Ranged weapons

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Excuse me if this has been asked before.

I'm curious about how ranged weapons work.

Dexterity affects ranged weapons yes? Does Strength add to hit and damage?
Is there a difference in this between different ranged weapons like, sling and crossbows?
In BGII ranged weapons in melee was penalized. Is it just the character in melee or everyone firing on the characters in melee?

 

I am pretty sure thrown weapons, like knives and axes, add strength bonuses to damage. Some slings do that too, like Sling of Seeking and such. Umm... composite longbows add strength bonuses to damage, iirc. Also, if your character is using a ranged weapon in close combat, he or she is penalized, but it should not affect the other characters, as long as they are shooting at someone outside of melee range, and aren't being attacked by someone wielding a melee weapon.

 

I thought it was Dexterity that adds to your THAC0 and not strength. I'm assuming by "hit" you mean THAC0.

Using ranged weapons in melee gives a THAC0 penalty to the ranged guy and a +4 THAC0 bonus to the melee attacker. All melee attackers on your ranged guy receive the bonus, so don't get surrounded. But I think the penalty applies to firing at anybody. So you can't shoot at the mage far away with a fighter in your face without a penalty. It used to be that being in melee totally disables ranged weapons, so this makes sense.

Other characters far away have no penalty.

[ April 11, 2005, 20:18: Message edited by: Blog ]

 

Thrown weapons (knives, axes and hammers) use strength. Slings using magical bullets also use the Str bonus, although this is supposed to be a bug.

Crossbows generally have 1 attack per round.
Bows, short bows and slings have 2 attacks per round.
Of course, this is affected by class level and profeciencies.

Say a fighter gets in the face of your Archer. He gets a +4 attack bonus against your archer. Everyone else attacks the archer as normal. Your archer gets a -4 attack penalty against everyone, till he gets rid of the fighter.

 

and darts are 3 shots/round

 

I thought it was Dexterity that adds to your THAC0 and not strength. I'm assuming by "hit" you mean THAC0.

To hit armor class 0, yes. If my AD2 ed memory serves me strength increases thac0 for melee weapons.

So you can't shoot at the mage far away with a fighter in your face without a penalty.

Interesting, is this checked by distance or must the archer actually be attacked?
My impression is that accuracy downgrades once my tanks are engaged whether the archers are attacked or not.

I was playing around with Coran in tutu and changed him to a blade(removing his prof.), but he still had an ungodly THAC0 with a bow, so I assume this had to with his 20 dex.

 

Yes, Coran will have an ungodly to hit bonus on missile weapons with a 20 in dexterity. I think the bonus of a 20 in dexterity is either +5 or +6. So that makes sense.

Dexterity affects THAC0 for all missile weapons, regardless of whether they are launched or thrown weapons. Strength bonuses are only calculated for thrown weapons such as daggers and axes. Darts to not get a strength bonus even though they are thrown. It seems to be that anything that has a melee weapon equivalent (like axes and daggers) gets the strength bonus.

There are no strength bonuses associated with any type of launched weapon, unless it explicitly says so in the item description, for example the Sling of Seeking. Also, composite long bows give a bonus of +2 to damage, but this is due to the added velocity at which the arrow is fired, and not the characters strength. However, since you need a high strength to even use a composite long bow, you may view this as a strength bonus.

 

20 Dex gives +3 bonus for missile attack, according to the BG2 tables.

 

I ran some tests to check this and it seems that things do not work as we expected. (I used Yoshimo (DEX 18) using the Tuigan Bow on some of the enemies in the first room of the planar prison.) This is what I found:

- If the target is too close, the archer gets a penalty when trying to hit the target regardless of whether or not the target is attacking him or not. (Forgot to check how big the penalty was )

- Archer stands next to enemy and attacks a mage at a distance. If the enemy does NOT attack the archer, the archer has NO penalty on hitting the mage. If the enemy attacks the archer, there was a -4 penalty the archer's THAC0. This penalty stacks; if the archer is attacked by two melee people, the penalty went to -8.