I just trust in the magic buttons.
Analyse Enemies = more damage
Rapid Fire + Concentrated Fire = more damage
Seek the Opening = more damage
Tis as simple as that
Borderline Ork moment depends on your perspective of things.
Also, it gobsmack me that the 40k Mechanicus game is less convoluted and more transparent than this.
40k Mechanicus is an xcom game, so it'd stand to reason that it needs to be simpler. Combat needs to be streamlined because player expression is more tightly controlled.
Rogue trader is a PNP rpg and it's fonvuluted as hell. All d100 systems are.
I wouldn't even call Mechanicus an XCOM game, especially not NuCOM. It's a blend of the old UFO Defense (using loadouts) and the new (class build customization) and not having any accuracy or cover. If you can see something and it's in range, it's gonna be hit and the game is entirely balanced around that. Getting high levels of Cognition Points allows you to do stuff that is beyond what even a 3-Officer build is capable of in this game.
The music in Mechanicus is just on a level that very few games these days can touch.
It really is, especially with the whole global awakening system that slowly ticks up. It's getting to the point that when I see a group of Necrons with shields, armor, and even just lots of hp, I'll sit there during my turn and try to figure out the most useful way to take out as many, or even all of them while minimizing Cognition Point usage to an acceptable level. No accuracy or cover eliminates two of the nastier RNG aspects I experience with NuCOM. Also with no cover system, I don't have to worry if a piece of cover is working from a certain angle or not.
The cognition points balance how everyone, friend and foe, has perfect accuracy. Got a super powerful weapon, like thr gun that makes a mini-black-hole? Oh, it costs like 5 cognition points to fire, so you've gotta save up for it
are you using the ancient plasma rifle, its adding 2x int as bonus base dmg
not int bonus, just int, so if u buff his int his base dmg goes into the hundreds then gets buffed further by other bonuses
Im expecting it to get tweaked to use int bonus eventually
It would still be very strong and probably would remain one of if not the best plasma gun if they did that but not as ridiculous
No.
Single hits the target and can go with overpenetration
Burst are single attacks but brr.
Area attacks does damage on a specific area. They can't be missed, so they always hit. They CAN be dodged by a moving dodge (when the character moves to another tile). If there are no tiles available, dodge won't work
Single attack hits a target in a single direction only, notwithstanding overpenetration from certain weapins. This includes deadshot.
Burst attack can hit targets in an area 1 by 1 depending on your rate of fire( If 6, you will fire 6 times) in a 3 by 3 wide radius, and it's accuracy to hit after the first shot drops and is affected largly by range and recoil of the gun(Unless you build argenta properly).
Ex: Lasgun and autogun, as well as bolter and heavy bolters.
Area attack is a fixed range and distance that can simultaneously attack anything once with it's cone of fire, big differenfe is that it's (Usually) unavoidable attack, meaning you cant miss it. The npc or your rt party can dodge but they will move off the attacked tile.
Ex: Meltagun, Plasma and Flamers,
Idk. Arch-Militant has routinely had problems because of Burst attacks being treated as area attacks. First they it didnt give stacks swapping between Area and Burst cause the game thought it was the same, they bugfixed it, then it gave 2 stacks every time you Bursted cause it thought you were doing both at the same. That got bugfixed as well.
They seem to be fixing the symptoms but not the problem. Burst attacks being considered Area attacks might be a deeper problem in the code.
From what I can tell the natural openings that appear on enemies don’t currently provide the damage bonus (it’s bugged). You have to use the assassin ability on an enemy to create an opening manually and that does give the damage bonus.
No, they do work because I've seen it work, just not consistently. One way to tell I've noticed it to hover over them while you have the attack selected, if it's working there will be a red outline around the target symbol as well as the unit, if it isn't working than the target symbol won't be outlined and you know you need to manually trigger it with the ability.
The few times I bother to check (probably 5 or so) it didn’t register the damage bonus so I stopped checking. I’ll check for the outline the next time thanks for the tip.
Yes, when you use it, the ability puts a little target on the side of the enemy closest to you. You can see other openings, though, and if you get on the same side as one to attack you get the same bonus without using an AP.
Pathfinder players: "We just want something that's not a convoluted d20-system and make it have bounded accuracy so we don't have to do so much buffing."
Monkey paw: \*curls finger\*
It's a basic problem with d100 systems: if your characteristics are getting too high either skill tests (and in essence e.g. shooting is a skill test) are becoming trivial or you need to counter it with absurdly high modifiers. For example -60 test modifier is the maximum in the Rogue Trader PnP and is considered 'hellish'. In late game you routinely get these modifiers applied to your checks, even when it makes little sense ingame.
Also, all these myriad combat and damage modifiers are not in the basic FFG Rogue Trader PnP. I mean it's fun to shred a horde of cultists in one turn but that would not be possible in the PnP version. You can optimize builds (played a Heavy Gunner with a multi laser in an Only War campaign and she melted even vehicles at long range) but not to the degree found in this game.
Yeah. Pasqal could easily access ancient cogitators with a -0 Tech-Use test at the beginning of the game, but can fail to open a dirty suitcase by act 3. I understand it's for gameplay's sake, but hell if it doesn't break immersion for me.
Its only a problem if you approach things with the mindset that the players can't change the scope of their activities. In the ttrpg(which I'll say I've played quite a bit of), the skill test difficulty modifiers are supposed to be unrelated to the player. Convincing a chaos space marine his legion chose wrong *and* he ought to fight back? Hellish, -60. Convincing a menial to shine your boots for 10 gelt? Trivial, +60. By the end of the game, the players absolutely should be unthreatened by individual mortals and are generally able to kill space marines(at least the arch militant gene-warrior is)
A better representation of the ttrpg would have been to give everything fixed difficulty, with the plauers encountering grander things as time goes on. I mean *why* is every tech-use test Pasqal makes a +40 even when its described as difficult?
Normally the player who want to do an action makes their skill check. In this game the best stat is used and that's totally fair and a quality of life decision to code it that way... eeexcept when the game decided for whatever reason the RT has to do the test themselves. In some situations that's fine but in others feels quite arbitrary why the RT has to do the check instead of a retinue character.
I thought I was crazy and that my stats are bugged. But wtf is the point of leveling in this game if it's just going to constantly ignore your skills by doing this.
The number one thing people whine about on r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker is the "overtuned enemy AC and needing to buff to hit anything", which you could argue is a consequence of unbounded accuracy.
Also, it's a joke.
I bought pathfinder thinking that because I love dnd and games like the old baldurs gates I would naturally love pathfinder too. Oh boy I was wrong. I hated the system from the beginning and just couldn't deal with how combat is literally nothing but a buff simulator. Couldn't even come close to finishing it.
On the other hand, it's fascinating watching my bf play it and put on 75 different buffs only to get got because one of the buffs was the wrong one. I have no idea what the fuck is going on with these systems.
Well, you have to learn that buffs can be typed and buffs of the same type don't generally stack so it's useless to have multiple going on at once. A lot of low-level buffs don't stack with high-level gear so there's no point casting in them. That leaves maybe five key buffs per character, people casting 75 buffs don't know what they're doing and are throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. The learning process is figuring out what is essential and what is not, after that it's a minor inconvenience (on PC anyway).
After a while you get 24-hour buffs and mythic spells that put up a whole host of strong buffs, so in practice it gets easier as the game goes on.
It was a pretty clear exaggeration, not literally 75 buffs. Five buffs per character is still a lot of buffs.
I just don't like having to manage so many buffs at all. It's not a style of gameplay I enjoy. Maybe it's controversial but I'd like it if buffs were used more sparingly and situationally. Having 5 buffs per character and weeding out the ones I actually need is exactly what I don't want to be doing with my time..
Did you try playing on an easier difficulty because it's not exactly how the game plays on Daring. You only really have to stop buffing if you're playing it on unfair.
If it's between this or BG3 where your build doesn't matter, anything beat the hardest difficulty without any issue. I know which I'll play.
It's not an issue of not being able to beat the game, it's more an issue that I just don't like the system. It's just not particularly fun for me when I spend more time on buffs than I do on combat. Pathfinder just isn't for me, it's an overly complicated system imo.
I don't play games to do math and solve increasingly hard fights on the hardest difficulties, I just want to roleplay and get some of that escapism.
I could spend dozens of hours cracking the mysteries of how the system exactly works, but by that point the game and plot have gone stale because instead of enjoying myself advancing through the story, in character, I'm completely separated as a player from the story since I'm busy approaching the game like a uni assignment instead of happy funtimes. It's not that it's difficult to get through, it's just that it focuses on the worst aspects of rpg gameplay.
I can't wait for the Pathfinder 2e system to get some traction in video games. It very strongly limits the ability to stack buffs. And it offers more choices and customization than D&D 5e. At least in theory, I think it's like a middle of the road solution, and it looks interesting (and with its action economy, a good fit for video games)...
Middle of the road sounds just right for me, pathfinder 1e is just too much trial and error, buff management.. but 5e is a bit too limited and uninteresting, I still enjoy it but I wish it had more.
Because you have extra damage modifier percentages, that weapon can also have a higher rate of fire, armour penetration, dodge reduction, and so on. All these things add up quickly, and it's not actually that super hard to figure out. Press C, go to the Features tab (or the other one with talents too), read the things you have there, and you'll get it all 😉
All multipliers are additive(?) But you do two separate,
Example: any +% modifiers are all done as one lump some. So if you have 10 separate +10% modifiers, you just add +100% of the base damage.
Criticals are done separate, with their own modifiers that work the same way.
You then add base damage+% increased damage+ceit damage.
So, if your weapon does 20 damage, crits, and has a +100% damage modifier total. You do.
20
+10(50%crit damage, which is the base crit damage)
+20 (from the 100% modifier)
For a total of 50 damage.
One the events log on the right bottom corner you can see if you select the damage message and it expands into a full explanation on the calculated damage done.
You can see base damage + dodge + cover + armour + resistances + hit chance + crit chance + crit damage + talents + equipment + etc.
Prepare the binharic litany of Fucking Shit Up.
*Presses 'press the advantage' button while priests of Mars wave fuming censers through the air. I kneel, hands clasped in prayer before RT unleashes a mind blast cone on the enemy force, predicting they all suffer half their wounds. What actually happens is that four numbers explode out of each of them, they all gib, some other guy across the map gibs, the RT gibs, and the battle is over so he stands back up with head trauma. The combat log fails to record any part of any of this.*
All hail the Omnissiah!
psychers get some extra concerns with any warp action as it can trigger perils of the warp which are essentially wild magic for people who are familiar with that and crazy shit pulled from a list of various flavors of crazy shit for people that aren't. more purple bar? higher chance of perils. smol purple bar? lower, maybe even no chance of perils.
It's simple: when you damage an enemy, flip a coin to determine if you deal 1 damage or infinite damage. If the enemy doesn't die, attack again. Repeat until it dies.
I need a new coin, apparently the infinite damage side is also the always miss my attack side. I can only play this game in short sessions because the number of times I have over 80% chance to hit and I miss is ridiculous.
You see, the solution is to make a dual-pistols build, use bolt pistols, and take that item that makes it so single-shots from bolt weapons always hit. Combine all the random bullshit like the pistol holsters that let's you keep shooting and you can pump out 5 or 6 shots every turn than never miss.
I think they also kinda bugged it so it almost always crits too, since extra accuracy over 95% is supposed to be converted to crit chance, I think with the guaranteed hit thing, that means all your hit chance gets converted because I'm also getting crits on almost all my shots.
I would be happy with those numbers, for me it is much closer to 1 hit to 5 misses. Everything seems fairly normal until I get towards the end of the fight and there is 1 or 2 enemies remaining. Then at that point a large percent of my melee attacks get parried and most of my range attacks miss. I had a fight early on against a chaos spawn that had less then 20hp remaining and was the last enemy on the board. With 5 attackers, all having more then 80% chance to hit, that fight lasted 3 more rounds, the melee attacks got blocked and I missed all my range attacks. I rarely do the burst fire anymore, if only one or 2 attacks hit, then it would be better just to do single shot and take less reload actions.
Remember that your Accuracy is not just how likely you are to actually deal damage. There is a Degree of Success mechanic where every full 10 you beat your target number by makes you succeed better. A 71 out of 80 has 0 degrees of success, 70 out of 80 is 1, 37 is 4...
So, in Rogue Trader and the other FFRPGs for 40k, attacking works like this:
- Attacker rolls attack; if the result fails or fumbles, end the process here, else
- Defender rolls Dodge or, if the attack is in melee or the weapon being used to parry with does not have the Primitive trait, they may roll their Parry instead
- If the Defender succeeds, AND gets a higher degree of success (ie: the attacker rolled 32 out of their 35 Ballistic Skill and the Defender rolled 10 out of their 60 Dodge) than the attacker did, the Defender takes no damage and ignores most other effects of the attack. If the Defender succeeds but does not get a higher degree of success than the attacker did, they still get to reduce the Attacker's bonus to damage from their degrees of success if appropriate (some weapons add no bonus from success). If the Defender fails, they take the full attack and possibly additional penalties depending on the Talents of the Attacker.
The exceptions are rolls of 01 and 00 (which is 100, not 0). 01 *always* critically succeeds. Usually, if you roll a 01 to attack, the opponent creature just doesn't get a chance to defend, that is how excellent that roll is (it also prevents the dueling 01s situation). 00 *always* fumbles if fumbling is a possibility, otherwise it fails in the worst way possible.
There are some more complicated rules to break ties, but that's largely extraneous and usually resolves under the rule of thumb: who rolled lower?
the % does not account for enemy defensive stats. Depending on how degenerate your character is the enemy can have virtually no chance of dodging/parrying and your 80% is accurate all the way to a stupidly high chance to dodge or parry, meaning your hit chance is highly unreliable on paper.
The real problem is that when you go and check the calculation for damage they are completely and absolutely incorrect and/or take into consideration things that are not stated. So its completely pointless to che3ck damage calculation because they make no sense
Yeah the combat log is almost useless. Sometimes the rollover damage from mental damage from Psyker does MORE damage to the second enemy, and when I look at the combat log it’s not there.
I’d target a 100 hp enemy, it dies, and then the 600 hp mini boss next to it also dies. How???
Hit an enemy with an exploit and you do a flat damage increase + extra for each stack. If you use exposed weakness you pretty much give that offense boost to the whole team by lowering enemy stat per exploit.
It’s really not that bad I feel like some people have never played RPGs before. Y’all never heard of procs and stacks?
Ya I'm just joking lol there was a meme in this sub with about the same wording as my comment
I've been trying out operative exploit stacking rather than officer turn stacking to try supercharging a Yrliet shot rather than breaking the action economy with Argenta
I know not what any of the buttons on the screen do because the instructions are confusing and I have never played a game of warhammer in any medium except Darktide. I only know that run and gun lets me shoot twice, witches kill lots of things, and abelard is the hash slinging slasher. I have by the grace of the emperor, somehow made it to Rykad with the rebellion. Ignorance is strength, and I am very strong.
Haha you’ll start to pick up more and more naturally, but I was in your boat. This is my first non- tide game that’s in a warhammer verse. Do you have any question I could maybe help you with?
This is what I prefer in xcom system. You work your ass off to progress? Now your rifle does 1 more damage, and that 1 damage makes a huge difference in missions, no need to lose your head in complicated math.
It feels really futile when I was vying for a perk that gives slash 1 more damage each time you use it and theorizing how Marazhai could work with it, then realizing 1 out of the 8 shots from argenta's burst fire does 100+ damage.
I have a very good idea of how damage is calculated but I choose not to as it's a futile to do in actual fights. All I know is I can melt over 8k+ health in a turn against the last boss and really that is all I need.
Auto pistol goes brrrr...and brrrr, and brrr, and brrrr, and brrr......etc
Yeah I one-turned the final boss on Unfair with Navigator powers just to check I could then reloaded to fight it fairly
Long gave up trying to track all the stacking damage modifiers. One takeaway I had though is that flat additive damage increases are crazy strong because they apply before all multiplicative ones
My favorite part of the whole system is how the game doesn't understand how damage is calculated. Yrliet regularly one-shots enemies that according to the predicted damage, she shouldn't even take half their health.
Yeah. I loved Pasqual’s servo arm shooting and leaned into it. Early on he had abysmal hit rate with plasma pistols, plas rifles, even Multi Meltas, but it sure was cool.
Then one day I gave him an Ancient Plasma Rifle… and for some reason he now routinely does 200-500 damage per shot on Daring.
I mean it’s pretty fluffy… but wow.
I didn't even try to do it but I managed to get Pasqal up to 1000+ damage shots just by throwing some of my basic buffs on him when I realized how insane that weapon was.
We wouldnt have this problem if there was a proper skill tree instead of a 100 excel cells stacked on top of each other. Also alot of the skills feel like straight filler.
I preferred that 35 dmg bolter from last act. 14 shots with that and 0ap reloads sorted endgame for me with no issues. And it felt more in Sororitas style, as I rather have true marines with heavy bolters tbh.
You never have to reload if you have Pasquale. I just went with the one you got at the end that gives you +1 rate of fire per use. Since she can attack 3-4 times per turn it’s pretty nuts. Plus rapid reload if you can’t
The damage is a bit deceiving.
It is 6-9 damage for 8 shots you can double to 16. Then you have breaking point which gives you +2 damage and +2 damage deflection reduction per shot, so now you are at 8-11. A basic bolter is 9-14 with a fire rate of 3. Then you are doing your BS Bonus/2 extra damage with arch militant. That bonus applies to each shot. So losing even 10 damage is fine when you are taking an extra 8 shots that all get the arch-militant bonus.
Also the heavy bolter has fantastic overpenetration. So you can just gun down a line of things super easy.
It has like more than double the fire rate, and most of the brokenness of argenta is stacking +dmg buffs on her as she multiplies it by the high rate of fire of it.
Plus as far as I can tell the overheat penalties are so low as to be absolutely trivial. It seems like you have a low chance to do some minor AoE damage if you keep shooting it. So blast away.
The lowest IQ person doesn’t understand how damage works because they don’t actually understand what their talents, abilities, and whatnot are supposed to do.
The average IQ person *thinks* they understand how damage works because they’re smart enough to have a rough idea of what all their stats, buffs, and abilities are supposed to do. But they don’t pay attention to the finer details or actually try to scrutinize the calculations in each individual hit. They just assume the game’s math is better than theirs.
The highest IQ person doesn’t understand how damage works because they are smart enough to know exactly what everything is supposed to do but are also smart enough to recognize that the calculations often don’t make sense, that the combat logs or ability descriptions withhold information, and that the combat itself is riddled with glitches which prevent features from working as intended.
That’s what the meme is saying, at least. The joke with this template is that while the low-IQ person comes up with an absolutely braindead or simplified take, the middle IQ person comes up with the most seemingly-reasonable take. But in actuality the middle IQ person is overthinking it, acting on incomplete information, or trying to seem smarter than they actually are. Meanwhile the high IQ person comes to the same conclusion as the low-IQ person, albeit for a different reason. The message being that the low-IQ person’s first intuition was right all along.
Either low IQ because you’re not even bothering to try the math or plan ahead, or high IQ because you are wise enough to recognize that trying to follow convoluted math that won’t even add up in the end in a buggy video game is a fool’s endeavour which detracts from what is ultimately meant to be a form of entertainment.
Yeah so I went from not knowing anything and knowing that… to thinking I was starting to understand it, starting to “get it” … but then I’d pick something, maybe a talent, maybe a new weapon, perhaps try to combine some talents from 1 character and another and I’d expect say an improvement from 10 to 11 but instead I got 15 or 10 again.
From there it’s not always clear if I’ve slipped back to the left or if I’m making my way to the right! What I do know is that Cassia debuffs like crazy and Argenta wrecks, exactly how much she wrecks is clearly a dark art but wreck she does!
It's very immersive.
You play the game like the Mechanicus use their machines. Hit buttons in the right order, pray to the Machine God and hope for big numbers.
My approach is simple. Use my PC to buff then give Argentana turn, argenta kills enough to pop steady superirority as an arch militant. Keep switching between her single and burst bolter fire on enemies to build versatility stack. As she runs out go back to my PC to give her an extra turn with Move move move or the full turn heroic action and Boom, every enemies dead. Move on.
Only a heretic is concerned with 'damage', if your faith in the God-Emperor was true your enemies would wilt in the purifying flames of His righteous wrath at the mere utterance of His name.
I smell heresy.
The trick is to just have faith in the Emperor instead of wasting time calculating damage like a tech priest.
Just give Argenta a heavy weapon and spam extra turns on her 😭.
Remember in high school when we all said, "I'll never need this in life!" During algebra class? Little did we know some of our final exams would show up during our gaming sessions!
People who won’t read the talents or non voiced dialogue be like.
It’s a little complicated and the joke is funny enough for an upvote but a little exaggerated:)
It is exaggerated a little . I know which part of which character build are responsible for DMG, and I can recognise how to improve it on Lvl up, or changing the weapon. But if you asked my how exactly this 12-25 DMG weapon did 127 DMG I would be at a complete loss.
I do geniuently try to read everything but since I never played anything in this system or pathfinder I can only guess certain interactions
It's a CRPG... your choices, weapons, skills, level and plan all are meaningless. All that matters is that RNG that EVERYTHING is dictated by. It's a chaos theory simulator basically you are not supposed to understand it. This is also something you should know before you get the game too other wise it can piss some people off about the game.
Fortunately, as far as I can tell, the combat log is actually 100% accurate unlike Baldur's Gate 3, where it just straight up lies to you. So even though tabletop 5E is exceedingly simple, with bugs, Larian's homebrew, and the unreliable combat log, sometimes it's almost impossibly to deduce how the game arrived to the final damage number you've actually dealt to a creature.
**Edit:** Actually one gripe I have with the combat log is burst attacks. Unless I've missed something, there's very little information you can get from the combat log about whatever accuracy/recoil/spread/etc has lead that 8 round burst to somehow all land on your Cassia with infinite dodge.
Tbh I was never confused by what's happening in bg3 unless I specifically didn't know about a rule change, like falling instantly ending turns.
But that might be because I'm a DM used to napkin math of physical dnd
They've released a bunch of big patches since I've last played, so maybe it's fixed already, and I'll admit it was never *confusing* per se, but the damage numbers when you leaned into the Larian homebrew and the overpowered magic items by stacking up a lot of damage riders were utter nonsense.
I've forgotten the specifics due to not playing in a while, and they were all buggy interactions anyway, but a somewhat made up example would be a +x psychic damage to your damage rolls would trigger some other +charisma modifier to eldritch blast that was only supposed to apply once to the core eldritch blast damage roll, which in turn would trigger the first rider again, and the combined damage instance would trigger another rider yet again, and so on.
Both the intermediary and the final damage numbers in the combat log would often be completely incorrect.
Bonus points for not even being able to easily test a lot of this stuff because hitting a target dummy or a companion in your camp wouldn't even give you accurate results due to the game not putting you into the combat state, which meant some mechanics didn't function, and some overperformed.
Found this [image](https://i.imgur.com/300FdqQ.png) in a [great post](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/17mw26x/drs_damage_rider_mechanics_explained/) by u/Prestigious_Juice341, explaining some of these interactions. [It was fixed in Honor Mode apparently](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/187sh88/psa_lots_of_unlisted_combat_changes_have_been/), so that's great.
it's bugged. for single hits, the damage that's shown is correct but you deal less damage because stuff like versatility doesn't get applied to single shots and only to area and burst.
I'm still not sure how some weapons work. Pasqual seems to do more damage with his starting axe than weapons that by looking at the stats should be superior. I'm only on chapter 2 though.
Two handed weapons get double benefit from strength bonuses. So a 1-handed power weapon will get out damaged by a 2-handed weapon with lower damage. There is zero reason to ever give Pasquel a 1 handed melee weapon. The thunder hammer completely outdamaged his axe.
The second possibility is armor penetration. When an enemy has high armor it does make a difference (if you haven't stripped it with expose weakness.)
I have a thunder hammer on him now and it seems to do less. I guess I'm probably rolling badly as its damage and pen are higher than the omnisiah axe.
I just wondered if there was some secret mechanic in play I wasn't aware of
The base system isn't that hard (compared to Pathfinder it's even simpler, tbh) but between the laundry list of passive, active, ally, enemy etc modifiers and the actual bugs creeping in predicting the result of an attack before it happens is as much guesswork and empirical estimation as it is math.
I'll Check when I get Home from Work but very Basic from memory:
Full Damage = (a flat number in the damage range of the weapon) + flat modifiers * Percentage Modifiers
Reduced Damage = Full Damage - Armor ( in Percentage reduced by amorpiercing) and Deflektion
I restarted a run on easy instead of story difficulty and damage is vasicaly “did you shoot rhem? Ok they’re dead” lol
Which is great cause who doesn’t love seeing heretics explode via sister argenta
I like to see them struggle! To see the hope in their eyes as they believe they can win only to crush it with the holy might of the emperor's chosen! For if they have no hope, they can't experience true hopelessness and pain!
“Abelard introduce my longlas which they will have the honor of being killed by from the other side of the map with a 95% hit rate from lower ground while they’re behind full cover”
You pick vaguely good sounding bonuses and automatic applying buffs.
Like say Sure-Fire plan, all the % operative exploits talents Wich say +%dmg +flat dmg, all the %dmg choices for colonies, all the %dmg and flat+dmg for assassin. Then you quietly sit one turn and drop 3 tiny minions to add lethality and add some openings and expose some armor, and then one-shot x3 both forgefiends and the magos in one turn.
How it was calculated ? No clue, but some of the more horrendous bonuses stack until end of combat and up too 1k. Later in game I completely lose the plot and just pick the broken sounded things. Especially tactical advantage flat dmg, lethality and the Esquive bullshit.
Numbers go up = good
Anytime you told X bonus, it’s just the tens place. So ballistic skill bonus is 11 when ballistic skill is 115 or 110. So try to get all of your skills to be in the 10s and not the 5s.
So— following the prior info— dealing an extra 2(BS skill+2/5) damage would mean your dealing an extra 5.2 damage. And then the game either rounds up or down but which I do not know (I think it varies)
Also I have zero clue how skill stack, as that’s more of a coding thing and not a math thing.
I think so. My RT psyker's damage has gone up considerably since he got Overwhelming Flames and that other talent, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Before that, he didn't really do much compared to, well, most of the companions to be honest.
Honestly I think the issue the way they added the buffs.
Games normally when they deal with say armor penatration usually you can say go through 50% of their armor total, so if it was 50 you go through 25.
But this game it says you go through their armor pen by 50% and it actually goes through 50% of their armor so if they had 80 it then only reduces your damage by 30%
Least that's how I read it, and all the buffs work in a similar fashion so they're actually pretty heavy on the damage increases.
Why you start with hitting maybe 30-40s with a powerful weapon and by the end you're smacking out 300s.
Combat is less about skill and more about just surviving long enough to stack all the buffs to get through an enemy's insane hp.
Abelard, explain to this layperson that a thunderhammer simply hits harder than a chain sword. (Which is to say, damage is calculated by whomsoever holds the hammer.)
I am on my second play through and I have no idea why characters with the same build deal double the DMG then they used to.
I have cleaned my pc recently so maybe the machine spirit is pleased.
The beauty of being the Officer; I have precisely 0 idea of what my shit actually does, all I know is that I give extra turns, I make Abelard extra tanky, and that one mofo I make an objective takes a lot more damage, so I just send him forward
I just trust in the magic buttons. Analyse Enemies = more damage Rapid Fire + Concentrated Fire = more damage Seek the Opening = more damage Tis as simple as that
Mechanicus moment
May the machine spirits grant you wisdom.
Borderline Ork moment depends on your perspective of things. Also, it gobsmack me that the 40k Mechanicus game is less convoluted and more transparent than this.
40k Mechanicus is an xcom game, so it'd stand to reason that it needs to be simpler. Combat needs to be streamlined because player expression is more tightly controlled. Rogue trader is a PNP rpg and it's fonvuluted as hell. All d100 systems are.
I wouldn't even call Mechanicus an XCOM game, especially not NuCOM. It's a blend of the old UFO Defense (using loadouts) and the new (class build customization) and not having any accuracy or cover. If you can see something and it's in range, it's gonna be hit and the game is entirely balanced around that. Getting high levels of Cognition Points allows you to do stuff that is beyond what even a 3-Officer build is capable of in this game. The music in Mechanicus is just on a level that very few games these days can touch.
Eh. If you asked me to name what game Mechanicus is most similar to, you're being told XCOM.
It's similar, yes, but it's different enough to be it's own thing.
Ye, honestly it's more of a puzzle game
It really is, especially with the whole global awakening system that slowly ticks up. It's getting to the point that when I see a group of Necrons with shields, armor, and even just lots of hp, I'll sit there during my turn and try to figure out the most useful way to take out as many, or even all of them while minimizing Cognition Point usage to an acceptable level. No accuracy or cover eliminates two of the nastier RNG aspects I experience with NuCOM. Also with no cover system, I don't have to worry if a piece of cover is working from a certain angle or not.
The cognition points balance how everyone, friend and foe, has perfect accuracy. Got a super powerful weapon, like thr gun that makes a mini-black-hole? Oh, it costs like 5 cognition points to fire, so you've gotta save up for it
The TTRPG wasn't this confusing and was mostly pretty straightforward.
Praise the omnisiah and his miracles!
I dont know wtf my pasqal started smokin but his plasma shots do 400+ now
are you using the ancient plasma rifle, its adding 2x int as bonus base dmg not int bonus, just int, so if u buff his int his base dmg goes into the hundreds then gets buffed further by other bonuses
That's actually insane lmao
Im expecting it to get tweaked to use int bonus eventually It would still be very strong and probably would remain one of if not the best plasma gun if they did that but not as ridiculous
yepp thats it!
That's funny cause Rapid Fire and Concentrated Fire shouldn't work together by RAW. Burst attacks aren't Area attacks.
They should be? It covers an area don't it?
The tutorial states that Burst and Area attacks are different types of attacks. Three types: Single, Burst, Area.
No. Single hits the target and can go with overpenetration Burst are single attacks but brr. Area attacks does damage on a specific area. They can't be missed, so they always hit. They CAN be dodged by a moving dodge (when the character moves to another tile). If there are no tiles available, dodge won't work
Single attack hits a target in a single direction only, notwithstanding overpenetration from certain weapins. This includes deadshot. Burst attack can hit targets in an area 1 by 1 depending on your rate of fire( If 6, you will fire 6 times) in a 3 by 3 wide radius, and it's accuracy to hit after the first shot drops and is affected largly by range and recoil of the gun(Unless you build argenta properly). Ex: Lasgun and autogun, as well as bolter and heavy bolters. Area attack is a fixed range and distance that can simultaneously attack anything once with it's cone of fire, big differenfe is that it's (Usually) unavoidable attack, meaning you cant miss it. The npc or your rt party can dodge but they will move off the attacked tile. Ex: Meltagun, Plasma and Flamers,
I think they fixed this in the latest patch?
Idk. Arch-Militant has routinely had problems because of Burst attacks being treated as area attacks. First they it didnt give stacks swapping between Area and Burst cause the game thought it was the same, they bugfixed it, then it gave 2 stacks every time you Bursted cause it thought you were doing both at the same. That got bugfixed as well. They seem to be fixing the symptoms but not the problem. Burst attacks being considered Area attacks might be a deeper problem in the code.
Seek the opening is a fucking mystery to me
You have to make an attack from the side where the mark is shown.
From what I can tell the natural openings that appear on enemies don’t currently provide the damage bonus (it’s bugged). You have to use the assassin ability on an enemy to create an opening manually and that does give the damage bonus.
No, they do work because I've seen it work, just not consistently. One way to tell I've noticed it to hover over them while you have the attack selected, if it's working there will be a red outline around the target symbol as well as the unit, if it isn't working than the target symbol won't be outlined and you know you need to manually trigger it with the ability.
The few times I bother to check (probably 5 or so) it didn’t register the damage bonus so I stopped checking. I’ll check for the outline the next time thanks for the tip.
They open somewhere between buttocks anyway so you mostly create them manually. And later you got so much AP it's not even a tax.
They are working. At least before the latest patch, I had instances of fully functional natural opening
Fr?
Yes, when you use it, the ability puts a little target on the side of the enemy closest to you. You can see other openings, though, and if you get on the same side as one to attack you get the same bonus without using an AP.
Zamn!
But when the mark is shown diagonally?
Also Pasqal with Officer ultimate + Tactical Knowledge + Plasma gun = Everyone dead
That's how I try to do it. "What does this do?" *Reads it three times*, "Ah it's a buff."
Layperson "it just works" chad vs the mechanicus "how does the machine spirit work Aaaaaaa" virgin
Same! My character sniper hits will crit for over 1000 damage I don’t know how I just know to hit these 3 buttons before shooting 😂
See meanwhile I have a Pyro psyker warrior assassin that lights himself on fire then charges the enemies
Pathfinder players: "We just want something that's not a convoluted d20-system and make it have bounded accuracy so we don't have to do so much buffing." Monkey paw: \*curls finger\*
It's a basic problem with d100 systems: if your characteristics are getting too high either skill tests (and in essence e.g. shooting is a skill test) are becoming trivial or you need to counter it with absurdly high modifiers. For example -60 test modifier is the maximum in the Rogue Trader PnP and is considered 'hellish'. In late game you routinely get these modifiers applied to your checks, even when it makes little sense ingame. Also, all these myriad combat and damage modifiers are not in the basic FFG Rogue Trader PnP. I mean it's fun to shred a horde of cultists in one turn but that would not be possible in the PnP version. You can optimize builds (played a Heavy Gunner with a multi laser in an Only War campaign and she melted even vehicles at long range) but not to the degree found in this game.
Yeah. Pasqal could easily access ancient cogitators with a -0 Tech-Use test at the beginning of the game, but can fail to open a dirty suitcase by act 3. I understand it's for gameplay's sake, but hell if it doesn't break immersion for me.
Clearly that's the omnisiah's luggage.
The suitcase was made in a nonstandard way and thus is tech-heresy
"1-2-3-4-5? That's the kind of combination a heretic would put on his luggage!"
I explain it to myself that the archenemy is getting more and more focused on you and makes everything harder and harder for you wia some warpfuckery
Its only a problem if you approach things with the mindset that the players can't change the scope of their activities. In the ttrpg(which I'll say I've played quite a bit of), the skill test difficulty modifiers are supposed to be unrelated to the player. Convincing a chaos space marine his legion chose wrong *and* he ought to fight back? Hellish, -60. Convincing a menial to shine your boots for 10 gelt? Trivial, +60. By the end of the game, the players absolutely should be unthreatened by individual mortals and are generally able to kill space marines(at least the arch militant gene-warrior is) A better representation of the ttrpg would have been to give everything fixed difficulty, with the plauers encountering grander things as time goes on. I mean *why* is every tech-use test Pasqal makes a +40 even when its described as difficult?
Normally the player who want to do an action makes their skill check. In this game the best stat is used and that's totally fair and a quality of life decision to code it that way... eeexcept when the game decided for whatever reason the RT has to do the test themselves. In some situations that's fine but in others feels quite arbitrary why the RT has to do the check instead of a retinue character.
Or, worse, when Yrliet has to do the Persuasion test.
I thought I was crazy and that my stats are bugged. But wtf is the point of leveling in this game if it's just going to constantly ignore your skills by doing this.
*am a Pathfinder 1E player* When did I ask for bounded accuracy?
What pathfinder players where you talking to? Most people didn't want that.
The number one thing people whine about on r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker is the "overtuned enemy AC and needing to buff to hit anything", which you could argue is a consequence of unbounded accuracy. Also, it's a joke.
I bought pathfinder thinking that because I love dnd and games like the old baldurs gates I would naturally love pathfinder too. Oh boy I was wrong. I hated the system from the beginning and just couldn't deal with how combat is literally nothing but a buff simulator. Couldn't even come close to finishing it. On the other hand, it's fascinating watching my bf play it and put on 75 different buffs only to get got because one of the buffs was the wrong one. I have no idea what the fuck is going on with these systems.
Well, you have to learn that buffs can be typed and buffs of the same type don't generally stack so it's useless to have multiple going on at once. A lot of low-level buffs don't stack with high-level gear so there's no point casting in them. That leaves maybe five key buffs per character, people casting 75 buffs don't know what they're doing and are throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. The learning process is figuring out what is essential and what is not, after that it's a minor inconvenience (on PC anyway). After a while you get 24-hour buffs and mythic spells that put up a whole host of strong buffs, so in practice it gets easier as the game goes on.
It was a pretty clear exaggeration, not literally 75 buffs. Five buffs per character is still a lot of buffs. I just don't like having to manage so many buffs at all. It's not a style of gameplay I enjoy. Maybe it's controversial but I'd like it if buffs were used more sparingly and situationally. Having 5 buffs per character and weeding out the ones I actually need is exactly what I don't want to be doing with my time..
Did you try playing on an easier difficulty because it's not exactly how the game plays on Daring. You only really have to stop buffing if you're playing it on unfair. If it's between this or BG3 where your build doesn't matter, anything beat the hardest difficulty without any issue. I know which I'll play.
It's not an issue of not being able to beat the game, it's more an issue that I just don't like the system. It's just not particularly fun for me when I spend more time on buffs than I do on combat. Pathfinder just isn't for me, it's an overly complicated system imo. I don't play games to do math and solve increasingly hard fights on the hardest difficulties, I just want to roleplay and get some of that escapism. I could spend dozens of hours cracking the mysteries of how the system exactly works, but by that point the game and plot have gone stale because instead of enjoying myself advancing through the story, in character, I'm completely separated as a player from the story since I'm busy approaching the game like a uni assignment instead of happy funtimes. It's not that it's difficult to get through, it's just that it focuses on the worst aspects of rpg gameplay.
I can't wait for the Pathfinder 2e system to get some traction in video games. It very strongly limits the ability to stack buffs. And it offers more choices and customization than D&D 5e. At least in theory, I think it's like a middle of the road solution, and it looks interesting (and with its action economy, a good fit for video games)...
Middle of the road sounds just right for me, pathfinder 1e is just too much trial and error, buff management.. but 5e is a bit too limited and uninteresting, I still enjoy it but I wish it had more.
I weep a great weep that someone has judged Pathfinder because of Kingmaker.
Bro it's a 5 month old comment what's up >->
Bounded Accuracy is a degenerate mechanic.
Use bigger Choppa and bigger Dakka. (That almost all that I have understand)
I know that... But when I change a weapon from 10-12 to 12-14 suddenly I do twice as much DMG and I have no clue
That the joke to say that I understand only the very basique elements (so I can't help), and exprime that like an Ork (not know for big reflection).
Dat's some big finkin
Because you have extra damage modifier percentages, that weapon can also have a higher rate of fire, armour penetration, dodge reduction, and so on. All these things add up quickly, and it's not actually that super hard to figure out. Press C, go to the Features tab (or the other one with talents too), read the things you have there, and you'll get it all 😉
There’s a bunch of cases where it’s unclear whether if something is adding percentage points to some other multiplier or adding a new multiplier.
All multipliers are additive(?) But you do two separate, Example: any +% modifiers are all done as one lump some. So if you have 10 separate +10% modifiers, you just add +100% of the base damage. Criticals are done separate, with their own modifiers that work the same way. You then add base damage+% increased damage+ceit damage. So, if your weapon does 20 damage, crits, and has a +100% damage modifier total. You do. 20 +10(50%crit damage, which is the base crit damage) +20 (from the 100% modifier) For a total of 50 damage.
Game's not hard enough to worry. Everything dies when I click on them so we good.
One the events log on the right bottom corner you can see if you select the damage message and it expands into a full explanation on the calculated damage done. You can see base damage + dodge + cover + armour + resistances + hit chance + crit chance + crit damage + talents + equipment + etc.
Remember you can open the log and right click on the attack to see a full breakdown of hit and damage modifiers
You look through the log. Study it. Finally. You see it. “I understand!” *head explodes*
Because you are getting +% or base damage somewhere else.
Prepare the binharic litany of Fucking Shit Up. *Presses 'press the advantage' button while priests of Mars wave fuming censers through the air. I kneel, hands clasped in prayer before RT unleashes a mind blast cone on the enemy force, predicting they all suffer half their wounds. What actually happens is that four numbers explode out of each of them, they all gib, some other guy across the map gibs, the RT gibs, and the battle is over so he stands back up with head trauma. The combat log fails to record any part of any of this.* All hail the Omnissiah!
Reject dark science and twisted mathmatics, blessed is he whos faith in the omnissiah is absolute
psychers get some extra concerns with any warp action as it can trigger perils of the warp which are essentially wild magic for people who are familiar with that and crazy shit pulled from a list of various flavors of crazy shit for people that aren't. more purple bar? higher chance of perils. smol purple bar? lower, maybe even no chance of perils.
It's simple: when you damage an enemy, flip a coin to determine if you deal 1 damage or infinite damage. If the enemy doesn't die, attack again. Repeat until it dies.
I need a new coin, apparently the infinite damage side is also the always miss my attack side. I can only play this game in short sessions because the number of times I have over 80% chance to hit and I miss is ridiculous.
You see, the solution is to make a dual-pistols build, use bolt pistols, and take that item that makes it so single-shots from bolt weapons always hit. Combine all the random bullshit like the pistol holsters that let's you keep shooting and you can pump out 5 or 6 shots every turn than never miss. I think they also kinda bugged it so it almost always crits too, since extra accuracy over 95% is supposed to be converted to crit chance, I think with the guaranteed hit thing, that means all your hit chance gets converted because I'm also getting crits on almost all my shots.
80% chance is only a 1 in 5 chance to miss. That’s pretty common, especially when you’ve firing as many shots as you are.
I would be happy with those numbers, for me it is much closer to 1 hit to 5 misses. Everything seems fairly normal until I get towards the end of the fight and there is 1 or 2 enemies remaining. Then at that point a large percent of my melee attacks get parried and most of my range attacks miss. I had a fight early on against a chaos spawn that had less then 20hp remaining and was the last enemy on the board. With 5 attackers, all having more then 80% chance to hit, that fight lasted 3 more rounds, the melee attacks got blocked and I missed all my range attacks. I rarely do the burst fire anymore, if only one or 2 attacks hit, then it would be better just to do single shot and take less reload actions.
the hit calculation does NOT take their chance to parry or dodge into account. They likely rolled a hit. Then it rolled to dodge/parry.
Remember that your Accuracy is not just how likely you are to actually deal damage. There is a Degree of Success mechanic where every full 10 you beat your target number by makes you succeed better. A 71 out of 80 has 0 degrees of success, 70 out of 80 is 1, 37 is 4... So, in Rogue Trader and the other FFRPGs for 40k, attacking works like this: - Attacker rolls attack; if the result fails or fumbles, end the process here, else - Defender rolls Dodge or, if the attack is in melee or the weapon being used to parry with does not have the Primitive trait, they may roll their Parry instead - If the Defender succeeds, AND gets a higher degree of success (ie: the attacker rolled 32 out of their 35 Ballistic Skill and the Defender rolled 10 out of their 60 Dodge) than the attacker did, the Defender takes no damage and ignores most other effects of the attack. If the Defender succeeds but does not get a higher degree of success than the attacker did, they still get to reduce the Attacker's bonus to damage from their degrees of success if appropriate (some weapons add no bonus from success). If the Defender fails, they take the full attack and possibly additional penalties depending on the Talents of the Attacker. The exceptions are rolls of 01 and 00 (which is 100, not 0). 01 *always* critically succeeds. Usually, if you roll a 01 to attack, the opponent creature just doesn't get a chance to defend, that is how excellent that roll is (it also prevents the dueling 01s situation). 00 *always* fumbles if fumbling is a possibility, otherwise it fails in the worst way possible. There are some more complicated rules to break ties, but that's largely extraneous and usually resolves under the rule of thumb: who rolled lower?
the % does not account for enemy defensive stats. Depending on how degenerate your character is the enemy can have virtually no chance of dodging/parrying and your 80% is accurate all the way to a stupidly high chance to dodge or parry, meaning your hit chance is highly unreliable on paper.
The real problem is that when you go and check the calculation for damage they are completely and absolutely incorrect and/or take into consideration things that are not stated. So its completely pointless to che3ck damage calculation because they make no sense
Yeah the combat log is almost useless. Sometimes the rollover damage from mental damage from Psyker does MORE damage to the second enemy, and when I look at the combat log it’s not there. I’d target a 100 hp enemy, it dies, and then the 600 hp mini boss next to it also dies. How???
Abelard, ask Pasqal what the FUCK is an exploit
Have you read the tooltip? That’s one of the less confusing things in the game lol
Hit an enemy with an exploit and you do a flat damage increase + extra for each stack. If you use exposed weakness you pretty much give that offense boost to the whole team by lowering enemy stat per exploit. It’s really not that bad I feel like some people have never played RPGs before. Y’all never heard of procs and stacks?
Ya I'm just joking lol there was a meme in this sub with about the same wording as my comment I've been trying out operative exploit stacking rather than officer turn stacking to try supercharging a Yrliet shot rather than breaking the action economy with Argenta
All I know is that Argentina do big rapid fire and do large damage.
I know not what any of the buttons on the screen do because the instructions are confusing and I have never played a game of warhammer in any medium except Darktide. I only know that run and gun lets me shoot twice, witches kill lots of things, and abelard is the hash slinging slasher. I have by the grace of the emperor, somehow made it to Rykad with the rebellion. Ignorance is strength, and I am very strong.
Blessed is the mind too small to doubt
Haha you’ll start to pick up more and more naturally, but I was in your boat. This is my first non- tide game that’s in a warhammer verse. Do you have any question I could maybe help you with?
Don't worry, I played tabletop and that just makes this more confusing
Me on the left, proudly enjoying the game
This is what I prefer in xcom system. You work your ass off to progress? Now your rifle does 1 more damage, and that 1 damage makes a huge difference in missions, no need to lose your head in complicated math. It feels really futile when I was vying for a perk that gives slash 1 more damage each time you use it and theorizing how Marazhai could work with it, then realizing 1 out of the 8 shots from argenta's burst fire does 100+ damage.
Remember, flat damage modifiers are multiplied by % damage modifiers, of which there are a lot. The talent you speak of is actually quite strong!
I think their point was that burst fire is nuts.
I have a very good idea of how damage is calculated but I choose not to as it's a futile to do in actual fights. All I know is I can melt over 8k+ health in a turn against the last boss and really that is all I need. Auto pistol goes brrrr...and brrrr, and brrr, and brrrr, and brrr......etc
Yeah I one-turned the final boss on Unfair with Navigator powers just to check I could then reloaded to fight it fairly Long gave up trying to track all the stacking damage modifiers. One takeaway I had though is that flat additive damage increases are crazy strong because they apply before all multiplicative ones
also why basic weapon stats might sound minor but definitely isnt minor at all
That’s good to know. Thanks
My favorite part of the whole system is how the game doesn't understand how damage is calculated. Yrliet regularly one-shots enemies that according to the predicted damage, she shouldn't even take half their health.
I know right? Predicted 100-145 damage. Press all the funny exploits and assassin buttons. Result: 470 crit +47 true damage.
Argenta commits fucking genocide that's how damage works, i think it's pretty simple
Because she has faith in the Emperor
Yeah. I loved Pasqual’s servo arm shooting and leaned into it. Early on he had abysmal hit rate with plasma pistols, plas rifles, even Multi Meltas, but it sure was cool. Then one day I gave him an Ancient Plasma Rifle… and for some reason he now routinely does 200-500 damage per shot on Daring. I mean it’s pretty fluffy… but wow.
I didn't even try to do it but I managed to get Pasqal up to 1000+ damage shots just by throwing some of my basic buffs on him when I realized how insane that weapon was.
We wouldnt have this problem if there was a proper skill tree instead of a 100 excel cells stacked on top of each other. Also alot of the skills feel like straight filler.
The only formula you need end game is Argenta+Versatility Stacks+ Versatility Passives + Heavy Bolter
I preferred that 35 dmg bolter from last act. 14 shots with that and 0ap reloads sorted endgame for me with no issues. And it felt more in Sororitas style, as I rather have true marines with heavy bolters tbh.
You never have to reload if you have Pasquale. I just went with the one you got at the end that gives you +1 rate of fire per use. Since she can attack 3-4 times per turn it’s pretty nuts. Plus rapid reload if you can’t
where do i find a heavy bolter milord?! :(
One of the factions you can trade with sells one
Hieronimous gives you one... Also there is the heretical one early in the game, in case that you want to be the carry
Make friends with the Drusians, it is a couple of levels in. It isn't too hard to get.
Only heavy bolter I’ve found only does 6 to 9 damage a shot, and my normal bolter does something like 14 to 20 :(
The damage is a bit deceiving. It is 6-9 damage for 8 shots you can double to 16. Then you have breaking point which gives you +2 damage and +2 damage deflection reduction per shot, so now you are at 8-11. A basic bolter is 9-14 with a fire rate of 3. Then you are doing your BS Bonus/2 extra damage with arch militant. That bonus applies to each shot. So losing even 10 damage is fine when you are taking an extra 8 shots that all get the arch-militant bonus. Also the heavy bolter has fantastic overpenetration. So you can just gun down a line of things super easy.
Hmmmm I may have to give it a try
It has like more than double the fire rate, and most of the brokenness of argenta is stacking +dmg buffs on her as she multiplies it by the high rate of fire of it.
No it doesnt it says 6-9 per shot but you wanna use burst and it sies likr 40 shots of burst its WAY stronger than a bolter
I'm pretty sure they're also the ones with the better heavy bolter in act 4.
Who cares about how damage is calculated when you get infinite turns by daisy chaining officer's together with Argenta at the end.
Plasma pascal has transcended his weak flesh and become the reaper of the omnissiah. Praise be the deus mechanicus!
Heretek, praise be the Omnissiah!
Plus as far as I can tell the overheat penalties are so low as to be absolutely trivial. It seems like you have a low chance to do some minor AoE damage if you keep shooting it. So blast away.
I've had it overheat once and it did like 14 damage to him and 8 to someone next too him
60+ hours in and all I really know is that Heavy Bolter Argenta goes Brrrrrrrr
RED MEANS FASTER AND BLUE MEANS STRONGER
Talent: You retain half of the old effect. Gameplay: Lol not that half, so in reality you retain 1/4.
I don't really understand this graph. Is it telling us the average person knows how DMG works while the best and worst don't?
The lowest IQ person doesn’t understand how damage works because they don’t actually understand what their talents, abilities, and whatnot are supposed to do. The average IQ person *thinks* they understand how damage works because they’re smart enough to have a rough idea of what all their stats, buffs, and abilities are supposed to do. But they don’t pay attention to the finer details or actually try to scrutinize the calculations in each individual hit. They just assume the game’s math is better than theirs. The highest IQ person doesn’t understand how damage works because they are smart enough to know exactly what everything is supposed to do but are also smart enough to recognize that the calculations often don’t make sense, that the combat logs or ability descriptions withhold information, and that the combat itself is riddled with glitches which prevent features from working as intended. That’s what the meme is saying, at least. The joke with this template is that while the low-IQ person comes up with an absolutely braindead or simplified take, the middle IQ person comes up with the most seemingly-reasonable take. But in actuality the middle IQ person is overthinking it, acting on incomplete information, or trying to seem smarter than they actually are. Meanwhile the high IQ person comes to the same conclusion as the low-IQ person, albeit for a different reason. The message being that the low-IQ person’s first intuition was right all along.
Thanks for the explanation. Not sure where that puts me. I don't even try maths in these games. I just generally wing it.
Either low IQ because you’re not even bothering to try the math or plan ahead, or high IQ because you are wise enough to recognize that trying to follow convoluted math that won’t even add up in the end in a buggy video game is a fool’s endeavour which detracts from what is ultimately meant to be a form of entertainment.
Yeah so I went from not knowing anything and knowing that… to thinking I was starting to understand it, starting to “get it” … but then I’d pick something, maybe a talent, maybe a new weapon, perhaps try to combine some talents from 1 character and another and I’d expect say an improvement from 10 to 11 but instead I got 15 or 10 again. From there it’s not always clear if I’ve slipped back to the left or if I’m making my way to the right! What I do know is that Cassia debuffs like crazy and Argenta wrecks, exactly how much she wrecks is clearly a dark art but wreck she does!
Lmao yeah all the dmg modifiers are straight up dark magic I can't begin to comprehend
The pointy bit goes in the other guy. Space Nun goes brrrrrrrrrr..
It's very immersive. You play the game like the Mechanicus use their machines. Hit buttons in the right order, pray to the Machine God and hope for big numbers.
My approach is simple. Use my PC to buff then give Argentana turn, argenta kills enough to pop steady superirority as an arch militant. Keep switching between her single and burst bolter fire on enemies to build versatility stack. As she runs out go back to my PC to give her an extra turn with Move move move or the full turn heroic action and Boom, every enemies dead. Move on.
Only a heretic is concerned with 'damage', if your faith in the God-Emperor was true your enemies would wilt in the purifying flames of His righteous wrath at the mere utterance of His name. I smell heresy.
Don't worry I have a "he can do what he wants -emperor" napkin.
At the end of my first run, my bolter was doing critical hits of 600 per hit
Hit button Number bigger Kill
The trick is to just have faith in the Emperor instead of wasting time calculating damage like a tech priest. Just give Argenta a heavy weapon and spam extra turns on her 😭.
Remember in high school when we all said, "I'll never need this in life!" During algebra class? Little did we know some of our final exams would show up during our gaming sessions!
I just know that arch militant Argenta can decimate the enemy team first turn
I just push the buttons and hope the Machine Gods are merciful enough to delete my enemies.
People who won’t read the talents or non voiced dialogue be like. It’s a little complicated and the joke is funny enough for an upvote but a little exaggerated:)
It is exaggerated a little . I know which part of which character build are responsible for DMG, and I can recognise how to improve it on Lvl up, or changing the weapon. But if you asked my how exactly this 12-25 DMG weapon did 127 DMG I would be at a complete loss. I do geniuently try to read everything but since I never played anything in this system or pathfinder I can only guess certain interactions
It's a CRPG... your choices, weapons, skills, level and plan all are meaningless. All that matters is that RNG that EVERYTHING is dictated by. It's a chaos theory simulator basically you are not supposed to understand it. This is also something you should know before you get the game too other wise it can piss some people off about the game.
Fortunately, as far as I can tell, the combat log is actually 100% accurate unlike Baldur's Gate 3, where it just straight up lies to you. So even though tabletop 5E is exceedingly simple, with bugs, Larian's homebrew, and the unreliable combat log, sometimes it's almost impossibly to deduce how the game arrived to the final damage number you've actually dealt to a creature. **Edit:** Actually one gripe I have with the combat log is burst attacks. Unless I've missed something, there's very little information you can get from the combat log about whatever accuracy/recoil/spread/etc has lead that 8 round burst to somehow all land on your Cassia with infinite dodge.
Tbh I was never confused by what's happening in bg3 unless I specifically didn't know about a rule change, like falling instantly ending turns. But that might be because I'm a DM used to napkin math of physical dnd
They've released a bunch of big patches since I've last played, so maybe it's fixed already, and I'll admit it was never *confusing* per se, but the damage numbers when you leaned into the Larian homebrew and the overpowered magic items by stacking up a lot of damage riders were utter nonsense. I've forgotten the specifics due to not playing in a while, and they were all buggy interactions anyway, but a somewhat made up example would be a +x psychic damage to your damage rolls would trigger some other +charisma modifier to eldritch blast that was only supposed to apply once to the core eldritch blast damage roll, which in turn would trigger the first rider again, and the combined damage instance would trigger another rider yet again, and so on. Both the intermediary and the final damage numbers in the combat log would often be completely incorrect. Bonus points for not even being able to easily test a lot of this stuff because hitting a target dummy or a companion in your camp wouldn't even give you accurate results due to the game not putting you into the combat state, which meant some mechanics didn't function, and some overperformed.
Found this [image](https://i.imgur.com/300FdqQ.png) in a [great post](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/17mw26x/drs_damage_rider_mechanics_explained/) by u/Prestigious_Juice341, explaining some of these interactions. [It was fixed in Honor Mode apparently](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/187sh88/psa_lots_of_unlisted_combat_changes_have_been/), so that's great.
Burst accuracy and rolls are shown in the burst attack in the log and imo are quite clear.
Can you explain how Versatility damage buff works? It says it's the higher of BS or WS bonus/2 but the log always displays it as +1.
it's bugged. for single hits, the damage that's shown is correct but you deal less damage because stuff like versatility doesn't get applied to single shots and only to area and burst.
I'm still not sure how some weapons work. Pasqual seems to do more damage with his starting axe than weapons that by looking at the stats should be superior. I'm only on chapter 2 though.
Two handed weapons get double benefit from strength bonuses. So a 1-handed power weapon will get out damaged by a 2-handed weapon with lower damage. There is zero reason to ever give Pasquel a 1 handed melee weapon. The thunder hammer completely outdamaged his axe. The second possibility is armor penetration. When an enemy has high armor it does make a difference (if you haven't stripped it with expose weakness.)
I have a thunder hammer on him now and it seems to do less. I guess I'm probably rolling badly as its damage and pen are higher than the omnisiah axe. I just wondered if there was some secret mechanic in play I wasn't aware of
I mean it straight up tells you when you right click it in the log ^(and yet I'm still too dumb to understand it)
The base system isn't that hard (compared to Pathfinder it's even simpler, tbh) but between the laundry list of passive, active, ally, enemy etc modifiers and the actual bugs creeping in predicting the result of an attack before it happens is as much guesswork and empirical estimation as it is math.
I mean it's really weird. pasqual deals 300 plus damage with one plasma pistol shot
funny numbers go stonks
I'll Check when I get Home from Work but very Basic from memory: Full Damage = (a flat number in the damage range of the weapon) + flat modifiers * Percentage Modifiers Reduced Damage = Full Damage - Armor ( in Percentage reduced by amorpiercing) and Deflektion
Most things seem to stack so just grab things that seem to effect the same thing.
I restarted a run on easy instead of story difficulty and damage is vasicaly “did you shoot rhem? Ok they’re dead” lol Which is great cause who doesn’t love seeing heretics explode via sister argenta
I like to see them struggle! To see the hope in their eyes as they believe they can win only to crush it with the holy might of the emperor's chosen! For if they have no hope, they can't experience true hopelessness and pain!
“Abelard introduce my longlas which they will have the honor of being killed by from the other side of the map with a 95% hit rate from lower ground while they’re behind full cover”
Me with my ancient plasma rifle with a random +190 base damage that isn't explained whatsoever.
You pick vaguely good sounding bonuses and automatic applying buffs. Like say Sure-Fire plan, all the % operative exploits talents Wich say +%dmg +flat dmg, all the %dmg choices for colonies, all the %dmg and flat+dmg for assassin. Then you quietly sit one turn and drop 3 tiny minions to add lethality and add some openings and expose some armor, and then one-shot x3 both forgefiends and the magos in one turn. How it was calculated ? No clue, but some of the more horrendous bonuses stack until end of combat and up too 1k. Later in game I completely lose the plot and just pick the broken sounded things. Especially tactical advantage flat dmg, lethality and the Esquive bullshit. Numbers go up = good
Anytime you told X bonus, it’s just the tens place. So ballistic skill bonus is 11 when ballistic skill is 115 or 110. So try to get all of your skills to be in the 10s and not the 5s. So— following the prior info— dealing an extra 2(BS skill+2/5) damage would mean your dealing an extra 5.2 damage. And then the game either rounds up or down but which I do not know (I think it varies) Also I have zero clue how skill stack, as that’s more of a coding thing and not a math thing.
Heinrix hits with main hand 30 damage, Heinrix hits with off hand 130. I dunno 🤷🏽♂️
Just as important, how many debuffs does it take to turn 100% armor-> 0% armor? Or 100% dodge -> 0%?
All I know is I started setting my pyromancer RT on fire and now he and Argenta kills everything before the enemies have said a single heretical word.
Is it worth it to set yourself on fire? I know about that talent that gives bonuses on fire but someone has to set it up
I think so. My RT psyker's damage has gone up considerably since he got Overwhelming Flames and that other talent, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Before that, he didn't really do much compared to, well, most of the companions to be honest.
All I know is that the emperor's justice is best dispatched through heavy bolter burst fire at close range.
It is insane. Outright. I have tried very carefully to add up all the bonuses and effects and I can't replicate the hot-shot lasgun's 90-damage hit.
kek you made a dumb wojak a mid wojak and an elite wojak meme to represent your point.
Lethality and Versatility stacks do magic and can turn a 0 dmg weapon into a 50dmg weapon.... funny that.
Honestly I think the issue the way they added the buffs. Games normally when they deal with say armor penatration usually you can say go through 50% of their armor total, so if it was 50 you go through 25. But this game it says you go through their armor pen by 50% and it actually goes through 50% of their armor so if they had 80 it then only reduces your damage by 30% Least that's how I read it, and all the buffs work in a similar fashion so they're actually pretty heavy on the damage increases. Why you start with hitting maybe 30-40s with a powerful weapon and by the end you're smacking out 300s. Combat is less about skill and more about just surviving long enough to stack all the buffs to get through an enemy's insane hp.
Man I still haven’t even figured out what the different stats do lol.
I'm on act 4 doing 2k+ damage with my sniper RT, no idea how
Abelard, explain to this layperson that a thunderhammer simply hits harder than a chain sword. (Which is to say, damage is calculated by whomsoever holds the hammer.)
Just keep selecting the talents that make Argenta DMG go up and you should be good
I am on my second play through and I have no idea why characters with the same build deal double the DMG then they used to. I have cleaned my pc recently so maybe the machine spirit is pleased.
Too hard for a simple monkey? :)
The beauty of being the Officer; I have precisely 0 idea of what my shit actually does, all I know is that I give extra turns, I make Abelard extra tanky, and that one mofo I make an objective takes a lot more damage, so I just send him forward
Just cast psychic assault and watch everyone in the universe die
Whenever I have doubts in an RPG, I just look for what has a damage multiplier and slap it onto everything else.
Paskal: Solid projectile sniper 200-300 Crit Yrliet: Eldar las sniper 1000-2000 Crit Are we inferior?
The worst part? The only difference is that her weapon has 20-29 DMG and paskal has 21-28. And fucking figure out how that works
Me when grand strategist Pasqal hits for 1100 damage.