But Henry - that's largely irrelevent. Power Attack is and always has been a prerequisite of Cleave - it's a feat used for clearing away large numbers of zombies, and other inconveniences.
When you have Cleave, it is better to have a lower chance of hitting and a higher chance of killing your target in one hit. When you have Great Cleave - even more so. "Average Damage" is completely irrelevent, it's a feat which feeds into the strategy of attacking weak creatures.
So people can go ahead and do statistical analysis on how much damage you do per round against a heavily armored BBEG. While it doesn't come out especially favorably - that's a meaningless comparison. The question is not "how much damage do I do to the BBEG in five rounds" - it's "what are my odds of killing a zombie in one attack?"
Let's say you are a 4th level Warrior-type and have an attack bonus of +10 with your Greatsword (2d6+7 damage on a hit). In order to kill a zombie in one attack you need to hit (which you do on a 2+), and then inflict 16 damage (which you do if you roll a 9+ on 2d6). So without Power Attacking you kill a zombie in one attack 19/72 times - which is 26.3% of your attacks. If you power attack for everything you need to roll a 5+ on a d20 and then a 5+ on 2d6 - which is 26/45 of your attempts - which is 57.8%.
That's old Power Attack - the one that is supposed to be underpowered and in fact doubles your chances of getting a cleave every time you attack a zombie. Power Attack delivers on the Zombie Killing. That's what it is for and it does the job exceptionally well. It delivers huge on the thing it is actually supposed to do. So acting like it is underpowered is either ignorant or dishonest.
And yes, powering it up until it is a good idea all the time will make it even better at what it was already good for - and then it is completely overpowered.
-Frank
