Skill Damage Mechanics / Weapon Synergies

[Physiologic]

basically here's where skill damage comes from, four factors:

1. Skill rank (1-6)

2. Stat driven skills (Int raises skill damage directly for elves, Str for bears, Dex for birds)

3. Base damage - this is the damage that does not include weapon damage. It comes from attributes, and from gear bonuses other than weapon damage (items like armor or helms that boost damage, set bonus damage increases, etc). 100% if base damage is added to skill damage.

4. Weapon damage - this is the confusing one. A portion of your weapon damage us added to skill damage. Exactly how large that portion is seems to depend on many factors that would seem to include, but not be limited to: Type of weapon (axe, wand, sword, bow, staff, dagger etc.), campaign if origin for the weapon and/or level, 1 vs 2-handedness of the weapon, the weapon's damage itself, and perhaps something random

Edit: and I should note, you can't always tell simple weapon damage from looking at weapon stats. Some weapons seem to provide both a base damage increase and weapon damage and both are just combined in the weapon's stats. All mega Mage items, for instance provide 10 base damage, including weapons, so when you look at the stats of a MM weapon the damage shown is the weapon damage plus 10 base damage .

Royce pretty much summed it up in this post, but factor (4) is the most excruciating variable to think about and test for. I've personally tested this for archers and I believe Royce has done one for mages. I highly doubt anyone has tested this for bears. So the math has to be done by an individual who wants to sit down and calculate all of this mess - it's not assumed knowledge at all. It's up to you to calculate it out. As for weapon choice, I'll leave that up to Ellyidol or some other bear to explain.