Jonathan Tweet denounces Power Attack

[Achan hiArusa]

Power attack is just fine for my cleric 3 (healing, destruction)/paladin 6, especially when I do it during a smite.

But if he wants something he's describing maybe he should just look in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia under Fighter. Its called a smash attack, -5 to hit and you got to add your Strength to your damage roll.

Other than that, the power attack all the time character already exists, its called the monk.

 

[Najo]

Am I alone in thinking that, while stuff like Grappling and Bull Rushes may have slowed the game down significantly, a line might be drawn between those effects and the comparatively simple Power Attack? It seems like they're axing a good feat (accessible, easy to use, and creative) for a pretty bad reason.

As merric said above, the smarter your players are the more power attack slows down the game as they min max.

Look at this too:

1) It doesn't feel like a wild, brutal swing.

2) It breaks the immersion of roleplaying as you determine the number.

3) Why have something as simple as swinging really hard be something you have so much control over and can fine tune like that?

Most of the arguments being made can be countered by simple points Tweet makes in his post and are being made here.

Power Attack should toggle, be quick and dirty, and feel like a wild swing that does more damage. If it doesn't then the current feat is not doing its job.

 

[Najo]

Both can be good, it just depends on what you give up to get there.

The fights would be much quicker if it was deiced ed by a single flip of the coin. Heads you win the fight tails you lose. I'm not sure speed and lack of metagaming would save that from being a sucky game.

With a game like D&D, streamlining akward rules and making them fun is very, very important on many levels. D&D needs choice, strategy, ability to min/max character building and such, but once your playing your abilities, resources and other character features should be intuitive to find and use, they should allow for choices that players can figure out and remember easy. Especially as the character gains levels and becomes more complicated.

Another thing, metagame play and convoluted rules hurt roleplaying and fun. Metagaming in case you do not understand the term is when you no longer are playing the game as intended and are playing with the theories and higher mechanics of the game system. In D&D, you are no longer playing your character but studying and tweaking the game mechanics and holding up everyone's actions. This is neither fun nor streamline when a game rule does this.

What you are really saying, and many people are saying, is that the current power attack seems simple and streamline, almost elegant, and as such necessary to the game mechanics. Converting to hit chance into damage. The sliding scale gives the illusion of flexibility and choice. But it really doesn't do this. As you take penalties to hit, your overall percantage of damage is dropping, and so even though you are gaining a damage bonus, you are actaully losing the chance to cause that damage in the first place.

Thus, like Tweet says, if you miss you don't even gain anything from the feat. You actually sabotage yourself. This is counter to fun. The math-challenged won't realize it, but they are screwing themselves over, while the math-capable are boring the hell out of their friends while they work the numbers.

Now, in none of my posts did I say replace the wonderful depth of a game system like D&D with coin flips. Just streamline and smooth the rough spots, but keep the fun areas of playing with the rules once you attain mastery of the game system.

 

[Najo]

OK, I'm late in on this thread, but I don't like the "fiddliness" of Power Attack either. Pretty much anything that encourages you to min-max at attack time is bad. I've seen many a fighter sit there trying to figure out how many points to put into PA given the rolls we've seen and the enemy's likely AC. "Hmm, 2 or 3 points?" A binary choice should be the most complexity for a single effect, given how many different effects can apply to a single attack.

I agree with you 100%. You keep it so simply too. He is right peeps, listen up

 

[Najo]

I want to throw one other point out at the doom and gloom removal of choice camp that is on here.

1) Just because they are looking at Power Attack doesn't mean they are removing it. They may make it better.

2) From everything I have seen, 4e is going to give WAY more options than 3.5. So far we have:
* talent trees
* easier multi classing
* improved combat actions to make them more accesible
* terrain effects
* magic items that are more interesting and useful to each class
* more diverse spells
* more class features and choices with those features
* adding movment and tactics to combat

In comparison, 3.5 is more like:
* Get as many stackable bonuses as you can.
* Min/ Max your character to do its couple of things it does really well
* Find overly synergistic (i.e. broken) combos that help you do those one or two things really well.
* Fill up every magic item slot you can.
* Use the same power gaming spells in the same slots, either leaning to healing or damage/ neutralizing your target the best you can.
* Not being able to multi class spellcasters and non-spellcasters together without screwing them over
* take 5 foot step and then unlease with everything while avoiding attacks of opportunity

Now, for all of those cool things 4e should do, you need to streamline things like power attack, saving throws, grappling, bull rush, polymorph etc...

4e is going to be amazing. So far WOTC has done way more good than bad with D&D, trust them to keep doing their job until proven otherwise.

So far, the biggest mistake I think they have made is killing the Dungeon and Dragon. I think there was a better option there for two wonderful staples of our hobby. I miss reading them on the throne and I am not impressed with the DI or Gleemax yet. The magazines were more fun to read than the web articles, it was fun to get it in the mail, it was fun to see them in the store, it was fun to have all the articles at once and flip through them instead of being spoon fed. It was fun to sit away from a computer and get ideas from them, whether travelling, hanging in the living room, down time between a meeting or other appoinment.

That is what they took away and messed up. But power attack, it needs fixing. Dragon and Dungeon didn't.

 

[Mouseferatu]

It seems to me like the salesmen were saying that they're streamlining the rules (they're rules and not guidelines now?)

They've always been rules. People can treat them as guidelines, and DMs may choose which rules to follow, change, or throw out--but every edition of the game has indeed identified them as "rules."

 

[Klaus]

I will say that the first time we've (my game group) really LOOKED at Grappling (as in, really used it extensively with lots of grappling-related feats) was the past three game sessions, with one of the PCs as a grappling-built character. We spent so much time debating if this clever wrestling feat goes off before that op-attack, or this close-quarters fighting feat works with that other conditional modifier, etc. that it dominated the whole combat's time. In fact, the player of a party barbarian, when wrestling the other PC, was so flustered he conceded their bout rather than try to figure out if he stood a chance. The rules weren't broken, really - but they were extremely convoluted.

... which is the reason I decided to make the Action Cards in Fiery Dragon's BattleBox. Instead of changing the "software" (rules) of the game, I opted to make a new piece of "hardware" (accessory) that'd make the game run faster. The Grappling card was by far the most busy, but I still managed to get all rules in a Magic-sized card. And the presence of the cards at the table is enough to remind players that there are other things they can do besides "roll attack/roll damage".

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Gosh, even without power attack in the picture, our spellcasters struggle to keep up in the damage stakes with the fighters, who with massive strength, big weapons, critical hits and full attacks *completely* rule the roost in damage stakes.

Ooh, the wizard drops a fireball - 10d6, so that's 35 damage, half on a save, and take off the fire resistance. 7 damage gets through. Versus the fighter full attack, hit! 2d6+12 damage! Critical 4d6+24! (55 damage) cleave onto next guy! 2d6+12! etc etc. BTW, I'm understating the damage here, as I'm assuming 22 Str, weapon specialisation and +1 weapon; in reality it is likely to be more strength and better weapon magic)

The only time that a caster beat them in the damage stakes was a druid with the (overpowered?) incense of meditation, which maximises all his spells prepared that day - doing 60 with every flamestrike and 50 with every Call Lightning Storm bolt was a pretty tough act to follow (and no arcane caster could have managed it, at least not with core rules).

Cheers

I can definitely see where you're coming from here. IMO it's often a casters weakest point - dealing HP damage to 'one big monster' - i.e. strong saves/sr/resists. (Although the Orb spells from CA would probably disagree).

That fireball you exampled gets way more impressive when it hits a dozen mook targets who don't have fire resistance?

Having said that, IME most high level spellcasters nasty comes from non damaging spells. Death magic, Dominates/Disablers, horrors like the Irresistable Dance and so on? That and some really nifty battlefield control? Nothing deals infinity damage like a failed Implosion save?

Given all that good stuff, I find it fair for the fighter types to be able to pound away at a single target more effectively? IME, it's kinda been their niche?

Think the most devastating attack I've seen recently was a Rainbow Pattern, a very high bridge and 15 elite hobgoblins (with lowish will saves)...

 

[ThirdWizard]

I have one player in particular who uses PA constantly at a wide range of modifiers. Another who uses it with moderate frequency and almost always a fixed intervals, and me using it at totally random frequencies and extents as a DM.

An interesting side effect of that is that I would lay good odds that the PCs have only succeeded in overall lowering their average damage by playing PA that way. If you don't play the numbers with PA, it is a very sub-par feat. If you do play the numbers, its a good feat, but slows down play.

 

[Mallus]

As merric said above, the smarter your players are the more power attack slows down the game as they min max.

Let me suggest that the smarter your players are, the less they indulge in behavior that bogs down the flow of play, even if it means a slight loss in their own character's effectiveness...