Can i combine Power attack & Combat Expertise?

[Veven1290]

Not sure why i would want to but just curious. If i had a BAB of 10 could i take 5 for Power attack and take the other five for Combat Expertise?


Edit:
Just thought of a couple more questions and would rather not open a new thread.

If i am using a duskblade's arcane channeling ability to channel a touch spell and i roll a natural 20, is the spell AND weapon damage multiplied or just weapon damage?

also, i don't quite understand this clause in the description of Chill Touch,
"you can use this melee touch attack up to one time per level."

 

[Dandu]

Not sure why i would want to but just curious. If i had a BAB of 10 could i take 5 for Power attack and take the other five for Combat Expertise?

Yes.

If i am using a duskblade's arcane channeling ability to channel a touch spell and i roll a natural 20, is the spell AND weapon damage multiplied or just weapon damage?

Good question. Some spells (weaponlike spells) will deal more damage on a crit, while others will not. Enervation, for example, does not seem to deal double damage on a crit, while Shocking Grasp would, if I recall correctly.

also, i don't quite understand this clause in the description of Chill Touch,
"you can use this melee touch attack up to one time per level."

It's a little confusing. As written, it seems to allow for multiple touch attacks the round you cast it at one or more creatures, but that reading doesn't feel quite right to me for some reason.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

also, i don't quite understand this clause in the description of Chill Touch,
"you can use this melee touch attack up to one time per level."

Here's the rule for "Touch Spells in Combat". Basically, you can hold the 'charges' until discharged in some way:

If you don’t discharge the spell in the round when you cast the spell, you can hold the discharge of the spell (hold the charge) indefinitely....

 

[udalrich]

Not sure why i would want to but just curious. If i had a BAB of 10 could i take 5 for Power attack and take the other five for Combat Expertise?

Actually, I think you could do that even if your BAB was only 5. Both apply a penalty limited by your BAB, but I don't think either actually decreases your BAB. (If they did, you should also lose iterative attacks.)

If i am using a duskblade's arcane channeling ability to channel a touch spell and i roll a natural 20, is the spell AND weapon damage multiplied or just weapon damage?

Since you are not making a separate attack for the spell, I would suspect that you only double the weapon damage.

also, i don't quite understand this clause in the description of Chill Touch,
"you can use this melee touch attack up to one time per level."

The way that I see it, it gives you a short duration touch attack. If a level 12 wizard (BAB +6/+1) casts the spell, he can make one attack on that turn. On his next 5 turns, he could make full attacks to deliver damage twice and once more on the turn after that, for a total of 12 attacks.

Otherwise, the damage is rather low (1d6 + 1 Str), even for a first level spell. A first level spell should do CL x 1d6 damage, which this does (eventually) if you use all the attacks.

At 6th level, it does bypass the normal damage cap (5d6), but since you need to make so many attacks to bypass the cap, I do not think that is much of a problem.

 

[frankthedm]

Not sure why i would want to but just curious. If i had a BAB of 10 could i take 5 for Power attack and take the other five for Combat Expertise?

Technically you can take both penalties up to a max of your BAB [or the 5 for CA]. -10 PA and -5 CE.

If i am using a duskblade's arcane channeling ability to channel a touch spell and i roll a natural 20, is the spell AND weapon damage multiplied or just weapon damage?

Just the melee weapon hit is doubled. The spell gets treated as extra damage dice.

Sometimes you multiply damage by some factor, such as on a critical hit. Roll the damage (with all modifiers) multiple times and total the results. Note: When you multiply damage more than once, each multiplier works off the original, unmultiplied damage.

Exception: Extra damage dice over and above a weapon’s normal damage are never multiplied.

i don't quite understand this clause in the description of Chill Touch,
"you can use this melee touch attack up to one time per level."

Casting chill touch gets you stack of touch attacks. You'll be able to make one as part of casting the spell on the turn you cast it, then use one on an AOO if a foe gives you one, then on your next turn, you could make a melee attack to make another touch, possibly a full attack if BAB permitted.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

1st question: You actually take a penalty EQUAL to your BAB (or less) when you use power attack and expertise, you're not actually subtracting from your BAB. An important thing to note, since in your above example, the level 10 fighter could actually take -10 for power attack AND -5 for expertise. They're separate penalties, they don't have to add up to 10 or less. If you had Improved Combat Expertise, you could even take a -10 for power attack and expertise, in fact.

Why would you? Well, some enemies *cough*dinosaursandotherbigdumbthings*cough* at higher levels have stupidly low AC for their challenge rating, so you can put those attack penalty feats to great use against them.

2nd: Any additional dice damage isn't multiplied on a critical hit. If you were attacking directly with the touch spell as a touch attack, the spell's damage would be the base weapon damage and be multiplied. Because you "attached" it to a melee weapon's damage, though, by RAW it shouldn't multiply. Duskblades aren't a good idea for a critical hit build. *shrug*

3rd: You hold the charge till you use all of it; you could get one off as a melee touch attack using a full attack for multiple uses in one round. Presumably you could also inflict it every time you hit with an unarmed strike or natural weapon. Normally when holding the charge, casting a new spell ends the holding of the charge. Of course, that means Chill Touch is a lot less useful once you get more touches than you can dish out in a single combat...