Jump to content


Photo

The purpose of the 'Luck' effect discovered (?)


  • Please log in to reply
3 replies to this topic

#1 aVENGER

aVENGER
  • Modder
  • 1680 posts

Posted 22 January 2003 - 11:34 AM

I've been doing some play testing for the upcoming revision of my Rogue Re-Balancing mod, and I believe that I may have discovered what the mysterious Luck effect does in IE games. This happened when I decided to create a Luck increasing item for one of my characters but then I realized that I didn't know what it would actually do, so the only solution left was to experiment. I created a magical ring which increased the wearer's luck by one point while equipped. The effect I used for this was #133 'Luck Non-Cumulative' and the statistic modifier was set to 1 .

I then imported my 'Lucky Ring' into the game, equipped it on my character and made him attack another PC. I did this because I had hoped that the luck attribute affected the Critical Hit and Miss chances. After some testing, I didn't notice much difference, so I decided to increase the statistic modifier of my Lucky Ring to 10.

The result was amazing...while the Critical Hit/Miss chances did not seam to change, my character was now doing maximum damage with every hit! I wondered about this a bit and lowered the statistic modifier to 5. After that, my character was no longed doing maximum damage with each hit but he was still doing more damage than usual (I double checked this by equipping and unequipping the Lucky Ring every round). Intrigued by this behavior I did some more testing and here's my current theory:

The 'Luck' effect modifies the character's damage rolls by adding the Luck Statistic Modifier to the dice roll value. Here's and example, imagine that your Fighter has 15 STR and is wielding a plain Two Handed Sword. He should only have one point of 2HSword proficiency and wear no additional gear to exclude strength, proficiency and item related damage bonuses. The standard damage roll of a 2HSword is 1d10 meaning the damage done by the Fighter varies between 1-10. Now, if you assign a Luck effect with the statistic modifier of 5 to that Fighter, his damage output will increase by five points, and his damage roll is now 1d10+5 which is 6-10 damage per hit! So, with a luck value of 10 he would always be doing 10 damage per hit. If the luck value is higher than the damage roll dice (d10 in this case) the result would remain the same, meaning no additional damage would be added and the Fighter would still be doing 10 damage per hit even with 25 Luck. benefit To-Hit rolls also seam to benefit from High Luck but I'm unsure of the exact formula...it might be random.

Well, this about covers it, I have some more experimenting to do with the spell dice rolls (i.e. Fireball) but judging from my first couple of tests they don't seam to be effected by luck and I'm still unsure if Luck effects Critical Hit/Miss chances, Saving Throw rolls or any other stats...further testing should reveal more. Note: my experiment took place in a BG2 game, thus I'm not sure about Luck effects in the other IE games, but I think it should work the same.

#2 VorpalStick

VorpalStick

    lay-about slacker

  • Member
  • 24 posts

Posted 22 January 2003 - 07:34 PM

Wow. Yet another thing that I didn't know about when it comes to this stuff.
Anyway, are there any normally found (throughout the game) items that have a luck bonus to them, or was this just one of those aspects that Bioware decided not to include?
Who're you calling a terrorist?

#3 aVENGER

aVENGER
  • Modder
  • 1680 posts

Posted 22 January 2003 - 11:22 PM

Wow.  Yet another thing that I didn't know about when it comes to this stuff.
Anyway, are there any normally found (throughout the game) items that have a luck bonus to them, or was this just one of those aspects that Bioware decided not to include?

AFAIK, only the Luck spell itself and no other items grant this bonus in BG2/ToB. There is also a 'Lucky Scimitar' in IWD1.

#4 AG3

AG3
  • Member
  • 40 posts

Posted 02 February 2003 - 01:21 PM

I created a sword with a luck bonus of 10 (I think) in Icewind Dale 2, and the character using it always got a critical hit. Haven't tried it for BG2.