Worst weapons to specialize in

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If you've got ToB you can get a quick +3 returning dart with no trouble at all, plus it'll burn a couple days off of your NPC and/or stronghold quests if you need it. Not a waste IMO, especially since it has a shorter range. A shorter range being good, you say, how is that? Well, anyone who's using that dart is going to be engaging the enemy anyway, and the shorter range puts them in front of everybody else with their longer range bows and slings. Formation is important.

The only category that really qualifies, I think, is slings. But their upside is that your clerics can't use any f***ing other missile weapon, so you're kind of stuck with them.

I suppose bastard swords might qualify, but there are plenty later (Jhor the Bleeder, Purifier, Foebane) to make it worth a late pick.

 

Ahh, Under-represented item mod also introduces some POWERFUL weapons from IWD2.

A dart+5, returns, removes magic per hit, but can blind you. (%5 chance) Cool weapon, allows STR bonus, 3 attack/round, base 1d3+5 damage, dispels protections!

Plus too many and numerous nice TWO-Handed axes, bastard swords, maces, and a few arcane-friendly neat armors as well!

 

Long Bows aren´t poor choices. In Windspears Hills, you can get a +4 Bow(Mana Bow), in the Lair of Firkraag.
And you can get Dragon Breath, a +4 Halberd in the Underdark.

 

The Heart Seeker is the long bow I'd point to as any good.

ToB kind of fixes the Scimitar problem. There are a few very decent weapons that use this category. Spectral Brand being one of them. extra d6 of cold damage. Plane Protection. Can do the whole flying sword thing for 4 rounds. And it's even a +5.

Harmonium Halberd is way too double edged in my opinion though. with the mind flayers in various places like they are. And it's lowering of your intelligence. I really wouldn't want to fight them with that being my best weapon. Dragon's breath and ravager are both nice.

Hindo's doom is a Katana that's good. but I think Katana's got a little jipped if the best they can offer is upgrading to a +4.

 

Bastard swords, definitely

 

I can't believe that two people actually said that the scimitar was one of the worst weapons to specialize in. I'm not sure if I can speak for anyone else here, but belm and the spectral brand are pretty useful.
I've got to go with the bastard sword category as being the worst, seeing as how by the time you get some of the only useful ones, you probably have more preferable options.

 

I think we can agree that there's no shortage of good longbows in SOA / TOB. Longbow-specialized archers have a very good time of things. Their best bet in SOA is Strong Arm since it gives the biggest damage bonus (and THAC0 bonuses are irrelevant when the difference is between -5 and -7). As was posted earlier, archery isn't as powerful as in BG1 or IWD, but archers are insanely strong (but balanced out by Prot Normal Missiles / Prot Magic Weapons / Mantle / etc.).

The Harmonium Halberd only drops INT by 1...but if you have a min-maxed CHARNAME with 3 INT, no, it's not a good choice against mind flayers (then again, a min-maxed CHARNAME with 3 INT isn't a good choice against mind flayers either). That's what Lilarcor, Chaotic Commands, etc. are for. For day-to-day fighting, Harmonium Halberd is a great low-level +3 weapon, easily one of the best +3's you can get early on.

EDIT - Here's the thing about scimitars: there's really only Spectral Brand (a TOB weapon near the bottom of WK) and Belm, which was made for the off-hand. Belm begins to outlives its usefulness in TOB because it's only +2 enchanted. Other than those 2, there's basically just Drizzt's defender and Kachiko's; you need UAI to make use of the latter. Drizzt's defender is admittedly still a pretty nice weapon until later on in TOB, assuming you seize the opportunity to take it from him, either from importing from BG1 or risking the loss of several good-aligned party members at the end of SOA.

Don't get me wrong, Belm is a great SOA weapon, as are Celestial Fury, Harmonium Halberd, the +3 elemental battleaxes, Flail of Ages +3, etc..

 

I think there's really two questions here. What are the worst overall choices, and which are the worst choices for the main hand. Thing like Kundane and Belm are great off-hand choices, but they are poor selections for your mainhand. If we're talking primary weapon, both scimitars and short swords are poor choices. There isn't a bastard sword worth using until you get to the Underdark. There isn't a spear worth using before the underdark, and halberds are really limited in their usefulness before the Underdark. Although there is Dragonslayer, which really shines against dragons, but it is +3, so I suppose that would work.

 

Belm is a good weapon, but if you're only putting it in your offhand so that you get an extra attack with your main hand, then you don't even need to bother putting points in scimitars to use it.

There are some powerful long bows, but often you'll find them totally useless. If you specialise in long bows then you also need to specialise in something else; when you come across enemies that can't be harmed by weapons lower than +3, you're SOL if you're relying solely on long bows. At least short bows offer weapons like Tansheron's and Gesen's which supply their own enchanted ammunition.

(The Harmonium halberd is good. The one point penalty to INT is irrelevent four times out of five. Mind flayers drain 5 points of INT per successful hit. If your man doesn't have PFMW then don't put him anywhere near a 'flayer, period. Nothing else will save him.)