How do these ideas fix Power Attack?

[Najo]

In another thread we are discussing Johnathan Tweet's commentary on Power Attack, essentially how it slows down game play through metagaming. Here are my ideas on how to solve power attack with the following interests in mind:

1) Keep true to its spirit.
2) Find a way to give player's a way to increase damage.
3) remove the metagaming element (i.e. breaking the supension of belief and encouraging min/maxing of the math).
4) Keep in working fast and scaling well.
5) It should toggle on/ off, and be "used" as an action of some sort. Using power attack should be a choice.

I hate to see a feat like Power Attack go. The following two results are my ideas to solve the problem. I like commentary on mine (both pros and cons) and I would like to see other poster's ideas too. Try to follow the guidelines above.


Power Attack (pre: Str 13+)

You may choose to use power attack as a full-round action. Make a single melee attack. If the attack hits your foe, add a damage bonus to your attack equal to the amount your attack roll is greater than your foe's armor class. If your attack misses, your opponent may make an attack of opportunity against you.

You may only use this feat once per round.


Or you can do this:

You may choose to use power attack as a full-round action. Make a single melee attack. If your attack hits your foe, you automatically cause a critical hit. If your attack misses, your opponent may make an attack of opportunity against you.

You may only use this feat once per round.



So how do these two ideas help the problem? What issues do they have? Are they balance? Please comment and share your own ideas.

 

[wingsandsword]

Maybe somehow when I played 3e with my friends, I was playing it radically different, but I never saw this whole sliding-scale probability-analyzing thing going on in the games I played.

Power Attack was the sort of thing that was either not used, or used at full power. A very common Fighter phrase used at the table was "Power Attacking for full".

Then again, a lot of the things that they are supposed to be "fixing" in 4e are "fixing" things I never thought were broken to begin with.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I used it in increments of 5 when I was playing a fighter, and just kept my character sheet up to date level by level with what that meant.

So, "Power Attacking for 5", "Power Attacking For Ten" and "Full Power Attack" were pretty much all I used - this idea of working out the sliding scale of what the most effective amount of power attack would be - meh. Seriously, I have better things to do with my out-of-game time than run a maths problem.

I appreciate that gamers want to maximise their effectiveness - but seriously, you can judge it on the fly and do a courtesy to your fellow gamers by not slowing the game down.

Personally, I don't think PA needs to be revised, since I never noticed it as a problem. What needs to be revised is players attitude to playing a game with other people - if you're slowing down the combat to juggle numbers and causing other players to have LessFun, then you're the problem - not the rule.

However, if the rule has to be changed then I'd go with the block increase in damage for a block decrease in chance-to-hit - eg +5 dmg for -5 to hit. Bringing attacks of opportunity into it would mean I would just avoid the feat entirely, or look for a different way of doing more damage.

 

[Dalamar]

One of the things Tweed mentions is that Power Attack, as it currently stands, is better for characters with low damage, so perhaps the revised version should do something as simple as doubling the damage for a certain penalty to attacks.
Or perhaps not a penalty to attacks, but to AC instead to make it more of a reckless attack instead of a wild swing.

 

[Fifth Element]

Isn't limiting a full-round action to once per round redundant?

 

[ThirdWizard]

You may choose to use power attack as a full-round action.

Doesn't that make it decidedly worse than it is now. Or is this in reference to 4e with no iteratives? If that's the case, it depends on how good the "rapid shot" for melee attacks is that will most likely be in the system.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Aside from early levels, Power Attack for full was never used in our campaigns.
Varying Power Attack values was common, though. But I think nobody used spreadsheets for optimisation. Often, power attack was used to "simplify" the attack bonus - negate bonuses from buff spells and abilities, or to get "nice" numbers (multiples of five, usually). (Thus, the real calculating began only when an attack actually hit)

I think the easiest solution would be to have a fixed penalty and bonus. (maybe -5 to Attack and +5 to Damage). Or even -10 to attack for double damage (costing a fullround action then, I'd guess)

 

[Imaro]

I will chime in and say I never saw the whole "take forever/optimisation" thing either. I mean compared to numerous other things in 3.5 this didn't even register as a blip when it came to combat slowdown. Most of my players had a round to decide what their numbers would be, and most liked the feel it gave of a bidding/guesstimation mechanic (which IMHO fit what it was suppose to be like). Maybe we were just weird or something.

 

[TerraDave]

Or you can do this:

You may choose to use power attack as a full-round action. Make a single melee attack. If your attack hits your foe, you automatically cause a critical hit. If your attack misses, your opponent may make an attack of opportunity against you.

Almost. I would say "you do double damage". (assuming the convention still holds that damage multipliers are addative if, say, you also critted, and you roll the extra die of damage).

Now we are rewarding the guy who does a lot of damage, and the AoO mechanic keeps the "wild swing" element in play. But we aren't getting into the crit properties of the weapon, and making it extra sweet if he does crit.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

I like the idea of Power Attack functioning as a Feat in this fashion:

When bloodied, the character adds a bonus to strike equal to his level. However, he also loses the same bonus to his base Reflex defense.

I'm not too keen on sliding numbers (1-5); tieing it directly to level seems less cumbersome to manage numbers during a combat round.