Dual-branded weapon damage calculation

[khyung]

Can a weapon wielder choose the slay of a multibranded weapon against a particular victim?

Dual-branded weapon have offers different slays against different victims. Yet the damage calculation does not always offer the biggest damage. The usual slay selection does not appear to choose the greatest damage against a particular victim.

My hT-warrior wields pike til-i-arc, with multiple slays including cold and fire. Yet when used against hydras, the prompt displays "burns" instead of "freezes". Because hydras do not resist fire but are hurt by cold, the maximum damage calculation should be based on cold instead of fire.

In most cases, multislay weapons are calculated to produce maximum damage. A weapon with a particular slay against orcs for example will always smite orcs before smite evil, burn, free, etc. For elemental branding, however, the damage calculation only checks for victim's resists but not victim's susceptibility.

I do not see any option to change the slay selection on multibranded weapons. Based on the prompts, however, I conclude that the default calculation treats all victim elemental resists equally but never checks for elemental susceptibility.

[Estie]

Not sure but my guess is that unlike spells, brands dont do more damage to susceptible creatures. So fire and cold brands do the same damage and the game picked fire for its display.