It seems that you can get your full strength bonus on bows whether or not you use a bow with the "mighty" property.

This makes the "mighty" property meaningless, doesn't it?

Is there any reason at all to use a bow with the "mighty" property?

I know what the "mighty" property is supposed to do but the problem is that it makes no difference.

With Khelgar, you can give him a regular shortbow (no "mighty" property) or a duskwood shortbow (mighty +6) but his full strength bonus applies either way.

Can anyone comment on this?

Thanks

Bows do not have a bonus by default, therefore Khelgar should not be getting any strength bonus for plain shortbows. For the Duskwood bow he should be getting +3 for his default 17 STR (mighty only gives up to the character's STR bonus, and no more). Can you elaborate more on what you mean by "It seems that you can get your full strength bonus"?

What you're describing is how the mighty feat should work but in reality any character using a bow gets 1 1/2 of his strength bonus added to damage.... at least that's how it is in NWN2 when I play it. I have a copy of NWN2 I got off of GOG, which should be fully patched AFAIK.

- Tossa

Are you sure you're not looking at a composte bow? I haven't yet played NWN, but by the 3.5 ruleset, a composite bow will allow you to add (up to) a given level of strength bonus to your roll. The downside is that if you don't have that strength, you receive a penalty. on your roll.

I understand that, which is why I asked you to explain exactly what you mean. I am still unclear: I do not see what you are describing in my GOG copy of NWN2. Do you have any modules, hak paks etc?

Yes, I'm 100% sure. I know the rules but NWN2 doesn't seem to properly apply the rules anymore. So, for you, for example, if Khelgar equips a regular shortbow, he gets no bonus to damage? His damage with it is 1-6, not 1-6 +4?

That means there may be something wrong/unusual with my copy of NWN2.

Just out of curiosity, do you have MotB and SoZ installed? (I do.)

A ranged attack is not simply the stats of the bow. Khelgar (at level 1) has a BAB of 1 and with 13 DEX has a +1 ranged bonus, meaning his ranged attack will be +2 at level 1.

I'm a bit confused, so I'll just throw this out, since I didn't see it mentioned. When you're talking of getting your full strength bonus with ordinary bows, are you possibly thinking of thrown weapons? You do get your strength bonus applied to any of those.
If you had 18 str, with a common shortbow, you'd do 1d6 damage. With a common throwing axe, you should do 1d6+4 damage.

Also, as far as I know, mighty and composite are functionally the same.

But that should only be +2 to hit, not +2 to damage.

I'll have to try this out when I get around to reinstall nwn2, can't test it right now.
Could easily be a bug caused by one of the patches, or something funky in tossacromwells install specifically.
Or just a misinterpretation of critical hits or whatever.

Doesn't anyone else have nwn2 installed? :D

I don't understand what you want to know, but I'm posting screenshots to show you what I have already explained verbally:

Casavir with composite longbow (mighty +3):

https://plus.google.com/photos/113774482362578517236/albums/5968591982284061601/5968591983151430418?pid=5968591983151430418&oid=113774482362578517236

Casavir with regular longbow:

https://plus.google.com/photos/113774482362578517236/albums/5968591982284061601/5968592076838497058?pid=5968592076838497058&oid=113774482362578517236

Notice that the strength bonus applies as 1 1/2 in each case (+4 since Casavir has a natural 16 strength)

Does this answer your question(s) and if not, then please ask something specific.

Thank you,

Tossa

EDIT: FYI, the +2 bludgeoning damage (in the screenshot) is from Grobnar's Inspire Courage ability The screenshot should clarify that I am indeed talking about bows. Khelgar (or Casavir or anyone with a strength bonus) should not be getting any strength bonus for plain shortbows, but in my copy of NWN2, he (and others) does. Again, the screenshot confirms this.

What are they using for ammo?


*edit* Oh, and something tells me there was a problem with the character sheet when it comes to displaying damage from ranged weapons, in that it shows incorrect values (it treats any weapon as a melee weapon with regard to damage values. The bow would be looked at as a two-handed weapon, therefore the additional damage. This is not actually applied in-game. It's just a character sheet display glitch).

Did you check the damage values in-game to make sure you're actually getting the extra damage? (Forgive me if this is posted up-thread. It's late and I haven't the ambition to check all the posts).

So I got a little ambitious, and I might have figured it out.

Right as rain, my ordinary longbow is shown as giving 1d8+3 damage. I assume the +3 damage is the 1 1/2x str bonus.

But if you look at this picture I took in game, you notice a contradiction.
http://i427.photobucket.com/albums/pp351/IGiveUpArgh/LongbowDam2_zps45b38ced.jpg

Notice how the Orc was hit for only 1 damage, when the minimum should be 4. So I'm thinking it shows as bonus damage, but doesn't count as such.

Edit: My original explanation was clumsy, so I fixed it.

Some time ago something strange happened.
I had a char with a natural strengh bonus who used a mighty bow.
The damage bonus was not shown on character sheet.
Then I cast bulls strengh on him.
Now the correct damage was shown on character sheet

it was something like this:
strengh 14, no bonus by item or spell, mighty longbow+3 ---> 1d8 damage on character screen
same as above but with bulls strengh = 18 strengh ---> 1d8+3 damage shown on character screen.

note: mighty longbow+3 means it is any longbow and the mighty bonus goes up to +3.

I do not know if bows really do the wrong damage or if it is only the character sheet that is buggy.
I could not find out because the difference was only 1 point of damage and there might be other factors (enemies have damage resistance or weakness, some buffs are not shown, . . . who knows what)


Some experience from when I tried to play an archer:
-The damage is not shown correctly (see above). For example, the arcane archer bonus is not shown at all.
- Usually you fight several enemies at once. Avoiding melee combat completely is almost impossible, especially when your archer is a warrior and you don´t want to use a mage as tank
- At high levels archers burn their ammo with an insanely high rate. (At level 30 6 base attacs + rapid shot + haste =80arrows per minute)

I think in NWN archers are much less useful than in the baldurs gate series.