Damage rating

Table of Contents
Base damage rating formula
Breakdown of BDR formula
Sources of Enhancement/crit bonusses
Highest BDR
Flaws
“True” BDR

Base Damage Rating is an average damage number that is calculated by the numbers on image below.

The easiest way to calculate BDR is min damage + max damage /2 = average damage.
average damage x amount of regular rolls (non crits) + Crit. rolls x (crit multiplier x average damage) = result / 20= BDR

The value of this number is not an accurate way to display weapon strength, I will explain this later.

 A breakdown of getting the numbers

 

Even a level 2 weapon can look amazing if we add bonusses to enhancement and Weapon dice multiplier, lets break it down.
Min. damage is 1.25 x 2 = 2.5 + 8 = 10.5, but the game rounds it down to 10
Max. damage is 1.25 x 12 = 15 + 8 = 23

10 + 23 / 2 = 16.5
Critical hit multiplier is x2, so critical hits are 33 damage on average.
16 nomal rolls and 4 critical hit rolls, so 16 x 16,5 = 264 + (4 x 25 = 132) = 396 average damage over 20 rolls.
396 / 20 = 19.8 Base damage rating.

*note, I used +1 from epic past life, +1 from harper tree, +1 weapon enchant spell, +3 shield mastery enhancement and 0.25W from ship buff to increase the weapon with +3 enhancement and 0.25W damage.

Sources of  Enhancements/Crit bonusses

Enhancement bonus
Epic past Life Arcane Max +3
Fighter Kensei “Weapon meditation” Max +10
Fighter Stalwart defender “Shield Mastery”
Artificer Battle engineer “Infused weapon” Max +3
Bard Swashbuckler max +3
Bard Swashbuckler “Wind at my back” Max +5 (thrown weapons)
Cleric/Favored Soul Warpriest “Righteous/Wrathful weapons” Max +5 (religion favored weapon)
Holy Sword +1
Harper “Enchantment” Max +4
Ranger Arcane Archer “Runebow” +2
Ranger Arcane Archer “Arcane Archer” Max +6 (does not stack with enhancement level of bow)
Enchant weapon spell

Critical threat range
Holy sword competence +1
Fighter Kensei Keen edge competence +1
Bard Swashbuckler “Swashbuckling” max+2
Bard Swashbuckler “Exploit weakness” stackable insight +1 every time you damage and enemy but do not crit.
Monk Henshin Mystic “Staff specialization” competence +1 (staff)
Monk Ninja Spy “Ninja Master” competence +1 (short swords)
Monk Ninja Spy “Ninja Master” competence +2 (Kama, Shuriken)
Monk Shintao “Violence begets violence” Max +5 (+1 each time you are missed)
Rogue Assassin “Knife specialization” +1 competence (daggers)
Rogue Thief-Acrobat “Staff specialization” competence +1 (staff)
Halfling “Master thrower” competence +1 (throwing weapons)

Critical damage multiplier
Holy sword competence +1
Rogue Mechanic Competence +1 (Great Crossbow)
Bard Swashbuckler “Swashbuckling” max +1
Monk Henshin Mystic “Staff specialization” competence +1 (staff)
Monk Ninja Spy “Ninja Master” competence +1 (short swords)
Rogue Assassin “Knife specialization” +1 competence (daggers, kukri)
Rogue Thief-Acrobat “Staff specialization” competence +1 (staff)

Weapon dice multiplier
Deadly Weapon spell (artificer) +1W
Airship buff 0.25W

How high can we go?

How high can Base Damage Rating go? well, the highest BDR weapon I know is the Thunder-forged Great Crossbow at 46,58 BDR on tier 1.

We will have to add as many improvements to the enhancement level and weapon dice multiplier, crit range/multiplier as possible.

Adding the following:
enhancements
+3 tier 3 Thunder-forged (T3 has a +12 enhancement bonus)
+2 tier 3 additional Thunder-forged bonus (only adds to two handed weapons)
+3 Stalwart Defender enhancement Shield expertise
+10 Kensei enhancement Weapon meditation (only lasts 10 seconds per +1 enh.)
+1 harper enhancement Harper enchantment
+3 Epic past life Arcane x3
+1 Holy sword spell
other
+1 critical hit range – Holy sword spell
+1 critical hit modifier – Holy sword

+1W Tier 3 Thunder-Forged bonus
+1W Deadly weapon spell
+0,25W ship buff

With all these buffs the damage modifiers look like following:

5.75W [2d8] + 32 Crit: 17-20 x3
min. 43 + max. 124 / 2 = 83.5 avg
83.5 avg x 16 + 4 x 250.5 = 2338 / 20 = 116.9 Base damage rating. 

Flaws

The current Base damage rating system has some flaws.
– The calculation in min/max damage is rounded down, stealing some damage on display.
– Damage display is missing some properties, in example, it calculates how much the Keen property impacts damage, but not the Improved critical feat, while some other enhancements do get displayed.
– Inaccurate indication of weapon potential, but I understand addition damage sources are influenced more by enemy type then the raw damage output.

True damage potential

With all these flaws let’s review how things would look if they did display the other weapon properties or feats that also affect damage.

-Damage no longer rounded down
It’s a minor difference, using the Thunder-forged Great crossbow from above with the 0.5 avg damage extra, the Base Damage rating changes from 116.9 to 117.25 damage rating

– Improved crit not getting added to BDR while keen does.
Using the Thunder-forged Great crossbow again, Improved crit: Ranged will increase the “true” BDR from 117.25 to 150.75 damage rating

– Inaccurate indication of weapon potential

Weapons do not display the elemental/alignment damage, probably because it depends on the enemy if those attacks will deal any damage at all. For this I have a solution, brackets.
To compare I have the ESOS and Elemental Fury, big difference in Base damage rating. I won’t fill up the augment slots because I only want to show how much difference additional sources of damage can make compared to what BDR says.

ESOS: 35.75 (35.75) Base damage rating
Elemental Fury: 13.20 (63.20) Base damage rating

The latter is a huge difference compared to the raw damage and in my opinion it gives a much better indication of the weapon’s power.