Vital strike: What was the final ruling?


Rules Questions


Hello everybody,
I've been reading two years worth of discussion about the vital strike feat, but It's not clear what was the final ruling on this matter.
Has it been errated to be a separate standard action or not?
If not, of course this mean it could be used for AoO, or part of spring attack or whatever. Right?
If indeed vital strike was errated to be a standard action, what about chargin and spring attack? Is it still prohibited, or special exception were made?

Thank you very much and sorry if my question looks "noobish".

Liberty's Edge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16

It's a standard action. No charges, no spring attacks, no AOs, etc.


This is still the current ruling: http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz1grg?Charging-with-a-Vital-Strike#22

So it is a standard action.


mirtexxan wrote:
Has it been errated to be a separate standard action or not?

No, the action used has not been changed in errata. It's still functioning as originally written: using the attack action.

Vital Strike uses the attack action, which is a standard action, so it cannot be used as an AoO, or as part of Spring Attack or Charge. (Spring Attack was changed to a full-round action, so it was changed, but VS was not).

However, since Vital Strike is not an action on its own, but is an effect that happens when you use the attack action, anything else that uses the attack action may stack. Overhand Chop, for example.

Sovereign Court

can you use vital strike as one of your iterative attacks?


Nezthalak wrote:
can you use vital strike as one of your iterative attacks?

Nope, nope, and nope.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Charlie Bell wrote:
It's a standard action.
Sangalor wrote:
So it is a standard action.
Grick wrote:
Vital Strike uses the attack action, which is a standard action
Nezthalak wrote:
can you use vital strike as one of your iterative attacks?

-_-'


Jiggy, the confusion, I believe, is that each sub attack of an iterative is colloquially an "attack action". So it's not terribly unreasonable to think that.

However, it's not an Attack Action, so it most certainly does not work.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Cheapy wrote:

Jiggy, the confusion, I believe, is that each sub attack of an iterative is colloquially an "attack action". So it's not terribly unreasonable to think that.

However, it's not an Attack Action, so it most certainly does not work.

Note that "attack action" is not what I quoted three times.


Jiggy wrote:
Cheapy wrote:

Jiggy, the confusion, I believe, is that each sub attack of an iterative is colloquially an "attack action". So it's not terribly unreasonable to think that.

However, it's not an Attack Action, so it most certainly does not work.

Note that "attack action" is not what I quoted three times.

I don't want to :(


As DM I generally also allow it to be used in a charge. Since my players aren't heavily optimized (the one that has the feat uses a 1d8 Aldori sword) it hasn't broken the game yet.


I Know this is the rules forum, but I have to say:

When someone comes to the rules forum and asks about gating in genies and using dominate monster, folks say its RAW but stupid and advise house ruling against it.

annnd I have to say. I pretty much feel that way about vital strike.

RAW says no but.. thats stupid, and makes no sense, and should be houseruled.

Sure by raw blah blah blah.. but really? ingame? let the melee have some fun too. Thats why the feat was created afterall.

*dons asbestos undies and waits*

-S


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Quote:

When I built the Vital Strike feat chain, it was designed specifically to speak to the need for martial characters to be able to take a move action and still do a reasonable amount of damage in a single turn. The decision was made to limit this chain to make it a character decision point, as opposed to just making it part of a larger "must have" feat stack to make "The Baddest Fighter on the Block".

In hindsight, it might be a bit to restrictive, but RAW that is the way it currently functions.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing


1 person marked this as a favorite.

It's worth pointing out that in Council of Thieves, written while the Core rules were still being written, has a few NPCs that Spring Attack and Vital Strike.

I don't see the big deal about it, and allow it in my home game.

If you want to play 'let's imagine', compare the vital strike to what a fighter could do standing still.

Levels 1-5, vital strike is better. You'll note it's not available.
Levels 6-10, attacking twice is about the same as double damage.
Levels 11-15, attacking three times is strictly better.
Levels 16-20, anything but a full attack is a waste of time, since we can assume you're hasted 24-7 by now.

When we watch it in play, a viable attack and move option means more movement on the battlefield, a much more dynamic fight, and in my opinion, a game that is more fun to play.

Without these options, we're back to the high level 3.5 routines, where melee types moved into 5ft range, and beat each other with full attacks until one of them died. For every fight, no matter what.

Liberty's Edge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16

I usually houserule that it works with charges and Spring Attack, but no AOs or as part of a full attack. IMO Vital Strike ought to benefit from some nice synergies.


rkraus2 wrote:
It's worth pointing out that in Council of Thieves, written while the Core rules were still being written, has a few NPCs that Spring Attack and Vital Strike.

Spring Attack was changed via errata in/around update 1.2.


My final ruling is that Vital Strike can be used as part of a charge, and I also allow partial charges as a normal standard action. :)


Selgard wrote:

I Know this is the rules forum, but I have to say:

When someone comes to the rules forum and asks about gating in genies and using dominate monster, folks say its RAW but stupid and advise house ruling against it.

annnd I have to say. I pretty much feel that way about vital strike.

RAW says no but.. thats stupid, and makes no sense, and should be houseruled.

Sure by raw blah blah blah.. but really? ingame? let the melee have some fun too. Thats why the feat was created afterall.

*dons asbestos undies and waits*

-S

What's wrong with gating in genies and using dominate monster? It's not like there won't be repercussions for this sort of thing.


Thanks for all your answers. So nothing has been done, despite Mr. Jacobs opinion on the matter.
Anyway, it seems that just EVERYBODY house-rule vital strike in some way or another... and this is frankly absurd.
If there's a (disputed) ruling, but almost everybody just flat-out ignore the ruling, why doesn't Paizo do something?

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

mirtexxan wrote:
If there's a (disputed) ruling, but almost everybody just flat-out ignore the ruling, why doesn't Paizo do something?

Because the writing of the rules is not a democracy? Paizo writes the rules a certain way, and encourages people to make adjustments for their own games. Just because one adjustment happens to be popular doesn't mean they need to change the actual rules.


Jiggy wrote:
Because the writing of the rules is not a democracy? Paizo writes the rules a certain way, and encourages people to make adjustments for their own games. Just because one adjustment happens to be popular doesn't mean they need to change the actual rules.

Of course the writing of the rules is made by the Paizo staff (and they are very good at it), but I thought that the community opinion mattered. Especially in this case where, after 3 years, this house rule has proven to be:

1) very popular
2) balanced
And I think that these 2 properties are the basic properties of a good rule.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

mirtexxan wrote:

Of course the writing of the rules is made by the Paizo staff (and they are very good at it), but I thought that the community opinion mattered. Especially in this case where, after 3 years, this house rule has proven to be:

1) very popular
2) balanced
And I think that these 2 properties are the basic properties of a good rule.

On the other hand, we've only heard from a handful of random people that it's balanced. How many people aren't using it because they believe it's not balanced? What if the people saying it works fine are the outliers? Or what if they all have some other common thread (like not otherwise building very powerful melee types) that's not necessarily present in the bulk of the playerbase?

Furthermore, the stated intent of the feat is for extra damage when you move and attack (as opposed to full-attacking) so that it's only usable in that situation instead of becoming an auto-pick (much the way Power Attack already is). Even if it's "balanced", would very many people not take it if it was easier to use? Paizo seems to want to keep the list of "every PC of this variety always takes this" feats to a minimum.

Liberty's Edge

In general, changing the rules of the game is a bad thing. You don't want to have so many changes that people can't keep track of them or newbies get super intimidated by them. Because of that, changes in the rules to make something more powerful are pretty much unheard of, if something's so good its a must have, or is ruining the game because only some people can have it, then yes, it'll get errata'd. If it is just a poor option, then it'll be left alone and simply considered suboptimal.


rkraus2 wrote:

It's worth pointing out that in Council of Thieves, written while the Core rules were still being written, has a few NPCs that Spring Attack and Vital Strike.

I don't see the big deal about it, and allow it in my home game.

If you want to play 'let's imagine', compare the vital strike to what a fighter could do standing still.

Levels 1-5, vital strike is better. You'll note it's not available.
Levels 6-10, attacking twice is about the same as double damage.
Levels 11-15, attacking three times is strictly better.
Levels 16-20, anything but a full attack is a waste of time, since we can assume you're hasted 24-7 by now.

When we watch it in play, a viable attack and move option means more movement on the battlefield, a much more dynamic fight, and in my opinion, a game that is more fun to play.

Without these options, we're back to the high level 3.5 routines, where melee types moved into 5ft range, and beat each other with full attacks until one of them died. For every fight, no matter what.

I would amend your list to:

Levels 1-5, vital strike is better. You'll note it's not available.
Levels 6-10, attacking twice is about the same as double damage.
Levels 11-15, attacking three times is a little better than triple damage from improved vital strike (with IVS you don't get to triple str/other bonus damage).
Levels 16-20, attack four times is a bit better than quadruple damage from greater vital strike. (Same reason as above) However, a full attack is almost always better, since we can assume you're hasted 24-7 by now.

The key benefit of the VS chain is that you are doing close to the same damage, while only needing a single hit at your highest BAB.


Jiggy wrote:
mirtexxan wrote:
If there's a (disputed) ruling, but almost everybody just flat-out ignore the ruling, why doesn't Paizo do something?
Because the writing of the rules is not a democracy? Paizo writes the rules a certain way, and encourages people to make adjustments for their own games. Just because one adjustment happens to be popular doesn't mean they need to change the actual rules.

^^ what he said.

Its also easier for a DM to give more power through houseurles than to take it away, generally. (there's less resistance to making PC's stronger than there is to making them weaker)

Not that I advocate making things weaker just so its easier to houserule- but I also don't advocate making changes to rules just beacuse a few/some/alot/most folks houserule it anyway.

-S


if the vast majority of the buying gamer think something is poor then it should be changed, or given consideration to be changed, by the publishers

Changing the rules is fine. every book that comes out does this, either by adding new stuff to previous stuff, or bringing in brand new stuff, like guns, mysteries etc

I much rather we get the rules right rather than having house rules, which you cant really use in cons etc


How would the Vital Strike feat tree work for, say, the Mobile Warrior fighter archetype at 15th level, when they can make a full attack as a standard action?

Liberty's Edge

They can't be used together Azten, you can only vital strike if you choose to vital strike.


mirtexxan wrote:
...why doesn't Paizo do something?

Well, in all fairness to Mr. Jacobs, I'm pretty sure I saw him peaking disapprovingly through the blinds into my game room this past weekend when my son's fighter both charged and used vital strike as a single action. We ignored whoever it was, and eventually he went away. :)


Spes Magna Mark wrote:
mirtexxan wrote:
...why doesn't Paizo do something?
Well, in all fairness to Mr. Jacobs, I'm pretty sure I saw him peaking disapprovingly through the blinds into my game room this past weekend when my son's fighter both charged and used vital strike as a single action. We ignored whoever it was, and eventually he went away. :)

Ahahahah :D

Seriously, you know, If I am the DM I can just ignore Mr. Jacobs peakings... but if I'm the player (or worse a player in an organized game) I can't :(


Mr.Jacobs liked the incorrect ruling better. He is the one that had a character using it in an official product. That darn rules team however.....

PS:Just joking rules team if you are reading this post. :)


He's lying! He didn't roll a Perform(Comedy) check! Or a Bluff check for that matter!


Jiggy wrote:

On the other hand, we've only heard from a handful of random people that it's balanced. How many people aren't using it because they believe it's not balanced? What if the people saying it works fine are the outliers? Or what if they all have some other common thread (like not otherwise building very powerful melee types) that's not necessarily present in the bulk of the playerbase?

Furthermore, the stated intent of the feat is for extra damage when you move and attack (as opposed to full-attacking) so that it's only usable in that situation instead of becoming an auto-pick (much the way Power Attack already is). Even if it's "balanced", would very many people not take it if it was easier to use? Paizo seems to want to keep the list of "every PC of this variety always takes this" feats to a minimum.

Good points. But note that vital strike suffer from two weaknesses, not just one.

1) it can't be combined with charge or spring attack (and with OP options like cleave, part of full attacks, AoO, and so on
2) to remain on par with iterative attacks, a "mobility" fighter needs to pick not one but THREE feats... while the "5-feet-full-attack" fighter needs none.

So, if we remove only ONE of these two weaknesses, I think vital strike won't become a "must" pick for every fighter out there.

For the first problem, however, you're right, we're basing our opinion on a very small sample of players (nominally the posters on paizo.com). Nevertheless, we can assume that the posters on these forums are representative of the most avid, and enthusiast players out there, so their opinion have a certain value.


I houserule that Vital Strike can be used in any action that limits your attacks to 1 (charge, spring attack etc). Also made it so that it adds 2d6 rather than a multiple of base damage, to make the feat viable for anyone but the people with comically oversized swords, and balance it for the extremely big monsters.

The two other GMs I ever played with adopted this, and have not looked back since.


Kamelguru wrote:

I houserule that Vital Strike can be used in any action that limits your attacks to 1 (charge, spring attack etc). Also made it so that it adds 2d6 rather than a multiple of base damage, to make the feat viable for anyone but the people with comically oversized swords, and balance it for the extremely big monsters.

The two other GMs I ever played with adopted this, and have not looked back since.

Yes, that sounds very reasonable.


I know I differ from the majority in this thread, but we do not houserule vital strike. Personally I also see no reason to. Being able to combine it with charges and spring attacks is not necessary to make it viable.
If Paizo changes it, I will adapt, but so long I am fine playing with the rules as written. :-)

Something I have not seen discussed here is that vital strike is great for non-full-bab classes, too. Those often have no chance to hit a high level opponent with their 2nd/3rd attacks (which corresponds to a fighters 3rd or even 4th attack), so sacrificing those to get some more damage is quite valuable. Even more so, when your group plays with fumble rules and you have to decide whether you dare to take those other attacks... :-P


Last night the level 7 paladin in our group was dealing with a 'hit and run' vampire rogue (move speed 45 +spring attack with the rogue archetype ability to sneak attack when moving 10feet+). She was enlarged, declared a readied attack action, smite evil, and with a greatsword +vital strike+power attack laid the the smackdown on it every time it came in for a pass. Vital strike rocks. I think she was rolling something like 6d6+20 each time.

While her full round attack damage is superior to that it still rocks for situations like last night. She was unsure of taking the feat but last night proved its value to her.

- Gauss

Dark Archive

If I remember correctly, James Jacobs allows Vital Strike with Spring Attack. Or somebody at Paizo allowed it in their home game.

Spring Attack and Vital Strike have their places in the game, but the problem is the way the game is designed and works, it so much better to be 2 dude standing next to each other hacking away.

Spring Attack is actually pretty good, but it's very heavy in requirements. Dodge is often taken, but Mobility is often not a good feat.

Vital Strike's main issue is that it doesn't scale and adding only the dice is often not very good. However, Vital Strike tends to be good with big monsters since they have big damage dice (d10s and above or multiple d6s). Vital Strike would be much more attractive if the d20 system didn't place such heavy emphasis on static damage bonuses and Power Attack.


I've been pushing for it to work with single attacks in my game too. Just haven't gotten around to it yet. Anything that adds more tactical options is a-ok in my book.


Tarantula wrote:
rkraus2 wrote:

It's worth pointing out that in Council of Thieves, written while the Core rules were still being written, has a few NPCs that Spring Attack and Vital Strike.

I don't see the big deal about it, and allow it in my home game.

If you want to play 'let's imagine', compare the vital strike to what a fighter could do standing still.

Levels 1-5, vital strike is better. You'll note it's not available.
Levels 6-10, attacking twice is about the same as double damage.
Levels 11-15, attacking three times is strictly better.
Levels 16-20, anything but a full attack is a waste of time, since we can assume you're hasted 24-7 by now.

When we watch it in play, a viable attack and move option means more movement on the battlefield, a much more dynamic fight, and in my opinion, a game that is more fun to play.

Without these options, we're back to the high level 3.5 routines, where melee types moved into 5ft range, and beat each other with full attacks until one of them died. For every fight, no matter what.

I would amend your list to:

Levels 1-5, vital strike is better. You'll note it's not available.
Levels 6-10, attacking twice is about the same as double damage.
Levels 11-15, attacking three times is a little better than triple damage from improved vital strike (with IVS you don't get to triple str/other bonus damage).
Levels 16-20, attack four times is a bit better than quadruple damage from greater vital strike. (Same reason as above) However, a full attack is almost always better, since we can assume you're hasted 24-7 by now.

The key benefit of the VS chain is that you are doing close to the same damage, while only needing a single hit at your highest BAB.

I think something being left out is that this feat chain may also be used with other feats to make it more appealing.

Power Attack and Furious Focus used with a two handed weapon makes a character front end loaded with respect to hitting with iterative attacks. An enormous increase in damage and without trading off to hit probability on the first hit.

When facing a more challenging and often difficult to hit creature, especially one with significant DR the party is not prepared to counter, the extra damage on one hit from the chain is very nice. This is especially true since the chance of hitting with the iterative attacks could very well disappear.


BYC wrote:

If I remember correctly, James Jacobs allows Vital Strike with Spring Attack. Or somebody at Paizo allowed it in their home game.

Spring Attack and Vital Strike have their places in the game, but the problem is the way the game is designed and works, it so much better to be 2 dude standing next to each other hacking away.

Spring Attack is actually pretty good, but it's very heavy in requirements. Dodge is often taken, but Mobility is often not a good feat.

Vital Strike's main issue is that it doesn't scale and adding only the dice is often not very good. However, Vital Strike tends to be good with big monsters since they have big damage dice (d10s and above or multiple d6s). Vital Strike would be much more attractive if the d20 system didn't place such heavy emphasis on static damage bonuses and Power Attack.

That is why devastating strike, part of the vital strike combo, is so useful. It gives a static bonus that multiplies on crits.

Scarab Sages

In my campaign I houserule that Vital Strike can be combined with Spring Attack, charge, cleave, or any other standard action attack. It hasn't broken anything and encourages more tactical movement.

Liberty's Edge

I guess I'm in the minority in that I actually like Vital Strike as it is intended to be, not how the "majority" want it to be.


2 people marked this as FAQ candidate.

Apart from people's opinion on the 'rightness' of Vital Strike's exlusivity to the narrowly defined Attack Action, I'm mainly just baffled that there has never been any official FAQ entry for this, just the messageboard posts.

Apart from the confusion over normal English usage vs. Rules Terms (which aren't Capitalized or otherwise explicitly indicated in the rules text), the actual RAW is highly problematic re: Attack Action, in a way far more broad then me, rely Vital Strike: All the rules for Crits, Ranged attacks, Natural Attacks, etc, are placed under the Attack Action NOT general Attack Rolls (where they really belong). So by pure RAW (which we are encouraged to apply to Vital Strike), none of those rules should be used with Full Attacks or other 'special' Standard Action attacks (like Cleave). Good luck playing like that.

Personally, I'm amenable to allowing Spring Attack to use Vital Strike but not Charge. Pre-Errata, it wasn't clear how Spring Attack actually worked, action-wise, so allowing Vital Strike was A-OK. I was disappointed that it wasn't Errata'd to work something like: As part of a Full-Round Action that allows you to move up to 2x your Move Speed (avoiding AoOs from your Target), you may take an Attack Action during this movement (with restrictions on distance you need to travel first, etc). That is essentially 'giving a bonus Attack Action' mechanically speaking, but I don't see anything unbalanced about it in game play. Charge is allowing a double Move, but also applying a special bonus to the single attack, potentially along with Charge-specific bonus damage, so I don't think adding on potential Vital Strike damage is necessary, and in fact could be unbalancing for anybody who uses things like Lances, Rhino-Hide Armor, etc.

Silver Crusade

Vital Strike like most figther feats are completley nerfed when compared to Meta magic feats. I think that the DEVS have a bias againist fighters. It seems to me that Fighters are slighted by the DEVS in favor of the spell casting classes.

Vital Strike swould work with The Spring attack chain of feats.

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