Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

For a while now I've had a sneaking suspicion that using Ki Damage (Weapon Master ability) during some of the more difficult fights the server has to offer, was actually lowering the damage output of my character.

I went ahead and tested it, and while the regular hits do deal their appropriate damage, there is a definite issue with Critical Hits when using Ki Damage.

This first screenshot shows a Regular Crit for my character.



Notice the physical component of it. 138 Physical damage.

Looking at all the flat added damage 27 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 9 = 43 Physical damage.
Multiply by 3 on a crit and it's 129 minimum Physical damage, just from the flat added damage alone.

Now compare that to the second screenshot, which shows a Ki Damage Crit for my character.



Notice the physical component of that one. 107 Physical damage.

The flat added damage is still the same: 43 Physical damage.
The multiplier is still x3, so the minimum Physical damage should still be 129, but it's not.
It's 22 lower than the minimum.


At first I thought it was Northlander Hewing (+9), which was buggy, but even discounting that in the numbers it still doesn't add up.
27 + 4 + 1 + 2 = 34 flat Physical damage. Multiply by and the minimum is 102.
So far so good. But Ki Damage maximises all Physical damage rolls, so at 1d6 that would be 6, multiply by 3 = 18.
The total Physical damage should then be 120, but it's not. It's still lower, sitting at 107.


Something is not right with the way Ki Damage calculates damage on Critical Hits.

It was always so buggy since the feat was implemented in nwn1, best avoid using it

Only the base weapon damage is maximized by this feat. If the weapon deals additional variable damage, it is possible that a ki damage hit will do less than the maximum possible total damage. A ki damage hit will still do more total damage on average than other hits.

On a critical hit ki damage will only maximize one instance of the base damage. Thus a mace with increased multiplier will deal 6 + 2d6 base weapon damage on a ki damage critical hit (as opposed to 3d6 without ki damage).

from https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Ki_damage

Theodore01 has it right here. In addition, if Ki Damage is like the One Shot feat, it's likely it doesn't properly add scripted bonus damage like Northlander Hewing or Crossbow Sniper. It's possible it's not adding the Weapon Mastery damage as well.

Is this one of those issues that cannot be fixed?

Without knowing the scripting side of this well, I would still imagine there is a way to hook into the critical damage calculations, and do some correcting there.
Ki Damage calculates correctly for non-criticals, so it must be the critical calculation that is off.

Cannot be fixed, in the black box.