Reverse of Power Attack, Would this be balanced?

[SidusLupus]

I'm not sure if this should be house rules or not, but I hope that here is fine since it's a mechanics question.

There's a prestige class on the wizards website, the arcane duelist, that gains an ability that somewhat functions in the reverse of power attack, and I thought it would be a balanced if it were made into a feat.

It's called dexterous strike or something, and these are the mechanics

When attacking, you may sacrifice weapon damage to add to your attack for the round. You can take off as much damage as you like, but you must do minimum 1 point of damage with the weapon. So a short sword is d6, and you could take off up to 5 damage for +5 attack, and still do minimum 1 damage from the weapon (other bonuses to damage like strength don't apply).

On a cursory glance it seems pretty balanced to me. Since it's the reverse of power attack I would limit it to light weapons only (since you can't power attack with light weapons), and to shore up possible loopholes of sacking 11 damage from a great axe and using it to gain 11 atk.

Prereqs- 13 dex, like the 13 str for power atk. Possibly also make it require weapon finesse. Limited to only light weapons (and rapiers) and applies to all attacks made in one round, including AoO's.

Would this be balanced?

Can someone run the numbers on a theoretical level 10 fighter fighting average ac for his level using a combo of power atk + greatsword, and dexterous strike + 2 weapon fighting?

 

[Victim]

Well, to hit is generally more valuable than damage. However, the real issue would be use of the feat with lots of bonus damage dice (ie. sneak attack) or special moves (energy drain, ability damage, etc). In many cases, you'd probably have rogues throwing away all their base damage so they can more effectively deliver sneak attacks. With flaming, screaming, corrosive, shocking weapons.

 

[Stalker0]

You mentioned the other bonuses to damage not applying....thing is if I have 1d6-5, and I roll a 1 I haven't lost anything.

 

[Endovior]

Yeah, it seems to me that you should be giving up your bonus damage, not your random damage.

 

[SidusLupus]

Yeah, it seems to me that you should be giving up your bonus damage, not your random damage.

Hrm, good point. If you gave up bonus damage, up to a max of bab/2 would that be better?

If not, what would you suggest to make it balanced?

 

[Lord Pendragon]

When attacking, you may sacrifice weapon damage to add to your attack for the round. You can take off as much damage as you like, but you must do minimum 1 point of damage with the weapon. So a short sword is d6, and you could take off up to 5 damage for +5 attack, and still do minimum 1 damage from the weapon (other bonuses to damage like strength don't apply).

This type of feat would be exploitable by adding effects to the attack that don't do hp damage. For instance, a short sword with the Wounding enchantment is going to do 1 point of Con damage per successful attack. So the halfling with a 10 strength takes this feat and nabs himself a +3 to hit at the expense of piddly damage, and gets to do con damage with each attack. Or he gets himself a Spell Storing weapon, and fills it with Poison. And he uses actual poison, on top of that. Or all three on the same blade. Since these effects only require a successful hit to activate, the damage loss is meaningless compared to the to-hit bonus.

It seems to me that for a character built not to do hp damage to begin with, this is a very powerful feat. Several times stronger than Weapon Focus, at the least.

 

[Krelios]

Well, to hit is generally more valuable than damage. However, the real issue would be use of the feat with lots of bonus damage dice (ie. sneak attack) or special moves (energy drain, ability damage, etc). In many cases, you'd probably have rogues throwing away all their base damage so they can more effectively deliver sneak attacks. With flaming, screaming, corrosive, shocking weapons.

That's pretty much exactly what I would say, any rogue would take this feat the instant s/he qualified for it. If it's a must-have, it's probably broken.

 

[Bill Muench]

Also, with rapiers and the like (any finessable weapon you can power attack with), I don't see anything that would prevent them from taking the penalty to damage (-5 for a rapier, as I understand it) and getting +5 to hit. And then Power Attacking for 5 two-handed, getting +10 to damage. So +5 damage in the end with no penalty or bonus to hit.

Well, nothing preventing it other than the DM.

 

[werk]

The problem here is that your BAB increases as you advance, but there is no such advancement for damage. So that leaves the question, what do you subtract from to add to the AB? Just generic weapon damage, which, after including modifiers and possible crits becomes a large pool to pull from. How do you know how much damage you do? Do you roll damage before you roll the attack so that you know how much you can modify the attack roll?

I don't think it is smooth or well balanced.

.02

 

[Infiniti2000]

Well, you could have the character declare how much to subtract on damage and add to the attack roll. Then, if the damage is less than 1hp, not only does the attack miss (regardless of roll), but the character becomes _______ for a round. Fill in the blank.