[Bug] Incorrect rolled dmg

[kmbogd]

Sometimes the rolled weapon dmg is not correct. In the picture attached Eder is dual wielding sabres and is using confounding blind on target, however the combat log displayed a 20.1 rolled dmg. Unless I'm mistaken, rolled dmg should be a random value inside a weapon's base dmg interval, which for sabres caps at 19.  Not sure if this affects only abilities or auto-attacks as well.

[kmbogd]

In this second picture my character is dual wielding swords and is using Buttom's Up on target. Combat log displays 20.2 rolled dmg which is above the max base weapon dmg for swords (19).

Edited May 30, 2018 by kmbogd

[adragojlovic]

Greetings kmbogd,

 

Thank you for taking the time and notifying us regarding this issue this should be fixed in the recent patch 1.1. Should you have any additional questions or concerns let us know!

 

Cheers.

[kmbogd]

Hi adragojlovic,

 

Unfortunately it seems that as of patch 3.0 this still hasn't been fixed. Abilities still don't follow the weapon's base damage range. I did not notice this problem for auto-attacks.

 

Here my character is equipped with Whispers of the Endless Path that has a lower base dmg (9-15) but comes with a cone attack. He uses Heart of Furry ability. Notice in one of the attacks the 16.2 dmg roll which exceeds the max value. As a possible cause I'm thinking that maybe the implementer added the +25% dmg increase of the ability in both the base dmg range and also as a dmg modifier (instead of keeping it only as a damage modifier).

 

 

Here we come back to the case of Confounding Blind as per my initial post. Eder is using a mace (Bardatto's Luxury) which has a base weapon dmg range of 11-15. Notice the 16.3 rolled dmg. Again maybe the implementer added the +25% bonus from the ability to both the base weapon range and as a dmg modifier instead of keeping it solely as a dmg modifier.

 

Edited September 30, 2018 by kmbogd

[Boeroer]

Abilities' base dmg gets influenced by Power Level. Maybe that has something to do with it?

Edited September 30, 2018 by Boeroer

[kmbogd]

It might be, but I'm not aware of such a mechanic and it was never referenced by the developers: that the primary or the full attack scales with Power Level. Also in that case a 20 lvl character should influence the ability quite a lot, thus the base dmg should be noticeably higher. But as per my findings the increase is quite low ~8% (true with respect to the max value of the range).

 

edit: actually upon further testing I think you might be right, there seems to be an impact of Power Level (I noticed some huge differences in some other tests). It's true that I did not play this game for a while now so my memory could fail me, but I'm pretty sure I don't remember anything mentioned with respect to Power Level and primary attack/full attack scaling. This is crazy if you think that in a game like this you would like to have the features as documented as possible. Saying this I would still classify this whole situation as a bug since the abilities are obviously not documented properly in the description (they fail to mention which parts of the abilities scale with power level - not everything does - and by how much).

Edited September 30, 2018 by kmbogd

[Boeroer]

Power Level increasing base damage of abilites is a fact.

It's known for some time now (was discussed at here in the forum) - but of course if you haven't visited/read for a while this might be totally new to you. You are right that the mechanics are obscure and the info about it is somewhat hidden. It's there but it's def. hard to find out if you don't know what you are looking for.

 

I wouldn't say it's a bug since it works as intended - but the explanation of PL mechanics surely could be a lot better.

 

If you look at the damge rolls of low level abilites (for example Flames of Devotion) and those of high level abilites (for example Heart of Fury) you will notice that the difference between "official" base dmg and actual dmg roll can be quite high for FoD while it's low for HoF. That is because low level abilites receive more PL bonuses. If you have 13 Power Levels for FoD (lvl 20 = PL9 + Magran's Favor + Sun and Moon = +4) it will deal way more base damage than advertised while HoF (PL 8, not profiting from Magran's Favor and Sun and Moon, thus only gains +1 PL scaling) does not. Usually this is countered by higher damage bonuses of high lvl abilites (if they work with weapons) or higher "starting" base damage (if it is a spell or an ability that's independent from weapons).

 

This way low level abilites keep being useful even at high levels. Sometimes they are even better (also more cost effective) than higher level stuff.

Edited October 1, 2018 by Boeroer

[kmbogd]

The way things are right now is kind of illogical to me, as for example some parts of the martial abilities scale with Power Level (albeit under the hood with 0 documentation) some parts don't. If we take for example Confounding Blind we do get a scaling in the most unexpected place: rolled weapon dmg (which should be the only constant in the whole formula, the root of everything). But at the same time we don't get a scaling with Power Level of something more logical like the bonus dmg the ability does (if I'm not mistaken the +25% dmg remains the same no matter the Power Level). The same for other martial abilities that have bonus penetration or accuracy, I don't think they scale.

 

For the rolled weapon dmg scaling, if I understood correctly the thread that discussed this mechanics, under the hood it is actually treated like a dmg modifier applied multiplicatively. So why not represent this separately from the rolled dmg? We even have a very good GUI solution for representing this scenario as we can reuse the way Penetration was represented  in the last iteration of the Beta (in that last build penetration was the only dmg modifier that was still applied multiplicatively).

 

Also why not scale the bonuses instead of the rolled dmg? And why not update all the martial abilities tooltips to include the scaling with Power Level the same way as spells do?

Edited October 1, 2018 by kmbogd

[Boeroer]

Increasing base dmg is a multiplicative dmg boost, yes.

 

It's more powerful than raising the bonus dmg from 25% to 30% or whatever. But I have no idea why Obsidian chose this path.

 

I actually like it that way - we have way too many additive dmg mods in the game and only two multiplicative ones: lashes and Power Level. In my opinion Power Level shoud be impactful, so raising base dmg is fine. However, it should be communicated a lot better.

[thelee]

Increasing base dmg is a multiplicative dmg boost, yes.

 

It's more powerful than raising the bonus dmg from 25% to 30% or whatever. But I have no idea why Obsidian chose this path.

 

I actually like it that way - we have way too many additive dmg mods in the game and only two multiplicative ones: lashes and Power Level. In my opinion Power Level shoud be impactful, so raising base dmg is fine. However, it should be communicated a lot better.

 

the ask for more clarity on power level scaling has been one of the main repeating issues i've been seeing in the community since backer beta, and yet... *sigh*

 

at last with games like D&D it was self-documenting. (e.g. Fireball deals 1d6 damage per level up to 10, Incendiary Cloud lasts 1 round/level, etc.)