Weapons Damage

[WarCat]

Can someone explain to me the meaning of the numbers that are linked to a weapon. ?
exemple:
Damage physical: 1-9
ion:+1-4 droid
damage bonus: +1
Critical threat: 19-20,x2

Ballanced: +2/0 vs two wepon penalty if use on the of hand.
(How do i know which hand is the off hand on my character?)

Thanks.

[Polyphemus]

Damage physical: 1-9

This means that an attack with the equipped weapon will do anywhere from 1-9 points of physical damage, I think that means blugeoning, slashing, piercing, etc.

Ion +1-4

This means that if your weapon does 1-9 damage, then it will cause 2-13 damage. Ion damage really only effects droids and personal shields.

damage bonus: +1

It will add an extra point of damage to your attacks, regardless of the average taken from your attack. Whenever you attack with say a 9-36 damage weapon, the game rolls a pair of dice behind the scenes of the game that takes an average of 9-36. So you'll usually inflict about 20-30 points of damage, unless it's a critical attack.

Critical threat: 19-20,x2

This means that in order for you to get a critical hit, the D20 "dice" that the game rolls behind the scenes must land on a 19 or 20. If you can whittle this down to a 16-20 or so, then you will have a much better chance of scoring one. Critical threats multiply the damage by two, hence the "x2".

balanced weapons

this means that if you use a balanced weapon in your off hand (left hand regardless of who your character is) it will reduce the penalty on your to-hit chance by two. With Master Two Weapon Fighting, the penalty is -2/0. So using a balanced weapon reduces it to 0/0, completely negating the to-hit penalty.

Does anyone know what massive critical does? The numbers don't seem to make sense.

[Ergophobia]

Massive criticals means extra damage inflicted when a critical hit is scored, in addition to the double damage already inflicted. Behind some weapons, instead of the 2x behind the critical threat range, there is 3x or maybe 4x, which means damage is not doubled, but tripled or quadroupled in the case of a critical hit. Power attack/blast also adds 1x to the critical damage.

[Jon_Irenicus]

Physical damage means either slashing/piercing/blunt, depending on the type of weapon (a stun stick is considered blunt, whereas a sword is slashing). I do not know how damage vs armor types are calculated in KOTOR (or 3rd edition for that matter) but there are separate resistances against the three physical attack types.

Notice that when upgrading a weapon, something like "+1-4 slashing damage" will get added to the physical damage of the weapon regardless of the weapon's dmage type. This is important because not all weapons depend on physical damage, example: lightsabers inflict energy damage.

So if you have 10-20 physical damage sword and a 10-20 lightsaber, the sword would go 11-24 physical with that upgrade, but the lightsaber would be 10-20 energy +1-4 physical.

AFAIK, this makes a difference in critical hit calculations, meaning that the critical hit modifier (x2, x3, etc) takes into account the base damage of the weapon (whether upgraded or not) and THEN adds any other damage modifiers it has. Continuing with the above example, if both swords had x2 critical, when you scored a critical hit:

The normal sword would do: (11-24)x2, 22-48 physical damage.
The lightsaber would do: (10-20)x2, 20-40 energy damage + 1-4 physical damage.

I haven't actually tested out the above myself but that is how it's supposed to happen (in theory). The game could be ignoring all that for all I know.

[Darth Clayaken]

What about "Unstoppable"?

"Keen" means it adds one to the critical strike range, right? (i.e. 20-20 becomes 19-20).

[UserUnfriendly]

Originally Posted by Darth Clayaken

What about "Unstoppable"?

"Keen" means it adds one to the critical strike range, right? (i.e. 20-20 becomes 19-20).

applies to ranged weapons only, means you can't stop with energy shield. like disrupters...

you're correct about keen

[Tetinator2]

No, your wrong about keen, keen doubles the threat range. If the range is 20, then keen makes 19 or 20. If range is 19 or 20, and number 17-20 will work. Check it out when upgrading weapons. Keen multiplys not adds.

[Ergophobia]

BUT, if a weapon is keen and you use critical strike, it doubles the OLD threat range, then doubles the OLD range. So if you have a 19-20 weapon and use improved critical strike, it becomes 15-20, and then adds the 2 from keen, making it a 13-20 threat range. So the maximum chance of a critical hit is 11-20, a 50% chance.

[Jon_Irenicus]

Unstoppable applies to all weapons (there are shields against physical damage). Unstoppable damage also bypasses resistances and immunities (so you HAVE TO suffer that 1-10 damage on the disrupter rifle, nothing you can do about it). It is usually found on items that can't be upgraded, and AFAIK, there's no weapon upgrade that adds "+X unstoppable damage".

[stormcloud]

what about a weapon like so

19-20, 2x, +2

what does the +2 mean? thanks

[Jon_Irenicus]

Already mentioned above, that +2 is something called a "massive critical" bonus. It mean that when a critical hit is rolled, apart from doubling the base damage of the weapon (x2 effect) it will also add 2 more damage points on top of that (+2 effect).

As I said, items that have "massive criticals X" give you that bonus

[stormcloud]

Thanks. The game likes to throw around all these terms but some of us number crunchers like to know how the puzzle is put together.

I guess I'll be on the look out for better weapons.