D&D 3E/3.5 3.5 power attack: the designers' rationale

[Malin Genie]

I definitely agree with you that the biggest problem with the Feat change is not that it makes two-handed-weapon-wielders vastly more effective but that it makes the moderate-strength-dual-wielder concept unviable - and anything that destroys a concept is trouble for Living Campaigns.

Notwithstanding your point, I think that +3 average damage is reasonably significant; given that the average damage pre-feat is only about 10-11 points against AC 18 it increases average effectiveness by over one-fourth - more effective than Weapon Focus and twice as effective on average as Specialization!

 

[Celtavian]

Re: Re: re

No it will not. But, hey, if you can prove to me that they will with numerical examples, I'll take your word for it. Note that you must also disprove the numerical examples listed above.

Rav

Speak to me again after you see a Whirlwind attack or Great Cleave two-hander fighter in action. Sure, it won't make much of a difference if all folks were doing was full attacking making iterative attacks.

I have a player who has Great Cleave and another with Whirlwind attack. How much is Power Attack going to benefit them? Throw Haste or add the speed capability to a weapon, and watch the Power Attack become even more powerful.

Then take into account templated characters, say if you happen to allow a half-dragon or half-ogre who has base attack to spare due to their enormous strength. In fact, any character with an extremely high strength will have base attack to spare since you don't lose strength damage when power attacking.

The new Power Attack puts a serious premium on strength for two-handed weapon users, like they already didn't have enough reason to be strength fiends. Looking at one narrow view of attacking with Power Attack does not show all the angles that will cause this feat to be seriously abused.

Seriously, someone do the calculations for a Whirlwind two-hander with this new version of Power Attack. How much more damage will that person do? Anyone figure on how much better Cleave and Great Cleave will be with this new version of Power Attack? Use your first attack to take the creature down, then you get a nice second attack at Full BAB with damage modifier from power attack as you cleave through.

Forget Fireball, let's just send the power attacking, cleaving or power attacking whirlwind fighter "weed whacker" to take care of all the bad guys. Thus, a new min/max concept is made even better by the change to Power Attack, a feat that was previously a prereq feat, but now is one of best feats you can purchase to enhance your two-hander combination.

Why the heck didn't Dodge get this kind of improvement? It is a prereq feat.

 

[Celtavian]

I definitely agree with you that the biggest problem with the Feat change is not that it makes two-handed-weapon-wielders vastly more effective but that it makes the moderate-strength-dual-wielder concept unviable - and anything that destroys a concept is trouble for Living Campaigns.

Notwithstanding your point, I think that +3 average damage is reasonably significant; given that the average damage pre-feat is only about 10-11 points against AC 18 it increases average effectiveness by over one-fourth - more effective than Weapon Focus and twice as effective on average as Specialization!

The biggest problems I see with the new Power Attack:

1. Feat combinations such as Whirlwind attack or Cleave or Great Cleave.

2. For those DM's who allow templates and higher level characters with high strength that gives them base attack to spare. (Lose 1 strength bonus to hit, gain 2 damage. What a bargain.)

3. Really powerful strong monsters like Giants or Dragons who don't have iterative attacks like a PC and have Base attack to spare due to extremely high strength and hit dice.

It wouldn't have been a big deal if the only people using power attack were PC fighters of a common PHB race using their iterative attacks. Take into account all the different creatures and feat combinations that benefit from Power Attack. I'll be real surprised if this isn't one of the changes many people look at as "whoa, that was a seriously bad change."

I think only people who have watched whirlwind or great cleave attackers with improved crit and keen greatswords will blanch in horror at this change, or those who allow templated characters such as half-dragons or the like, half-ogres, and even half-orcs to a much lesser degree. I hope they raise the CR of giants just because of the change to this feat. Giants have Base Attack to spare, and leveled Giants have even more base attack to spare. This is going to hurt real bad when DM's start using the new power attack with super strong monsters with reach. Ouch!!!

I personally think a better change would have been to limit the damage bonus from Power Attack for two weapon fighters to only their primary weapon. This not only eliminates any advantage a two weapon fighter with power attack has, but also discourages them from taking it, while at the same time still keeping two-weapon fighting a very viable option.

 

[spunky_mutters]

Re: Re: Re: re

Speak to me again after you see a Whirlwind attack or Great Cleave two-hander fighter in action. Sure, it won't make much of a difference if all folks were doing was full attacking making iterative attacks.

I have a player who has Great Cleave and another with Whirlwind attack. How much is Power Attack going to benefit them? Throw Haste or add the speed capability to a weapon, and watch the Power Attack become even more powerful.

Then take into account templated characters, say if you happen to allow a half-dragon or half-ogre who has base attack to spare due to their enormous strength. In fact, any character with an extremely high strength will have base attack to spare since you don't lose strength damage when power attacking.

The new Power Attack puts a serious premium on strength for two-handed weapon users, like they already didn't have enough reason to be strength fiends. Looking at one narrow view of attacking with Power Attack does not show all the angles that will cause this feat to be seriously abused.

Seriously, someone do the calculations for a Whirlwind two-hander with this new version of Power Attack. How much more damage will that person do? Anyone figure on how much better Cleave and Great Cleave will be with this new version of Power Attack? Use your first attack to take the creature down, then you get a nice second attack at Full BAB with damage modifier from power attack as you cleave through.

Forget Fireball, let's just send the power attacking, cleaving or power attacking whirlwind fighter "weed whacker" to take care of all the bad guys. Thus, a new min/max concept is made even better by the change to Power Attack, a feat that was previously a prereq feat, but now is one of best feats you can purchase to enhance your two-hander combination.

Why the heck didn't Dodge get this kind of improvement? It is a prereq feat.

I don't think they know what to do with dodge without breaking something. It's a feat nobody would take except as a prereq., so it should be up for a change.

As far as Whirlwind Attack, it's bad. The Power Attack balance is usually a function of the iterative attack chance falloff. Anything that gives you full BAB attacks makes it worth more, as you correctly point out. It's hard to calculate the utility value of this, and it looks like Wizards is calculating it pretty low.

 

[Malin Genie]

those DM's who allow templates and higher level characters with high strength that gives them base attack to spare ... who allow templated characters such as half-dragons or the like, half-ogres ...

...deserve whatever game balance ramifications flow from their silly decision....

 

[Celtavian]

...deserve whatever game balance ramifications flow from their silly decision....

Thanks for the snotty answer. I guess those DM's who allow such things aren't perhaps allowing their players to enjoy a different type of character from the norm after having played numerous regular PC's over our 20 plus years of gaming.

 

[Malin Genie]

/adds Celtavian to the "guys/girls with NSOH" list

Right, that out of the way, if you intend to treat it as a serious proposition, I will rephrase.

If a DM using non-standard options finds they interact poorly with Core rules, that in itself is not a good argument against the balance of the Core rules. It might suggest either that the DM should withdraw or tone down the non-standard options she offers. In the case of the high-strength templates, either the Str bonus could be reined in or the LA increased if the Power Attack change has made high Str even more attractive.

For the same sorts of reasons, if a change in the Core rules interacted poorly with psionics, or Oriental Adventures classes, or splatbook PrCs (viz the Divine Oracle...) that wouldn't be a cause IMHO to reject the change - instead (pending any planned revisions of the expansions in question) the psion/samurai/PrC could be disallowed or altered to fit with the new Core.

 

[Celtavian]

/adds Celtavian to the "guys/girls with NSOH" list

Right, that out of the way, if you intend to treat it as a serious proposition, I will rephrase.

If a DM using non-standard options finds they interact poorly with Core rules, that in itself is not a good argument against the balance of the Core rules. It might suggest either that the DM should withdraw or tone down the non-standard options she offers. In the case of the high-strength templates, either the Str bonus could be reined in or the LA increased if the Power Attack change has made high Str even more attractive.

For the same sorts of reasons, if a change in the Core rules interacted poorly with psionics, or Oriental Adventures classes, or splatbook PrCs (viz the Divine Oracle...) that wouldn't be a cause IMHO to reject the change - instead (pending any planned revisions of the expansions in question) the psion/samurai/PrC could be disallowed or altered to fit with the new Core.

I don't know if you have noticed, but modules they write also tend to use alot of templated NPC's. With the addition of Savage Species, WotC has further encouraged the use of templates and monster PC's.

Don't you think they should take into account how changes to the core rules will effect books and ideas they are promoting? As far as I can tell, the Monster Manual is a core rulebook that employs ideas from Savage Species and strongly encourages monster classes as well as the possibility of PC's playing monsters or having monstrous cohorts.

Power Attack will affect PC's and NPC's. Since that line is further blurring, the core rules should take such considerations into account when designing feats.

I have no idea why you addressed only one part of my post rather than addressing the entire post including the other two considerations which you completely ignored so you could make a snide comment.

 

[Malin Genie]

As I have (now twice) tried to indicate, the comment was meant to be tongue-in-cheek rather than 'snide' or 'snotty'.

FYI: T-I-C indicator light --->

Nevertheless, to reply to your post, I addressed particularly the issue of Savage Species because (as suggested in my previous post) I feel any non-Core supplement is something over which a DM has right of refusal, and so should be used only very judiciously to critique the Core rules.

Originally posted by Celtavian
As far as I can tell, the Monster Manual is a core rulebook that employs ideas from Savage Species and strongly encourages monster classes as well as the possibility of PC's playing monsters or having monstrous cohorts.

I can't comment on that, not having seen the 3.5e Monster Manual. Savage Species certainly struck me as being, like the Psionics Handbook or Oriental Adventures, as a supplement providing interesting options for gamers and DMs who wanted a different type of campaign; not necessarily guaranteed to be balanced with respect to the Core Rules. MM templates are designed for use with monsters - if people want to adapt them to PC use; again, nice to expand options available but don't expect them to necessarily balance out against non-templated PCs.

Core Rules were designed and play-tested on the basis of PCs with stats that would top out at around 20 at low levels. Does that mean you can't run a fun campaign with a Str 24 or more half-ogre fighter? No, but don't expect all of the assumptions made by the Core rules (like, for example "Power Attack, while at the 'good' end for Feats for a strong fighter, is more-or-less balanced") to hold.

With regard to the rest of your post:

1) I completely agree with your overall thesis that the change to Power Attack raises the premium on high Str to an even greater level.

2) Similarly I agree about Cleave/Great Cleave/Whirlwind Attack/Dragons getting more out of Power Attack. That is, iterative attacks blunt the impact of Power Attack.

Whenever you get more attacks at full (or non-decreasing) BAB, that makes Power Attack more attractive. Even AoOs are at full BAB - if you are in a situation (e.g. superior reach against an opponent without Tumble) where you regularly get AoOs Power Attack gains value. Heck, even Spring Attack synergises (because if you are exchanging blows one-for-one rather than trading full attacks you get the full benefit of Power Attack on each of your attacks, rather than the reduced benefit it grants when applied to a Full Attack sequence.)

 

[Mike Sullivan]

Re: Re: Re: re

For a two-handed weapon wielder it's gone from 'useful against relatively low AC opponents' to 'useful against nearly all opponents'. At least in an average damage sense - how meaningful a measure of combat effectiveness that is is another debate unto itself.

Let me slightly rephrase that: It's gone from "somewhat useful against relatively low AC opponents at low levels" to "somewhat useful against nearly all opponents at low-to-mid levels." At high levels, as your damage increases and your iterative attacks increase, it'll get less and less useful until it's back in its role of, "Use it only when all of your attacks for the round hit on 2+." And it'll be more useful in that role, sure.

Remember that that's how it's always been for TWFers!