Discovered a 2nd negative strength damage bonus with Master Power Attack and only a x3 crit multiplier!!!

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SITH'S BLOOD!!!!!!!!!

This is a follow up to my previous thread here but I am thinking there HAS to be a way to correct this utilizing the correct damage displayed in the Combat Log report screen, where I discovered the bug many years ago.  My prior thread is still on page 1 and addressed the issues of using the Shien lightsaber form, with all of the other Sith Marauder Powers.

Since I knew that the current community patch hasn't been able to fix the negative "strength mod" damage bonus from Master Power Attack using the Shien light saber form which when combined with Master Speed and scoring a critical strike gives you X4 damage, I figured I would try another entire playthrough with both Jedi Weapon Master and Sith Marauder and a different approach, hoping to avoid the bug.

My thinking was that initially going full Jedi Weapon Master when you reach full Light Side, you get that +3 STR bonus and it would be easier and quicker to naturally, without cheating, to hit the strength mod bonus cap quicker, but Sith Marauder is far superior when it comes to a Strength Stacking build using Master Power Attack to try and discover the biggest Crits possible, which is kinda "my thing".  Since the Sith Marauder can use the Credo Robe for +6 Strength and the "Named" Dark Side Crystal once fully upgraded yields an additional +7 Strength, the Jedi Weapon Master actually falls far short compared to the Marauder as the majority of the damage with Master Power Attack comes from your STR, especially on a crit with the x3 or x4 multiplier.

So what I did on this playthrough was start with 18 strength, every chance I had to raise an attribute point, it went into strength, then for equipment, used the following strength based gear:  Crado Robe (+6 Str), Physical Boost D Package (+3 Str), Dominator Gauntlets (+5 Str), GNS Strength Enhancer Belt (+4 Str) and the my light saber build is:

Opila Crystal for the Massive Critical damage boost

Named Crystal, Dark Side, Rank 9 (Highest Rank) +7 Str, 

Ponite Lens

Expert Fencing Emitter

Ultimate Diatium Energy Cell

(screenshot of lightsaber included below)

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I also utilized the mod that is supposed to give you an XP boost for stuff that you kill as it claimed in a full playthrough you can reach level 50?  But I 'm thinking combined with the community patch that that is not possible, however, it did aid in me doing an honest playthrough with only mods and I only used the save game editor to grant me a few additional feats so that the main character can get all of the XP from things like mines, unlocking security crates & lockers, repairing droids instead of say Atton or HK-47 and lastly made sure that the witch Kreia was always in the party because I previously failed to pay attention that when she is in your party she has the "Mentor" Feat which gives the entire party an additional 7% XP when she is in the party and it gives an nice additional boost to leveling up.  This build is so powerful that my main Jedi hasn't even trained Heal as I found if you force Kreia into "Jedi Support" she'll heal the party and do all sorts of random buffs.

So this Dark Side playthrough I knew Shein Form would immediately be broken as once your strength is above a buffed 54, and you score a "crit" of x4 damage, your "strength mod bonus" according to the combat log goes from 124 points of damage to -124 points of damage.  I have extensive screenshots of this in my previous thread.   So I played entirely with only the Makaski Form which gives a much more modest damage boost of +3 damage and keeps your "crits" on a x3 multiplier with Master Speed compared to the Shein form which boosts it to an x4 crit multiplier.

Things were going quite well, I was consistently getting Master Power Attack Crits of 300+ to 350 points of damage with only a x3 multiplier, as I think my previous best with a x4 multiplier was 375 points of damage.   

But sure enough, once I finished doing all of the evil Dark Side options for Onderon Part 1, I was able to get the last Dark Side Crystal upgrade with +7 Strength, started to solo the stealthed hissa's in the beginning of Korriban and it happened....

With a buffed Strength of 67 you can actually get a Strength bonus of 126 points, but once you get to a buffed Strength of 68, I think it's considered an "overflow" error, your strength mod bonus goes NEGATIVE again, but this time to -127 points.  I've included screenshots in this thread to show this unfortunate discovery.  

My thinking on this is though, the correct damage is actually displayed in the combat log, isn't there some way to pull this data into a "mod" then have the same "mod" that is like an additional overlay on the main screen to display your properly re-calculated critical damage?

The other weird thing I've observed is that granted if a foe you kill doesn't have a total amount of health of hit points, the combat log still will display your additional hits but it won't display it in the standard red floating damage numbers when you succeed with an attack or miss.

 

So that is the challenge I would like to pose to the community, to create like an overlay damage mod that properly re-calculates your crits despite the negative strength mod damage and to also show all damage that a single saber strike does, so you can finally see honest and accurate damage numbers?  On my present playthrough I am seeing non-critical hits in excess of 135+ points of damage and since I am on Korribon, I don't yet have the Ludo Kresh armband which should give me another +1 Strength and with the boosted XP mod I should be able to get an additional point of Str (or more) for a fully buffed strength of 70 and that is without any cheating.  

A x3 crit of say 140 damage would be 420 damage with Makashi and Master Speed and using the Shien form with Master Speed would be an x4 crit of an insane 560 points of damage.  Imagine actually seeing those sweet red crit numbers via a mod on your main screen!    Talk about a much needed attitude adjustment for that over confident Darth Sion!

I highly encourage anybody considering another playthrough to check this out and confirm it for yourself.  A strength stacking Sith Marauder build, with a double saber and Master Power Attack IS the biggest hitter period, yet, the original game code is seriously leaving the full potential of this build and approach in the realm of the UNKNOWN.

Please dear community, consider researching this yourself and throwing this conundrum into your creative modding experience and fulfill my dream for all lovers of KOTOR 2 to know the full potential of build!  I know one of you or maybe networking together it can be achieved!

For now, I am going to put my main playthrough on hold, do a little more research on Korriban as the Shyrak Cave is a GREAT PLACE to get tons of crits on the winged beasties in there and see if Master Critical Strike and Master Flurry get affected by the "negative strength damage mod" bug as well or not.   If I discover anything else, I will of course be back to report!

And let me just clarify about my vision for a true combat damage mod as an overlay.  What I am thinking is, if you've ever used the program FRAPS for showing FPS, taking screenshots or making videos, Fraps does have a built in overlay for the FPS variable that can be displayed in either of the 4 corners.  That is basically what I am visualizing for this mod, to just pull out the damage variables, re-calculate and total them, then have a similar overlay that shows something simple like "True Saber Damage" then a secondary display of the stacked red damage numbers, ideally in the same font as the original code.  

I think that would be a pretty bad ass idea and I hope it can be done as somebody in my original thread stated that trying to fix the actual damage equation or the damage tables, is hardcoded into the .exe.  So doing an overlay approach, I would think, could bypass this restriction.   

Please let me know what you think!  Remember, if you play around with this and get really religious studying Master Power Attack hits you'll also notice that quite often you'll do damage that is reported in the combat log but isn't displayed in the red numbers on the main screen.  This potential mod actually kills two birds with one stone, if it possible to do it!

Darth Fart

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Do Sith Cry?

Confirmed via screenshots the negative strength mod damage bug affects Master Critical Strike and Master Flurry as well.  I've hit the damage cap no matter what Master Saber Strike you choose to use of the 3 (Master Power Attack, Master Critical Strike and Master Flurry).

Does NOT affect "off-hand" critical strikes which don't use the multiplier.    I incorrectly raised that speculative point in my original thread.