Power Attack vs Combat Expertise balance

[Herzog]

Can anyone explain to me why Combat Expertise is limited to +5, while Power Attack has no such upper limit?

Both trade in BaB for something else.
Power Attack for extra damage, Combat Expertise for extra AC.
Power Attack is even more powerfull with two handed weapons, Combat Expertise has no such extra option.

So, why? What is so gamebreaking about Combat Expertise that it requires a cap at +5?


Herzog

 

[Felix]

Power Attack, by way of reducing the probability of hitting, restricts itself.

You might power attack for 20 and have a huge potential damage bonus, but the liklihood of that hit happening is miniscule. So folks will Power Attack for what they feel is a reasonable amount to gain a nice bonus while only taking a modest risk that they will miss.

This is not the case for Combat Expertise, because instead of reducing the chance to hit for a bonus to damage that will likely only affect one enemy, you reduce the chance for every enemy that attacks you to hit. In this way, every additional bonus to AC is as valuable as the last.

Power Attack suffers from diminishing returns because it reduces your chance to hit. The offensive bonus is mitigated by an offensive drawback.

Combat Expertise does not suffer because it only improves your ability to defend yourself. The defensive bonus is mitigated by an offensive drawback.

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Of course, this argument would be lost on the FPAATT folks.

 

[Herzog]

I'm not completely convinced yet.

In my opinion, Power Attack will be used against low AC, high hp enemies. It's a tradeoff between chance to hit and damage dealt. By trial and error, you try to get a maximum damage and a reasonable chance to hit.

Combat Expertise will be used against enemies with a low AC and high attack bonus.
Since you are reducing your chance to hit to reduce the chance of your ememies hitting you, you are effectively 'dragging out' the combat.

Since the important difference is the fact that your AC improvement is against all enemies, does that mean that if (bordering houserules here, sorry) I would introduce an option to use Combat Expertise against 1 opponent only, in that case I could drop the cap?

Herzog

 

[Stalker0]

In many cases you don't care one little bit about hitting, you want as much AC as possible. That's why CE is capped, there's plenty of times with my monk in my current game that I would CE for 100 if I could!! I'm getting swarmed by archers, I'm toe to toe with a huge giant and need to live, etc etc.

 

[hong]

Power Attack being limited to min(5, BAB) wouldn't go astray IMO. Then introduce an Improved PA that goes up to BAB.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Interesting ideas that I've seen:

In M&M power attack is limited to +5 like Combat Expertise, and that seems like a nice compromise (i.e. PA becomes an addition to your damage rather than the main component of your damage).

Someone on ENworld had an interesting houserule that in the same way that 2H weapons get 2 for 1 on power attack, shield users get 2 for 1 on Combat Expertise - an interesting way of bolstering shield use.

Cheers

 

[Felix]

In my opinion, Power Attack will be used against low AC, high hp enemies. It's a tradeoff between chance to hit and damage dealt.

I agree with this analysis.

Combat Expertise will be used against enemies with a low AC and high attack bonus.
Since you are reducing your chance to hit to reduce the chance of your ememies hitting you, you are effectively 'dragging out' the combat.

But I disagree here.

While you exchange BAB with both feats, you want to hit when you PA, and often when you Combat Expertise, you're simply trying to survive; you may want to simply block passage, or protect someone, or keep a target from escaping; hitting is not as important to you. Because hitting's importance is reduced, or a non-issue, you will want to have as high an AC as possible: further reduction of your attack bonus ceases to become a drawback.

Actually, you could argue that Combat Expertise with out a cap experiences increasing returns to scale: because you have such a little chance of hitting with a -10 penalty to attack, there is not much additional penalty to accepting a further -10 penalty; however, a +10 bonus to AC and a +20 bonus to AC is an incredible improvement in defenses.

So there's your reason:

As you increase the attack penalty from 0, Power Attack approaches optimal and then reduces in effacasy while Combat Expertise only ever improves.

Since the important difference is the fact that your AC improvement is against all enemies, does that mean that if (bordering houserules here, sorry) I would introduce an option to use Combat Expertise against 1 opponent only, in that case I could drop the cap?

This would indeed make a difference, but not as big a one as you may think. It is not objectionable, however. Though I doubt very much if you will ever see anyone not take a full CE penalty-to-AC.

I'm not completely convinced yet.

Do you understand the argument for the cap, even if you don't agree with it?

 

[shilsen]

Power Attack being limited to min(5, BAB) wouldn't go astray IMO. Then introduce an Improved PA that goes up to BAB.

I've done the first in the campaign, which has worked very well, and I'm considering doing the latter.

 

[phindar]

In M&M power attack is limited to +5 like Combat Expertise, and that seems like a nice compromise (i.e. PA becomes an addition to your damage rather than the main component of your damage).

M&M also uses a damage save, and five points of extra damage is a lot more in that system in D&D. (Its the difference between an enemy needing a DC 25 save rather than a DC 20 to remain conscious, instead of doing an extra 5 points of damage to creature with say 50 hit points.)

I agree with Felix. Whereas with Power Attack you get to a point of diminishing returns (it doesn't matter what your bonus damage is if you can't hit), when you don't want to get hit trading out BAB for AC just gets better and better.

AC is hard to get. I don't necessarily agree with it, but that's D&D.

 

[Herzog]

Do you understand the argument for the cap, even if you don't agree with it?

Yes, i do.

And, with the further arguments supplied, I agree too.

Arguments to the reverse (adding a cap to PA instead of removing the one from CE) also make sense.

Herzog