Power Attack: Worthless for Monks?

[heliopolix]

I've noticed the conflict in the fact that Power attack is pretty worthless for the monk at higher levels, when his unarmed damage outperforms his monk special weapon damage. Being that a monks unarmed attack is a light weapon, and power attack doesnt do anything for light weapons, why should any monk take it? There is also a feat from CW (I dont have mine with me at the moment) that improves unarmed strikes, but requires PA and Improved Unarmed Strike. Perhaps Im missing something, but PA seems like a bogus pre-req. Perhaps bogus is the wrong word. It just seems to me that it is a useless feat to be the pre-req, given the useless-ness of PA unarmed.

Any thoughts on why my monk wants PA? If ive made an oversight, plz let me know

 

[James McMurray]

Because of this:

You can’t add the bonus from Power Attack to the damage dealt with a light weapon (except with unarmed strikes or natural weapon attacks)

 

[heliopolix]

Aha! Thx man. Teach me to post w/o my books with me.

 

[Deset Gled]

Darn you people are fast. In the time it took me to look up INA, the discussion is over.

Anyway...

An interesting houserule might be to say that Improved Natural Attack lets you treat an unarmed strike as a medium weapon.

 

[frisbeet]

You can't add the bonus from Power Attack to the damage dealt with a light weapon (except with unarmed strikes or natural weapon attacks)

Monks can Power Attack with their unarmed attack. Here's the optimum PA for a level 15 Monk, Str 24, with feats of Weapon Focus & Improved Critical for unarmed attack. I report the average full attack damage/round when said Monk flurries, against a range of AC, listing both the non-PA and optimum PA damage values. Source: click sig.

opp AC   no PA   opt PA  w/ PA
10	73.15	11	115.50
11	73.15	11	112.75
12	73.15	11	110.00
13	73.15	10	105.60
14	72.38	9	101.20
15	71.61	8	96.80
16	70.84	7	92.40
17	70.07	6	88.00
18	69.30	5	83.60
19	67.76	4	79.20
20	66.22	3	74.80
21	64.68	2	70.40
22	63.14	1	66.00
23	61.60	1	61.88
24	57.75	1	57.75
25	53.90	0	53.90
26	50.05	0	50.05
27	46.20	0	46.20
28	42.35	0	42.35
29	38.50	0	38.50
30	34.65	0	34.65
31	30.77	0	30.77
32	27.69	0	27.69
33	24.61	0	24.61
34	21.53	0	21.53
35	18.45	0	18.45
36	15.33	0	15.33
37	13.02	0	13.02
38	10.71	0	10.71
39	8.40	0	8.40
40	6.09	11	6.56

 

[Plane Sailing]

Plus it is a prereq for cleave and a high level monk might want to get mileage out of that (visual: spinning roundhouse that drops two mooks with one kick)

Cheers

 

[Shin Okada]

Power Attack may not be the best friend of a Monk. But it often happens that a prerequisite feat is not that useful (especially when you are trying to take a strong feat or prestige class in non-core books).

And, some times your monk may choose to use a weapon even though his unarmed strike is better than usual monk weapon. Say, when he is fighting against a giant and happen to have a nice +2 dragon bane quarter staff.

 

[shurai]

Plus it is a prereq for cleave and a high level monk might want to get mileage out of that (visual: spinning roundhouse that drops two mooks with one kick)

I should think that monks would find Cleave less useful because they get so many attacks as it is. Yet it's also true that Cleave is useful whenever you drop an enemy (no matter how tough) and there's another standing there, which is pretty frequently, especially for monks. It really calls to mind the imagery from the kung fu movies, in which Wong Fei Hung (or somebody) faces off against a dozen guys and wins.

-S

 

[Plane Sailing]

I should think that monks would find Cleave less useful because they get so many attacks as it is.

Great Cleave might be less useful with lots of attacks vs one *really big* attack, but Cleave works nicely with lots of attacks.

 

[Darklone]

Quarterstaff monk/druid with shillelagh. That's Power Attack.