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

....is the only unarmed shape for which gloves damage does not transfer to shape.

Surely that's an oversight, isn't it?

Sorry, i wasn't able to replicate it. More details, please?
+4 EB gloves in my case.

Here I'm using gloves with 1d4 slashing.
As one can see, Gorgon gets slashing EB from shifter levels and that seems to overwrite the 1d4slash from gloves.

Werewolf and owlbear get physical damage from shifter levels, while the g-cube gets bludgeoning. Both types stack with these gloves.




Another try with 1d4 bludgeon gloves, these show up for both werewolf and gorgon shape. (Couldn't verify for g-cube, guess it won't show up here.)


However, while testing I hit a dummy for half an hour and parsed the combat log.
Never hit for max. damage as shown on the sheet.


That got me thinking does/should extra damage(slash, bludgeon, pierce) from gloves stack with physical damage from shifter levels at all?


Is it by design that the player has to figure out what stacks with what for each shape individually or is it just buggy?

Hi there. Thanks, that clarified things for me a bit.

Is it by design that the player has to figure out what stacks with what for each shape individually or is it just buggy?

I definitely don't get why would you think we design stuff around "figure what stacks on your own". But, it's a weird behavior (not buggy though, see why below).

I found what's the reason about it:
1) Nwn2 engine doesn't stack damage if you have bonus damage same as your main damage.
In other words, if you have longsword +4 EB + 1d6 slashing, it will only stack 1d8 (base sword dmg) + 4 slashing (from EB). It always uses higher as same damage bonus on weapon don't stack.
2) Compared to gorgon, both werewolf and owlbear use slashing + piercing weapon as their creature weapons, not just "slashing". Since those are vanilla game blueprints, we don't have control on what exact damage type those deal. Thus, if you have +4 EB 1d4 slashing gloves, it effectively converts into: physical base weapon dmg (not sure how it translates about DR etc, but it's separate damage type from slashing/bludgeoning/piercing). Anyway, it goes with: physical weapon dmg +4 physical dmg (from EB) + 1d4 slashing. Cause they are different damage types, they stack.
3) In case of gorgon with its slashing creature weapon (same for manticore in fact), it's slashing base damage for their creature weapon, so it doesn't stack.
If it was some piercing or bludgeoning damage, it'd stack, but in same type of damage, only highest applies. I can't just switch gorgon weapon to one similar to werewolf/owlbear because it will mess with DR penetration.

It's pity that those rules are not transparent etc, but it's not what we have control over, sadly.
So, while it's not our wish to deceive player and is not a bug, it's definitely a "nice" obsidian coding that makes things so obscure at times.

Also i found that owlbear has it's 1st creature weapon attached wrong so it doesn't exist in game, so i will fix, at least, that.

Speaking of dmg not applied even when shown on sheet, i will make more tests myself to see if it works.

As of dmg not applied:

I tested locally and found the source of frustration.
I used +4 1d4 piercing/bludgeoning/slashing gloves (so each are +4 and 1d4 of single dmg type) to make sure things are exactly how they are with your example.

In my test, gorgon has such damage modifiers:
2d8 dmg slashing as base creature damage
+8 from str
in other words, it's 10-24 dmg.
Gloves themselves should add:
+4 base dmg type
+1d4 of selected dmg type.
So, if no 1d4 is not of same type as base weapon dmg, then dmg should be 15-32.

In any case, the only real proof that it applies is if gorgon deals over 28 dmg without crit. Since it's 10-24 base and +4 EB makes it 14-28. So, if i get any hit with dmg of 14, it's automatic "doesn't apply" and if i get any hit with 29-32, it's automatic "does apply".

Gorgon (base slashing dmg):
Ref pic: 1) Bludgeoning gloves:
Expected dmg: 2d8 + 8 + 4 + 1d4 = 15-32, 14-28 without 1d4.
126 hits, none of them went below 16 dmg,1 hit dealt 32 dmg (not crit), so it applies.

2) Piercing gloves:
Expected dmg: 2d8 + 8 + 4 + 1d4 = 15-32, 14-28 without 1d4.
78 hits, minimum dmg dealt 17, maximum dmg dealt 30, so it applies.

3) Slashing gloves:
Expected dmg: 2d8 + 8 + 4 + 1d4 = 14-28, because it's slashing shape so 1d4 shouldn't apply.
173 hits, minimum dmg dealth 15 (5 times), maximum dmg dealt 28 (5 times), so it definitely doesn't apply. No regular hit damaged over 28 dmg.

Werewolf (base slashing + piercing dmg, physical in other words):
Ref pic: NB, i turned off werewolves lacerate ability so it doesn't mess into my testing data. It only applies to my local testing setup, doesn't affect live server in any way.

1) Bludgeoning gloves:
Expected dmg: 2d6 + 6 + 4 + 1d4 = 13-26, 12-22 without 1d4.
2 hits, maximum damage dealt 23 without crits.
So few hits because second hit did already show that bludgeoning applies.

2) Piercing gloves:
Expected dmg: 2d6 + 6 + 4 + 1d4 = 13-26, 12-22 without 1d4.
57 hits, minimum damage ealt 13, maximum damage dealt 23 without crits.
So, piercing 1d4 gets applied.

3) Slashing gloves:
Expected dmg: 2d6 + 6 + 4 + 1d4 = 13-26, 12-22 without 1d4.
201 hits, minimum damage dealt 12, maximum damage dealt 22 without crits.
So, slashing 1d4 definitely doesn't get applied.

Summary:
There are such creature weapons type by damage:
Bludgeoning (so 1d4 bludgeoning won't stack with it if has EB bigger than 2 from any source)
Piercing (so 1d4 piercing won't stack with it if has EB bigger than 2 from any source)
Slashing (so 1d4slashing won't stack with it if has EB bigger than 2 from any source)
Slashing + piercing (so 1d4 slashing won't stack with it if has EB bigger than 2 from any source. but 1d4 piercing will stack with it).

Shifter shapes weapon stats. Creature has single weapon unless i specify other:
1) Dryad: piercing (bow)
2) Werewolf : slashing + piercing
3) Gelly cube: bludgeoning
4) Owlbear: weapon 1: slashing, weapon 2: slashing + piercing, weapon 3: slashing + piercing.
5) Manticore: weapon 1: slashing, weapon 2: slashing
6) Pixie: piercing (bow)
7) Wyvern: weapon 1: slashing, weapon 2: slashing, weapon 3: piercing
8) Gorgon: slashing
9) Ogre magic: bludgeoning (warmace)
10) Mindflayer: slashing.

I hope this information will help you getting it clear what glove properties will/will not work for which shape.
Thanks for pointing out at this situation. It's not something we can fix, but it's something we can get people informed of.

Shifter gets its own EB by Leveling up.

That means you should test with gloves/gauntlets granting ONLY extra dmg types, with no EB (or AB) on them.

- Weapon Enhancement bonus: +1 per 4 Shifter levels (max +5 at Lvl 20 Shifter)

Steve wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 6:55 am Shifter gets its own EB by Leveling up.

That means you should test with gloves/gauntlets granting ONLY extra dmg types, with no EB (or AB) on them.

- Weapon Enhancement bonus: +1 per 4 Shifter levels (max +5 at Lvl 20 Shifter)

That doesn't really matter, because if shifter gives +4 and gloves give +4, only one of them is applied. But extra damage by type is a different matter and will stack/not stack regardless where does EB bonus comes from.

Except you showed that an EB +/- 2 causes or prevents extra damage.

And EB shouldn’t be having any affect here.

Steve wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 8:32 am Except you showed that an EB +/- 2 causes or prevents extra damage.

And EB shouldn’t be having any affect here.

Don't forget that EB is not only damage, but AB bonus as well.
It's not super clear how EB interacts with extra damage bonus, but i did grant my pc gloves with 4 eb and 10 extra slashing dmg. In that case, 4 eb was still giving ab, but i had 10 total dmg bonus.

If your dmg bonus from eb is of same type as extra dmg bonus, the higher one will only apply. I'm not sure how it compares 2-3-4 flat vs 1d4/1d6 bonus, but the overall concept still works as i described.

Steve did update wiki to reflect shifter dmg stacking and i asked Rhifox to update shifter wildshape description to reflect that as well. Once it's done, i'll make this one as solved.