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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Leugren" data-source="post: 3059184" data-attributes="member: 44754">Enlighten me, please.  Beyond the acquisition of better magic items, how exactly do melee combat specialists appreciably and reliably increase their average damage output per round as they progress from, say, 8th-level to 15th-level?  - Is it because they get a couple more attacks on a full-attack action?  OK, these help a little, but the extra attacks generally only hit if the opponent has an AC that is way below average for an opponent with a CR commensurate to your character level.- Is it because of power attack? This helps a little, again, but only if you are fighting opponents that have an AC which is way below average.- Is it because of AoO specialization? I'll readily admit that AoO specialization is one of the best ways for a melee combat specialist to increase his or her damage output per round, but it does so by increasing your number of attacks per round, not your average damage per attack. It's also not strongly linked to level advancement.  I can acquire feats like Karmic Strike early in my career and pretty much top out my true damage-dealing potential but for a few minor boosts here and there.- Is it from feats like Weapon Specialization, Greater Weapon Specialization, and Weapon Mastery?  To a monster with 200+ HP, your ability to deal an extra +4 or +6 points of damage per hit is pretty much a joke!- Is it because you can play a Frenzied Berserker? Yeah, I just love playing characters that will kill their own party members!- Is it because you can create an uber-charger?  Maybe.  But this means that all melee combat specialists will need to be leap attacking shock troopers in order to hang with the spellcasting classes.So please teach me.  I'd really love to know how I can reliably and dramatically increase my average damage per round as I advance in level without relying on my DM to hand out some "phat magic loot" or without relying on one of a select few ultra-optimized one-trick-pony builds, like uber-chargers, and gatling-gun AoO specialists.  As a melee combat specialist, the only way I can think of to do this reliably is by playing one of the martial adept classes from ToB.I'm in the camp of those who, like Mike Mearls, always thought that melee types were underpowered in D&D 3.x beyond around 8th level, and who is happy as heck to have the new options from ToB to help remedy this situation.P.S.  To those of you who argue that spellcasters are severely constrained by their limited resources per day, I say two things:1) Wands, Staffs, and Scrolls: invest or create your own!2) When the spellcasters' resources become depleted, call for the team to make camp!  If you're in the middle of a dungeon, pick up a scroll of the 1st-level rope trick spell or something similar.  This makes the limitation largely irrelevant in almost all instances.  How many teams insist on soldiering on long after their spellcasters are all but useless?  Such teams are begging for a TPK!  DMs will only occasionally force the issue because they want the players of the spellcasters to have fun too.  It's the same reason you rarely see rust monsters running around in a dungeon.</blockquote>

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