Jonathan Tweet denounces Power Attack

[KB9JMQ]

I don't know if this is good or not.
We only used PA as a gateway to other feats.
It was written down on a character sheet and forgotten. So at least with my group it makes no difference.

 

[Drowbane]

It's funny. I've ran with several different playing groups and many, MANY different playing styles since 3.0 came out and no one I ever played with used power attack as anything besides the requisite for cleave.

If you would be so kind as to email thier addresses, dates & times that they play and a small fee, I can have a Powergaming Tutor sent to each of those groups.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I find it a bit funny that Power Attack was called weak. IME it was too strong due to very poor monster ACs.

Only classed characters with full plate and a heavy shield seemed to be able to avoid the raging barbarian's attacks (still getting hit on the first round, but probably not taking as much damage mathematically). Anyone else just got screwed over. I'm just glad mages had so many options for not getting into melee :0

(This was 3.5's 2:1 Power Attack, but nothing over-the-top like a Frenzied Berserker.)

 

[frankthedm]

Multiples of damage is a good thing. It keeps the game exciting and fast paced.

Not when those multipliers get accounted for in character builds. If someone plans for making attacks dealing x2 to x5 the normal damage of a character at his level, something ridiculous is going on.

Power attack is perfectly balanced at full effect for dual wielders. -5 to hit, +10 damage is perfect. Shield users should just be beefed up to compensate.

Thankfully, 4E won't be going the path of "Something is broken, lets break everything else so they are equal."They had plenty of that in 3.5 splat.

+2 or more to AC instead of just +1 for using a shield.

That just gives more encouragement to FPAATT and shoot for 20’s.

 

[mmadsen]

It seems rather obvious to me that power attack's original purpose lay in patching up the attack bonus scaling problems in the core game. The disparity in attack bonuses between classes put the designers in a sticky situation regarding the AC of monsters because if it challenged fighters then other classes had no chance of hitting it, yet you catered to classes with less attack bonus and the fighters were guaranteed a hit. Power Attack allowed the designers to reduce monster AC since fighters could convert excess attack bonus to damage. This also, conveniently, helped to scale fighter damage as the game progressed.

Well said.

It's important to note that power attack is most useful when (a) the attacker has a high probability of hitting, and (b) the attacker does not normally do much damage.

As this damage per attack spreadsheet points out -- assuming a single attack at -1 to hit for +1 to damage -- power attacking does not makes much difference once an attacker is doing serious damage.

 

[JoeGKushner]

For me, Power Attack was one of those feats that was useful at all levels. It could scale quite nicely. When dealing with foes with very high AC's, it's utility was somewhat diminished, but as Wulf notes, all power attack all the time, leads to some great stories.

It was also one of the first things about 3e that made me say, "Ah, this is different." than previous editions.

I'd played around with not even making Power Attack a feat, but rather a combat option. Why should you need a feat to put some extra effort into the attack after all?

I KNOW that the author is not saying this, but it reads to me, "Basic math is hard and well, people are stupid and we're going to make this game a snap to play!"

The author is actually saying, "Leave the mechanics behind the scenes and game on."

I don't like it.

 

[Pygon]

I guess because he jokes about it so much that I'm just supposed to agree with him (or think everyone else is going to). Nevertheless, I didn't mind Power Attack. If you know you could hit easily, hell, use it all. Or just use a little to get past that DR. It seemed fine the way it was, except MAYBE was overpowered with the 2x with two-handers at high levels.

As was already hinted at, maybe PA as is won't be necessary in 4e for fighters to perform well (rather, it would be too powerful the way it is). Fine, tell us that instead of all those extra words. Along with "loving paladins now" and "thinking that everything they say about rules is obvious", I really don't like the way they communicate. But, that's common at this point.

 

[Storm Raven]

Power attack + 4x critical = lots of damage... if you get a critical.

And often, a lot of that extra damage is just wasted, as your foe would have been just as dead if you have inlficted 15 fewer hit points of damage.

 

[Storm Raven]

I'd played around with not even making Power Attack a feat, but rather a combat option. Why should you need a feat to put some extra effort into the attack after all?

We use a house rule as the flip side of fighting defensively: you can take a -4 to your attack roll to add +2 to your damage roll. Everyone can pump up their damage by swinging wildly, so having the Power Attack feat just means that you are especially skilled at doing this sort of thing.

 

[Ahglock]

Yes, Power Attack is a great feat. But we never messed around with the sliding damage. Pretty much the only people to take Power Attack were two-handed weapon wielders.

Then it was pretty much -5 hit, +10 to damage!! Hopefully, the 4e feat will just work like that.

And hopefully it won't be nerfed in 4e. -5 to hit and +5 damage is too weak to make the feat viable, in my opinion. One point of attack bonus is worth more than one point of damage.

Wow you could do that. You could just pick a number and use that every round. What a nifty option. What would be really cool is if I could like have an option to change that number if I wanted to whenever I wanted to. Sure I might stick with the same one for ease of play, but having the option to change it would be really cool.

Oh wait I could do that in 3e and you could keep a fixed number in 3e, in 4e you might be able to do what you were doing and I can't do what I was doing.

If my options are reduced I'm not so sure I want to pay the ease of use tax.