Dear Devs, great game but need clarification on role of DEX

[killington]

rescind

[petri]

Hi there! Yes, strength is the ability which increases damage, melee and ranged. Dex affects melee accuracy, evasion and some resistances. Perhaps it helps if you think it like this: more strength allows you to hurl the projectile weapons faster thus causing more damage. Now, I agree this does not make that much sense for bows but we wanted to keep the system simple and consistent so strength boosts all physical damage.

The primary effect of weapon skills is to increase Attack Power with that weapon group and unlock some weapon group specific talents (and also increase accuracy for melee weapons). Weapons skills have some stat upgrades for flavor. Those upgrades may not necessarily make the attack with that weapon any better. So for example, Missile Weapons not only increases Attack Power with bows (and grants special things with bows at level skill levels) but as a bonus it also increases character's dex and therefore helps with evasion and therefore makes the rogue a better frontline character. We hope that these flavor bonuses make the level system a bit less one dimensional and therefore more interesting.

Hope this helped!

[killington]

Hi there! Yes, strength is the ability which increases damage, melee and ranged. Dex affects melee accuracy, evasion and some resistances. Perhaps it helps if you think it like this: more strength allows you to hurl the projectile weapons faster thus causing more damage. Now, I agree this does not make that much sense for bows but we wanted to keep the system simple and consistent so strength boosts all physical damage.

The primary effect of weapon skills is to increase Attack Power with that weapon group and unlock some weapon group specific talents (and also increase accuracy for melee weapons). Weapons skills have some stat upgrades for flavor. Those upgrades may not necessarily make the attack with that weapon any better. So for example, Missile Weapons not only increases Attack Power with bows (and grants special things with bows at level skill levels) but as a bonus it also increases character's dex and therefore helps with evasion and therefore makes the rogue a better frontline character. We hope that these flavor bonuses make the level system a bit less one dimensional and therefore more interesting.

Hope this helped!

So I was wrong. Kinda makes missile worthless. Anyone using a bow won't be front row and evasion will be worthless.

I rescind all previous statements.

[Dalton]

So I was wrong. Kinda makes missile worthless. Anyone using a bow won't be front row and evasion will be worthless.

I rescind all previous statements.

So you've never had to hot-swap your rogue to the front lines when a fighter got seriously hurt? Somebody's playing on easy.

Even without heavy armor and HP, my rogue is almost as good in the front lines as my two fighters just because of her huge evasion. She almost never gets hit. And her missile damage is still very respectable.

Edit: Very respectable damage, on top of being able to attack quickly (and never missing) from a distance so far that monsters have no hope of fighting back. So worthless, right!

[maethlin]

Hi there! Yes, strength is the ability which increases damage, melee and ranged. Dex affects melee accuracy, evasion and some resistances. Perhaps it helps if you think it like this: more strength allows you to hurl the projectile weapons faster thus causing more damage. Now, I agree this does not make that much sense for bows but we wanted to keep the system simple and consistent so strength boosts all physical damage.

The primary effect of weapon skills is to increase Attack Power with that weapon group and unlock some weapon group specific talents (and also increase accuracy for melee weapons). Weapons skills have some stat upgrades for flavor. Those upgrades may not necessarily make the attack with that weapon any better. So for example, Missile Weapons not only increases Attack Power with bows (and grants special things with bows at level skill levels) but as a bonus it also increases character's dex and therefore helps with evasion and therefore makes the rogue a better frontline character. We hope that these flavor bonuses make the level system a bit less one dimensional and therefore more interesting.

Hope this helped!

Thanks so much for the response! That totally answers all my questions. I'm positive some people will not be fond of the answer as all of us I'm sure have been conditioned to think dex = damage/accuracy for missles, but I understand streamlining a game and am perfectly content with it the way it is. For future games (possibly even patches) it may be worth it to do the same system lots of games have opted for in the past (use dex for damage for missle only, or do half dex half str for damage, or do the higher of the two - basically to make people feel like it's worth it to increase the stat). The current system is quite playable as it is and I'm perfectly content to pump up strength (I don't have a pure missile person anyway). I do think it's enough to keep me from playing a pure ranger type though as I'd be tempted to use a beefcake minotaur in the back lines for max effectiveness and it just wouldn't feel right.

Thanks again for the clarification.

[killington]

So you've never had to hot-swap your rogue to the front lines when a fighter got seriously hurt? Somebody's playing on easy.

Even without heavy armor and HP, my rogue is almost as good in the front lines as my two fighters just because of her huge evasion. She almost never gets hit. And her missile damage is still very respectable.

Edit: Very respectable damage, on top of being able to attack quickly (and never missing) from a distance so far that monsters have no hope of fighting back. So worthless, right!

Not on easy, Normal-Old School. My rogue is thrown weapons, and yes I've had to swap him to front, but he dies in 3-4 hits so it doesnt really help at all. (And he's specced max dex) They have less HP and cant wear Heavy Armor without penalties. Evasion only goes so far. If you're dying, it's because you're pinced inbetween mobs anyways.

As for you missing my main point, it was that, why bother going missile when you can go thrown, get all the perks of ranged combat, and your stats you gain synnergize with your damage(something you're doing 100% of the time) as opposed to dodge only (something you ideally should never be doing.) THIS was my point, not that evasion is useless.

[Dalton]

Bow weapons do a HELL of a lot more damage. Compare the base 20 damage of a crossbow to a shuriken.

The throwing weapon tree only gives you a total of +5 strength, which won't compensate for this difference.

Meanwhile, the +dex means evasion which saves you if you have to hotswap to the front lines or get hit from the side. I don't know how your rogue dies in three attacks when mine never even gets hit, and I'm on hard mode, but oh well.

[maethlin]

Interesting points there - so if bows are beefed up to compensate, that makes up a bit for the lack of dex bonus. I'm curious, do assassination perks stack with either thrown/missile attacks? I assumed these were for dagger attacks only but I'm not actually sure I read that anywhere.

[Alaric]

Crap!

I'm on level 4 now, and I maxed out my rogue's Dex (to something like 20) at the expense of strength, since I wanted him to do bows.

In fact all of my other party members are also messed up as it turns out.

Fail. =(

[Jack Dandy]

I still think it would make more sense if DEX would be the prime factor for bows\crossbows.