Mostly Missile Party

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It depends on what you mean by gobs, and it depends on at what point we're talking about. In general, with a mostly missile weapons party, I probably WILL have gobs and gobs of cash, as there are going to be several pricey items that I won't need to buy, namely mage scrolls and a cloak of the arch-magi. I can also probably avoid paying for the Full Plate Mail, and the Ankheg Plate, as Khalid is the only member of the party (along with my PC) who will switch to melee combat. It's nice to have Full Plate on someone like Kivan, but Plate Mail will probably be sufficient seeing as how he shouldn't be getting involved in combat anyway. I probably will purchase Balor's Claw for Garrick, seeing as how he doesn't get a constitution bonus, but also won't get a penalty with the -2 penalty to Con.

I suppose it's possible to use exclusively darts of wounding or biting from around Chapter 5 onwards. In BG1, I usually go for better THAC0 over straight damage. In BG2 your fighters are hitting all the time anyway so I go for damage, but in BG1, you usually do the most damage with the weapon that you hit with most often. With that train of thought, I always felt that the biggest bang for my buck was +2 arrows or +2 bullets, along with a magic bow/sling.

Now, I think about it, Darts of Biting may be +4, meaning they exceed the to hit of a +1 sling w/ +2 bullets, but early in the game, +2 bullets are way more affordable, and +1 bullets are usually in your price range early in Chapter 3.

The best THAC0 modifiers for missile weapons would be the Long Bow of Marksmanship w/+2 arrows, or also the +3 sling w/+2 bullets. Unfortunately, the +3 sling isn't attainable until late in the game. It's possible to the TOP of Durlag's Tower fairly early, (it's pretty easy provided you have Prot. from Petrification), but the bottom levels are pretty tough early. Seeing as how the +3 sling is also pretty far down in the Tower, you're going to have serious problems getting that early on.

One more unrelated question - I think I read somewhere that scimitars in BG1 with the proper patch are changed to short swords. Is this true? The only reason I question it is because if scimitars are considered short swords, why is a druid able to select large swords as a proficiency? I was under the impression that the only weapon in that class useable by druids were scimitars.

Current plan: Do chapters 1-3 quickly to get to Coran. Kill a wyvern to make him happy, and then do all the other stuff before going to Baldur's Gate.

 

About Scimmys, I've never heard about that patch. They have allways been large swords for me.

 

The weird thing is that scimitars are not "changed" to the Small Sword proficiency (well, maybe the patch does it; I can't know, never having played without it ). It's just that the ones that are added in the expansion use the small sword proficiency. But Drizzt's scimitars are still Large Sword, I believe.

 

^ Well, that is perplexing, seeing as how the only scimitars that weren't added in the expansion were Drizzit's weapons. AFAIK, scimitars were only used in the expansion. So you mean, a regular scimitar that you purchase from Winthrop is a short sword? And the magical +2 scimitar atop of Durlag's tower?

 

Yep and yep. Every scimitar added in the expansion (including the scimitars added to existing shops) use the Small Sword proficiency, but they didn't bother to change Drizzt's to match.

 

Can someone help me? I'm trying to the bow of marksmanship off the ghost...I pickpocket all the ghosts, but nothing. It says "target has no valid items" on all of them. I haven't activated the quest yet either...so not sure what I did wrong.

I am playing BG+TOSC+latest patch, and use of ease mod for stacking only.

 

Bow of Markmanship and ghosts? I've never heard of that... You mean the ghosts in the Firewine ruins?

 

The Longbow of Marksmanship is on a hobgoblin in Tazok's tent at Bandit Camp. You don't get it from a ghost.

You can get ancient armor from a ghost in the Firewine dungeon, if that's what you meant. Just kill him when he asks you to.

 

Earlier in the thread. There is a second Long Bow of Marksmanship, found on one of the ghosts in the Firewine ruins. Specifically...

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Having never tried it myself, though, I can't say for sure whether it would be pickable; it may be equipped, in which case you wouldn't be able to get it.

 

Well I am sure. Either Montaron or Jaheira is a good test character - give them normal darts and see how much damage they do. You won't see them hit for 1 hit point of damage, ever.

So the real comparison between darts and slings (for a character with 2 stars in missile weapons, but below level 7) is:

Darts: 1d3+2 damage & 3.5 ApR = 4 * 3.5 = 14
Sling & bullets: 1d4+3 & 1.5 ApR = 5.5 * 1.5 = 8.25

Darts +1: 1d3+3 damage & 3.5 ApR = 5 * 3.5 = 17.5
Sling +1 & bullets: 1d4+4 & 1.5 ApR = 6.5 * 1.5 = 9.75
(I think this comparison is unfair. The sling +1 lasts forever, you'll run out of +1 darts very quickly. Better is:
Darts: 1d3+2 damage & 3.5 ApR = 4 * 3.5 = 14
Sling +1 & bullets: 1d4+4 & 1.5 ApR = 6.5 * 1.5 = 9.75
)

Darts +2: 1d3+4 damage & 3.5 ApR = 6 * 3.5 = 21
Sling +1 & +1 bullets: 1d4+5 & 1.5 ApR = 7.5 * 1.5 = 11.25

Sling +1 & +2 bullets: 1d4+5 & 1.5 ApR = 8.5 * 1.5 ApR = 12.75
Sling +3 & bullets: same as above

Sling +3 & +1 bullets: ... 14.25

Sling +3 & +2 bullets: ... 15.75

Once you get to level 7 the darts don't have such an advatage. For instance:

Darts +1: 1d3+3 damage & 4 ApR = 5 * 4 = 20
Sling +1 & +1 bullets: 1d4+5 & 2 ApR = 7.5 * 2 = 15

Sling +1 & +2 bullets: 1d4+6 & 1.5 ApR = 8.5 * 2 ApR = 17

or:
Sling +3 bullets: 1d4+6 & 2 ApR = 8.5 * 2 ApR = 17
Darts: 1d3+2 & 4 ApR = 4.5*4 = 18


You cannot reach any conclusion about which does more damage without knowing whether the specialization damage is applied or not. But I'm sure it is and that darts do more damage than slings.

That said to use darts in every battle you need to carry around several hundred at least. There is no way to use +1 darts on a regular basis, in the way that you can use +1 bullets on a regular basis - the darts are consumed way too fast.

In addition, as pointed out, the range of the darts is quite a bit shorter than that of the sling, so you have to close the range before you can attack, so your first attack is significantly delayed, whcih matters for spell disruption, and you are vulnerable to melee and spell attacks. But we're talking about a fighter here, so the vulnerability should be OK.