Arcane Strike: Broken?

[Sejs]

But really, the far more abusive use of this is on a nice, big, dragon. An ancient red, for example, has 7th level spell slots. Nice, sure, but he's a dragon. He's got better things to do in combat than cast prismatic spray. Like take a full attack (bite, haste bite, claw, claw, wing, wing, tail) all with +7 to hit and +17.5 damage. If you power attack the attack bonus away, you're getting about 173 damage out of that feat and a spell slot that you probably weren't going to use for much else anyway. Too bad you can only do that 5 times a day.

I can certainly agree that an ancient red dragon has better things to do in a fight with his lvl 7 spells than Prismatic Spray.

Limited Wish, Forcecage, Waves of Exhaustion, or out of combat, the city-killer Control Weather do look rather tempting, on the other hand. (Or for added fun: the Craft Contingent Spell feat, and have Resurrection be one of its lvl 7 spells. ) Really all it boils down to is the fact that Mr Dragon doesn't need his spells to deal damage. He's good at that already. His spells are for things that arn't damage but still make you wish you'd never been born in other ways.

 

[The Forsaken One]

Untyped plus to hit +9 and 5 attacks at normal dmg and +9d4 dmg all.

Thats +45d4 dmg if it all hits as bonus and the +9 makes it all more likely that they all hit. Not to shabby, not to shabby at all.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

Actually, the feat says "you can channel arcane energy into a melee weapon, your unarmed strike, or natural weapons"

For the dragon, it's an uber boost to all his natural attacks. For PCs, not so much.

I've used it to keep pace with a power attacking gish, but then he started using it too and even burning a quickened orb of whatever at my target, I couldn't come close to his damage output. At higher levels, if you don't have a full caster level, things just ingore your spells. This makes up for it.

Now, a duskblade doing a wraithstriking, power attacking, arcane striking, whirling blade set of attacks with a 2 hander would be a sight to see, but it'll be like a psion nova in terms of staying power.

 

[Victim]

That and Duskblades don't get Wraithstrike.

 

[RigaMortus2]

Actually, the feat says "you can channel arcane energy into a melee weapon, your unarmed strike, or natural weapons"

If you check the feat description in full, it says:

Yarren gains an extra +4 bonus on his attack rolls and an extra 4d4 damage with a single melee weapon of his choice (his rapier).

 

[Iku Rex]

Actually, the feat says "you can channel arcane energy into a melee weapon, your unarmed strike, or natural weapons".

If you check the feat description in full, it says:

Yarren gains an extra +4 bonus on his attack rolls and an extra 4d4 damage with a single melee weapon of his choice (his rapier).

Yes, it does. What's your point? Yarren the bladesinger channels arcane energy into "a melee weapon" (singular) as per the feat description. If the example involved a dragon it'd be channeling arcane energy into its "natural weapons" (plural) as per the feat description.

Or are you trying to argue that the example is intended to override the main feat description, and that you can't use Arcane Strike with unarmed strike or natural weapons?

 

[jasin]

I actually had it with my human sorceress (no levels in warrior classes, just pure spellcaster) in the CotSQ campaign, and made good use of it (wielding a magical greatsword with Master's Touch and a good number of buffs, of course).

You are my hero.

My tiefling eldritch knight (with Arcane Strike) in CotSQ is still one of my most mourned characters.

I'm now considering a human paragon/wizard for Age of Worms, and have been looking at Arcane Strike... use magic device (gotten through paragon) and a pile o' money could even get me access to divine power!

What buffs did you use with your sorceress?

 

[jasin]

There is one thing I consider a little broken: not only does is it grant an untyped bonus, but using the feat is a free action. And while the bonus to hit is capped by your BAB, the actual damage bonus doesn't appear to be. So as written you can sacrifice several spell slots per round and get some nice damage. And several 1st level spell slots are better fodder for this feat than a single high level spell.

I don't think this works.

However, your point is still a good one: one of the big benefits of Arcane Strike is indeed the fact that it's a free action to use. While it's more efficient to cast bull's strength to get +2 to attack and +2 to damage for minutes and minutes instead of burning a slot with AS to get +2/+2d4 for a single round, what's even better is casting bull's strength and then burning another slot on top, without having to use another action.

Sure, you go through your spells super fast, but IME sorcerers rarely use up all they have anyway, doubly so if they are warrior-mage types, which don't cast spell after spell but spend time on melee.

Not so sure about wizards... and wizards also have the problem of deciding whether to burn fireball or clairvoyance or fly or...? The sorcerer just crosses off slots and still has access to any spell he knows as long as he has at least one slot of the appropriate level left.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

That and Duskblades don't get Wraithstrike.

They do if you spend the feat to get it.
And another for Whirling Blade.

Oh noes! I went there!

 

[Someone]

It´s a potent feat because it´s a free action. You don´t just get Xd4 damage: you get xd4 damage on top of a boosted full attack, which is very good with certain builds. Last time I checked, people considered that the ability to spend many resources at once to deal a lot of damage per round was very good.