went plane hopping.

And yes, that's not a typo. 74 damage. I had a critical on a thrall in the prison for 61. Another critical for 59 damage, this time on a Gauth in the Unseeing Eye area.

Think it is possible? Do xbows add strength damage and we just don't know about it?

I'm positive the STR bonuses were not applied to my bolts when I tested with a lvl 34 Archer and a normal Light Crossbow. I'll test with other bolts and crossbows later, but I think the exceptional damage you get with them is a bug isolated to either the Mac, or the unpatched version of BG2.

How the hell you could get odd values (59 and 61) on your Criticals is beyond me:

1) BG2 only uses integers when it comes to damage calculations
2) Critical hits simply doubles the base physical damage
3) 2x is always an even number if x is an integer
- Getting an odd value on your Criticals should thus be impossible. Again, I think your game is seriously screwed up if you really got those values.

Anyway, what is your damage range with that crossbow, excluding criticals of course? The difference between your maximum and minimum possible damage should be 7 (for 1D8 bolts), if this is not the case, well then you got even more bugs.

You could always try and calculate the damage you should be doing - that is, Proficiency bonuses + Crossbow bonus + Bolt damage - with the results you're getting, then maybe you can find out where this hidden bonus is coming from. I doubt the game just adds a random number, so it must be a bonus already present in the game, but one which was not meant to be applied to crossbows.

Bolt is 1d8
Giant Hair Crossbow is +5 damage( although I believe you are using the Heavy Crossbow of Searing. For maximum damage potential though, I'll use this instead)
Grandmastery is +3 damage
Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise is +2 damage

Maximum damage is 8+5+3+2 = 18 damage, 36 on a Critical Hit.

Even with STR bonuses, and assuming 25 STR, a normal hit will 'only' deal 32 damage, 64 on a Critical Hit. Unless you factor in Bolts of Lightning which adds 4d4 Electrical Damage.

Ergo. You have some warped Mac-only bug. A good bug, but still a bug. Your Dwarf ain't holding a crossbow man, he's wielding the Medieval Bazooka.

http://www.handykult.de/plaudersmili...ocketwhore.gif

ADD] It is possible to obtain odd numbers on a Critical Hit. The target must have piercing damage resistance.

[ 01-31-2003, 12:39 PM: Message edited by: Dundee Slaytern ]

Really? Isn't the resistance calculated before doubling the damage? I've never ever gotten an odd number on criticals, even vs physically resistance creatures. Gauths don't have any sort of resistance anyway, so it still makes no sense.

[ 01-31-2003, 02:34 PM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]

I seem to recall some odd numbers when I executed critical hits, but I do not have any screenshots at the moment. This is besides the matter though, since the more pressing issue is how a Dwarven Plain Fighter can nearly match, if not exceed, what a Kensai can do with a melee weapon.

So the bow bug I have noticed might just be a Mac thing, (Although peecees seem to have the bug as well) it might just be worse on my side?

I get outrageous criticals at times. I thought this was normal actually, being a CRPG and not a true PnP game. With melee weapons, I have had criticals past 100 in SoA.

The only thing I can think of is how Macs handle number crunching compared to peecees. Perhaps, well, by the odd chance that the game code is still trying to use peecee based number crunching, it could cause horrible mistakes on the Mac. There was a well known bug with this very thing a long time ago when Microsoft had a version of Excell on the Mac. Data entry fields would become horribly corrupted when you did the number crunching. This was also a HUGE problem in Sim City 3000 on the Mac... They used a bare bones windows emulator to get the game to run, making it molasses slow and it had all sorts of bugs. The number cruncher did not get along with the Macs way of thinking, causing all sorts of things in your city to go haywire. (There was a way to exploit this and get millions of dollars too)

If this is true, I am not sure what to do. I highly doubt the company that ported this to the Mac would put out another patch. There has only been one patch so far. And there are still known issues. And they probably would not fix it anyway, because most folks would think this is a "good thing" to have happen, a bug in your favour.

Hmm.

Dwarven Wizard Slayers are great. Mine used paired maces, and firetooth +5 crossbow. Couple the boots of speed with Ardutia's Fall, or Flail of Ages, and you're set. You're moving fast, while others move slow. If you give him Whirlwind Attack and Improved Whirlwind Attack, no spellcaster stands a chance of ever casting a spell. And, at higher levels, Wizard Slayers get 5% magic resistence every other level. With the Elven Amulet the queen gives you, you can end up with an MR of roughly 80% to 90%.

[ 01-31-2003, 08:21 PM: Message edited by: Gor Blackmace ]