Newbie Questions About STR, Damage and Skills

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum and the game and I apologize in advance for my bad English.

1- How exactly is the STR penalty calculated? In the Wiki it is written that there is a -1 damage penalty for each STR point less than 9. Let's say I have a weapon with 1-4 damage and my STR is 5, in this case the damage penalty should be -4 and I should not be able to deal any damage with the weapon, but when I tested it, I can do up to 3 damage even with a 1-4 weapon with 5 str.

2- How are Total Attack and Total Defense calculated? And what exactly does it indicate?

3- Is there a mode that shows the skill points in numbers (for example 4 out of 20 etc.)?

 

Hey,

I don't know about the Wiki, but the info about Strength bonus/penalty to Damage is presented in the game in a pretty straightforward way. Just take a look at the Character Sheet:



The actual formula is the following: 0 Damage Bonus for STR 9-10, +1 for each couple STR points above that (+1 for STR 11-12, +2 for STR 13-14...) and -1 for each copule STR points below that (-1 for STR 8-7, -2 for STR 6-5...). However, there's another combat-related penalty that depends on Strength: the Minimum STR Requirement for weapons. This is a To-Hit penalty of a -5% for every point of difference between you character's STR and the weapon's Minimum STR Requirement. Taking into account that a 5% To-Hit equates to 1 Point (1/4 of a full Rank) in a given Combat Skill (Melee, Bow, Throwing...), this penalty may be what the Wiki is referring to.

I can't say I know how those numbers are calculated, given that they represent such a disparate array of values (To-Hit & all kinds of Damage types for Total Attack and AC & all kinds of Resistances for Total Defense). I do know, though, that those numbers can sometimes be deceiving and that most of the time you'll be better off not paying too much attention to them. What I'd pay more attention to from each one would be the following:

• From Attack: To-Hit chance (not from Inventory screen, but from cursor-over-enemy Message Window info) and Normal or any Elemental Damage (not Poison), plus Fatigue Damage in some cases.
• From Defense: Damage & Elemental Resistances are hands down the most important values here (especially normal Damage as it's the most common one by far). AC is negligible due to being unreliable as a means of avoiding damage (just like the Dodge Skill, which is not taken into account here but I just thought I'd mention it); Poison Resistance can be totally ignored depending of your access to certain items &/or spells; and regarding Spell Resistance, for the very few occasions you might be actually interested in it you're probably better off buying a Mage's Staff and activating its Dweomer Shield.

No, there's not such mode (as far as I know at least). But it's not really that hard to infer the numbers behind the Skill system:



20 total Skill Points distributed in 5 Ranks of 4 points each, the price of a full Rank being 1 Character Point. But I pressume that you already knew all this well enough, and just wanted the number-mode option for mere convenience.