What's the Best Fix for Power Attack?

[Moon-Lancer]

i find the best way to balance power attack is with a longbow and farshot they should be fiarly weak by the time power attack comes into play

rowen takes out his tower *shield* from his handy heaver sack, and straps it on. the next few rounds rowen closes on the archer using full cover...

in my opinion, i think any fighter is not looking at all his options if he does not have a tower shield stowed away, regardless of if they are thf or not.

But yeah, most of the time a archer would work. i argree with you.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Other. Two-handers do x 1.5 with power attack, while off-handers do x .5 damage.

 

[BRP2]

I agree. What fix do you use incidentally?

Two things really.

Light = .5
1-hand = 1
2-hand = 1.5

And don't multiply on critical.

Also, though it doesn't really effect it, but I wanted to give Finesse melee a boost against Power Attackers so a made a feat that did the following: -5 Attack for 1 point increase for critical range and that kind of took the place of Improved Critical. No one ending up taking it anyway, so I couldn't test the balance if it helped against Power Attack.

I'm might be interested in turning it into 1d6 for -3 with the same multiplier above in the future, since I want to limit the amount of straight bonuses and increase the amount of dice.

 

[airwalkrr]

in my opinion, i think any fighter is not looking at all his options if he does not have a tower shield stowed away, regardless of if they are thf or not.

IMO a tower shield is like a polearm, it is not exactly the kind of thing your can "stow away." Additionally, shields apply their armor check penalty to the character even while stowed, so the -10 is nasty if you fall in a lake or need to climb somewhere fast.

 

[Slaved]

I'd say go for the same changes that work for strength. 1.5, 1.0, and 0.5.

But it might be more interesting to change it so that you take some penalty and max out the damage of your weapon. Basically it would be the character using his weapon in its most effective way but would be unlikely to cause a lot of problems I think.

Perhaps it could be something like take a -1 penalty to your attack roll to treat a d4 damage die from your weapon as maximum, take a -2 penalty to your attack roll to treat a d6 damage die from your weapon as maximum, or something like that. It would take some work to fit right but the mechanics would be interesting.

I suppose that if you put a limiter on it that the extra damage gained can never make your base weapon damage go above maximum then you could make it a flat -1 to attack, +2 to damage for all weapons. Since lighter weapons tend to have lower or fewer dice of damage they would automatically be factored down. As criticals add extra weapon damage dice in they would make it more likely that the full bonus you paid for is gained.

Actually I really like that last one. It makes the most sense to me while being pretty fair across the board.

 

[brehobit]

I know you said "if you don't have a problem with PA don't post", but I feel I have something to add anyway. Because I do feel there is an imbalance and discrepancy with regards to how much more effective a 2H Swordsman is over a Sword and Board guy.

But my fix wasn't to nerf power attack. Instead, I beefed Combat Expertise, making it limited by your total BAB right out of the gate, like PA, and in addition, gave a 2-for-1 ratio when it comes to using shields.

This had the effect of making combat expertise actually useful, and used by my players, which NEVER happened before, and the shield became quite a useful tool. Maybe perhaps a bit too useful at times, but we had fun, and the nigh-impossible to hit ACs were countered with quite interesting tactics, if I do say so myself, including drawing out attacks by presenting targets of opportunity, flanking, and other such things.

Cute, I think this but at a 1.5 rate, combined with capping power attack at 5 points (need another feat to get to 10 points) would work well. I don't really see power attack, per se, as a problem. I see it has helping two-handed fighters too much.