WTF is the “to-hit bonus”?

Hi, I have played Cataclysm: Dark Day Ahead for quite some time now. LOL, I even played Cataclysm.

I think I have mostly understood the game mechanics. But there is one thing I never could get my head around:
That thing called “to-hit bonus”. It appers everywhere but I did not found an explanation anywhere. What does it mean and how does it affect items?
Not even the wiki had an answer to this.

Oh, I also need to know this for the German translation I’m working on. It’s currently at 40% and it grows every day at the moment. :slight_smile:
I can’t translate something I don’t understand.

the “to-hit bonus” is what it says on the tin, the number if positive, makes your odds of hitting something better if negative it makes your odds of hitting something worse.

I don’t know exactly the mechanics behind it, but I find that items with positive to hit don’t miss as much when my skills suck complete balls.

Is a +2 to hit bonus like having plus two melee skill points while you use it? Or is it like a percent chance increase?

It’s gonna be a raw bonus to either the random ‘dice’ rolled to determine whether or not you hit the target, or a raw bonus to the ‘dice’ rolled when determining damage.

I just can’t recall if it’s affecting accuracy or damage output for a given weapon. (Obviously higher accuracy means more consistent damage, but I mean directly affecting).

I’m not sure exactly how cataclysm does it, but traditionally in gaming, +hit is a positive modifier to accuracy and not to damage done. If it was a damage multiplier it would be called +dam. So basically, it’s a dice roll to see if you hit, if you do, another die is rolled to see how much damage you inflicted on your opponent.

Thanks for the replies so far, but the answers are all way too vague to me.

“To hit” adds to your chance of hitting a monster. To be slightly more specific your chance of hitting is:
number of dice = 1 + int(dex_cur / 2) + skillLevel(“melee”) + weapon.type->m_to_hit
sides = 10 - encumb(bp_torso);

This is then compared against the monsters dodge roll (# of dice = dodge modified by size, sides/status, # of sides = 10). You also have a flat one_in(4 + dex_cur + weapon.type->m_to_hit) chance to miss as well.

The stat also shows up in a few other, lesser, places as well (such as determining crit chance), but those are the main two.

In essence, the bonus is exactly the same as your melee skill, so you can treat the +to_hit bonus as effecting that directly if you so wish.

Okay, thanks a lot. Those answers were helpful.