Malice Damage

[Slarty]

No -- stunning DOUBLES the damage of any attack (physical attacks anyway) against the stunned target.

And yes, I am aware that the bow feat does not automatically max out damage. Since my question was concerning the maximum POSSIBLE damage, any calculations for that question would assume maximum possible rolls.

I'm fairly sure I've seen my bow and unarmed feats go critical, i.e. produce about twice the damage that should be possible, but I'm not 100% sure. My suspicion though is that they can, and that the statement in the manual is simply wrong -- perhaps due to mechanics changing after it was written.

[Antigrav]

I am playing an axe-wielding blighter and I also had a surprise high-damage hit... of 42. I think something more is at work here. Something to do with life, the universe, and everything.

[KillingMoon]

Thanks for the answers! I never would have guessed that 'stunning' would involve double damage.
I'm not so experienced with this game yet, and info is often missing.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

Something else about these sudden massive hits struck me. I realize that I'm wearing an Animal Rage Amulet, and had been wearing two Bloodlust Rings. The bonus damage from these must be adding to my base damage before calculating the Feat and Malice bonuses, whereas weapons with bonus damage, the bonus gets added after.

[Slarty]

Are you sure? That doesn't sound likely. I'm pretty sure that all multiplicative bonuses (including most feat bonuses) only affect max damage and do not affect bonus damage at all.

[KillingMoon]

Yes, just look at those two screenshots I uploaded on the first page of this thread. In the first shot I'm wearing 1 bloodlust ring, my max damage from character stats is listed as 14+1; the damage I'm applying is 42+1. The 1 is the bloodlust ring.
Second similar; character stat says max damage is 17+2; damage I'm applying is 39+2.

No multiplier effects on those at all; a bloodlust ring will always add 1 extra damage to the normal damage. Also no reductions from finesse shots.
If your bonus damage would be a large chunk of your total damage, you should go for finesse shots.

[Slarty]

*nod*
It's true.

On a side topic, one thing I've noticed about to-hit rolls is that while the final cap is obviously 100% (or 99%? well, either one), this cap is not applied until AFTER to-hit modifiers are applied. This means that if you achieve a very, very high to-hit score, say by investing all your skill points into bows, you can retain a 99% hit rate even when there are situational modifiers against you! For example, I just noticed that I had a 99% hit rate against a bunch of slimes despite adjustments for power shot [-30%], inclement weather [-20%] AND target not visible [-20%]... even though those three adjustments combined should take away about 55% of my to-hit chance.

[Farwalker]

You folks have me curious on the stunning, is it possible to get a stun effect from a physical attack that I missed, or is the x2 mentioned just for attacking someone who is already stunned (for example via spell)? (I didn't know about the x2 stun effect - does it multiply bonus damage too?)

Related to damage rolls, I saw something strange when I was doing some testing...

I was attacking with a max damage of 39, but noticed the damage rolls never dropped below 18 (I tested this a huge number of times...). Is the damage supposed to vary all the way from 1 up to 39, or is it some other setup?

[Slarty]

The stun effect, AFIAK, just comes from the Sonic Blast spell or certain enemy attacks.

That makes sense about the damage range -- come to think of it, I've never noticed really low damage rolls either.

If the actual average damage is 75% of Max Damage, even before the bonus for a heavy blow, feat, crit, etc, no wonder Max Damage now seems better than bonus damage, whereas in book 1 the opposite was true.

[Oshkell]

You know, I recall seeing some nonsense like this, too, when I was playing, but I didn't think to analyze it in such a way. I merely regarded it as testament to how effing awesome I was.

Bug or not... this is why I like the Nefarious axiom so very, very much. Come to think about it, I believe they may have even toned it down a bit from Book I.

[Farwalker]

I posted in the windows support forum on the rolls, hoping BW will mention whether it's by bug or by design.