Is archery any good in this game?

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Meh ... slings

 

Actually, I think that if you used Near Infinity, you'd find that in BG2, most slings did NOT add any sort of STR bonus to damage, except for the one that specifically mentioned it in the description. OTOH, IIRC, slings do add the STR bonus in IWD2 last I looked in NI.


Slings and thrown weapons are actually better than bows for high STR characters in IWD2 for this very reason. Well, except that you need to be aware that certain thrown weapons are rather short ranged. That said, darts in IWD2 should REALLY be used by high STR tanks and not mages, since they a) get the STR bonus and b) are so short ranged that your mage might actually run out in front of your party to get in range of the target and expose himself to the enemy.


On the question of archery and dedicated archers, I have no problem with dedicated archers. Sure they're not going to be use purely destructive as a sorc. So frigging what! I've managed to make it thru normal and HOF a good number of times with a pure ranger/archer in my party who was primarily an archer with dual wielded short swords as his backup melee option.

The key is to not expect that a dedicated archer will be a total killing machine. They're perfectly acceptable at disrupting spellcasters and delivering the coup-de-grace on nearly dead monsters. Also, there are times when the enemy you're facing is so dangerous in melee that you want to stay out of range. It's nice to have a long ranged option in your party and not just a crossbow in the hands of your mage when he's not spellcasting.

 

@crucis

Are you sure that Darts and Slings take Str bonus? Which rolls does it apply to, attack or damage. If that is right I will surely hand over the Darts to my Barbarian. Throwing Axes have such short a range

 

Shrikant, I just looked in Near Infinity to verify.

Yes, darts and slings (and Th hammers and Th Axes and Th Daggers) to received STR bonuses to damage.


Also, Th Axes have a range of 10, Th Hammers and darts have a range of 20, and slings have a range or 40 or 50 (it varies with most good enchanted slings having the higher range). And nearly all (except one, Final Word with a range of 30) throwing daggers have a range of 10.

A couple of exceptions... The 2handed Th Axe, Big Death, has a range of 20. And the 1H Th Axe, Cloudkiss, has a range of 75. (almost seems to be a mistake)


FYI, Xbows and longbows have a range of 100 and short bows have a range of 75. (Sophia's Flight, the longbow with +50% range, has a range of 150.)


With this info, it seems pretty clear that darts are really much better used by melee characters or perhaps by clerics you want to keep just behind the melee wall, not by mages that you want to keep well behind the lines. And they're best used by strong characters who can get some advantage out of the added STR bonus.

But given their really short range, the situations where you can use them are going to be limited. That said, one situation would be if you've webbed or entangled an enemy and don't want to get close enough to them so that they can reach you with their melee weapons. Just whip out your darts or th daggers while you're just barely out of reach of their swords and start playing darts with'em.

"Hey, Hartan, betcha can't hit the orc in the nose!"

 

Seems like I'm on a thread resurrection spree here, but bear with me..

A dedicated archer is NOT a weakling by any means. Just don't expect to be a good archer using a puny (cross)bow - let your back row casters use them instead.

As far as I know, the only thing an Archer will lose (damagewise) compared to a melee guy is the Power Attack feat. Also, there's a grand total of two thrown weapons that allow for the 1.5 x STR damage bonus, the Big Death and its HoF variant. The better of them has only +3 enchantment and does 1d10 + 3 damage base plus a bit of extra slashing. Not quite the same as the infamous Massive Greataxe of Flame +5 with its 2d12 +5 base, right?

Well.. that's just one part of the story.

Going by the list of possible buffs depicted in the Ultimate Damage character in JUPP, we're looking at something like this:
Base Damage = 1d10 + 3, always 13 with +10 luck
Strength bonus = +22 (40 STR with Tenser's and Champion's Strength)
Equipment = +2 (Gauntlets of Weapon Specialization)
Feats = +2 (Weapon Specialization)
Spells = +9 (Actually wrong in JUPP, Recitation doesn't boost damage)
Team bonus = +3 (Bard 1st lvl song and Destructive Blow from Talos cleric)

Total = 51 slashing + 1d10 slashing before critical hits.

With buffs up, the character also has 80% chance of scoring a critical hit (!), so the effective average damage per hit jumps to... drumroll...

138 points of damage per hit!

Last time I checked, that's MORE than the expected damage from a maximum level sorcerer's DBFB on a failed save (30d8 = 135 average). Up to five times per round.

Now, tell me that ain't golden? Plus, instead of being a luck dependant thing (as is the case with that greataxe), you can always buy the Big Black Flyind Death once you get there...

 

The reason why archers suck in IWD2 is because of the 3ed rules. And the fact that bows only do 1d6 damage in iwd2 (should be 1d8). In 3ed, everyone gets loads more HP per level. You only need 12 con, to get a bonus. And every class gets a bonus for each odd number after 10, on con. In 2ed, wich BG1 uses, everyone, except the warrior classes, gets 1 bonus for 15 con, and one for 16. Thats it.

So with reduced damage on bows + enemies with alot more Hp, it makes bows pretty much useless, when compared to other weapons.

Picture a level 20 barbarian, getting shot at by peasants using short bows. Lets say the fellow has about 200 hp. He also gets 4 damage reduction, for being a barbarian. (aparantly your skin hardens, when you are a barbarian. Because you are aparantly more used to being hit, than say a fighter.) So an arrow from a short bow, will do maximum 2 damage to him, when it hits. That means you need 100 arrows doing maximum damage to him, to bring him down to zero hp. So basically he can stand there with 99 arrows in his body, and still fight as though he isn`t wounded at all. Just an observation.

 

+10 luck, eh. Right, this is the character that wears the "Young Ned's Knucky", depends on finding two of a super-rare random drop

... and still only comes up to +8 luck.

You're stacking on a whole bunch of spells that last 1 round/level (or less); it does not seem reasonable to compare with a single level 7 sorc spell.

Can only be cast once per rest period. 1 round/level.

Throwing weapons are fine, but it's better to use realistic numbers rather than assuming all party resources are going towards increasing one character's damage as high as possible.

 

Well, the point was to illustrate that you CAN make an archer do rather sadistical amounts of damage. Yes, once a day, but that's what the Ultimate Melee Damage guy used as base so why shouldn't I be able to calculate it for the Ultimate Archer, too?

If we go with something more.. in tune with reality, Luck bonus should probably read +5 (just NLK and TL, no bard nor Luck spell), with no team member bonus (no Talos nor bard), no Tenser's (cleric/mages are a pain to level up) and no Chant since that's a pain to use. The rest is just everyday stuff in my book - the only time I attack anything in HOF without most of the buffs still active is when there's only few stragglers remaining after a skirmish.

So you'd get 34 STR (Eg. Aasimar paladin(1)/Fighter(x)/Cleric(x) for no exp penalty) for +18 damage and after the rest of the reductions above, you'd still end up at 41.5 non-critical damage per hit. (1d10 with +5 luck is 8.5 damage average.) With a more realistic 35% chance for critical (no Executioner's Eyes either since you were so adamantly against really short-term buffs, but whatever) you'd still see 76 effective average damage per hit.

How many of YOUR characters score in the order of 350+ damage per combat round, consistently, without resorting to heavy-duty Area of Effect spells, hm?

Oh, and a nitpick. Two TL rings, the amulet, bard song AND Luck spell together give +10 luck, so there.