Whenever I toss any of the grenade/thrown weapons like Acid Flask, Alchemist’s Fire, Holy Water etc. they always do 1 damage, and never more than that, regardless if I throw it at an enemy or an ally, or if they have low/high AC, or HP.
According to the item descriptions, it should do damage in the range of 1-6 as stated on the wiki:
This glass flask holds a highly corrosive acid. If thrown, the glass shatters, inflicting 1d6 points of damage to anyone hit by the acid.
Alchemist’s Fire is a sticky, adhesive substance that ignites when exposed to air. Anyone hit by it will suffer 1d6 points of fire damage
I’ve tested this both in NWN1 and NWN2, and I always get the same result no matter how many times I throw those items.
Does anyone know what’s going on here and how exactly the mechanics for thrown weapons work? Am I doing something wrong, or is there a bug with the damage calculation?
What’s the primary target? It may have elemental damage resistance or a high saving throw vs that specific elemental damage type.
Secondary splash damage on nearby enemies on the other hand is always just 1 point.
May need more info if neither of those things can account for it.
Grenade weapons have two forms of damage - Targeted and Splash.
Splash damage is applied to all valid objects within the grenade’s radius, including any targeted object.
Splash damage is applied automatically (no die role to determine hit/miss).
Targeted damage is only applied to the valid object that may have been clicked on. If no valid object was clicked on (i.e. the ground) then there will be no targeted damage, but splash damage will still be applied.
Targeted damage uses a Ranged Touch Attack to determine hit/miss/crit. If hit, the target takes both targeted and splash damage. If miss, the target only takes splash damage. If crit, target takes double targeted damage.
Valid objects being OBJECT_TYPE_CREATURE, OBJECT_TYPE_DOOR, and OBJECT_TYPE_PLACEABLE. Also, OBJECT_TYPE_ITEM with regard to Alchemist’s Fire as it can be applied to melee weapons.
Of course, Holy Water only effects RACIAL_TYPE_UNDEAD.
Yep, this is it. I always aimed these grenade weapons on the ground close to the enemy, thinking they would deal the damage as stated in their description, never realizing it was dealing splash damage all this time and not targeted damage, especially for things like Holy Water which made no sense when I was seeing 1 damage to the undead, when the description clearly states 2d4.
Now, when I tested it out on the first duergars in the opening act of the OC, there was a clear Ranged Attack roll in the log window, and the damage from both the Alchemist’s Fire and Acid Flask was more than 1 (one was 6, the other was 4).
All this time, I always thought these items were bugged or had a scripting error or something, so thank you @travus for explaining that!
I’ve always felt that the default grenadelike items are almost useless. They cause damage to everything in range, including friendlies, but they cause so little damage that they are of no practical value past the first couple of levels.
A solution which I have implemented is to use the dexterity modifier of the wielder to increase the damage done (e.g. 1d6 per dex modifier), and to remove damage to friendlies.
This requires extensive edits to the scripting for grenadelikes, but it turns them from weaksauce items which practically everyone ignores to being useful items which, while they’re unlikely to kill an enemy outright, are nevertheless a useful addition to one’s arsenal.
As another example, I changed Choking Powder so that it has a DC and if it takes effect, the enemy spends one second coughing involuntarily before being able to return to the battle. This breaks their initiative. It has no effect on undead since they don’t breathe. Whether or not it affects constructs could be debatable since dust in the joints of an iron golem could damage it and a flesh golem probably needs to breathe.