[3.5] Power Attack - can this possibly be right?

[heimdall]

Yes, when he runs out of hit points. Because if the barbarian is drawing attention to himself by dishing out gobs of damage, it's only natural that the enemies are going to be trying their best to take him down.

I tend to agree on this one. In a previous campaign I played the melee machine. He quickly became the melee magnet. Basically, I was able to crush a lot of things with a half-orc fighter, huge strength buffs, wielding a two-handed sword, but the problem was everything targeted my character. It's a time-honored principle from warfare: concentration of fire. What basically happened was the party had two clerics: one for the half-orc and one for everybody else.

Opponents with any reasonable amount of intelligence are going to focus on whichever character is capable of dishing out the most damage. This is usually apparent after about 1-2 rounds of combat. Players do it. NPCs and monsters with appropriate intelligence levels shouldn't play out any different.

 

[hafrogman]

But is there a limit to the number of times a Barbarian can swing his sword in a day?

Perhaps not, but Archade's post questions how extreme the damage gets when he's raging, and there is a limit to how much and how often he can do that.

 

[youspoonybard]

There are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 10 rounds per minute. That's 14,400 rounds.

Assuming there are casters always there to haste him all day long, and that he's level 16+, and has the TWF chain, he can make 9 attacks a round (4 + 4 off hand + 1 haste).

Assuming he doesn't get tired, that's 129,600 attacks.

So yes, there is a limit. : P.

 

[anonystu]

The average of 70 points a round is assuming all hits: this is quite silly.

When you want to compare expected damage rates, you have to include chances of not hitting, and include chances of saving.

It is notable, since saves against most damage spells are half, that in a situation where the enemy saves half the time, the expected damage is 75% maximum, but for the fighter who expects to hit half the time, it's 50% (ignoring crits).

 

[Archade]

I did take into consideration whether he hits or not, hence the post that his raging to hit bonuses are +15/+10. That's still pretty scary. AC20-23 creatures (which are in abundance) have much to fear from these guys, and I don't see too many CR10 critters that have higher AC bonuses...

 

[anonystu]

As someone pointed out right after my math, a key element to whether 3.5 power attack is balanced is what's happened to the AC of monsters: if it turns out that in the majority of cases, a player can improve their expected damage by power attacking (because the AC is below the break even point we talked about), then it becomes a sketchy change to me: power attack already has lots of tactical uses, and is a set up for cleave, a great feat, and if 80% (arbitrary number) of the time, you can churn out higher ev by power attacking, then it might be too powerful (although, if it's not a major difference, it might be simply the risk premium for the high variance, which is fine.

It is also worth noting that even if power attack becomes a major boon for 2H fighters, there is a secondary question of whether that increase is not paralleled in increases by 2WF, or sword/board.

But, these issues have been hashed so much, that it's not even worth starting to speculate. The books will be here soon enough, and then the real math can begin in earnest! Wheee!

 

[SpuneDagr]

Friends, friends!

Don't forget that monsters can do anything a character can do.

Dwarf PC: "Hahah! I just did 30 damage to you, you stupid ogre!"
Ogre PC, on the following round: "Scrod angry. Now he has to clean the mess off of his two-handed club."

My dragons often use up most or all of their BAB on Power Attack. Even at 10 HD, that can add up, especially for multiple attacks. (I know the change in PA only applies to 2H weapons, but you get the point.)

-Spune

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

That's true but you have to bear in mind that the archer to melee balance is dramatically effected by the number of FAAs (which drop in 3.5 for melee characters but not nearly as much for archers) and that the fighter type to rogue balance is also dramatically effected by the number of FAAs (if you only have one attack per round, tumbling for a 1d6+3+6d6 flanking sneak attack is better than dealing 2d6+10--and the ratio of BAB 11/6/1 2d6+10 to BAB +8/+3 1d6+3+6d6 favors the rogue more the fewer FAAs are made.

The change to power attack helps to equalize the FAA gap between archers and melee characters (which is exacerbated by Manyshot--the make a FAA even on surprise rounds feat) and also helps to equalize the relative advantage afforded to sneak attack fighters by the decrease in FAAs.

Also, a variety of numerical analyses (somewhat naive because they don't account for cleave but still substantially accurate for ballpark assessments) demonstrated that it is generally disadvantageous for fighters to power attack--even on non-FAAs and that it is more disadvantageous the higher the fighter's base damage is. You can find these on the other various power attack 3.5 threads.

And I think any questions about the effect of this change on the two handed vs. Sword and board style is addressed by the inclusion of Improved Shield Bash (formerly Shield Expert) in the core 3.5 rules and the less feat intesive implementation of two weapon fighting rules (and the Greater Weapon Focus/Specialization feats).

HUH? If the number of FAA's drops in 3.5, which it will. Then the number of times that it is DIS-advantageous to use Power Attack drops. This rule change alone makes a good 3.0 feat better in 3.5.

Once you add in the 1 for 2 mechanic. Yeesh!

I always looked at PA as being for the 1 Big Swing, that it wasn't a good idea combined with an FAA didn't bother me.

 

[anonystu]

Out of curiousity, how would you account for cleave? My guess is that you figure some average number of hit points for a monster given a base attack combo, then add in a chance of an extra base attack that's equal to expected damage/hp.

I think you would probably need to set up multiple events: low for level EL's (where the chances of having somebody nearby to cleave is higher), versus high for level EL events (where the chances of cleave mattering are lower).

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

The difficulty of accounting for cleave is the reason that people don't do it.

For average damage/round calculations all you need to know is the character's offense relevant statistics and equipment and the AC of the target. In order to include Cleave, you need to also know the hit points of the target and assign a probability that the character is in an appropriate position to cleave.

For creatures like bugbears or zombies and low-level fighters, it's fairly simple. (Zombies are a case where it's often a good idea to power attack in damage/round calculations and cleave serves to multiply the usefulness of power attack; Bugbears are an instance in which it may be advantageous to power attack even though ordinary damage/round calculations show it to be disadvantageous--because cleave nets more attacks).

Someone did some calculations with a matrix which was the part of math I never really understood how to use in High School (the last time I studied any math). My very rough concept math didn't deal with damage/round in hit points but rather in monsters and went something like this:

Fighter (lvl 4, Str 16, +1 greatsword, weapon specialization= attack bonus +9, damage=2d6+7 (average 13)), fighting lots of AC 17, 15 hp opponent (bugbear IIRC)--assuming that he is always in a position to cleave.

W/out power attack, he hits 65% of the time but takes two average hits to drop the bugbear. On the second hit, he will drop the bugbear and cleave into another. Hitting 65% of the time, he therefore drops 11 bugbears in 20 rounds.

If he power attacks for 3, OTOH, he deals an average of 16 points of damage 50% of the time. Consequently, he's likely to drop 15 bugbears over 20 rounds.

Clearly, my math is somewhat lacking because I assume that every hit will deal average damage. In reality, the non-power attacker will single-shot bugbears on a roll of 10 or better (about 7/36 chance of that) and the power attacker will need a second hit to drop the bugbear on a roll of 6 or lower (about 16/36 chance of that). Nor does it account for critical hits which single-shot the bugbears whether or not the character is power attacking. So the math should come out to much less than the apparent 50% increase in bugbear killing predicted by my average damage assumption.

The math is more complex when you run into a situation like large or huge zombies or some animals where power attacking means the difference between killing the creature in two blows or killing it in 3. (Especially when a character has multiple attacks). As I said, I'm not knowledgable enough in matrix theory to make a managable formula for that.

Out of curiousity, how would you account for cleave? My guess is that you figure some average number of hit points for a monster given a base attack combo, then add in a chance of an extra base attack that's equal to expected damage/hp.

I think you would probably need to set up multiple events: low for level EL's (where the chances of having somebody nearby to cleave is higher), versus high for level EL events (where the chances of cleave mattering are lower).