A Land Far Away

Hey,

NWN 2 gives your strength modifier as bonus for ranged weapon damage even if positive. Furthermore, it treats it as a 2-handed weapon. I.e. a longbow with str 12 reads 1d8+1 on the char sheet, with str 14 1d8+3.

I do not think this is supposed to be the case, since there are "composite" versions. It's also the same for crossbows.

However, I currently don't have the patience to test it out whether what is written on the character sheet is the actual damage you do - there were a lot of instances where NWN 1 differed from the actual rolls in game to what it said on the char sheet.

Maybe someone in a better state of mind could check it out, if not I'll get around to it after the holidays.

Cheers,

I didn't pay attention myself, but were you using mundane versions or Mighty ones? Positive STR modifiers should apply to Mighty versions only (though it should be a straight modifier, not x 1 1/2) and negative STR modifiers should always be applied. That's my recollection anyway.

I just tested in the Official Campaign

Mundane Longbow - STR 14
1-8+3 dmg

I've yet to test the 'mighty' longbows to see what differences result but I believe Alara is right, longbows and perhaps shortbows also are being considered two handed weapons and automatically having a STR bonus applied to their damage even if they have no mighty property.

Okay,

after more testing it seems this is a classic case of WYSINWYG - although it reads the strength damage on the character sheet, it does not apply it to ranged weapons in the game combat engine. If you do 1d8+1 with str 12 and a non-mighty longbow, you can hit for 1 damage, and the maximum damage is 8. So all is good, just the character sheet display is screwed.

My testing was consistent for this, but I would naturally like someone to confirm it.

I tested it with a shortbow and got the same results. Would be nice if the display got fixed, but the dmg is coherent at least.

Now, what's left to test is whether a +3 mighty ranged weapon already does full +3 damage when you have STR 14, as the damage bonus on the char sheet is displayed as for a two-handed weapon. My guess is that no, it will work like it is intended (and only give +2 damage), but it's quite a possibility to think.

I found that testing maximum damage is quite easy on the game's easy setting by the way - characters always do maximum damage then, which saves you the having-to-shoot-something-until-you-rolled-both-min-and-max-damage...