Power Attack still sucks

[Crashy75]

Here's what I came up with. I did, however, also like Stalker0's suggestion.

Power Attack
Prerequisite: Str 15
Benefit: You can draw on your strength and inner reserves of power to recklessly attack your foes with extra might. You gain use power attack as an at-will power.

Power Attack Feat PowerYou attack your enemies with extra force, leaving yourself open to attack.
At-Will ✦ Stance
Minor Action Personal
Effect: While you are in this stance, you gain a +2 bonus to melee damage rolls (or a +3 bonus to the damage roll with a two-handed weapon). This extra damage increases by level, as shown on the table below. In addition, you take a –2 penalty to AC and Reflex defenses. This penalty does not increase at higher levels.
Special: When you exit this stance, you still take the penalty to AC and Reflex defense until the beginning of your next turn.

Level Extra damage (two-handed weapon)
1st-10th +2 (+3)
11th-20th +4 (+6)
21st-30th +6 (+9)

 

[77IM]

How about,

Attack -2,
Damage +Strength

Thus for a Str 18 guy, it is a 1:2 trade-off which is pretty good, but it also naturally scales with level (assuming you keep putting points in Str). By using Str it retains the "power" flavor.

I think the fact that Power Attack is more useful for at-wills and basic attacks is fine: plenty of encounter/daily powers already fulfill the same conceptual niche as Power Attack (for example, brute strike).

-- 77IM

 

[Syrsuro]

Given the overall reduction in power for feats in 4E I see Power Attack as perfectly appropriate.

It may suffer the same problems as it did in 3.5, but it's not appropriate to determine from that it is 'weak' as a 4E feat.

Carl

 

[Doctor Proctor]

How about,

Attack -2,
Damage +Strength

Thus for a Str 18 guy, it is a 1:2 trade-off which is pretty good, but it also naturally scales with level (assuming you keep putting points in Str). By using Str it retains the "power" flavor.

I think the fact that Power Attack is more useful for at-wills and basic attacks is fine: plenty of encounter/daily powers already fulfill the same conceptual niche as Power Attack (for example, brute strike).

-- 77IM

I'm not sure if you guys are reading this feat correctly. First off, Power Attack is something you can add to a power, it's not always on. So if you just have to hit that daily? Don't use it. Or use it, a lot of dailies are reliable anyway.

Additionally, the damage scales up as you go up in level. Power Attack is primarily designed for a Greatweapon Fighter, which is why the 2H damage is bigger. If you look at 77IM's suggestion above, you'll see that this is almost exactly what Power Attack already does!

Level 1 Fighter - 18 STR = +4 mod
Power Attack is -2 to hit and +3 damage when using a 2H weapon.

Now, if you pump up your Strength every level you will have a 21 at level 11, which gives a +5 bonus. Power Attack, for a 2H weapon, gives a +6 bonus at 11th level. So it's actually beating out your Strength at that point.

The same thing happens at 21st level. Your Strength will be at 24, which is a +7, whereas Power Attack is giving a +9 bonus! Even at 28th level your Strength will only be giving you a +8, so this is actually hands down better than adding your Strength mod.

The thing is, Power Attack is really only useful for 2H weapons. When you do the math for a 1H weapon, the damage just doesn't impress at +2, +4 and +6. +9 damage for a -2 attack is pretty good though, as Combat Advantage will cancel that out.

I don't think this needs a houserule at all, you just have to know how to apply it correctly.

Edit: Also, not the damage of Fighter Encounter powers at high level. They're doing 4[W], or 2[W] in a burst for Cruel Reaper. Assuming you have an Executioner's Axe, which is 1d12 Brutal 2, it does an average of 7.5 damage per die. So Power Attack is actually adding damage in excess than the average value of one weapon die. In effect, you're getting like a 20% bump here. At the low levels where it does +3 and you're doing 1[W] or 2[W], you'll see a similar effect. 2[W] is only average of 15, and you're adding 3, which is 20%.

With something like Warrior's Urging, it adds even more. If you Power Attack on every hit, and you get say, 6 hits, then you're adding 54 total damage. Since it's pulling from 3 squares away, 6 hits isn't outlandish to be expecting. Assume 6 hits with 2[W], that's 15 damage to each target. Now, let's say you Power Attack each of those attacks, and because of that you miss one attack (that's actually more than the effective 10% chance to miss), you're still hitting 5 of them for 15 average damage, +9 for Power Attack. So you missed doing 15 to one guy, but you did +9 to five others for 45 additional damage.

I'm a little lazy right now, so you'll note that the above doesn't include all the other damage mods and such. I was just concentrating on Power Attack versus [W]'s of damage. The other mods are static anyway, and would apply regardless of whether or not you used Power Attack.

 

[Orcus Porkus]

I have the perfect solution to the problem.
Make Power Attack available to everyone, as a general option for melee attacks.
The reason is that Power Attack is only of situational use, and can't compete with other useful feats, particularly now that MP is out. It doesn't break the game if everybody has it, but it adds to the options in combat. Everybody should be able to say "I swing the next one really hard, I don't care if it hits, but I want it to hurt."

 

[brehobit]

At the heroic tier we are talking -2 to attack and +4 damage with a two-handed weapon, yes?

Say you are 2nd level, and have a +1 d12 weapon and a damage bonus of +4 (pretty normal) for d12+5 damage. Now say you need an 11 to hit (also pretty normal).

Normal average is 11.5*(10/20) or 5.75
Power attack is 15.5* (8/20) = 6.2
Weapon foucs is 12.5*(10/20) or 6.25

If you needed a 6 (and how often does _that_ happen?)
11.5*(15/20) =8.625
14.5*(13/20) = 9.425
12.5*(15/20)=9.375

Moral of the story, you are right, power attack sucks.

Epic tier you are looking at 2d12+18 damage or 31 on a hit. The math will come out about the same. So in the best case (which is rare: at-will vs. low AC) it is about as good as weapon focus.
----
Fix?
Maybe half the bonus damage and a follow-up attack vs. fort (still at -2) on a hit and then apply a condition for one round (daze?).

Maybe same as normal but on a crit you get an extra [w] damage per tier?

Maybe double bonus damage but grant CA to all on a miss?

 

[Hadrian the Builder]

It might be worthwhile to consider power attack in terms of combat rounds...

I didn't see this yet in the thread, so I'll bring it up.

If power attack's +2 damage is not enough to reduce the staying power of a monster by at least 1 round, over the course of a combat, then why bother taking it?
One of the meta-game reasons for doing more damage is to QUICKLY eliminate opponents.

So considering the monster design guidelines, you're going to want to power attack against the Brutes and the Artillery (AC is 2 below average), but you'll need 5 hits and 3 hits, respectively, to reduce their presence in combat by one round. Since a typical combat is supposed to be about 6 rounds, does this make much difference?

I don't think so. However, I think it does become meaningful if you allow that +2 to be "per [W]". A single 3[W] hit, with power attack, will reduce the "lifespan" of any monster, except a Brute by 1-2 rounds (2-3 if two-handed).

Is my line of thinking resonating with anyone else?

 

[galaga88]

I made a spreadsheet quite some time ago. Disclaimer - I'm not sure if the math is right or not, but I think it is. I did this back in August during a boring afternoon. I seem to recall making it take into account critical hits as well as automatic hits and misses. (God that math is ugly in the cells..)

You put in the number of dice you'd be rolling, the type of die, your bonus to damage, how much bonus damage power attack deals, along with what type of bonus dice you get on a crit.

It gives the data for how much average damage regular versus power attack would do for each number required to hit, along with the difference, the percentage difference, and highlighting which does more. A graph accompanies it for quick analysis.

The sample data is for a greatsword doing 1D10+4 damage with 1D12 for the crit die.

http://tonytoon.home.insightbb.com/power.xlsx

(might need to right-click -> save-as to download it correctly.)