Wraithstrike balance?

[IndyPendant]

This is a question for all you people who think Wraithstrike is broken, going by RAW. (A viewpoint I happen to agree with.) --If I understand the general consensus correctly, Wraithstrike is broken because it allows a gish to dump all of his BAB into Power Attack, for a +2 bonus per point to damage with a two-handed weapon (which most gishes will use anyways because a shield gives ASF anyways and one hand needs to be free for spellcasting). --To a lesser extent this also applies to feats like Combat Expertise as well.

What if Wraithstrike were given the clause "For the duration of the spell, you cannot apply penalties to your attack roll to gain bonuses to any other attribute, such as damage or AC. Should you already have any such adjustments when the spell is cast, for the duration of the spell you do not gain that bonus; only the penalty applies."

What do you think? In particular, I'd like to know of anything that might still 'break' this spell that I have not thought of.

 

[Rystil Arden]

It still causes problems with characters built around doing something nasty when they hit because they will always hit, even on the last iterative attack. I can easily build a hasted dual-wielding gish who uses Wounding Weapons and gets 8 attacks per round (I could do more attacks than this, but let's pretend I'm not even trying to min/max the attacks per round--just casually taking the three TWF feats and haste). That means 8 Con damage to an opponent per round of Wraithstrike, plus 8 strikes of damage. You won't miss except on a 1 because you are Wraithstriking and not Power Attacking. That's 164 maximum hit points lost by the Touch AC 2 Great Wyrm Gold Dragon per round from the Con loss alone, ignoring the weapon damage.

Wraithstrike is one of those little WTF goodies that you find rarely in a WotC book that makes you wonder if it was tested (though most of their stuff is well-balanced). In order to build a gish character that uses Wraithstrike without breaking it, you have to go out of your way to find a build that doesn't abuse it.

I guess the bottom line is: Against the vast majority of non-epic opponents, Touch attacks with the bonuses of a weapon attack (like those coming from Wraithstrike-enabled attacks) for a gish will automatically hit. Automatically hitting with a full attack at the cost of a swift action and a 2nd level spell is broken.