Hi, i'm new here and have a few questions

[Coldblade]

I have beaten the game a couple time myself, but i still don't get how the Ac, thac0 and the damage thing works??

I'm thinking that like 1d4 is 4 side dice?? or you roll one dice of 20 sides 4 time, and u take the highest number?? then 2d10 or 4d20 or something is like 2 dice, and 4 dice respectivly?? how do the game change it from the dice rolls into real damage??

Secondly i have goten my Ac down to under -10! and the enemy can't hit me at all! I'm wondering how Thac0 works? lower the number is the better??? like -10 is better than 0? this only calucate the chance you can hit the enemy or do it also calucate the damage?

how do streighth affect the damage you do to the enemy??


then ive messed with shadowkeepr a bit, and had had some fun with a ubber character, 25 str, and all that junk, just for fun of it, and the record crit i ever head on him was 290 with a 7x backstab multipler, on a beagger was just boried so i was just expermenting with a level 40 assassin, and never ever had used backstab so was expermenting with it. you can mod the char stat, and all that suff, but HOW DO U MOD THE ITEMS?! i would like to make some interesting item, like a speical dagger that like has 10% chance of outright killing the target, or maybe a sword, that is +5 but has average damage but speed of 0 so is very very fast, etc.. how do you modifyes the items?? in the game i want to mess with them a couple time to see what i can do maybe comeing up with a interesting combo, like a powerful dagger, but it has a few serious weakness, etc..

ANd is it possiable to modify the spells in the game, i'm thinking its not possiable, but i'm wondering, mainly i'm interested in modifying the Items in the game!

-CB

[SSJ4Sephiroth]

well, im sure somebody else can explain this better, and im only gonna confuse you, but im going to try.

AC is the enemies chance to hit you. say your AC is 6, and their Thac0 is 0. if they roll a 4, it is my understanding that they would gain 10, although im not sure about that. i am, however, sure about the Damage rolls.

say if you have a Dagger, thats 1d4. if it carries a basic enchantment, 1d4+1. if you have 25 STR, youll hit for 1d4+1, +14(i think, my guide escapes me at the moment) and +8 Thac0 (1 from weapon, 7 from STR). so that means that, using a +1 dagger w/ 25 STR, you can do between 15 and 18 damage, as is my understanding.

o, and welcome to the boards!

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I'll kidnap ya fer 100, reprogram ya fer 300, and kill ya fer 500! Oh come one! I'll throw in the killin' fer 250!

[Fljotsdale]

I have been playing these games sinceFeb of this year and never been able to figure it out properly - I'm no good at math. But the Manual tells you a bit about it (ok, ok, I know the Manual is for wusses!)

WELCOME TO THE BOARD!

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[Glycerine]

Sephiroth did a pretty good job explaining how the damage system works, so I'll just explain AC and THAC0.

AC is basically how difficult it is for your character to be hit, including whatever armor you have on as well as dexterity and proficiency bonuses. (Such as Single Weapon Style...) Obviously the lower your AC, the better.

THAC0 stands for To Hit Armor Class 0 (Zero). This is the minimum roll you would need on a 20 sided dice to hit AC 0, not including any bonuses you might have from a magical weapon. (I don't think BG2 calculates that in, but I could be wrong...)

So if we put the two together, this is how it would work: You have an AC of -10, and are being attacked by a monster with a THAC0 of 5. This would mean that the monster would require at least a 15 or higher to hit you. What if you were attacked by a monster with a THAC0 of 15? Does this mean the monster cannot hit you? No it doesn't. When an attack is made, a roll of 20 always hits no matter what. This means that a goblin can still hit your 20th level warrior wearing full plate armor, just not very often. (And it probably wouldn't do enough damage for you to feel it anyways...)

Hope this helps.

Glycerine

[Coldblade]

Well when i got -11 or below AC i woul dge the message, all the time, from the moster saying, my character was immune to my damage?

And i'm also wondering how do u edit items? i want to make some modifyation to some of the items in the game

[Robin, Thief of Hearts]

Velkomm to der board!

I'll quote what I just wrote somewhere else It makes perfect sense , but ah, then I might be ahem, biased.
Here we go -

Well the lads have answered and quite well too.
Let's see if I can do it in a mathematical way to make it easier-
THAC0 = amount you need to hit armour class of 0. The lower the THAC0, the better for you.

Now, the lower the armour class, the harder it is to score a hit.
Thus an AC of 5 is easier to hit than an AC of -3.

Your swing-weapon dice-roll( 1-20) will score a hit IF it is equal to or greater than your THAC0 minus the enemy AC.

If Random roll >= (your THAC0 - enemy AC) ------------------------> You HIT.

(If you can dredge up memories of math class, it should be clear that a NEGATIVE AC is a good thing for you to have, and the more negative the better.)

If you should roll a full 20, then you score a "Critical hit". Now, some instances allow critical hits to occur if you roll just 19. I think this can happen if you're using a single weapon and have proficiency in single weapon usage skill, for example.
That mighten't sound like a whole lot of improvement, but look at it this way:
Regular chance to get a Crit hit = 1 in 20.
Augmented chance to get a Crit hit = 2 in 20, or TWICE as often!

A Critical Hit does substantially MORE damage than a regular hit, but helmets can block them. It's rather like the headshots in Doom. Since MANY many enemies wear helms, it can be a disadvantage to score lots of Crit Hits in battle. Those blows just ring off the enemy helm.
*Dong!*

There are few things you can do to improve your chances of hitting the enemy.
- Never fight when exhausted. It spoils your THAC0.
- Backstab the enemy wherever possible, this is said to help your THAC0. I don't know the details, but brother it SURE helps your damage!!

Now, about damage -
Working out damage inflicted is pretty easy. Read up your weapon stats and there you go:
1D4 = from 1 to four points. ( roll one 4 sided dice.)
2D6 = from 2 to 12 points( 2 times 1D6 )

Some weapons have an additional add on damage- eg a magical bonus. This ranges from plus 1 to plus 5 in the game. A rare single weapon, the Spear of Impaling does a Gigantic super-whopping extra 10 points damage!
Some other weapons have associated special effects that do additional damage-
such as fire arrows, which do additional 2 points fire damage.

[Hayashi]

Originally posted by Coldblade: Well when i got -11 or below AC i woul dge the message, all the time, from the moster saying, my character was immune to my damage? And i'm also wondering how do u edit items? i want to make some modifyation to some of the items in the game

Some monsters are immune to damage from certain weapons, or can be damaged only by a particular type of weapon, or by magical weapons.

Eg: Clay golems can only be damaged by blunt weapons (maces, flails, etc). So if you go toe-to-toe with one using a sword, you won't do any damage even though you hit all the time.

Eg: Werewolves can only be hit by +2 weapons or better. So a longsword+1 won't help.

[Sir Jaren Tor]

For rolling a Critical hit, you'll do regular damage if your enemy is immune to critical hits. You'll still do damage, just not the double damage that an unprotected enemy would recieve. A 20 always indicates a hit, so it'd be just plain retarded to have a gauranteed hit that didn't do damage.

[sunder]

Well you all explained the AC and Thaco, I'll explain dice in the game.

Baldur's gate is based off old Dungeons & dragons rules. In the old board game, you used dice to determine different rolls. They didn't have computers to do it back then

Now you have computers, so the computer just takes a random roll. The 1d8, 2d4 stuf you see is just a reference that you can use to know what the computer is doing.

1d4 is a random roll from 1-4. Such as mage hp.
1d6 is just a random roll from 1-6. Like short sword damage. If you hit
something with a shortsword, you can do between 1 and 6 points of damage.
1 minimum and 6 max. You might do 4, 3, 6, 2, etc.
1d10 is just a random roll between 1-10 damage. Like 2 handed sword damage.

When you get multiple rolls the game shows you like this....

2d4 What this is is TWO random rolls from 1-4. So if you have a bastard sword
that does 2d4 damage, the computer will roll 1-4 + 1-4. Your bastard
sword will do between 2-8 damage.
3d6 This would be 3 rolls of 1-6 each, or 1-6/1-6/1-6 or 3-18 points.

Different things in the game get different rolls. Monsters Hitpoints are based on 1-8 hp, or a 1d8. A level 10 monster gets 10 rolls of 1d8, so it will have
10-80 hp.

Chances to hit, saving throws, and some other things are based on a random roll between 1-20, or a 1d20. You have a save vs poison at 5, if you get attacked by a poisoned weapon and have to save, the computer rolls a random number 1-20. If the number is 5 or above (your save number) you don't get the poison damage. If the number is 4 or below, you are poisoned. If your saving throw vs poison is 0 or below, the computer has to get a roll of 1 in order for you to be poisoned. This works the same way for other saves.

Hope that helps out a little bit. There isn't really any dice in the game of course, its just a basic random computer generated number.

[Coldblade]

Thanks! i'm wondering how str affects the damage you do, i have a dude who has 1d4 dagger, and has 25 str, 25 dex, and i belive the dagger is the boneblade which is a +4 dagger i belive. Now i'm averageing 29-30 pt of damage each hit! then crits hit upward of 79 or more!! finally with backstab multipler 7x i get hit that are 290 or more!!!! i mean hollyshit

now i'm wondering how str and dex affect the damage you do?