Can you Cleave after a Cup De' Grassey?

[Hypersmurf]

But, Power Attack is not lining up a careful shot. It is swinging or thrusting wildly, putting everything you have behind the blow. It risks a miss in an attempt to hit with a lot of power. You give up skill by putting everything you can into the shot(s). By lowering to hit, it is the opposite of methodical.

Sneak Attack, on the other hand, is lining up a careful and precise shot. You can only do it when your opponent is having difficulty defending 100%. That is why Sneak Attack is compatible with CDG (in fact, the designers practically apologize about sneak attack with CDG because it is overkill, but it matches the methodical concept completely, hence, they allowed it).

Sorry, but "lowering chance to hit" does not equate to "focused concentration and methodical action". They are two different concepts (regardless of a desire to allow the game mechanics to stack).

And yet, there's absolutely nothing to prevent a Rogue performing a Sneak Attack with full Power Attack.

Hell, give him a level in Barbarian, and he can do it while Raging.

-Hyp.

 

[Hypersmurf]

It's always seemed plain to me that CdG's are automatically carried out with full PA in place, since you automatically hit and you aren't going to be making any attacks of opportunity that round.

Why no AoOs?

CDG is only a Full Round Action. It takes the same length of time as a Full Attack or reloading a heavy crossbow. You're finished by the end of your turn.

It's not like casting a one-round spell.

For the rest of your round, you threaten as normal, and can take AoOs as normal.

-Hyp.

 

[Gez]

In my experience coup de grâce has rather common usage in english as do other french words relating to combat and warfare (such as élan).

Lots of French word in English for Love & War. I was amused to read in an X-Wing (the 1993 PC game) briefing a sentence like "a group of corvettes is en route to the rendez-vous point"...

In english I have only seen coup de grâce used to mean the killing of a downed combatant. I do not know if it is used to mean other forms of mercy killing in french but in english it's use is limited to combat.

Nope, "euthanasie" for the medical act. Sometimes used figuratively to designate something that just worsened up an already bad situation (like "killing blow" in English", if I'm not mistaken). Example scenario: "The alarm clock's batteries ran out of power in the night, so it didn't rang. Then I found there was hoarfrost on my car's windshield, and I lose time scrapping it off. Of course, there was traffic jam about everywhere. The killing blow was when a policeman made me stop and fined me for speeding. It's been a bad day enough already, please don't whine about me being late!"

 

[Saeviomagy]

From a "game balance" designer perspective, it might be because using a power attack during a coup de grace at 20th level (for a combatant type of character) is equivalent to increasing his Strength by 40 points from a single feat.JMO.

Now why on earth would you decide to use "points of strength" as a metric for this...

Oh, wait. I know. You're forging a misleading argument.

First off, coup de grace already is fairly devastating. For a 20th level Fighter, it will typically be 5 damage for the weapon, 5 damage for the magic of the weapon, 7 damage for Strength, 2 damage for weapon specialization times 2 or times 3 for the critical of coup de grace which is either 38 or 57 points of damage which results in a save of either DC 48 or DC 67.

Adding 20 points of damage to that and adding 20 to the DC is unbalancing even more an already unbalanced ability, especially when talking about certain types of opponents (e.g. extremely powerful dragons or demons).

So bumping it up by 19 points of damage through weapon choice (and we're not even going for the real heavy hitters of the coup-de-grace world, nor a half-decent strength) is ok, but 20 points of damage through feat selection is not?

I have no problem with 20th level Fred Fighter slitting the throat of the 20th level Joe Wizard (I do have a bit of a problem that most of the wizards protections do not protect him against coup de grace at all while he is asleep).

I do have a problem with Fred Fighter using magic to sneak in and assassinate an 80 foot long 300 year old dragon because he sticks his sword in the dragons eye (which should blind the dragon in one eye, but come nowhere near killing it 95% of the time).

If he's pulled that off, then there's something seriously wrong with our dragon friend.

And, no amount of planning and intelligence can necessarily overcome lack of knowledge.

You mean knowledge gained through... say... thousands of years of experience??

For example in Superman III, Superman defeated the supercomputer which could out-think and out-anticipate him by introducing a chemical which the knowledge of the computer indicated was harmless. Only someone who had actually experimented with the chemical would know that it became very unstable at high temperatures.

But superman is the DM's pet character - you can hardly quote his adventures as things that worthy characters should be able to pull off.

If as DM you state "This dragon is super intelligent and knows every single spell and every single feat and every single magic item", then yes I guess your assumption might be correct.

However, if as DM you give your players a fair chance of being successful while still maintaining a solid defense for the dragon (even if the PCs bypass that defense), which is more enjoyable for the players? Remember that the only real people involved are the players and the DM, the dragon does not really exist. Play him smart, but do not play him omnipotent. You have to give the party Wizard who also has a 26 Intelligence a fair chance of being successful.

Letting the players coupe-de-grace the dragon makes for an enjoyable game? At the (relatively low) coupe-de-grace numbers you've already given, that dragon is dead 19 times out of 20 (a great wyrm gold has only got a +33 save). That's before power attack. Power attack isn't the problem - allowing people to coupe-de-grace a major villain is. If the player has a brain, and uses a real coup-de-grace weapon like a scythe, or uses the party rogue, or any one of a bunch of other methods, the dragon is praying for a 20 on that save. No power attack needed.