Question about sword doing less damage

My level 20 W/R has a natural 10 in Swordsmanship, 12 w/ a rune and helmet. The sword I'm using is a 14-20 and has a Swordsmanship requirement of 8 (which I meet, obviously). It doesn't have any elemental properties that might be lessening the damage done against creatures.

When I'm attacking monsters though, I see damage output averages about 7 for each "regular" strike (not using any skills) and it sometimes goes as low as 4. Is this normal? It seems like if the damage range is 14-20, then 14 should be the lowest. Am I missing something here?

m19

It's called armor. Monsters have it too.

it all depends on the monsters armor...i manage to hit 30+ normal hit on lvl 24s (might be crit...i dont pay that much attention)

That's exactly my point (and thanks for giving more than a cursory reply). I'm a level 20 using an almost max damage weapon (right?); in this example it was against a level-20 hill giant and I was going 4-7 damage. I haven't checked on others but it seems to be around there. Just seems like something isn't right, moreso than "it's called armor".

m19

find one with a damage +15% while enchanted or whatnot..then cusomize it (total 35% bonus) because then even if you were hitting 7 you would hit like 10

also try a sundering hilt, it will give you the armor pen at times

theres an overview of game mechanics somewhere on this site...

i think it's something like this: if you're level 20 with 12 weapon mastery you will hit for the weapons base damage is the target has 60 armor (caster armor) i don't remember where i found it. but its somewhere on this site..

and hill giants are heavily armored

Sever artery and gash work wonders on the giants, just use them with tactic skills.

Also "it's called armor" IS the answer, I'm not here to give you an answer you like :\.

Try more points in strength.

more points in strength only affacts you when using skills, try judges insight or strength of honor, mark of pain, conjure flame....etc

you can boost your damage many ways using skills (galraths slash and the like that add +x to you damage really help as that +X is unaffected by armor)

That damage amount is actually normal. Try different hilts of elemental damage or different types of weapons, course then you need to change attribute points. A good warrior should have 4 different weapons (like a fire sword, cold and lightning), one being a long bow for pulling. One weapon isn't good for all foes. Have fun.

It has +10% damage while enchanted and is customized, actually. Another reason the pitifully low damage I'm doing seemed odd.

I'm hoping it's just the fact that I noticed it was low because of the giants. I'll have to do some more testing in other areas but still, with a level 20 + 12 Swd. attribute and a pretty loaded sword, I'd expect to be doing better than *dink* 7!

The question was why is "regular" damage without using skills so low; I'm well aware of skills and how they function.

IIRC, my Galrath's is up around +26 damage right now, give or take. Using it last night, I was going about 30 damage on a hit. Again, not at all what I'd consider to be level-20 material.

Those are excellent points, thank you. I've used one sword and one bow throughout the game but it makes sense to have two or three different swords.

m19

Boost your weapon skill to 12. Anything less and you're doing less than 100% damage. Anything higher than 12 doesn't increase your damage as much as levels under 12 decrease it. There's really no reason to have less than 12 in your weapon skill if you want to do any respectable amount of damage with your weapon.

I mentioned in my first post that it's at 12 now (natural 10 + 2 from rune/helmet = 12).

m19