I haven't seen this specific proposal made as a buff for Careful Attack, but I quite like it for both Flavor and Balance.
Careful Attack:
To Hit: Str/Dex + 3 [in PHB it is Str/Dex +2]
Damage: [W] + WIS Modifier [in PHB it is just Weapon]
From a flavor standpoint I like adding the Wisdom in. It is consistent with it as the 2nd best attribute of a Ranger, it matches the flavor text that Careful Attack is looking for a weak spot and/or waiting for the right moment (Wisdom ties to Perception and Insight).
With a +2 Wisdom mod you would want to use CA over TS when the to-hit with TS was 16 or greater. E.g. if you have a base ranged attack of +6, when the target's AC is 22 or higher you'd switch to CA.
With a +3 Wisdom mod you would switch when the to-hit is 13 or higher. So Careful Attack is better if the AC is 19 or higher.
With a +4 Wisdom it drops to a to-hit of only 10 or better, so you'd almost always be using Careful Attack (and you'd have made Wisdom your top Attribute, so that would be reasonable).
One of the nice things about tying the damage to Wisdom is that it enables Careful Attack to keep pace with Twin Strike. Otherwise as players get better magic weapons, the fact that TS gives 2x as many criticals makes the gap between CA and TS grow. This mechanism keeps them in reasonable parity (assuming the player puts some +1 Att levels into Wisdom).
A couple quick notes. While strong, I don't think Twin Strike is broken, e.g. compared to Cleave and Reaping Strike, so I didn't want to nerf it. I also looked hard at leaving the +2 to-hit rather than +3, but it simply isn't good enough. The break points for switching to CA from TS are 2-3 points of AC higher than I list above, and looking at some representative monsters it seemed like you'd use TS 90%+ of the time.
Thanks to Stalker0 for getting me thinking about this.
Careful Attack:
To Hit: Str/Dex + 3 [in PHB it is Str/Dex +2]
Damage: [W] + WIS Modifier [in PHB it is just Weapon]
From a flavor standpoint I like adding the Wisdom in. It is consistent with it as the 2nd best attribute of a Ranger, it matches the flavor text that Careful Attack is looking for a weak spot and/or waiting for the right moment (Wisdom ties to Perception and Insight).
With a +2 Wisdom mod you would want to use CA over TS when the to-hit with TS was 16 or greater. E.g. if you have a base ranged attack of +6, when the target's AC is 22 or higher you'd switch to CA.
With a +3 Wisdom mod you would switch when the to-hit is 13 or higher. So Careful Attack is better if the AC is 19 or higher.
With a +4 Wisdom it drops to a to-hit of only 10 or better, so you'd almost always be using Careful Attack (and you'd have made Wisdom your top Attribute, so that would be reasonable).
One of the nice things about tying the damage to Wisdom is that it enables Careful Attack to keep pace with Twin Strike. Otherwise as players get better magic weapons, the fact that TS gives 2x as many criticals makes the gap between CA and TS grow. This mechanism keeps them in reasonable parity (assuming the player puts some +1 Att levels into Wisdom).
A couple quick notes. While strong, I don't think Twin Strike is broken, e.g. compared to Cleave and Reaping Strike, so I didn't want to nerf it. I also looked hard at leaving the +2 to-hit rather than +3, but it simply isn't good enough. The break points for switching to CA from TS are 2-3 points of AC higher than I list above, and looking at some representative monsters it seemed like you'd use TS 90%+ of the time.
Thanks to Stalker0 for getting me thinking about this.
