Due to the thresholding effects of AC a shield might tip combat balance more than a few extra points of damage per hit... The crucial difference is most of the time that between hitting and not hitting rather than between dagger and 2H sword.
Pretty sure AC's are bugged towards the end of BG2 ToB. They pretty much hit you whatever your AC is.
In the gold box games a 2-handed sword did 1d10 against normal and 3d6 against larger than normal,which is why I pretty much always used them - unless I had a silver sword+5 and silver shield+5 from Secret of the silver blades....
From the manual:
Sword, 2-Handed 1-10 3-18 2hd fighter only
I ended up giving Minsc Belm in his off-hand, and he's getting 2 attacks per round with it. He's getting 2 attacks with his primary hand, too. That's a total of 4, and I think I could have got it to 5 (or at least 9/2) if I had planned it out and put every pip I could into the weapons of choice.
But yeah, my guess that Minsc dual-wielding was getting 6 attacks per round was off. Without haste, he's currently maxxed out at 4 attacks per round. I'm still enjoying it more than the 2-handers, but I suspect the math is a wash now.
Belm is a special case and wont do much good against the creatures immune to its (+2?) enchantment. But I thought I read somewhere that the extra attack is with the main hand. Are you sure that he has 2 attacks with Belm? I guess it could be tested easily by putting some weapon with elemental damage in the primary hand.
You only get 1 attack with Belm, but it gives you an extra attack with your main-hand weapon.
About 2-handed weapons in BG: There's no automatic increase in damage against large creatures, but the strongly enchanted 2-handers get a base damage of 1d12 instead of 1d10.
Thanks for the correction. It appears that kundane also has this property. Oddly, my attacks go from 3 to 7/2 if they are equipped in the main hand, but to 4 if equipped in the off-hand. I guess they are best as off-hand weapons.
I like a suggestion I heard on the Bioware forums:
Use Belm, Kundane and Ras - you get an extra attack for the S Swd and Scimitar - and the L Swd can fight on its own by dancing! You don't have to have Ras in hand, just in a quick weapon slot, to use its dancing abilities...
What's the point of Kundane in that combo? It's only +2 and has no special properties beyond a useless speedfactor of 0. Something like Celestial Fury or Flail of Ages would be far preferable (until you need +4 weapons at least).
