What's broken/overpowered? What's weak?

[parasyte]

So:
A) Careful Attack is an awful choice. Never take it. Never let a friend take it. It makes 3e's Dodge look good.
B) The removal of crit confirmation rolls means you have to be *very* careful comparing different abilities if you need something near a 20 to hit.

I at first thought that of course this can't be true, it doesn't intuitively seem like it could be. And then I did the math.

Taking a d8 for example, if you need a 19 to hit careful strike is going to give you a 15% chance of getting a d8 damage and a 5% chance of doing 8 damage, coming to an average of 1.075 per attack (since the average damage on a d8 is 4.5)
A twin strike has each attack unmodified, so each roll has a 5% chance of doing 4.5 damage and a 5% chance of doing 8. This comes out to .625 damage per roll, or 1.25 average damage. As mentioned, magic weapons will skew the numbers even more in favor of twin strike, and so the only time careful strike will ever be useful is when you need a 21 to hit, as then it will enable critting. Even then it's probably only worth it with a high crit or magic weapon that does extra dice on a crit (actually just did the math - twin strike is slightly [.05 HP per roll] better with a plain weapon at a 22 to hit). In all other cases it's an inferior choice.

 

[keterys]

Careful Attack definitely got hit by the nerf stick a little too hard - I actually had been wondering if they meant to have it add your stat to damage (which it currently doesn't), cause isn't there another at-will that someone gets that is just a normal attack at +2 to hit? Or they could have done a reverse Valiant Strike. +2 as long as no enemy within 2 squares (allowing you to be careful)

 

[Kitirat]

Actually I don't think it's funny that a superior 1handed weapon is better than a military 2handed weapon, especially if there is no superior 2handed weapon being better than the 1handed bastardsword to fill the gap (at least according to what people tell).

From the limited info we have sword&board is just superior to 2handed.

A trade off would be less damage but more AC vs. more damage but less AC. But we get same damage and more AC, that doesn't sound balanced.

Greatswords are not worse then bastard swords. As two-handed weapons, they get a bigger bonus to damage from power attack (while bastard swords get a net +1 due to being wielded two handed) and are always a "feat ahead" since it requires a feat to use a bastard sword. So a bastard sword costs a feat which the greatsword user uses on power attack, when the bastard sword user gets power attack, the greatsword guy gets something else, etc. So you are always at minimum of a few points of damage ahead.

As for half-elves, they are EASILY the worst race, no comparison.