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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Najo" data-source="post: 3913771" data-attributes="member: 9959">My chart shows the to hit modifier, the percentage chance to hit the assumed armor class, the average damage with power attack with one hand and with two. The table scales downward as you increase the penalty to hit and add damage from power attack. As you can see, there is a bell curve effect where power attack reaches a sweet spot and then as your to hit roll gets too low, power attack's damage goes down. Your values show up in my chart too. Yes, 8.7 is better than 8.075, by .625. But at what cost truely? You are using a feat, that by my table shows in most situations it does give more damage. There is even a point that you lose damage if you penalize yourself to much. The end result is your attacks become very random. Yes, there is a chance you can hit big. Yes you have a slight increase in damage if you watch the math properily. If you use the feat wrong though, it doesn't give you any damage. It takes a To hit vs AC with each level of used power attack table to use power attack "properily". That is the math occuring. I gave the math for just a sample of that table to save time. Now, what all of this means. Power attack isn't fun nor easy to use. It looks like it is. It sounds neat. But it really hurts your character. The main reason, it increases randomness for the promise of a big pay off. Using power attack is like gambling at a casino, and the big of a pay off you go for, the more likely you will fail. If you keep this up, over each round, you are actually hurting your party's resources by failing to contribute damage. Does this make sense? You are sacrificing control of the dice and your attack roll for more damage. If the attack roll misses, you deal NO damage. So the attack roll is WAY more important. Again, it makes the dice take control more. You want to avoid this. You want to tighten the odds into your favor. This is the idea behind action points, dice rerolls, etc. You can't damage or crit if you miss.Because the game involves dice and power attack is so variable, the only way to study its effects is to look at it over time and with average damage and to hit values. I realize this is not the way that the feat feels in game, nor it is the way people play with it. But this allows us to measure the effects of the feat by assuming your making one attack per round and using power attack at a given level. Then you can compare levels of power attack on and off to see when power attack benefits most. By studying the average we have a measurable, control for tweaking the feat and finding its problems. Power attack's only value right now is as a prereq for cleave. We even proved that a build tweaked out at level 20 can't fight CL 20 mosters and use power attack on them. Power attack only works when your enemy has a much lower AC than you have attack roll. Power attack advertises it hits hard, it should do what it says it does and it doesn't. Johnathan Tweet, who works for WOTC, said all of this himself. So the game's designers and my points are in agreement. Game mechanics should be easy to learn and intuitive. Why put power attack infront of a new player and then give them nothing to chew on. There was an example from Dr. Akward early that pointed out how silly power attack is with a new player because it doesn't teach them anything. It requires hand holding from the DM. Basically, power attack makes you have to understand AC, to hit rolls, damage and the math behind the feat, it then requires you to guess with no point of reference how much to subtract and then add to your damage, and then it expects you to do it with a +1 BAB or a +0 depending on your class. Power attack doesn't even work for a character at 1st level and they can take it. That is poor game design that adds confusion to the game, and creates what is called a Barrier to Entry.Now, Barriers to Entry does not mean something that makes the game fun and only stupid people can't understand it. A barrier to entry is a complicated block to fun. It is a place someone gets frustrated and has to stop using common sense and thinking in the abstract and illogical sense. Barriers to Entry hurt games. Here are some examples of Barriers to Entry in the current 3.5 D&D:- Multiclassing - touch and flat footed armor class- grappling - cross class skill points - CL and ECL - Adventure design and monster use- stacking bonuses - spell slots and spell preparation - energy drain These are all areas of the game that have sub sets of rules or complicated processes that could be streamlined, made more inituitive, removed, changed or simplified. Fixing each of these areas creates a game that a new player can learn faster, easier and get to the fun parts sooner. This is important. It helps the game become viral and spread easier. Veteran players see these things as hurdles they got over, or things that weren't difficult to learn and so not a Barrier to them. Thing is, many veteran players are used to RPGS, complicated rules and they benefit from what Monte Cook called mastery of the game. When you attempt to change or improve these things, a veteran player becomes defensive as it challenges their mastery of the ruleset. What veterans are not seeing, is that streamlining these areas of the game saves them time, helps them share the game with new players, it lets them spend more time having fun and doing cool, D&D adventuring stuff instead of looking up the rules for grappling, or having to write down and plan out points spent into cross class skills, or subtracting levels from energy drain. Who really wants to spend 40 mins every day chosing new spells or to save time only changing a few and never getting to try all of the spells that area there.Power Attack, sadly, is one of these troubled areas. It isn't quite a barrier to entry, but it causes frustration when the right (or wrong) mix of people are put together. It leaves exploits in the rules, and for most players it doesn't deliver what it promises. Players have been fooled by it for 7 years, because you only remember when it hits and deals alot of damage. That is when it is fun, when you had the slot machine went off! But most of the time, your wasting your nickels.</blockquote>

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