crossbow of affliction or graceblood crossbow?

[Guest]

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is Mighty and Massive Critical worth the first one, or is the extra
attack bonus and Haste better?

 

[Guest]

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John Salerno <johnjsal@NOSPAMgmail.com> wrote in message news:<q66dnQ_iI6mfmjHcRVn-jA@rcn.net>...
> is Mighty and Massive Critical worth the first one, or is the extra
> attack bonus and Haste better?

Depends. I don't have the weapons stats in front of me, so I'll speak
generally.

Mighty gives you the benefit of adding your STR bonus to damage, so if
you have high STR, it's nice - but pointless if you have low STR.

Massive Criticals are nice - more damage when you score a crit. With
crossbows, you typically threaten on a 20 (or 5% of the time) and only
score a crit if your second attack roll hits, so you'll score few
crits on high AC opponents. And many monsters (undead, constructs,
etc) are immune to crits.

Extra attack bonus is nice because you typically can only get one or
two shots off before you're in melee, and an attack only counts if it
hits 🙂

With Haste, you may get some extra crossbow attacks before your're in
melee. Haste will also make up somewhat for the lack of a shield when
using the crossbow - being Hasted grants (IIRC) a +3 AC bonus.
Course, that's pointless if you already have an item that grants Haste
(Boots or Chainmail of Speed, for example).

My advice is to get both and use appropriately 🙂

If you can only afford one, my personal choice would be the Haste one
(If I didn't already have a haste item) because it helps you run away
🙂
This can allow you to snipe at a foe, run away, shoot some more...

 

[Guest]

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John Salerno wrote:

> is Mighty and Massive Critical worth the first one, or is the extra
> attack bonus and Haste better?

Mighty is a damage bonus, but only if your strength is high enough rate
that. Frequently, archers and crossbowmen are built with low
strength... if you don't get a Strength bonus, then Mighty does nothing
at all.

Massive critical is nice, but I find frequently that the NPCs I most
want to do damage to are immune to criticals.

An extra attack bonus is always nice, unless you are going after prey so
easy that you simply never miss. Hitting an extra 5% of the time boosts
your damage over time by 5% on average, but thats not the whole story.
If you are having a hard time hitting a target, say only hitting on a
17, 18, 19, or 20, then a +1 bonus will let you also hit on a 16... a
25% boost. This means that if your weapon does 4 damage per hit on
average, in 10 swings you will do 16 damage with the ordinary weapon,
but you will do 20 damage with the +1 version of the same weapon.

And there are plenty of NPCs out there with damage resistance that can
be beat by an attack bonus. Say you see something with DR 10/+2, this
means they subtract 10 points from every hit done with an ordinary
weapon, or a +1 weapon, but take full damage from every hit done with a
+2 or better weapon.

Haste is fantastic, as it gives you more attacks (and thus more damage)
and a solid boost to your AC (thus you take less damage) and lets you
move fast (so you can get out of harms way when needed, or move out of
reach and then turn and shoot while they try and catch up). But haste
works the same way regardless of what item slot its in; if you are
wearing it, you get all the benefits, regardless of whether its on your
weapon, gloves, boots, helm... anything. I'd definately look for Haste
elsewhere rather than take it on a weapon, particularly if you ever
expect to fight with some other weapon (say you shoot things from range,
and when they close in on you, you shoulder the crossbow and pull out
your sword... suddenly losing all the benefits of haste)

Lance

 

[Guest]

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Lance Berg wrote:

> Haste is fantastic, as it gives you more attacks (and thus more damage)
> and a solid boost to your AC (thus you take less damage) and lets you
> move fast (so you can get out of harms way when needed

I'm starting to see this. Also, I should have mentioned that I'm a
wizard, so my crossbow is used as sort of a backup weapon to my henchman
and animal companions, who do most of the damage. I do have a +2 STR
bonus (with a Fire Giant belt, for a larger encumbrance), so Mighty does
help me a little, but it turns out that the Crossbow of Affliction
doesn't do any more damage than the Graceblood Bow, since the former is
1d8 and the latter is 1d10. Both bows have a critical hit range of
19-20. Affliction has an AB of +4; the other has +5. I figure that the
extra critical hit damage doesn't matter much, since it's not usually me
killing creatures anyway.

I also noticed with Haste that I was able to cast two spells immediately
in a row, so that can't be underestimated!

But a quick question about the AC bonus that Haste gives: is it the type
of bonus that only applies at certain times (like +2 bonus against Evil,
for example), or is it always a constant +4 Dodge bonus that reflects on
my character sheet?

 

[Vellu]

Archived from groups: alt.games.neverwinter-nights (More info?)

John Salerno wrote:
> is Mighty and Massive Critical worth the first one, or is the extra
> attack bonus and Haste better?

Haste in my opion, no contest. (increases AC among other things)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.neverwinter-nights (More info?)

> But a quick question about the AC bonus that Haste gives: is it the type
> of bonus that only applies at certain times (like +2 bonus against Evil,
> for example), or is it always a constant +4 Dodge bonus that reflects on
> my character sheet?

As long as you hold the crossbow, you'll have the +4 Dodge bonus (which
stacks with other Dodge bonus).
It will be displayed on your character sheet.