Daggers and grandmastery?

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And for daggers: They are only considered as emergency weapons for mages, maybe thiefes. No one seems to use them on the main char. Why?

I made my dc fighter thief develop grandmastery with daggers as my weapon for situations where I can´t hurt my enemies with +3 only C´Fury. For backstabbing daggers are unmatched - actually the difference in damage from backstabbing with a katana and a dagger is neglectable.
Additionally throwing daggers (or axes) are the only ranged weapon a kensai (or a chevalier) can use and especially the throwing daggers have aformidable punch. Daggers kick ass!

 

But I still think my daystar (1d8+4 vs evil) kicks @$$ harder! There are some cool daggers though they don't do as much damage as a good longsword or a two-hander or katana, that's just a fact...!

 

Admittedly yes, but It doesn´t offer the exceptional ETWO-bonus the dagger gives you. And this is particular advantagous when backstabbing where the multi-damage adds up.

I think it mainly depends on your prficiency how much damage you cause. Consider that when your char causes for example 30 damage on an enemy - there´s just 1W8+4 (just 5-12 points) of it caused by the sword - the rest ist just your char (Ok - with his items like girdles etc. )!

So in my eyes it deosn´t that much depend on what particular type of weapon you use. (Exclude effects like blunt vs. skeletons or special weapon features)

 

i think a Dual-Dagger wielding thief is quite a kool idea myself. The problem is however that there just aren't enough magical daggers... even though Firetooth in the Underdark is amazing... you have to wait a long while before getting at it.

 

True, but just take the Demarche-stiletto or the simple dagger +2, it can hurt even vampires and mummys you can´t hurt using daystar as a sword IIRC (NOT with the nice weapon-effect ).

Personally I think dual wielding daggers is a bit too much for there are not too much good daggers. That´s why I prefer a more ballanced cahr with katana and dagger.

 

Well I can imagine that a Fighter/Thief with grandmastery on Dagger really kicks ass. 4 or 5x backstab damage, low Thaco..... Indeed, there aren't really good daggers in de game. My pure Thief has a + on short sword (to backstab) a + for Katana (Celestrial Fury) and a + for the Gesen Bow. I hide in Shadow, backstab with the cutthroat, then go to the inventory, swith to celestrial fury and kick some more ass.

 

All right: I have shadowkeeper at hand now and I find 10 magical daggers with at least +2, and there are four of them +4 and +3 (two each).

That´s a better than Katanas!

 

And they said that all fighter should have, with his main weapon, a dagger equipped. When you fight a mage, use the dagger instead of the big sword, because it got more attack/round, so it will make the mage lose each spell he will try to cast. And since a mage dont have big armor, and lot of HP, he can be killed easily with a dagger.

 

there are that many?

i haven't found many of them to be honest

i wonder where they are...

probably places i daren't look

 

I think there are at least five good daggers in Atkathla: IIRC tere are two Dagger +2 to buy (one at a trader in the slums near the temple, forgot the other one), there is Neb´s dagger +2 or 3 (for evil only), the throwing dagger +2 at the one of the fights in the pubs (IIRC in the bridge district) and for sure the stiletto of the Demarches (+2) in the planar sphere. There is also the dagger your aüpprentices make for you if you´re a mage (have naver tried that - anyone knows how good it is?). Not too scary places

Firetooth is for sale in drow-city but I forgot where to find the probably best daggers in the game: boneblade + 4 and the Vampire Dagger +4. All in all you really have the choice

 

In my opninion Celestrial fury is better then the good daggers, cause of the extra combat abilities. But of coorse a dagger is fast. Maybe it's nice to let your thief fight with Clestrial Fury AND a good dagger. Disadvantage is that you can't use de Gesen Bow... so you have to melee with a dagger...

 

Actually I´m going to use C`Fury as my primary weapon and daggers as a back-up & backstabb weapon, I really like the special effect of C´Fury quite much.

I´m looking forward to boneblade +4 (that can hurt e v e r y o n e ) and as soon as I get firetooth I´ll have a formidable ranged weapon too, I think I´ll use the throwing dagger +2 till that time...

 

There are no combat abilities, that's a small problem. And melee (daggers AND axes) are slow....

 

Slow... hmm, If your char´s hasted and using a dagger with an ETWO of -5 (**** with daggers; normal ETWO 10, using boneblade +4), having 7/2 attacks - is that so slow?! For a lvl-6/ 13 dc fighter-thief??!

 

what's ETWO?

 

Really good question, it took me a while to explain that correctly So what´s ETWO? I´ll try to explain as good as I understand it:

My manual sais: ETWO means "To Hit Armor Class Zero" Great, totally enlighted I began to understand.... it means THACO - I will try to just say THACO now - unfortunately the game was translated hastily, they use ETWO in the manual but THACO a n d ETWO on the game, aaargh <major insult !!!>

To explain in case you don´t already know Imagine BG-2 beeing a p`n`p roleplaying game where you have to dice to "place" your hit using the W20 dice - basically maths.
Given you have a base ETWO of 10 and your target has an AC of 5. You subtract the enemy AC from your ETWO and get 5 - the # to hit AC 0. You have to dice 5 or h i g h e r to successfully "place" your hit.

So, in short, the lower the ETWO/ THACO number actually is, the better is your chance to hit. So packing a good weapon, weapon specialisation and weapon style specialisation resulting in a negative ETWO like -5 is even better.

Effect of weapon-style specialisation in short: Bonusses to hit: * = 0; ** = +1; ***, **** & ***** = +2 ETWO/ THACO-Bonus (Main advantage of grandmastery is that you get a full extra attack, +3 on damage and -1 of your weapons speed factor). Thanks Darien, for more just check:
http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/proficiencies.php

I found that one using the search engine after finishing that text above: Syl explains it clearly here:
http://www.sorcerers.net/community/threads/what-criteria-goes-into-creating-base-thac0.9238/

 

ah, i totally grok thaco, just never heard of it refered to as etwo.

btw, i thought that the only thing you gained by moving from high mastery to grand mastery (**** to *****) was the +1 to damage, do you really get another 1/2 attack?

 

also, i didn't really understand what you said here:

> Admittedly yes, but It doesn´t offer the
> exceptional ETWO-bonus the dagger gives
> you. And this is particular advantagous
> when backstabbing where the multi-damage
> adds up.

why would a dagger give any special etwo bonus? i mean if it's a +3 dagger youre etwo goes down 3 -- same as any other weapon. or were you just refering to youre grand mastery bonus?

ps-
kensais can really use throwing daggers?! that rocks. i was kinda hoping dc'ing my ken to thief would allow me to use short bows, but of course it didnt. daggers would be a cool alternative.

 

Hmm, is is like that: My char has ***** with Katanas and a base THACO of 10. Using his +2 Katana it is reduced to 3. Having **** with daggers and using the +4 Boneblade, my THACO is -3 or so.
So I really guess there is an THACO-advantage with daggers - perhaps due to their low initiative, though I don´t know how and why it results like that.