Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 3911214" data-attributes="member: 40961">I don't know why people are all hung up on PROVING that power attack can be useful in certain carefully chosen situations, specifically, when you are unable to make a full attack versus an enemy with a significantly lower armor class than what you might expect.  We know that.The problem is that the feat just isn't that useful.1: Even if you know your targets armor class, there's a narrow band of amounts by which you should power attack that will yield a benefit.2: You don't usually know your targets armor class, and you can't derive it until after a few rounds of combat.3: After a few rounds of combat, you're usually stuck in, and don't need to make standard action attacks.4: Even if you ARE making standard action attacks, and you ARE aware of your target's AC, this is perhaps too much work to justify the small benefit you gain.5: Even if you don't mind the work, there are a lot of players out there who don't understand the math, and who mess up by power attacking while making a full round attack.And as a sidenote, while 4e will not have full round attacks in the sense that we currently know them, I am pretty sure that this will require a rebalancing of full BAB characters versus typical enemy AC.  Currently, BAB versus AC at higher levels is balanced so that in a typical fight, you are almost certain to hit with your first attack, then progressively less likely with your later attacks.  WOTC will have to rebalance the attack bonus on your best attack to avoid high level fighters who almost always hit on anything but a natural 1.Anyways, I am completely in favor of a feat (or feats) which accomplishes the following things:1: Letting a character with excess attack bonus transform it into something else.  This is a gamist issue, but a valid one- attack bonus is a resource, and if you have more of it than you need, it would be nice to turn it into something else on a situational basis.2: Lets you smack things really hard, harder in fact than normal.  This is flavorful, and is useful for when you prefer the damage increase versus whatever you paid to get it, and for when whatever you paid to get it isn't important.I just don't think power attack is a very elegant way to go about satisfying these goals.I'd kind of like a feat that just plain gave you a damage bonus when your attack significantly exceeded your targets armor class.  That would save a lot of time, and reflect the fact that even if YOU don't know your target's armor class, your CHARACTER has a pretty good idea of "how hard is it for me to hit this dude."</blockquote>

Verification