Vital Strike changes

[StreamOfTheSky]

I mentioned this long ago in some thread, thought maybe I could get some opinions on this houserule.

Current Vital Strike:

[sblock]Vital Strike (Combat)


You make a single attack that deals significantly more damage than normal.

Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +6.

Benefit: When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage. Roll the weapon’s damage dice for the attack twice and add the results together before adding bonuses from Strength, weapon abilities (such as flaming), precision-based damage, and other damage bonuses. These extra weapon damage dice are not multiplied on a critical hit, but are added to the total.[/sblock]

Proposed changes to Vital Strike:

[sblock]Vital Strike (Combat)


You make a single attack that deals significantly more damage than normal.

Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +6.

Benefit: When you use the attack action or the Spring Attack feat, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage equal to your Base Attack Bonus. This extra damage, unlike most non random damage bonuses, is not multiplied on a critical hit, but are merely added to the total.[/sblock]

Improved VS: Requires BAB +11, instead add double your BAB in damage

Greater VS: Requires BAB +16, instead add triple your BAB in damage


Why the change?

1. Firstly, not letting Spring Attack combine with it is a great injustice and needs to be fixed. Note in addition to being better for casters and better in general and w/o two feat pre-reqs, Flyby Attack works with Vital Strike.

2. Vital Strike tries to make skirmishing viable, but does it based on the worst metric possible: base weapon damage. This is bad because it doesn't work best for the agile guy with a weak weapon darting in and out. It works best for the druid and his animal companion T-Rex with Improved Natural Attack and Strongjaw spell using the biggest, most pumped up gigantic weapon damage possible.

3. Starts out at level 6 being slightly worse than original VS with a greatsword (extra 2d6, average of 7 damage), but gradually gains ground, I think, being pretty scary by the time Greater VS rolls around, and making not full attacking a viable option into the upper levels.

Potential issues:

1. As with anything based on BAB, monsters with gigantic piles of HD for their CR can break the hell out of this. DMs are encouraged to exercise caution.
Possible solution: Cap the damage benefit from VS at BAB +10 (+10 damage), from IVS at BAB +15 (+30 damage) and GVS at BAB +20 (+60 damage). Probably a good limit in general, still leads to potentially very high damage for a mid CR opponent even with the caps, though.

 

[Bloodspoor]

I didn't know it couldn't be used with spring attack. Seems kind of stupid. If anything, I would house rule that it does. Second, I would say that greater is far too powerful. For a Fighter 16, you're dealing 49 minimum damage per hit and that assumes you have 10 Str. Compare this to a level 20 delayed blast fireball's minimum damage of 20 and you start to see the problem. Mages can do immense amounts of damage, but their ability to do so isn't consistent and they can run out. Using this, a fighter would sacrifice a full attack almost every time. I know I would do it almost every time versus anything with DR.

If you feel it needs changing, make it require a heal skill minimum to simulate the character studying anatomy. instead of dealing extra dice damage, have it add your Int bonus as well as your Str bonus. Improved can add x2 Int bonus as well as allow it to work with other actions such as Spring Attack. Greater could allow a x3 Int bonus and allow it to be applied to a full attack action.

That way, the Fighter or Rogue isn't breaking the game by crushing every monster they come across, but they still have a good bonus damage if they choose to put some points into Int. I've always thought that Int should be more than a dump stat for a fighter and especially good for rogues.

 

[Qik]

I didn't know it couldn't be used with spring attack. Seems kind of stupid. If anything, I would house rule that it does. Second, I would say that greater is far too powerful. For a Fighter 16, you're dealing 49 minimum damage per hit and that assumes you have 10 Str. Compare this to a level 20 delayed blast fireball's minimum damage of 20 and you start to see the problem. Mages can do immense amounts of damage, but their ability to do so isn't consistent and they can run out. Using this, a fighter would sacrifice a full attack almost every time. I know I would do it almost every time versus anything with DR.

If you feel it needs changing, make it require a heal skill minimum to simulate the character studying anatomy. instead of dealing extra dice damage, have it add your Int bonus as well as your Str bonus. Improved can add x1.5 Int bonus as well as allow it to work with other actions such as Spring Attack. Greater could allow a x2 Int bonus and allow it to be applied to a full attack action.

That way, the Fighter or Rogue isn't breaking the game by crushing every monster they come across, but they still have a good bonus damage if they choose to put some points into Int. I've always thought that Int should be more than a dump stat for a fighter and especially good for rogues.

While I don't think the skill tax is necessarily a bad idea, I really dislike the idea of adding Int. While I haven't crunched the numbers, my first thought is that, in most circumstances, that would actually reduce the damage done in relation VS as it is currently written. Which is problematic.

IIRC, VS and Spring Attack can't be used together because the wording for SA specifies that it's a full-round action. I agree that it is stupid - hence threads like this one. I do believe that it's common to houserule that they work together.

I'm not enough of a numbers ace to astutely judge Stream's change, but my first thought is that I like it. I certainly don't find an issue with a fighter having a significantly larger average damage at level 16 than a wizard - given the copious advantages that the latter has over the former at that level, I'm happy with a fighter making up some ground in some area!

 

[BriarMonkey]

I honestly don't think that the proposed change to use BAB for damage is a bad one. In fact, given that a fighter's job is to whack stuff, they should be good at it.

Though, for the next two tiers, I think that the bonus damage may be a bit much. Maybe using a slightly more toned down scale, such as BAB x 1, BAB x1.5, and BAB x 2 damage would be a better approach. This would mean that fighters wouldn't always default to Vital Strike, they would have to make a decision based on what is at hand. And decisions are normally a good thing.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I didn't know it couldn't be used with spring attack. Seems kind of stupid. If anything, I would house rule that it does. Second, I would say that greater is far too powerful. For a Fighter 16, you're dealing 49 minimum damage per hit and that assumes you have 10 Str. Compare this to a level 20 delayed blast fireball's minimum damage of 20 and you start to see the problem. Mages can do immense amounts of damage, but their ability to do so isn't consistent and they can run out. Using this, a fighter would sacrifice a full attack almost every time. I know I would do it almost every time versus anything with DR.

If you feel it needs changing, make it require a heal skill minimum to simulate the character studying anatomy. instead of dealing extra dice damage, have it add your Int bonus as well as your Str bonus. Improved can add x2 Int bonus as well as allow it to work with other actions such as Spring Attack. Greater could allow a x3 Int bonus and allow it to be applied to a full attack action.

That way, the Fighter or Rogue isn't breaking the game by crushing every monster they come across, but they still have a good bonus damage if they choose to put some points into Int. I've always thought that Int should be more than a dump stat for a fighter and especially good for rogues.

A Wizard 16 does not "run out." Just doesn't. And Fireball is an area spell (and a weak one, overall), VS is single target.

I'm more concerned with the numbers for full attack vs. Vital Strike. VS shouldn't be as good as a full attack, but it shouldn't be far behind, either. By the time you've hit near epic levels and sank 3 feats into the chain...I don't mind if it even slightly surpasses a full attack -- you've invested quite a bit into it -- but I still doubt it does. I know a lot of PF players didn't like/use Tome of Battle, but for comparison... in that book, there was a level 9 (ie, available at level 17+) maneuver that as a standard action, you dealt normal melee damage + 100. And this COULD be multiplied on a crit.
This was considered a mediocre/average level 9 maneuver compared to the others (which did things like instant death, gobs of ability damage, free Heal spell on an ally when you hit for damage, etc...). Granted, you could not use it every round, but you could easily use it every other round, attacking normally between each use. And...PF added "favored class" hp bonuses and raised the HD of anything that was d4 or d6 in 3E, so if anything PF creatures have MORE hit points than in 3.5. So why was this strike ok, but my 3 feat chain that I guess would cap at +60 at level 20 and not multiply on a crit, not ok?

For your ideas...the feats are already an investment. You could add skill ranks, but I'm not a fan of the int-base you're going for, and in general you're operating under the assumption that Vital Strike does "what it says on the tin." It doesn't. It's one of the most poorly named feats ever. It has nothing to do with striking vitals at all. It works on ANY enemy, and can be used from 2000 feet away with a bow if you wanted to. If you want to make it more fitting to the name, go for it. But the purpose of VS wasn't to be a feat-based sneak attack. It was to be an acceptable alternative to boringly slugging it out with full attacks every round.
I don't see how this would let the Fighter or (especially! He thrives on full attacks to add SA to and with medium BAB never can even get Greater VS!) Rogue crush enemies, and the damage doesn't start getting really high until high levels, when there are tons of spells that can end an encounter in one round available, at many different spell levels.


Qik: Yes, that is the reason Spring Attack and VS can't work together. Furthermore, I recall it actually being addressed by a designer in the FAQ. It was funny, because on the one hand you had one guy (James Jacobs, I think) saying he allows Spring Attack + VS in his games, but then you had the "official" response from another designer saying they don't stack. And by RAW, the latter is true. Hence, that modification to the feat I made.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I honestly don't think that the proposed change to use BAB for damage is a bad one. In fact, given that a fighter's job is to whack stuff, they should be good at it.

Though, for the next two tiers, I think that the bonus damage may be a bit much. Maybe using a slightly more toned down scale, such as BAB x 1, BAB x1.5, and BAB x 2 damage would be a better approach. This would mean that fighters wouldn't always default to Vital Strike, they would have to make a decision based on what is at hand. And decisions are normally a good thing.

Hmm, those might be better multipliers. I should probably wait for someone who enjoys calculating hit % vs. typical AC for level to see how the VS feats I proposed compare to full attack. I just figured, Greater VS comes in at level 16 or higher, before then with Improved the most damage you're getting before GVS comes online is +30 at level 15 or higher. That's pretty darn good, but doesn't seem game breaking at all. When you hit GVS, I admit the damage shoots up dramatically again. But...that's such high level, I'm not sure it's so out of line. High level feats SHOULD be powerful, just as level 8 and 9 spells are.

Still, I would be willing to use 1.5 and 2x instead of 2 and 3x if people think it's more balanced.

 

[BriarMonkey]

Yeah, sorry, I'm not one of those math guys. I tend to roll with my gut and tweak as play works things out.

But I see what you are saying about 8th and 9th level spells and damage output of a fighter. But then, I personally think feats should be a lot more than giving a +1 to hit... But that's another subject entirely. Just remember though, those high level spells tend to be much less in frequency than a fighter's thwacking with his weapon. (Barring lots of scrolls and staves of course.)

 

[Shisumo]

Looking at the DPR Olympics over on the Paizo board, a 10th level fighter with a two-handed weapon loses roughly 25 damage making a standard action vs a full attack. (It's a falchion in the fighter I'm using for the comparison - Vital Strike would be worth +5 damage, and IVS would be worth +10.) With new!Vital Strike, that would make up about 40% (vs 20% for real!Vital Strike) of the loss in damage; at 11th level, though, you'd be looking at almost parity for full attack vs IVS, and I suspect that means your GVS would actually make a standard attack better than a full one. I'd suggest sticking with the 1x, 1.5x and 2x versions instead...