NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Storm Raven" data-source="post: 842952" data-attributes="member: 307">Power Attack is highly useful against two classes of opponents: (1) high hit point opponents whose AC is low enough that you can take a BAB loss and still reliably hit them, converting the wasted BAB to damage and (2) opponents that you could only hit with a 20 anyway.No, you are describing Great Cleave. Cleave is useful any time you are facing more than one opponent. At some point, one opponent will fall, and you will get your extra attack. If you are a 10th level fighter facing a crew of 50-60 hit point enemies, you will probably get an extra attack every other round or so. That is a big deal.Great Cleave is still useful for many high level fighters. They may not be fighting goblins, but there are enough instances where midrange opponents show up that he can drop one or more in a round to make it a very worthwhile investment.Using a reach weapon helps a lot when dealing with Combat Reflexes. It makes it really difficult for most enemies to avoid them without conceding you an edge in positioning. Avoiding the AoO from a reach weapon user frequently means that you have to conceed a rounds worth of attacks to him, once again a significant damage potential added. Also, never forget the damage potantial of being able to make AoOs when flat-footed that Combat Reflexes gives you. Many opponents do silly things when they think you are flat-footed.And the ability to do something like triple damage reliably once per day is a big deal. Esepcially for a high powered melee fighter who gets a lot of his damage from the added modifiers. A 26 Strength 10th level Fighter with a +3 Glaive and Power Critical sees his damage on his Power Critical attack go from 1d10+17 to 3d10+51, quite a leap in damage output that will skew the results a bit (especially given that most high level combats are over in a handful of rounds). If that allows him to trigger a Cleave, all the better.Conversley there isn't a "get a free attack when you drop an opponent" feat for ranged attacks. Feats frequently make the melee damage output go up. They allow for additional attacks, stronger attacks and so on.</blockquote>

Verification