Is Power Attack balanced?
- Thread starter Emirikol
- Start date
Egres said:
One more time. If you change the number in the "can Power Attack for up to ___" box to anything, it doesn't change the result. Ergo, it either isn't taking iterative attacks into account, or it is, and contrary to what you yourself are saying, iterative attacks don't matter.
Ah. By this fiendish strategem, I have calculated that the optimal PA number varies for each successive attack. Well, that was enlightening.
SlagMortar
First Post
To clarify Hong's point with an example:
If I put in 2d6 + 0 and "Can Power Attack for up to" 6 (implying +6/+1 for full attack), and an Attack Difficulty of 11 (implying a 50% chance to hit) then the "Average without Power Attack" is 3.5.
3.5 is the average for one attack, and does not count hte second attack at +1. Since you apply the same power attack penalty to all attacks, the "Best Power Attack amount" supplied by the site is only given for a single attack and is higher than would be optimal for a full attack.
Edit: The average without power attack would be 5.25 if the second attack of the full attack was taken into account.
If I put in 2d6 + 0 and "Can Power Attack for up to" 6 (implying +6/+1 for full attack), and an Attack Difficulty of 11 (implying a 50% chance to hit) then the "Average without Power Attack" is 3.5.
3.5 is the average for one attack, and does not count hte second attack at +1. Since you apply the same power attack penalty to all attacks, the "Best Power Attack amount" supplied by the site is only given for a single attack and is higher than would be optimal for a full attack.
Edit: The average without power attack would be 5.25 if the second attack of the full attack was taken into account.
You could put in the iterative chances to hit and add up all of the extras though.
It would not take much more code to have put that in though.
Oops.. the site is confusing and not as powerful as it could have been with a little more planning.
The optimal number does change so you cannot do this as directly as I had thought. But that does show that since the optimal number is changing then you can almost never have a perfectly optimal amount so there will be loss with some attacks.
It would not take much more code to have put that in though.
Oops.. the site is confusing and not as powerful as it could have been with a little more planning.
The optimal number does change so you cannot do this as directly as I had thought. But that does show that since the optimal number is changing then you can almost never have a perfectly optimal amount so there will be loss with some attacks.
Kahuna Burger
First Post
If you are fighting multiple weak or party average opponents. IME it is far more common to be fighting one or two very powerful opponents with DR. And if you don't have the right item to overcome DR, the two hander can often still do damage due to the greater damage per hit. The two weaponer usually simply can't. Also with a moving target, the 2H can do the same amount of damage each round as with a static target, while the twf is doing less than average.KarinsDad said:
Even assuming the circumstances where 2H are better are roughly balanced with those where twf is better (they aren't in my expereince, including the STAP, but I'd like to fight more "crowd o mooks" so I can accept the possibilty that other DMs use them more) as was pointed out earlier, twf takes a heavy stat investment and one feat per attack, plus the -2, while 2H takes... buying a two handed weapon. So it's really OK with me if twf is a better fighting style or gets more bang out of pawer attack in some circumstances.
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