Balancing weapons

[DaloLorn]

It's a bit short-sighted to zero in on the one context these weapons are best in. For instance: All of the "inferior" weapons you listed will have superior average damage per hit in contexts where your enemy is immune to critical hits (which is plausible even in PvP ), because of their larger damage dice. Granted, this tends to be grossly outweighed by the numerous damage boosts one can stack up, but there is still a marginal advantage.

A much more interesting topic would be the fact that piercing weapons are (comparably) useless due to the fact that piercing damage is the only physical damage type that doesn't penetrate some form of DR or another.

[Ghost]

Or you can just choose weapon based on what flavour you're going for.

This is extremely mechanics-oriented for what amounts to practically no difference. Quite frankly, I find these kinds of suggestions to distract from RP.

If you want a mechanical counter argument: Aside from scimitar, none of these take into account versatility, unless you want to monkey grip things in order to carry a shield. Moreover, all of these are slashing weapons, and you haven't taken into account at all the effect of different damage types and their relative damage reductions. Lastly, you are basing this entirely on the ability to crit, so you are failing to take into account enemies that are crit immune.

But in the end, this is just power creep (especially the suggestion of heavy pickaxe), and has nothing to do with RP. People need to stop thinking about maximising absolutely everything about their mechanical power potential and start thinking about what RP flavour they want to play. 99% of the server content is ridiculously easy - you don't need to even optimise an RP build to do well. Pick traits (skills, feats, etc) that make sense for your character and their goals, not just for combat advantage. We DMs notice very easily when people RP things their character sheets can't back up.

That was a bit of a tangent, but it was to illustrate my point: People should think flavour and RP when they make characters - not how much they are going to roflstomp PvE or pwn people in PvP. Weapon damage differences are tiny and insignificant to this.

[Antras89]

Also a thing. If you want nice skin for weapons who do not have alot of nice ones, request it. I gladly do more exotic weapons for people if they wish to use them.

[Rhifox]

but it's a fact that there are only 4 weapons that are worth using in Neverwinter Nights 2, and these are the next ones:

This way, with weapon master 7 and +20 damage that can crit and no damage that cannot crit (for simplicity) we could get these results:

Not everyone is a weapon master.

You're also ignoring things like, bludgeoning is almost always the superior damage type, how common certain types of weapons with good stats are available, range (eg whip)...

And, of course, people use what they want to use. Longswords are incredibly boring, and apparently weak according to your maths, and yet they're the most popular weapon because people like swords.


All this being said, I do plan to adjust how ridiculously underpowered piercing is when doing the pve rework. A damage type that should be one of the BEST for penetrating DR, being one of the worst, is so stupid. Slashing should be the weapon type most susceptible to DR.

[mrm3ntalist]

Damn, I have been using non optimal and unbalanced weapons all these years ...

[Young Werther]

Damage can also depend on targets AC, your working AB, and high range damage is nice to disrupt casters. Here's hoping the PvE rework makes more interesting monster formulas where a more diverse weapon ecosystem can thrive.

[artemitavik]

eh, depends on the piercing.

a smallsword or later term rapier? maybe not so much, but people didn't wear a lot of armor when those weapons were prevalent, so ...

now a battle-pick, like the spike on the back of an (actual) warhammer? totally, because it's a weapon specifically designed to go through armor. I have one on my wall at home, and I guarantee if I hit you with it, even in armor, you're having a bad day. That same armor is going to laugh hysterically at my various smallsword/late style rapiers as things bounce off.

as for slashing being the "Most vulnerable to DR" again it is highly dependent on what slashing weapon vs. what type of protection. Chainmail was historically super good at repelling slashing weapons, and so clearly was plate. But the strength of the sword in RL on the battlefield was its versatility, thus at least partially negating that advantage, and slashing weapons like the pole axe might have had enough kinetic energy to simply not care.

Having seen servers that had custom DR on every different armor type to try to match "historical" resistances, I will advise caution. All it did in those few servers I saw (granted this was ages ago) was cause completely new balance issues, because then suddenly instead of "everyone using the longsword" it was "everyone is using the <insert weapon that has the least DR vs armor issues>" and it caused just as much if not more frustration and calls for balance.

[GholaMan]

What nathe is suggesting is to make all weapons mathematically more equal so weapon choice matters less. Why he is saying piercing is the worst is because there are no mobs that allow piercing to bypass its DR. No one suggested using realistic armor DR. Anyway class abilities and levels are not just mechanics, its part of your RP. A weapon choice should be more aesthetic, or whatever works best with what you are trying to do with your build. It might make sense for your adventurer who was a soldier to wield a spear or halberd, but both of those are just weaker versions of scythes.

[Re'Drix]

Heck, I didn't even know if a rapier was good or not, I use it cause Re'Drix is a pirate and the main weapon I use I refer to it as a rather decorative item that was gifted to him from the previois captain he worked under, people really should play their weapons by their characters story, I couldn't tell you what weapon is good or OP or the best thing since sliced bread but if it fits your character! Get it! I bet there is a good tier weapon for each weapon.

[mrm3ntalist]

What nathe is suggesting is to make all weapons mathematically more equal so weapon choice matters less.

Is that what he was doing? I didnt notice in his calculations how the DR impacts the average dps, how the dps is affected with low AC/ high AC opponents, how the characters AB affects the DPS and how the confirmation of the crit can negatively affect his calculations. For example a falchion can be better against cannon fodder, but against bosses a greataxe can perform much better.

All Nathe did, is use a half-truth, an optimal scenario if you prefer, to support whatever he was/is trying to. Depending the player, there are different weapon options - BG is good on that part. To give some examples one of the most mechanically savvy player, was using warhammers on his FS/BG build. Another prefers dwarven axes or Bastard swords. My favorite weapon is battleaxe and I consider the Vilebite epic, the best all-around weapon weapon on the loot table.

[Steve]

.... since one of my best builds (It's not showed for public because I plan to play it myself) uses warhammer because of the big ways it has to use it.

You had me until you wrote bullshit like this.

BGTSCC shouldn't be a environment where we're out to pwn (each other).

[mrm3ntalist]

Nerf hammer hits hard (I've experienced it) when I publish my best builds and when something might be way too fun it can be way too bad.

Wait, are you the guy that quit some months ago because he thought the team was nerfing his builds??? If so, welcome back.

[mrm3ntalist]

I'm the guy that doesn't share his best builds if he wants to play them himself because he doesn't want to risk a nerf, but I'm not the only one that does it. I've been taught that by better builders than I am, so I guess this time it's not me.

Ye i understand mate. Paranoia is a very common thing and many have to live with it.

[Planehopper]

Yeah, thats about enough.