18 réponses à ce sujet

[Cygnus Xone]

Just curious about people's opinions concerning the trade off of -2 to hit and +2 AC for using a tower shield.  Is it worth it for a weapon master?

[kamal_]

Weapon master tends to be all about doing crits with things like falchions, doing damage as quickly as possible. Personally I've never thought the tower shield penalty was that big of a deal for a high BAB character.

[Arkalezth]

Depends on the enemies and how much AB/AC they have, but I'd generally pass on tower, you want as much AB as possible to confirm those crits.

About falchions, big weapons aren't generally worth it because you can get 2-handed bonuses with medium weapons anyway. Those are more versatile and the damage loss is only a point or two. As a WM, the best weapons to specialize are the ones with a large critical range (scimitar), or a large critical multiplier (scythe).

[Cygnus Xone]

I tend towards staying with the heavy shield at least at lower levels, but I'm still listening if anyone else wants to weigh in.

[Dann-J]

My calculations suggest that a greatsword [edit: greataxe] is the best over-all weapon for a weapon master, once you factor in all those non-critical hits. It doesn't do as much critical hit damage (or as often) as some other weapons, but its base damage is superior, which is important when you consider how many creatures are immune to critical hits in the official campaigns.

For shield-using weapon masters, the katana or bastard sword rank slightly better than the rapier or scimitar using my simple ranking method. They require an extra feat though (not that a fighter / weapon master can't spare an extra feat here or there).

My own weapon master character duel-wielded a crafted katana and the dream dagger in MotB, sacrificing extra strength damage for extra attacks. Since many of the creatures are undead, elementals or telthors in MotB, I didn't focus as much on critical hits.

Modifié par DannJ, 19 mars 2012 - 09:50 .

[The Fred]

Is a tower shield -2 AB but +2 AC in NWN2?

[Dann-J]

The Fred wrote...

Is a tower shield -2 AB but +2 AC in NWN2?

-2 AB and +4 AC as of patch 1.23, apparently:
http://nwn2.wikia.co...ki/Tower_shield

[Arkalezth]

Which calculations are those? Do they factor STR modifier, Weapon Specialization, Power Attack, etc? Base damage is negligible when you start factoring in other damage modifiers. What makes a weapon better than other is the critical range and multiplier.

Tower shield is +4 AC, -2 AB, yes. +2 AC, -2 AC over a heavy shield.

[Dann-J]

Arkalezth wrote...

Which calculations are those? Do they factor STR modifier, Weapon Specialization, Power Attack, etc? Base damage is negligible when you start factoring in other damage modifiers. What makes a weapon better than other is the critical range and multiplier.

I factor in base damage, critical range, base critical multiplier, keen/improved critical, WM increased multiplier and WM ki critical.

The scythe comes in quite low using my ranking method [edit: 3rd in my revamped algorithms]. Although it does 4x critical multiplier (5x for WM), it has a base critical range of only 20, and the base damage (2d4) isn't much to write home about.

It's all well and good to choose the weapon with the best critical hit damage, but you won't score a critical hit every time, and critical-immune creatures are always an onion in the ointment. Since you're doing non-critical damage more often than not,  the falchion and the scythe (both 2d4 weapons) are little better than a 1d8 longsword while you're waiting for that critical hit to occur.

Modifié par DannJ, 19 mars 2012 - 04:01 .

[Cygnus Xone]

DannJ wrote...

The Fred wrote...

Is a tower shield -2 AB but +2 AC in NWN2?

-2 AB and +4 AC as of patch 1.23, apparently:
http://nwn2.wikia.co...ki/Tower_shield

I meant -2 AB and +2 AC as compared to a heavy shield.

[Dann-J]

I've just revised my stats spreadsheet (I'd miscalculated the average base damages) and am now ranking weapons using the following algorithm:

( Average_Critical_Damage x %_Critical_Chance ) + ( Average_Base_Damage x (100-%_Critical_Chance) )

Assuming a 7th level weapon master (Increased Multiplier, Ki Critical) with the Improved Critical feat and no shield, the following are the rankings (essentially the average amount of damage per successful attack for a character with a strength of 10):

Greataxe 11.375
Greatsword 11.2
Scythe 9.75
Halberd 9.625
Bastard sword 8.8
Katana 8.8
Falchion  8.2875
Longsword 7.2
Rapier  5.95
Scimitar  5.95
Short sword 5.6
Kukri  3.825
Dagger 3.6

This doesn't take into account number of attacks, strength bonuses, or focus/specialisation feats. Neither does it account for the fact that  tiny weapons (dagger, kukri) don't get the 1.5x strength bonus when used 'two-handed'. Use of a shield or an off-hand weapon will reduce the STR bonus from 1.5x to 1x (which in this hypothetical case with a STR of 10 won't make a difference).

The greataxe seems to come out on top due to the huge base damage and the 3x multiplier (4x for a weapon master).


Here's the average critical hit damage ranking (Average_Base_Damage x Critical_Multiplier) for WM level 7 (STR=10). Scythes still come out second to the greataxe:

Greataxe 26
Scythe 24.375
Halberd 22
Greatsword 21
Bastard sword 16.5
Katana 16.5
Falchion  14.625
Longsword 13.5
Rapier  10.5
Scimitar  10.5
Short sword 10.5
Kukri  6.75
Dagger 6.75

Modifié par DannJ, 19 mars 2012 - 03:56 .

[Arkalezth]

Sure, but that was my point, you're mostly ignoring damage modifiers. This has been discussed to death, it's not hard for a simple fighter/WM (and I'm not talking about epic or anything, just early feats, STR and mundane weapons) to get a +20 damage bonus on top of the weapon's base damage.

When you're looking at 25 vs 28 base damage, the difference is made by criticals and versatility (allowance of a shield if needed, compatibility with modes like Power Attack, etc). Add buffs and weapon enhancements and the base damage difference will be even less noticeable. Not to mention other possible things like Frezerker or Favored Enemies.

About crit immunes, sure, criticals are useless there, but if I was going to face a lot of crit immunes, I wouldn't play a WM in the first place (and I rarely play one actually). And even then, in an everything crit immune scenario, I'd generally still pick a medium weapon over a big one.

[Dorateen]

I always take a tower shield as soon as one is available. One reason is because a dwarf using a tower shield looks like he's carrying a huge-ass table, and that creates all sorts of entertaining opportunities.

I also prefer AC to AB. That is, I prefer not to get hit and maximize the armor class so I can wade into a bunch of enemies and take their attacks. Let the rest of the party concentrate on doing damage, and I'll clean up the rest.

Completed the OC as a Fighter/Weapons Master (warhammer), but Dwarven Defender is a better prestige class, which I got to play in Storm of Zehir.

Harumph!

[The Fred]

Cygnus Xone wrote...
I meant -2 AB and +2 AC as compared to a heavy shield.

Ah, I see. OK that's cool.

To be honest, I'd rather have the AB, as a Fighter-type. It's probably easier to buff your AC than your AB, too.

RE base weapon damage - yes, it's fairly negligible comparatively, but only in the higher levels. A very low-level character needs those few extra points far more. Such a character is also more likely to be able to find a use for a tower shield, though I imagine that the AB is quite valueable to them.

A tower shield is probably useful when fighting multiple weaker creatures. If that (relative) +2 to AC is a significant fraction of their hit chance, compared with your -2 AB being a smaller fraction of yours, you will gain more benefit from it and it applies vs all of them. Otherwise, though, I'd probably steer clear.

[Arkalezth]

Not only at high levels, I tried to make that clear in my post. Obviously, at level 1 you won't have many feats, but even then, a level 1 character with Power Attack can get around a +12 damage bonus.

Speaking of WM, the earliest you can get Ki Crit is at 13. A fighter 6/WM 7 can reach around +20 damage with the right feats, or earlier without the WM prerequisites. I don't know how the OP's character is, but what I describe isn't hard nor takes long to achieve at all.

Back to the topic, since WM is all about crits, and crits are partly based on AB, anything that penalyzes AB will affect that negatively. So I'd use a heavy shield mainly, you can always have a backup tower one (if you're not encumbered) as a backup.

Or, as Dorateen said, just use whatever looks cooler or fits the RP, be it shield, weapon, or armor.

[nicethugbert]

Someone on the old epic character builders part deux forum ran calculations that showed that as the bonuses increase, the wider crit range and higher crit multiplyer weapons get better.

[I_Raps]

I haven't run any stats, but I've done a number of in-game trials; plus, I have 298 BICs currently in my Localvault and another 800+ in my archived Localvault, so you can say I've got a bit of experience. A couple of observations:

- Big crits are the bomb. Do more and bigger crits. All due respect to DannJ's analysis, but steady average damage is not what happens in the game. You get big hits and you get little hits. The big hits drop opponents if they're big enough. One character does 40 on average, another does 60. They will both normally need 2 hits to drop a monster with 80 hit points, but on a crit the second guy lays out the opponent virtually every time whereas the 40 guy will need another swing 50% of the time. As for those crit-immunes - buy a Pharoah's Mace or something or play with teammates.

- Again, Big is Better. The base damage really does matter. You can see this for yourself. Take a WM and console in the needed feats so he is the same with either a falchion/scimitar or greatsword/longsword or greataxe/battleaxe and try him out somewhere where you can spawn opponents. There is no comparison between the big and little weapons. Really.

...

As for the original question about the tower shield - go for it. 2 AB isn't going to matter - if it did, no one but a fighter would ever hit anything past level 6. The fighter types build up huge AB surpluses just so they can spend them on things like Power Attack, Two-Weapon Fighting - and tower shields.

[Dann-J]

nicethugbert wrote...

Someone on the old epic character builders part deux forum ran calculations that showed that as the bonuses increase, the wider crit range and higher crit multiplyer weapons get better.

Yes - but you may have to wait until later levels for that to happen. It's a pity you can't choose to revise your WM focus weapon at some point (provided you have melee focus in multiple weapons of course). Then you could use the weapons with high base damages early on, and switch to the extended critical range weapons at higher levels.

Of course, there's no real need to use you chosen weapon until you reach WM5 and get your first decent feats (superior focus, increased multiplier). You can only use ki damage a limited number of times per day at lower levels anyway. It's not like you weapon of choice is welded to your hand.


[Edit: I've added strength and enhancement modifiers to my spreadsheet, since they apparently get multipied as well during critical hits. As strength and enhancement bonus both increase, scythes eventually overtake greataxes performance-wise. The falchion doesn't seem to shine until well into epic levels though.)

Modifié par DannJ, 20 mars 2012 - 12:26 .

[Haplose]

I'd say you need to add feats like Weapon Specialization (+Greater/Epic) as well, as it gets multiplied too. Weapon Enhancements as well. You should probably have a +2 or +3 weapon by level 13, when WM starts to shine. Finally Power Attack. Not always worth it, but when it can be used, it's devastating. And it's multiplied on crits too. It get's absolutely sick in the hands of a FB in a two-handed stance.
Base weapon damage is really irrelevant for Str fighters, except for the lowest levels (like maybe till 8) and except against critically immune. Weapon base damage is pretty important for dex fighters and sneak-attackers though.