Hold the Strike: Add duration to your smites and stunning attacks!

[FireLance]

Do you really hate it when you miss on your x/day attempts to Smite Evil or use Stunning Fist? If so, the following feat may be for you. Comments welcome.

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HOLD THE STRIKE [GENERAL]

Prerequisite: Concentration 2 ranks.

Benefit: When you use a special ability in conjunction with a melee attack that is ruined and expended if you miss, such as a Stunning Fist attack or a paladin’s Smite Evil ability, the special ability is not immediately expended if you miss, but lasts for 1 round per point of Constitution bonus (minimum till the end of your next action) or until you make a successful melee attack.
Multiple uses of the same special ability do not stack, e.g. you cannot claim twice the bonus to hit and damage from two uses of Smite Evil, or require your opponent to make two saving throws from two Stunning Fist attacks.
This feat cannot be used with ranged attacks.

EDIT: Changed duration from 1 round per rank of Concentration to 1 round per point of Constitution bonus (minimum till the end of your next action).

 

[exempt]

One round per rank of Concencentration seems a bit weird since few or maybe no other feats give bonuses equal to ranks in a skill. Maybe make it similar to some of the divine feats in potential duration, such as a number of rounds equal to your Cha mod, mininum 1 round (Cha 13+ prerequisite, though). Or you could keep the dependency on concentration and just have the character do a concentration check to keep the smite/stun (DC = 10 + difference between AC and missed attack roll), though you should still have a maximum number of times the smite/stun can be kept.

Even so, it makes the smite/stun ability very powerful, maybe overbalanced -- I'd take this anyday over the extra smite/extra stunning attack feats written as-is. To correct, halve the bonus damage on teh smite if you hit the next time you attack or allow a +4 to the stun save on the next attack if it hits.

 

[MarauderX]

It's a pretty good feat as is. If a monk takes it versus some of the others available I would be surprised, but it would be nice to have as a choice. It's not overpowered IMO, and like exempt said, I would relate the number of rounds to an ability instead of a skill. I would select Wisdom as that ability to help monks out by utilizing Wisdom one more time, but that's just me.

 

[FireLance]

Thanks, exempt and MarauderX, for the comments so far.

I wanted to make this a generic feat that could be used with a number of similar abilities, so I didn't want to tie it to a specific attribute. Charisma would make it less useful for monks, Wisdom might be OK for monks and paladins, but may not benefit a Fighter/Wizard with Arcane Strike (feat from Complete Warrior) very much. Hence, I opted to tie the duration to skill ranks. However, thinking it through, I've decided to tie it to Constitution instead as most front-line melee combatants would have a decent score in that attribute, and it's the ability score that affects Concentration anyway.

As for how it compares with Extra Smite/Stun, I would say it depends on the player. Some would prefer the greater certainty of this feat, while others just like having more to dish out. Offhand, I would say that the Extra feats are more useful at low levels while this is more useful at higher levels.