Power Attack - What is "2 for 1"?

[dreaded_beast]

With the advent of 3.5 DND, I've heard several references to Power Attack and something called "2 for 1". Basically, some people think this is unbalanced.

What is "2 for 1" in regards to Power Attack?

 

[ForceUser]

+2 damage per -1 attack when wielding a 2-handed weapon. It's 1:1 with a one-handed weapon, and there's no bonus at all with light weapons.

 

[RuminDange]

With the advent of 3.5 DND, I've heard several references to Power Attack and something called "2 for 1". Basically, some people think this is unbalanced.

What is "2 for 1" in regards to Power Attack?

Basically for each point you take off of Base Attack Bonus you get 2 points of damage.

RD

 

[Sejs]

When you purchase one Power Attack feat, you get a second Power Attack feat of equal or lesser value for free!

 

[Jeff Wilder]

With the advent of 3.5 DND, I've heard several references to Power Attack and something called "2 for 1". Basically, some people think this is unbalanced.

What is "2 for 1" in regards to Power Attack?

Using Power Attack in conjuction with a weapon used in two hands now, under 3.5, grants +2 damage for every -1 to attack. This arguably has made two-handed fighting the premiere style for fighters, though IMO people tend to discount too heavily the benefit of a shield. (On the other hand, it certainly outshines two-weapon fighting, which is ironic, because TWF, incredibly under-powered in 3.0, was just strengthened in 3.5.

IMO, given the availability of Power Attack at 2:1, two-handed fighting slightly edges out both sword-and-board fighting and TWF (which are pretty even). (Speaking purely from a combat-power perspective.)

 

[Gort]

Animated shield!

 

[Urbanmech]

I really don't know why they made the jump all the way from 1:1 to 2:1. Wouldn't it have been more instyle of the rules to go to 1:1.5? Or did they just want to make the math easier? You get 50% more out of your strenght when using a 2 handed weapon why do you get 100% more when you power attack?

 

[Lamoni]

I really don't know why they made the jump all the way from 1:1 to 2:1.

I have wondered that myself, but I think that it might be due to mathematics. The more damage you do with each hit the less favorable it is to risk missing and doing no damage at all. Therefore if two handed weapons got a 1:1, it rarely becomes beneficial to increase your miss chance by 5% for each 1 additional damage. When you normally do 20 damage, doing an extra 1 point might not be worth the risk. If you normally only did 10 damage, missing 5% more for an additional 10% damage isn't a bad trade.

Anyway, I haven't really tried to crunch any numbers and maybe 1.5:1 would have been an adequate solution, but I'll leave it to others to prove my guess right or wrong. Even at the 2:1 ratio the optimal power attack is usually only a couple of points. At 1:1 I would guess the optimal power attack would usually be for nothing and 1.5:1 probably didn't give enough of a benefit for people to justify spending a feat on it. Right now I think it is balanced quite nicely since it is rare to see people who can power attack at the optimal amount... rather you instead see people randomly guess while usually obtaining a small benefit, but sometimes getting worse averages than if they didn't power attack at all.

 

[Deset Gled]

I believe Skip Williams once stated that the reasoning for 2:1 rather than 1.5:1 was because people generally hate dealing with the decimal point. While myself and probably many people who care enough to post on a D+D rules message board are generally math people who cringe at the thought of making something more powerful because others can't multiply, I can testify to the fact that there are gamers like that.

I believe the math for 1.5:1 does make the Power Attack feat a little better balanced (I think someone did a nice spreadsheet once), it isn't a huge difference. On the other hand, 1:1 almost never works out to a benefit, and only works when you have an almost guaranteed hit.

 

[iwatt]

If I recall correctly, the 2:1 was proposed to keep THF balanced with TWF. The decision to swithch from 1:1 to something else was due to the fact that PA was considered suboptimal for very strong fighters and instead was very effective for dual dagger wielding halflings. This went against what the designers hoped to represent with PA.

Anyhow, the greatest problem with calling 3.0 PA suboptimal is due to what most people want to optimize. If you want to maximize expected damage, 3.0 PA was suboptimal most of the time. But if you want to maximize damage potential, then the optimal Solution is Full power attack. 3.5 P.A. leads to using P.A. slightly moer often than was the case in 3.0.

In other words, if the Illithid is about to chew your buddies brains out, your optimal choice is to full power attack and hope for a crit