Throwing Tests

[Astrel]

With my char set up with a shield and GM parry, throwing skill 115+, 44 HCI, I counted the hits and misses over 100 throws against Ettins and then Earth Els. My char had 121 Str so the range was quite adequate.


Ettins: Hits 75%, Misses 25%

As there were some runs of hits the final figure is somewhat misleading as the most common individual kill was 4 hits and 2 misses (66%/33%).


Earth Els: Hits 41%, Misses 59%

One notable event was that against one El I missed 13 times in succession before hitting it three times in succession. Even when I have been developing a new skill, and the skill level was around 35, I have never failed 13 times in a row before.

Someone may point out that my Parry is not at 120, but I doubt that even if it was the scores would improve that much.

Edit: The Ettin test was carried out in Despise, the Earth El test in Shame.

One other significant bug that I also discovered is that parry does not function as parry when you are carrying a weapon. I went to Despise and got myself surrounded by Lizardmen. With no weapon in hand parry works as usual and your shield takes damage. However, with a weapon in hand, parry does not function and your shield takes no damage.

 

[WarUltima]

With my char set up with a shield and GM parry, throwing skill 115+, 44 HCI, I counted the hits and misses over 100 throws against Ettins and then Earth Els. My char had 121 Str so the range was quite adequate.


Ettins: Hits 75%, Misses 25%

As there were some runs of hits the final figure is somewhat misleading as the most common individual kill was 4 hits and 2 misses (66%/33%).


Earth Els: Hits 41%, Misses 59%

One notable event was that against one El I missed 13 times in succession before htting it three times in succession. Even when I have been developing a new skill, and the skill level was around 35, I have never failed 13 times in a row before.

Someone may point out that my Parry is not at 120, but I doubt that even if it was the scores would improve that much.

Edit: The Ettin test was carried out in Despise, the Earth El test in Shame.

I've 120ed my throwing and I also have 120 swordsmanship and 120 dex... Its still noticable for the increased missed at close range combat. And when I throw at something at max range, the -DI is also HUGE. ONLY THING throwing has better than archery is... you dont have to carry ammo... (and that means no 10% modified dmg for gargs).

All I can say is that I am very very disappointed.

 

[Astrel]

My original setup was with focus instead of parry, and with 26 HCI I had no hitting problems on any critter. I also suspect that even without a shield and just parry, it is worse than before.

 

[Pawain]

Its a shame that you are testing an above GM warrior on ettins.

Can throwing kill anything above an ettin?

 

[Chester Cheetos]

with that many misses do you even want to temp to try anything higher than ettins?

 

[Sabbath]

That's some nice testing there, Astrel. Hopefully the devs will take notice and make appropriate adjustments.

 

[legendsguy]

in case no one noticed, throwing is like archery except you don't need any arrows. there's no way it should be as accurate as archery or do as much damage either. that'd be invalidating archery completely.

 

[Sabbath]

in case no one noticed, throwing is like archery except you don't need any arrows. there's no way it should be as accurate as archery or do as much damage either. that'd be invalidating archery completely.

This test was primarily about accuracy, not damage. You really don't think that a Grand Master (or greater) level individual should be able to throw a weapon accurately to their target roughly the same % of time as an archer shooting arrows? Perhaps distance from target should be the primary factor in accuracy but when you are in each skills "sweet spot" the accuracy should be similar, I would think.

 

[Astrel]

At the moment throwing doesn't even work as it should, so damage is not a consideration, however, seeing that you can get some pretty nifty armor AFs to go with it, it does have potential. This potential is mainly in imbued jewelry, four pieces as opposed to two on a human char (and most of us use stuff like the green ring so we may only end up imbuing one piece). Thus, apart from topping off your resists you can add quite a bit of extra str and dex, and my guess is that eventually damage from an imbued throwing weapon could well come out more than any bow (and my weaker archer already does 300+ using an imbued slayer). While we may prefer a char that does not rely on imbuing, apart from weapons, I suspect that a thrower will become an imbuer's work of art.

Edit: This potential would also apply to garg melee fighters; if you have to imbue to survive, garg warriors have a lot of interesting potential.

 

[Astrel]

The basic flaw in the design of throwing is that not only do you get a HCI penalty from using a shield, you can also get a HCI penalty from distance thrown. Thus, you can incur two HCI penalties, and it appears that no matter what HCI bonuses you add to your char you are going to miss at some distances.

As any set distance is impossible to maintain in actual situations, due to monster movement, target changing, and terrain, the only way such a design would be viable is if monsters don't move and your character doesn't move.

As it now stands, even if you do manage to hit something it is only normal damage; nothing compared to what an archer or a melee warrior can do, and an archer can hit from any distance within range.

Thus, this so called 'sweet spot' of distance would only make sense if the damage was actually doubled, and anything outside of this sweetspot would be normal damage (with no HCI penalty incurred on distance), otherwise throwing is the most completely gimped template ever devised.