scather seems to be the perfect off-hand weapon ?!

[silverdragon72]

.

is there any reason not to use scather as off-hand weapon with imp. 2WF and maxed power attack / combat expertise ?

all off-hand- / AB- penalties should be ignored cause scather hits always...


...will all other "scather"-effects works also ?


.

[Greywulf]

Sounds good, plus, if you kill Thrommel while he's in your group (or allow him to be killed), you can also take Fragarach, and then resurrect him and still get Scather later as a reward - so if you've got all the two weapon skills, plus exotic proficiency in the bastard sword (required to wield them one-handed) - you're a death-dealing machine of chaotic goodness.

Sweet, eh?

[Mulligan]

Please note that if you havent got BOTH swords it's best to have scather in the MAIN hand.

Scather is a medium sized wpn, which means that your main hand will take a nasty to hit penalty if you wield it off-hand, effectively removing the need for the two-wpn feats.

With Scather-main hand and a light wpn.(heavily enchanted, of course) off-hand you'll score even more hits.

If you have both, or plan to, you dont need two-wpn feats other than for an extra off-hand attack.(imp.two-wpn. feat) You only need the Ex.Wpn:BS to wield both, meaning that a cleric can do it as well as a Ftr, and a Rouge can do TONS of sneak attack damage.

I recommend Scather main-hand OR get both and pump Pow.Attack/Combat Expertise to the max in both cases

[DraySkullan]

But don't they always hit regardless? Who cares about penalties?

I gave it to my thief, who wasn't even proficient with it, and always hit, most of the time with sneak attack damage, heehee

[Mulligan]

Let me clarify on Scather / Fragarach swords :

Yes they always hit but the question here is how many times you hit in a combat round.

Let's say all STR scores are 10 - no bonus to hit & dmg

A lvl 10 Character without the proper feats could wield one of them TWO-handed for 2 attacks (1 attack for wiz/sorc)

Attacks are maxed at 5/round and always follow this pattern: Main Hand first (x) Off Hand last (max 2)

Main Attacks are as follows:

Fighter/Paladin/Barbarian/Ranger
BAB +10/+5
Rouge/Cleric/Druid/Bard
BAB +7/+2
Sorceror/Wizard
BAB +5

To wield it ONE-handed or in the off-hand all characters would have to take the Exotic:Bastard Sword feat.

If so even a Wizard would get an extra attack when wielding it off-handed but the main hand attack would always miss due to penalties, so it won't have any effect on number of attacks.

With the Two Weapon Fighting feat all characters get an extra attack with a weapon in the off-hand, but with a -2 on all attacks plus a -6 to main hand/-10 to off hand if you don't have two-wpn fighting feats. you are also penalized if the off-hand wpn is larger than light.

A fighter with only the two-wpn-fighting feat and a medium main weapon and a light off hand weapon has:
BAB +8/+8/+3 (off-hand is +3)
With Improved twowpnfight he'll get another offhand attack at an additional -5 to hit, so now he has:
BAB +8/+8/+3/-2
If he takes the Scather in the offhand it will always hit but only 2 times and the main hand attacks get another -4 to hit, likely to miss.

Hope this clarifies some

[silverdragon72]

.

...maybe the other way around is better...


Scather for mainhand...


...and a magical enhanced BS (or another medium sized weapon) for the off-hand !


...who cares about the -4 penalty for the mainhand if you wield scather ?


.

[Mulligan]

Right, when a weapon always hits it's important to hit as many times as possible.

To get 5 attacks with a lvl 10 fighter the only way i know in TOEE is to HASTE and take both Two-wpn and Impr. Two-wpn fighting.

You then get 3 main hand attacks and 2 off hand attacks. To have a chance at hitting with the off-hand the weapon should be LIGHT, not medium, so take a dagger, shorth sword or a light mace in the off hand for maximum damage potential.

But then again, if you have both Scather & Fragarach you would hit 5 times always when hasted.

[silverdragon72]

.


did I miss anything ?


...using a medium sized weapon in the off-hand gives a AB penalty only to the the main hand ?


so when wielding scather as main hand - why not using another BS in the off-hand ?


.

[Mulligan]

Sorry,

I didn't give you the full list of penalties, but here it is:

ANY character can take a weapon in the off-hand, and get a penalty of -6 mainhand/ -10 offhand.

If the off-hand weapon is LIGHT the penalty is reduced by two, to -4 mainhand / -8 offhand.

If you take take the two-wpn feat the penalty is reduced by two for the mainhand and six for the offhand, to -4 mainhand/ -4 offhand.

All of these penalties stacks. I'll give my Cleric as example :

Lvl 10, STR 24, Feats twowpn fight. ,Focus:hand axes, 2 +3 axes, one is meduim (Great Cleaver) and one is small.

BAB is +17/+12, with light axe in offhand its +15/+15/+10 but with another med. axe in offhand it's +13/+13/+8.

I gave some wrong info earlier: The FIRST offhand attack is at full BAB bonus (all +/- included).

So 15/15/10 is mainhand +15, offhand +15 and mainhand +10 for the second attack.

So you see the penalties apply to both hands/all attacks.

I would still go for a light offhand weapon as it increases your "to hit" ratio.

Hope this helps

[Eflat]

I've never used either as I never made a CG fighter (who would gain max benefit from either weapon).

I have a NG ranger (who I happened to roll perfect straight 18s in abilities) I mostly use him alone as my main fighter. With Combat reflexes and a Holy Keen frost greatsword of shocking burst he always hits and deals damages far higher then he ever could with those weapons you've mentioned) He once dealt 102 hp in a single round against the hill giant shamon on the 4th level of the temple.

Then once I got bored with the game and up'd his abilities using a hex editor - with the sole thought of taking out IUZ (just to see if it could be done) sure enough he brought IUZ down to 0hp in a couple rounds but apparently you can't kill IUZ as subsequent hits do nothing - eventually four or five rounds latter St Cuthbert shows up and IUZ just leaves.

[Greywulf]

Originally posted by Eflat
Then once I got bored with the game and up'd his abilities using a hex editor - with the sole thought of taking out IUZ (just to see if it could be done) sure enough he brought IUZ down to 0hp in a couple rounds but apparently you can't kill IUZ as subsequent hits do nothing - eventually four or five rounds latter St Cuthbert shows up and IUZ just leaves.

You can kill Iuz - I killed him just as Cuthbert showed up - with Iuz dead, Cuth just stands there (he never leaves). If you talk to him, he cries out, "Iuz," and you can't be sure if he's looking for him or if maybe he misses him (just a little bit, eh?).



Iuz has a CR of 52 - I was so proud. We looted him, but I never made note of what he had on him.



But it can be done (and yes, that party had modified stats - all 25's).

[Mulligan]

He can be done with, but you don't need to "cheat" to do so.

The battle with Hedrach and the confrontation with IUZ is one of the most challenging fights in the game.

I took IUZ down with a normal party (Ftr/Rog/Clr/Sorc/Wiz) and Scather for my Rouge. (After several reloads, of course). I got lucky and got two crit. hits with the rouge and down he went. I had also hit him with 3 successful Rays:Enfeeblement and several M.Missiles.

Bug report:

What bugged me most is that his CR of 52 didn't give my party any XP!

His corpse hasn't ANY loot, except for a farmer garb !!

Also i had slain all the hill giants/ettins/bugbears/wizards and when Cuthbert arrived the loot disappeared and only Hedrack was Raised with a dozen Zombies as company. Loot Gone!!

After many reloads i managed to loot the ettins & hill giants in-combat and still get IUZ down, no cheating. The party needs to be heavily spelled/boosted but it is possible. This party had +6 Gloves: STR & +6 Amulets: CON and F/Rog STR 18's.

No XP for killing IUZ is a bug, Troika didn't include xp awards for CR's over 32 AFAIK (this might be wrong as i dont remember exactly).

The loot from the combatants disappearing is definitely a bug, and to not kill the ettins makes the fight extremely hard.

Ultimate Challenge ?

Play Iron-Man and kill IUZ without Scather/Fragarach !!!

[Greywulf]

Heh-heh, so basically, with all your gloves and amulets, etc, your party probably had close to 25's in most of the stats that mattered - and of course the reloads...



Funny thing is, I seem to recall getting XP for Iuz as part of the overall XP for killing Hedrack and his cronies. With me, I stayed out of sight and pelted Heddy from out of range, taking out whichever thugs of his ventured into sight. I don't recall the exact sequence of things, but nobody got resurrected by either Cuth or Iuz, and Iuz was down by the time Cuth strolled into view.
I coulda sworn Iuz had loot, but as I look in the InvenSource document, I see he has none (old age, ye are a mighty foe).

Well, with a little editing, he could have plenty of loot, eh?

[Mulligan]

As for my party's stats, i'm sorry Grey, i didn't mean to imply that you or anyone else were cheating, just that the party were rolled normally at lvl 1.

There are trainers availible that'll let you edit your pc's stats to incredible high levels, and i only meant to say that my party was "normal"

As for Iuz, i know that he dont give XP, but the overall fight is big and yields lots of XP!

I've also done the fight many times without killing IUZ (no xp, so why bother?) and if Hedrack goes down quick IUZ & Cuthbert wont come and all the loot from the ettins are there.

If IUZ shows up, after 5/6 round or so Cutbert will come and heal all pc's (raising dead ones too) before leaving and IUZ will heal Hedrack and summon about 20 zombies. If any of the bugbears or giants/ettins are alive they'll also get healed.

The zombies are done for with turn and Hedrack alone is an easy match.

Normally i get Hedrack to "near death" and then have the IUZ encounter and fight Hedrack a second time.

I havent done this in Iron-Man yet, but i'm close to..

[Greywulf]

Aw heck, I'm just joking around ...


Hey - how can you tell that Iuz didn't contribue to XP? Just curious.

And I've actually avoided Iuz, too - I've only had the mass resurrection thing happen once.

What exactly does Ironman do? I think you can't quick-save or something, right? But what else does it change?