[Feat] Smite Foe - Needs Crtiquing

[Silversun]

Smite Foe [General]
You are able to channel your devotion and dedication to the standards you live by and are able to smite those that do not share them.
- Benefit: Choose one of your alignment aspects (good-evil axis, or chaos-law axis). Once per day you may attempt to smite a foe of the opposite end of the axis chosen (if you are of a good alignment, your smite works on evil foes). When smiting a foe you gain a bonus on your attack roll equal to Charisma modifier (minimum +0) and you deal one extra point of damage per two character levels. If you accidentally smite a creature that is not of the proper alignment axis chosen, the smite has no effect, but the use of ability is still used up for that day.
- Special: You may select this feat more than once; when you do you must choose whether you wish to select your other alignment aspect or to gain one additional use of this ability per day (you may not exceed one use of this ability per four character levels you have).

 

[Runestar]

It has a decent effect, but is way too limiting for a feat, IMO, since you can only use it once per day per feat (and feats are an extremely valuable commodity in 3e). 1/encounter might be more worth it.

Plus, only paladins are likely to have the cha to power this feat (and they already have smite evil).

I also feel the damage can be scaled to +1/HD without it being overpowering.

You may wish to clarify if this ability can be used to augment an attack made as part of the full attack routine, if it is a standard action, an attack action (eg: can you activate it at the end of a charge, or on an AoO?) or a non-action.

Do you allow the extra smiting feat to apply to it? If so, kinda makes the option to take it multiple times somewhat lackluster.

 

[Arkhandus]

You should clarify how the smite works, like the paladin's smite evil or the Destruction domain's Smite granted power, to be clear on how it works and when. And it should probably be noted as a supernatural ability.

As it stands, it's probably somewhat too weak in that its damage bonus should probably be 1 per level.

If you change it to once per encounter as Runestar suggested, then keep the damage bonus at one-half character level, to a minimum of +1 damage, and only allow it to be taken a second time for use against the other alignment component. The Extra Smite feat or whatever would probably be applicable to this smite ability, increasing its uses per day by 1 or 2 (I forget which), not increasing uses per enoucnter AFAIK (those extra daily uses could be used in the same encounter as its 1/encounter use, though, if I'm right; I haven't seen the 3.5 version of Extra Smite).

 

[Runestar]

Extra smiting is from complete warrior, grants 2 extra uses of smite, can be taken multiple times. So unless the OP does not allow this feat, there is really little reason to take his feat more than once, save to gain the ability to smite another alignment.

 

[TienFong]

In one of the villain books (exemplar of evil i think) there's a feat that allows you to change smite good/evil to just smite. Strength of Conviction or something like that.

 

[Hawken]

The feat is weak and deficient. I wouldn't take this if the DM paid me to.

I'd suggest the feat be made at least as powerful as the actual Smite power. This 1 per 2 level stuff is garbage. IMO, Smite is too weak anyway. Even at 1 point of damage per (character) level once a day, so what? Its basically the equivalent of rolling the max on your damage die.

However, arguing the merits or deficiencies of existing Smite rules isn't what this is about. Basically, just make it the same as the paladin ability. I'd even allow the feat to provide an extra use per day for every 5 levels.

I'd strongly consider allowing this feat only for divine classes. Once you start converting class abilities to feats, its a slippery slope to do it to all other class abilities and before you know it, you've got rogues doing druid stuff and barbarians using a monk's safe fall.