Some questions from actual play

[Wormwood]

Just use the rule as written and do not extrapolate needlessly.

Exactly.

Two pages and I'm *still* not seeing the problem here.

Occam's Razor should definitely be Rule 0.5

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Reaping strike? That's more of a "aw, you missed. don't feel bad, you did a tiny bit of damage anyway!" - much less awesome.

Not when the BBEG was down to 1 HP and was taking his turn next!

DS

 

[Surgoshan]

Reaping strike? That's more of a "aw, you missed. don't feel bad, you did a tiny bit of damage anyway!" - much less awesome.

A tiny bit of damage? What kind of pansy strengthless fighter are you playing? Wielding a greataxe, the average damage on a hit for reaping strike is 6.5+Str. On a miss, it's just the Str mod. So it's an differency of about 6. At level 21 or higher, it's 13 + Str + 5 (magic weapon) vs just Str, by which point your Str mod is +6 or +7 anyway. In other words, you're doing roughly one-quarter damage on a miss, which is nothing to cry about. On a crit, you'll be doing just 36, or 50% more (or about 5-6 times the damage of a miss).

In the final analysis, I believe you still have an impression of the fighter as the meatgrinder he used to be. He isn't any more. He's about locking people down and taking punishment more than dishing out lots of attacks and damage. Strikers are where the damage is at.