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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elric" data-source="post: 587133" data-attributes="member: 1139">Power Attack is a fun feat.  However, it isn't useful in most circumstances when you would want it.In general, it seemed to me that if Power Attacking a lot is beneficial it means one of a few things:1.  Your character hits the enemy all the time.  Assuming that you're a melee fighter, it's probably because you have very high Str and other bonuses and they don't have particularly good AC.  You'll kill them very quickly (unless they have 32 HD or something like that).2.  Your character is really crummy.  Remember, +1 to hit is more powerful than +1 to damage unless you're doing something wrong.  If you do 20 damage and hit 90% of the time, it's not worth power attacking on average.  If you only do 8 damage a hit, you should remake your melee fighter instead of taking this feat.3.  You're an Archer and hit everyone all the time because of Bracers of Archery, stacking GMWs and something like Order of the Bow Initiate Zen Archery.  Too bad Power Attack doesn't work at range.  I think you need Peerless Archer to do that.4.  You are a couple points of damage per hit shy of making Cleave (or Great Cleave) very useful.  Of course, you shouldn't know the exact HP of your enemies well enough to benefit much from this.  5.  You're using Whirlwind Attack (see Cleave).6.  You only get one attack this round (charging or something) and are a high level fighter-type, which means that your primary attack always hits.  Note that your 16th level fighter does significantly more damage against AC 17 not power-attacking than using full power attack.7.  You are a 10th level frenzied berserker and the 2 points of damage for 1 point to hit trade-off makes things more worth it.  Of course, by then you'll probably be doing 40 an attack and it still won't be useful to power attack because of lower chances to hit on subsequent attack.  Of course, your insanely high Str means that you might hit on almost every attack, but then your opponent is taking smackdown-esque damage anyways.I see Power Attack as a "win more" or "lose less" feat, depending on your character.</blockquote>

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