Concerning extra damage piercing

[Fianon]

Hello there!

I hope somebody has an answer to this:

I have a compund oak longbow. Beside the massive criticals it has extra ranged piercing damage...well, at least the description says so.

In game, it so often does only 1 point of damage, even against inferior enemies, say ravens. How that? Shouldn´t it be at least 2 points? ( regular plus extra damage)
Or is it that every creature out there has damage resistance piercing?
And how is this extra damage calculated?

Thanks for any upcoming answer

*signed*

Fianon

[orth]

As far as I recall, it only does the extra 1d6 when you crit?

[Fianon]

Thanks,  Orth. I made a screenshot, which shows the description of the bow.
It clearly says "extra ranged damage piercing*


*signed*

Fianon

[orth]

Oh right, that...

Extra ranged dmg piercing does nothing if its on a ranged weapon that already does piercing dmg.

I'm not sure why that property is even on there... if it were slashing or bludgeoning it'd make sense.

[ShiffDrgnhrt]

So are you going to fix that ever?

[lonnarin]

I always figured it was intentional to balance the lvl reqs and lens prices between these bows and their standard counterparts since damage typically is done by arrows and only accuracy is usually defined by the bow.  So crit bonuses I could see, but standard damage bonuses really shouldn't apply to ranged weapons unless the bow was adding some kind of enhancement tot he arrow as it fired.  (like shooting it so fast it made a sonic +1 dmg from the boom or some such)

Of course Bioware messed up royally in coding its ammunition.  If you ever get a bow with unlimited ammo, it tends to force you to use the ammo with the bow and kicks any better arrows out of the quiver slot.  Now I would have personally had the quivers hold unlimited arrows, not the bows...  heh

[orth]

So are you going to fix that ever?

If by "fix" you mean remove the extra property and then adjust the level requirement through another means, it could possibly happen but doubtful.

If by "fix" you mean change it from piercing to bludgeoning or slashing, the answer is a clear "no" due to the creature balancing we have in place when considering ranged attacks.

If by "you" you mean me personally, no.

If by "ever" you mean in the next generation then yes! We won't have extraneous and useless properties to artifically inflate requirements.

[ShiffDrgnhrt]

Ah, so the property is there to increase the LEvel Req?  Oh....

[orth]

I doubt it was originally there for the purpose of raising the level requirement.  More likely the original builders of the items didn't realize the property was superfluous.  But now that the level requirements of the items are there, changing that might have economic and gameplay balance issues that we'd rather not adjust at this point.

[twidget658]

As soon as any bow is made into a compound, that description is added. If you compare a regular longbow and a compound bow in RL, what is the difference?
 
 Briefly, a long bow has one string which bends the limbs, no draw reduction through the pull range and is limited to how much you can muscle the string/limbs. A compound bow bends the limbs (which is really what gives any bow its power) through the use of cams and 'cables'. This means the limbs can me 'stiffer', less energy to draw back the string and a 'relief' once you are full draw. What does this afford? Higher accuracy, velocity and distance.
 
 How does this affect the IG aspects? 1d6 crit bonus from all that I could tell.

[lonnarin]

Ideally compound bows should be using the str modifier up to a limit based upon their construction, anything pulled back stronger would break the bow.

Crossbows should be more powerful at short ranges, but their dmg is rather static based upon the fixed notch to where the bolt is pulled back to and locked into place.  Their range is less than that of bows mainly because the bolts are less aerodynamic, but stronger in close ranges because its a short pump of a launch.  Arrows, even composite bow shot ones usually rely on a longer distance between the archer and the target for the arrow to sail and gain in velocity, so using a bow at close range is far less damaging or effective than a crossbow, but from a long distance and using cover, they work very well.  Also, arrows should be shot at a MUCH quicker interval than the crossbow, at least 2 or 3 arrows per bolt, cince the heavy crossbows used in medieval times were very cumbersome and a good deal of power was required to lock them in place.  Some even had to be drawn while sitting with the bolter's feet bracing against the base of leverage, others had complex winches and gears to redistribute the pulling force gradually...

I watched an A&E special where they were comparing firing rates between the two and their effectiveness... at close range the crossbow had little trouble piercing through platemail but took about 10 seconds of frantic work to load, while the same guy could launch 5, maybe 6 arrows in a rush from a distance and maybe pierce scalemail or chain.  Fullplate mostly deflected the arrows, and at close range the arrows were pretty useless against most metal armors.

I can't wait till we get new engine to fix all those things bioware forgot to do correctly according to the set D&D rules, and add many more variables which make even more sense than those.  Like Piercing melee weapons should tear up somebody in leather or chainmail, but be neigh effective against shields and plates, slashing would destroy leather armor quickly and soften bludgeoning well, and bludgeoning wouldn't do too well against leather, might be deflected by plate but wind up being perfect for beating some poor fool in a chainmail senseless.  Chain links might divert a blade, but the force of a hammer would still be felt pretty heavily, and the platemail bearer would be easy to knock over.  Crossbows good at short ranges, innacurate and weak at long ones and slow firing rate vs quicker arrows which were worthless in melee, etc.

It's always fun to start with the clean slate of variables!  Who knows, maybe we'll wind up founding our own Layonara specific PnP system if Wizards of the Coast keeps jealously stonewalling developers with it's "Open gaming system", ereby monopolizing its D&D franchises according to the handful of soulless, detached game publishing companies who never rolled dice in their lives.  I mean come on, d20 is either open gaming or it isn't, and I find it highly diabolical of them to pretend to be RPG saviors of free content on the one hand, while they pull this Carnegie Atari Monopoly of irreperable lawyer doom with the other.

Seeing as how Microsoft destroyed Shadowrun PC for me, and WotSC act like Bill Gates with a EULA-Extortion Squad, Layo is the future of online RPG for me for the next forseeable decade.  

[Fianon]

Hey. thank you all for the insights.
Pretty good information here.


Thanks


*signed*


Fianon

[miltonyorkcastle]

While not suggesting that this is how compound bows work in Layo (since in Layo you actually make them with cams and whatnot), but late ancient and medieval compound bows did not have cams or cables. It was made by layering bone, wood, and sinew. Hence the name "compound." They were very effective, but took a strong fellow to use. Unstrung, the bows literally bent backwards on themselves. Early "catapults" and "ballistae" were based on his technology, essentially being gigantic compound bows. It wasn't until a long time later that iron replaced the compound bow as the better material for superior torque, and thus we have crossbows. Unfortunatley for crossbows and bows in general, advances in gunpowder made guns far more cost efficient to use for armies.

Err... okay, that was slightly off topic. :p

[ycleption]

I think that what you are talking about Milt is a "composite" bow, not a compound bow, which you are right, is a modern invention. The parts required to make is however, suggest that the layo version is a compound bow.

*shrugs*

[miltonyorkcastle]

...... and here I was trying to sound smart and apparently got the terms mixed up. Composite, compound... dirty underhanded similar sounding words confusing my already overloaded brain matter.....

[Marswipp]

So... this just goes to show that research is a big part of game development. Right?