Feats and Weapon Skills Discussion

[Farwalker]

You cannot enchant arrows, even individually, in my copy of book 2.

Thanks Slarty, that's helpful to know. It is possible to enchant thrown weapons though? (And it has to be one at a time)?
(I need to level up a character with alchemy to try more of this myself! )

Update: tested and confirmed, you can enchant throwing weapons one at a time.

[Farwalker]

I played a sword man the first time through,and I find the feat for sword is negligible.with some basic buff,the two-horned thingy has ony16% chance to hit me,and mine 98%.So why do I need parry?I think I'll go bludgeoning or bow the next time.

Was it helpful at any point in the game?
What would you have preferred to see for the sword?

[carrotghoul]

I played a sword man the first time through,and I find the feat for sword is negligible.with some basic buff,the two-horned thingy has ony16% chance to hit me,and mine 98%.So why do I need parry?I think I'll go bludgeoning or bow the next time.

Was it helpful at any point in the game?
What would you have preferred to see for the sword?

Not as far as I can remember.In earlier part,when I do need parry,with my sword skill so low,thus longer intervals, I always have to retreat.In later part,with high sword skill, better equipment and magic buffs, I don't need parry anymore,and it now appears so frequently.So no,I don't find the feat helpful in any point.
What I prefer to see for the sword?Maybe more damage,but the bludgeoning feat has already got it,hasn't it?So I've no idea.

[Slarty]

It occurs to me that one other thing to mention, is that the superb bow feat actually removes the drawback to bows, that you get a -40% tohit penalty for point blank shots. the guaranteed huge damage makes it a lot easier to guarantee that you won't be cornered in melee.

[Krafen]

I am not convinced it is necessarily bad for some weapons to be more effective than others.

An awful lot of your suggestions seem centered around increasing damage. Do you really believe weapon damage is too low? If so, perhaps weapon skills should increase damage directly. I think feats are more interesting if they produce useful effects, rather than just hitting harder.

[carrotghoul]

Now I recall,in earlier part,I always go finesse mode,so I've forgotten there's a guaranteed attack following parry.Sorry if misleading.

[Farwalker]

I am not convinced it is necessarily bad for some weapons to be more effective than others.

An awful lot of your suggestions seem centered around increasing damage. Do you really believe weapon damage is too low? If so, perhaps weapon skills should increase damage directly. I think feats are more interesting if they produce useful effects, rather than just hitting harder.

I agree with you wholeheartedly on useful effects making these more interesting. I'm still mulling over ideas to improve that aspect actually.

However I do also think that one weapon skill shouldn't be too underpowered in possible damage output compared to another. I'd like it to be such a difficult choice as to which way I want to go that I'll want to play the game again trying a different approach (and that means there has to be something uniquely interesting about each approach not just equivalent damage), or I'll perhaps invest in a mix of weapon skills and change it up depending on the situation I'm in.

At first I thought bow was way overpowered, because I thought it also had max damage applied (because that's what the player manual said). Since it's not I took the approach of trying to find ways to make other options as attractive as the bow. I'm still thinking about the bow though - Slarty's recent comment on point blank is a really good one, perhaps the bow feat should be limited somehow for point-blank shots, or if you have an enemy adjacent?

[Farwalker]

Now I recall,in earlier part,I always go finesse mode,so I've forgotten there's a guaranteed attack following parry.Sorry if misleading.

Actually I thought your comments were pretty insightful. I've been rethinking the sword a bit as a result...

What if the sword feat had a bleed effect combined with the defensive benefit? It might make for more distinctive attack strategies, even for lower level characters that only get the feat once in a blue moon. You could run in, engage even a group and start one enemy bleeding (while defended from counter attacks), and then try to scoot out of there. Opens up hit and run. What do you think, would it be more fun to use the skill?

[Farwalker]

I think feats are more interesting if they produce useful effects, rather than just hitting harder.

Further along these lines, it occurred to me that the cleave feat could in addition be given a huge chunk of bonus damage against objects. This could allow you to cleave through a door faster for example.

There are places where this would make an interesting difference too, besides a convenience factor for how long it takes to open closed barrels - being chased by big bugs and wanting to quickly get through a locked door comes to mind...

[flushfire]

What if the sword feat had a bleed effect (snip)

imo piercing should get that. piercing's 2 hits is also fairly weak. sure the hits can crit but how often does that happen. considering that it's melee and there's no trainer one would expect more from piercing. also hit and run seems more akin to a rogue's style of play.

as for sword lets look at it this way: focus is 3 guaranteed hits, virtually giving you the turn you used it in & 2 free turns of guaranteed hits. why cant sword's feat also give you the equivalent of 3 turns of parry? the bonus damage can just be removed, it's not even that good. while that's insignificant to high AR builds, i could see it see more use for defensive purposes instead of what it is now. i think focus is the problem, bow's feat is all damage, while the other feats do bonus damage and some other bonus.

also, reducing cooldowns (assuming all cooldowns are the same) could possibly balance the less useful feats. bow's feat really is OP in my opinion because not only is it for a ranged weapon, it's also a guaranteed hit plus it can be used every time compared to cleaving's which is very situational. why can't all feats just be guaranteed hits anyway.

[Slarty]

One thing I've just notied: feat damage increases do NOT increase bonus damage or elemental damage. I assume that the second strike from the piercing feat does duplicate this damage. With weapon enchantments and Enkindled Weapon this can easily be 16 damage, so that does help out piercing a little bit. Add in the chance of a critical hit or nefarious strike, and that +6 damage named piercing weapon, and -- at least if the feat does auto-hit as has been suggested here -- piercing begins to look competitive with bludgeoning, and better than swords/cleaving.

[Farwalker]

why cant sword's feat also give you the equivalent of 3 turns of parry?

Oooh, that's a nice idea... So if you invested heavily in sword you could be getting hit only two turns out of 5 even in a mass of attackers. That might be reasonable. And it gives a better benefit for lower level users as well. If combined with the feint skill I proposed, and again heavy skill investment in both, you could be getting hit only one turn out of 5 in melee. Still reasonable at that kind of investment. I agree this would to some extent give an alternative to the high armor approach. You still have to take ranged attacks into account there though.

If we have this kind of sword feat to apply to ranged attacks as well (which I think it should, no idea if it currently does or not) then perhaps we should also allow the feat to be triggered even if there is no adjacent enemy to strike at. This could, for example, allow the sword user to close with ranged attackers while avoiding some hits on the way. (Or assist in running for cover). Currently though the feat is just triggered with a shift attack, so I'm not sure how to implement this best. Shift-clicking on just anything in sight (no attack if it's at range but the rest of the feat triggers) might work, but seems a bit artificial.

also, reducing cooldowns (assuming all cooldowns are the same) could possibly balance the less useful feats.

Or perhaps we balance the other feats up to the same attractiveness as bow, but then require more skill investment to minimize the cooldown across the board. I'd be in favor of this.
Currently it's something like 100 - (skill level * 3), with a minimum level of 5. If it were adjusted to 100 - (skill level * 2) instead, our bow feat spamming friends can still do their thing, but it will require another 5 levels worth of skills for them to get there.
That also emphasizes the whole point of the feat - big benefit, spend it wisely you only get it once in a while.

[Farwalker]

One thing I've just notied: feat damage increases do NOT increase bonus damage or elemental damage. I assume that the second strike from the piercing feat does duplicate this damage. With weapon enchantments and Enkindled Weapon this can easily be 16 damage, so that does help out piercing a little bit. Add in the chance of a critical hit or nefarious strike, and that +6 damage named piercing weapon, and -- at least if the feat does auto-hit as has been suggested here -- piercing begins to look competitive with bludgeoning, and better than swords/cleaving.

Wow, that does make a difference - I've been assuming the multiple was applied to the bonus and elemental damage as well. If not, then I may need to rethink a bit on some of these.
In a multi-hit attack (like cleave) I'm still assuming the bonus and elemental damage do apply to every target hit...

[Slarty]

The other thing to note is that if you really do just rely on the feat, this changes things. For the Bow feat with its automatic hit, every point of Max Damage is worth 3.9 points on the damage dice, or about 2 actual damage (more if the feat maximizes damage somehow). Bonus damage points remain worth just 1 damage.

Suddenly that "downgrade" of Bless to increasing max damage instead of bonus damage, has become an "upgrade"!

[Farwalker]

Did some testing of the Overwhelming Volley feat for throw.
When I tested it (at high throw skill), with a bunch of darts, I noticed the following:

1) I always used 7 darts if I had at least that many.
2) At least one dart always hit my target. If I only use one dart, it always hit the target (there is no mention of a to-hit roll, looks like auto-hit but I could be wrong - my to-hit was about 99% anyway in this test).
3) Damage was rolled and bonus applied for each missile hit. I had only +3 damage from jewelry in this test.
4) The distribution of the darts after the first was randomized. It is possible to get multiple hits on the same creature. A creature right next to your target may be missed. Sometimes the darts hit farther away from the main target than right beside it.
5) There is a bug with the refresh clock for the volley feat - it can get stuck, and you may need to make a different attack, get injured, or do something else to get it going again. Just running around doesn't unstick it. Reported already in the other forum section.