Vital Strike (in whatever form) is a feat which is claimed to be better for getting thru DR, since instead of (say) 2 attacks each of which has DR subtracted, Vital Strike lets you take ONE attack, but roll just your die damage 2 times, then add your bonuses. Thus DR is only subtracted once.
Some people love it, some people hate it. So I decided to do a little math...
You're attacking N times, with a weapon that does XdY+Z damage per blow
(X=# of dice, Y=kind of die [d6,d8,etc.], Z=fixed bonus)
against a creature with a DR of D.
The average value you get from rolling XdY many times is (XY+X)/2.
So N attacks of XdY+Z, minus DR for each attack does, on average
N(XY/2 + X/2 + Z – D) = NXY/2 + NX/2 + NZ – ND
1 attack of N(XdY)+Z, minus DR does, on average
NXY/2 + NX/2 + Z – D
Both attacks do NXY/2 + NX/2 damage, we can ignore them. So the modifiers to that basic damage are
Normal attack : N(Z – D)
Vital strike : Z – D
But here’s the thing : as long as the creature's DR is greater than the damage bonus, (Z – D) is a penalty, so the penalty is smaller with Vital Strike.
Example : d6+2 vs. DR=5, 2 attacks
Normal : 2*(3.5 + 2 – 5) = 1 HP on average
VitStrk : 2*3.5 + 2 – 5 = 4 HP on average
Conversely, if your bonus is greater than the creature's DR, you actually do LESS damage with Vital Strike! Weird, huh?
Example : d6+10 vs. DR=5, 2 attacks
Normal : 2*(3.5 + 10 – 5) = 17 HP
VitStrk : 2*3.5 + 10 – 5 = 12 HP
So the key is that you only pull out Vital Strike when your regular attacks aren't getting thru the creature's DR...
How much more damage do you do with Vital Strike?
(N–1) * (D–Z)
So the tougher the creature is, the more damage you do to it! Sweet!
In the first example above, N=2, D=5, Z=2 so the extra damage should be 1*(5-2) = 3, which it is.
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The biggest mistake in your argument is the assumption that Vital Strike is somehow meant to replace a full attack. It's not. Vital Strike is best used as a "consolation prize" attack when you have to move.
Vital Strike nearly always falls short of a full attack. It's better compared to a normal single attack, though. Whether that small bonus is worth a feat slot is a choice players have to make.
Personally, I find melee fighters have to move enough to make it worth taking. Many would disagree. Obviously access to pounce or archery devalues the feat.
For use with an arcane archer.
Lantzkev - These results have to assume that every swing hits, because I can't factor in the probability of hitting into either equation.
While in a normal full attack the second (or third) attack might miss, reducing the total damage of a full attack, by the same token if your single Vital Strike misses, you do NO damage.
Ryric - to address your second comment ("Vital Strike nearly always falls short of a full attack") first, that's exactly what I proved! If the target's DR is 0, Vital Strike is horrible, because you only add your bonus, not N times your bonus!
BUT, if the target's DR is higher than your damage bonus, Vital Strike WILL do more damage than a full attack.
Hadn't considered a single attack, let's see...
Single : XY/2 + X/2 + Z – D
VitStrk : NXY/2 + NX/2 + Z – D
Yep, it does more damage, and independent of your damage bonus or the target's DR. So that's a second situation in which to use Vital Strike. Thanks!
Why not factor in the extra chance of missing on a secondary attack?
Let's say your first attack has a 75% chance of hitting - it's arbitrary but so is any given damage bonus or DR. The secondary attack will then have a 50% chance. In this case the secondary attack will do one third less damage on average.
Example : 1d6+10 vs. DR=5, 2 attacks
Normal : 1.25 * (3.5 + 10 – 5) = 10.6 HP
VitStrk : 0.75 * (2*3.5 + 10 – 5) = 9 HP
Also, let's see if it makes any difference with a greatsword since Vital Strike users tend to favor weapons with big damage dice.
Normal : 1.25 * (7 + 10 – 5) = 15 HP
VitStrk : 0.75 * (2*7 + 10 – 5) = 14.25 HP
Still tends to benefit multiple attacks, but the difference is small.
And let's see what difference it makes with a 50% chance of hitting on the first attack and 25% on the second.
Normal : 0.75 * (7 + 10 – 5) = 9 HP
VitStrk : 0.5 * (2*7 + 10 – 5) = 9.5 HP
So, we found another case where vital strike works, involving DR + high AC.
Of course, by the time you've got BAB 6 you've probably got an ally who can cast Haste, and it's not going to be very common for three attacks to be worse than a Vital Strike...
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I like Vital Strike because it tries to make your weapon choice matter more.
I don't like Vital Strike because it is awful unless you're turning into a giant hippo or stegosaurus.
Matthew Downie - great idea! No time to look at your results now, probably tomomrow...
Petty Alchemy - it's exactly because some people think it's awful that I did this analysis. What the math shows is that it is :
1. Always better than a Standard action attack if you MUST take a Move action in your round (regardless of your opponent's DR), and
2. Always better than a Full-round attack IF your opponent has a very high DR.
1. Always better than a Standard action attack if you MUST take a Move action in your round (regardless of your opponent's DR), and
2. Always better than a Full-round attack IF your opponent has a very high DR.
Well, its also 3 feats long(like two weapon fighting!) and it doesn't pay well unless you do have a big weapon(obviously not meant for the guy using dual daggers). Personally, I'd rather see something to help martials on the go that doesn't cost them anything.
How many enemies are going to have higher DR than the guy with the two handed weapons bonus damage anyway? For a barbarian with 14 strength(uber low for them) that's at least 6 damage or so isn't it?
Oh NO not DR!
It's not like +6 equivalent weapons don't bypass all but DR/-
DR Slashing/Bludgeoning/Piercing isn't bypassed by enhancement bonuses either.
If it worked with spring attack it would be a pretty good deal, but without that it's just not a winning move to exchange one of your attacks for an opponent's full attack.
Even if you're melee focused and the enemies have the basic sense to attack your allies instead of you?
Here is where it's useful: Rogue with Improved Feint and a Rapier. Improved Feint is a move action, so the rogue can't use it and a full attack. But he or she gets an extra 1d6 damage with Vital Strike. So let's assume a 9th level rogue with 5d6 sneak attack damage, 1d6 for the rapier, 1d6 for the Vital Strike. Add in Offensive Defense and the Rogue's AC is now +5 as well.
Getting an extra +1d6 damage with a Rapier seems mildly amusing at best. There are probably better ways to get sneak attack damage. Gang Up comes to mind.
Anyhow, the only really good use I've found for Vital Strike is when it is used with very large base damage. Druids using Strong Jaw can score impressive hits with it, for instance, and big monsters with Improved Vital Strike can do enough damage to make a lasting impression. Dangerous monsters often don't survive very long after the PCs become aware of them, so being able to close and do big damage in a single round is great. It is kind of like a poor monster's Pounce except easier to use.
I guess Vital Strike could also be nice if you suspect you'll be seeing a lot of Frigid Touch or other staggering effects. A Monk with Greater Grapple could also do some pretty decent ground and pound by pinning people and Vital Striking them. It isn't a great line of feats for everybody, but it can be fun in the right cases.
Yes, but flanking only gives you a +2 to hit. Feint can effectively cut the armor class of any agile foe by a decent margin. So, do I want +2 to hit armor class 30, or do I want to attack armor class 24 instead? Or lower even. Sadly, I only get ONE attack against a foe when feinting, so Vital Strike helps improve damage.
Ok, it doesn't improve it much though, and a lot of foes aren't very agile. I guess it would be pretty nice against foes which can't be flanked but can be feinted though those might be rare.
so Vital Strike helps improve damage.
It improves it, but not by much I think was the point. Rogues aren't well known for having lots and lots of feats, and feign has a lot of problems of its own(eating up your iteratives being one of them).
FWIW, I give fighters the Vital Strike feat chain for free. It's a bit feeble (and frankly, a badly designed rule) but it's a consolation prize for when you can't get a full attack. Monks get a similar thing on unarmed attacks if they move 10' (a flying kick).
I say it's 'a badly designed rule' because it only considers the weapon's base damage. So it's great for some monsters, OK for big weapons and rubbish for others. And it ignores the weapon's properties, the user's strength, skill and so on, so it rapidly becomes obsolete. It should have been written as something like +50% damage. The only place it does work perfectly is for monk unarmed damage.
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How does Improved (and Greater) Vital Strike change the equation?
MA
VS is useful for a Halfling sling-staff specialist under a GM who follows the FAQs to the letter. They wield a sling-staff, meaning that based on current rulings they will never get multiple shots with this device. As a result VS doubles the damage die on the one shot they can make.
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The biggest mistake in your argument is the assumption that Vital Strike is somehow meant to replace a full attack. It's not. Vital Strike is best used as a "consolation prize" attack when you have to move.
This.
And the other conditions denying full-attacks: the suprise round and the staggered condition come to my mind.You also should consider the sourcebook: Vital Strike is a core option. Other alternative options to full-attack in core are pretty limited for meleers:
- charge: you need a clear path to your target
- cleave: you need to target 2 different adjacent opponents
- spring attack: you must move before and after your attack. It can't be used against adjacent opponents
- Dim.Door "taxi service": you need to be baby-sitted by a caster.
Vital Strike, on the other hand, has no specific condition: it isn't a powerful option but it's a reliable one when you can't full-attack.
Now, with the additional sourcebooks, your character gets more options to [move + full attack] so Vital Strike becomes less relevant.
To answer Mr Sin ("it's also 3 feats long") and Master Arminas ("How does Improved (and Greater) Vital Strike change the equation?") together, it's technically not "3 feats long" in the sense that you have to take two earlier feats to get the really great third feat. Vital Strike happens at 6th level, so the value of N in the equations is 2. At that level, doubling the damage is significant. Improved Vital strike happens at 11th level, so N=3. And Greater Vital Strike happens at 16th level, so N=4. (Thank you Master Arminas, I meant to explain that in the first post.) You're getting bigger multipliers to keep up with the bigger monsters. :) And you could stop at any time and keep the multiplier you've got.
But I also must address something Mr Sin said in his same post : "it doesn't pay well unless you do have a big weapon".
When using VS (any version) as a full-round attack to overcome DR, the extra damage done by VS is (N–1) * (D–Z), which is completely independent of the weapon!
And from the equations in my previous post for using it to replace the single attack when one must use a Move action, it essentially doubles (or triples, or quadruples; but I'll say doubles to keep it simple) the weapon's damage. Sure you get (for example) 7 more HP damage on average for a greatsword, vs. 2 more HP damage for a dagger, but double damage is double damage, no matter the weapon. The same thing applies to iterative attacks - sure you get more damage with a bigger weapon, but that doesn't make iterative attacks any less useful.
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BUT, if the target's DR is higher than your damage bonus, Vital Strike WILL do more damage than a full attack.
But, if the target's DR is higher than your damage bonus, you have failed as a Fighter
When using VS (any version) as a full-round attack to overcome DR, the extra damage done by VS is (N–1) * (D–Z), which is completely independent of the weapon!
Only if you ignore the greater accuracy of the primary attack.
Let's use a silly example. You have a 12d6 bite attack, and the DR exactly cancels out the damage bonus.With a vital strike, you do 24d6 in one attack. Without, you do 24d6 in two attacks, the second of which is less accurate. In this case, the vital strike is going to be the better option.
On the other hand, if you have a 1d6 weapon and +30 damage, you're comparing 2d6+30 potential damage to 2d6+60. The 2d6+60 is almost guaranteed to be better.
I think there's an extra factor to the formula that involves the ratio of static damage to dice damage, multiplied by an accuracy factor.
It might be useful to bypass DR... but Vital Strike and its upgrades are just downright useless, because they cannot be used in conjunction with other feats.
The feat clearly says that you can activate the feat when you use the attack action, but of course, since the designers didn't rewrite the feat's description to change it to "As a full-round action", they instead keep errata it to the point of not being able to use it wth Cleave, charges, Spring Attack, Manyshot and other stuff.
Seriously, I fail to see how this is still discussed when Vital Strike is essentially useless in the most obvious situations where you should be able to use it. The only uses I've seen are to bypass DR and to make a creature's natural attack deadly.
Y'know, if Vital Strike was a feat where you take a full-round action where you deliver a single attack with a manufactured or natural weapon and gets multiplied by half your level or HD, with a recovery period lasting 25% of your level or HD as a drawback, that actually would be more balanced and more enticing for players.
Those were probably bad examples.
Let's compare 10d6 + 10 damage to 2d4 + 10 damage.
In the first, the average damage per hit is 45, or 80 with vital strike. 90 damage if you hit twice, which is better than vital strike by 10.
In the second, the average damage per hit is 15, or 20 with vital strike. 30 damage if you hit twice, which is better than vital strike by 10.
That's fits in with the formula for average damage if all attacks hit, and in this case the damage dice don't change anything.
But if you're taking into account accuracy, they do.
If your hit rate is 50% on first attack and 25% on the second, the average damage in the first example is 40 with vital strike and 33.75 without. Vital strike is better.
In the second example, the average damage is 10 with vital strike and 11.25 without. Vital strike is worse.
And the only difference was the damage dice.
Matthew Downie -
I've been meaning to get back to you about your original suggestion of incorporating the probability of hitting into the equations, and what I've come up with is : if the probability of hitting on your first swing is P (which depends on your BAB and the target's AC), and you're taking two attacks, then the difference in damage between a full-round attack and VS is (everyone take a deep breath)
(P-0.5)(NXY/2 + NX/2) + [N(2P-0.5)-P](Z-D)
The problem is, now we have an equation with SIX variables!
XdY+Z : weapon damage
N : multiplier from VS (whatever version)
D : target's DR
P : probability of your first (best) swing hitting
And as you yourself have shown, you can pick one set of 6 values and show that VS does less damage, and pick another set of 6 values and show that it does more.
I can't think of any way to coax any good information about under what conditions VS would be better or worse out of that equation, but I'll post something if I do.
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And as you yourself have shown, you can pick one set of 6 values and show that VS does less damage, and pick another set of 6 values and show that it does more.
I can't think of any way to coax any good information about under what conditions VS would be better or worse out of that equation, but I'll post something if I do.
Doesn't that just proove that it is better in some situations and worse in others?
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But, if the target's DR is higher than your damage bonus, you have failed as a Fighter
BUT, if the target's DR is higher than your damage bonus, Vital Strike WILL do more damage than a full attack.
I'm doing +16 at 4th level with a not particularly optimized build.
So yeah, this.
I think Vital Strike Chain should be like power attack. Goes up with level, not requiring extra feats.
Vital Strike (in whatever form) is a feat which is claimed to be better for getting thru DR, since instead of (say) 2 attacks each of which has DR subtracted, Vital Strike lets you take ONE attack, but roll just your die damage 2 times, then add your bonuses. Thus DR is only subtracted once.
Some people love it, some people hate it. So I decided to do a little math...
*snip*
I'd like to request proof for this statement. A cursory glance around these boards shows the only time Vital Strike is claimed to be a good feat is for wildshaped Druids and the like who use a ton of damage dice. Even combining it with something like Lead Blades, Titan Mauler, Enlarge Person, and making a niche build that is more for kicks, not effectiveness.
I can't remember the last time I saw someone saying they loved Vital Strike. At best you have people defending that it's not bad if you want it for flavor reasons and defending how the fact it stinks so much is secondary to the rule of cool. And those are few and far between.
The only other build I consider Vital Strike good for is a build where you can retrain the feat once you get to the level where you have your first iterative. And even then only until you have access to haste.
But, if the target's DR is higher than your damage bonus, you have failed as a Fighter
BUT, if the target's DR is higher than your damage bonus, Vital Strike WILL do more damage than a full attack.
I'm doing +16 at 4th level with a not particularly optimized build.
So yeah, this.
I think Vital Strike Chain should be like power attack. Goes up with level, not requiring extra feats.
I think you should be able to use it for ANY non-full-attack attacks.
After a charge, during spring attack, AOOs.
Vital Strike (in whatever form) is a feat which is claimed to be better for getting thru DR, since instead of (say) 2 attacks each of which has DR subtracted, Vital Strike lets you take ONE attack, but roll just your die damage 2 times, then add your bonuses. Thus DR is only subtracted once.
Some people love it, some people hate it. So I decided to do a little math...
*snip*
I'd like to request proof for this statement. A cursory glance around these boards shows the only time Vital Strike is claimed to be a good feat is for wildshaped Druids and the like who use a ton of damage dice. Even combining it with something like Lead Blades, Titan Mauler, Enlarge Person, and making a niche build that is more for kicks, not effectiveness.
I can't remember the last time I saw someone saying they loved Vital Strike. At best you have people defending that it's not bad if you want it for flavor reasons and defending how the fact it stinks so much is secondary to the rule of cool. And those are few and far between.
The only other build I consider Vital Strike good for is a build where you can retrain the feat once you get to the level where you have your first iterative. And even then only until you have access to haste.
Mythic Vital Strike is fantastic and kind of makes the feat tree worth it.
A lot of times it's better than full-attacking.
Vital Strike might not be forgotten if it were a freely available combat option just as fighting defensively is. Though that would of course favor monsters more than PCs (except the druids).
Vital Strike might not be forgotten if it were a freely available combat option just as fighting defensively is. Though that would of course favor monsters more than PCs (except the druids).
Pfft, feats are to give you options, not to make yoru options better! Everyone knows martial adepts who adventure and fight a variety of foes only know how to fight in one or two ways and provoke and fail every other one.
There is also one feat people tend to forget: Furious Finish. How does maximizing damage dice plays into the equation?
I would think it would depend on your weapon because the feat(like vital strike) scales with weapon damage(mind you its 2.5ish damage per D6)Mind you furious finish also fatigues you and you need at least one level in barbarian to use, so its not exactly viable for someone like a fighter, or paladin, or cavalier, etc. or to be used before combat ends.
I played with a barbarian with a great axe, Improved Vital Strike, and Furious Finish. Automatically dealing max damage on 3d12 (9d6 when enlarged) as a free action was a really handy trick. (He used Cleave to get additional attacks, I think...it was a while back.)
@Mark Hoover: Yeah, I just started looking at trying to use the Vital Strike chain to recover a playable character from my poor, crippled Halfling war slinger.
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There is also one feat people tend to forget: Furious Finish. How does maximizing damage dice plays into the equation?I would think it would depend on your weapon because the feat(like vital strike) scales with weapon damage(mind you its 2.5ish damage per D6)Mind you furious finish also fatigues you and you need at least one level in barbarian to use, so its not exactly viable for someone like a fighter, or paladin, or cavalier, etc. or to be used before combat ends.
Though there are a few ways to ignore fatigue. Take a dip into the Oracle to get the Lame curse at level 9. Immunity to fatigue, so that single Furious Finish becomes Furious Finish equal to rage/day.
...your rage immediately ends, and you are fatigued (even if you would not normally be).
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the only character ive seen make vital strike worth the feats is a metal oracle rage prophet. lead blades and enlarge pseron potions means pain. use thunder and fang to gain a large sized base earthbreaker and you have one massive hit with furious finish. now i personally think that vital strike and mythic vitale strike should be merged, or make mythic vital strike a stand alone feat after, or merged with, greater vital strike.
but anyway on a greatsword wielding vanilla fighter i wouldnt take it.
Vital Strike become more valuable when your GM uses the critical fumble deck, trust me. I've seen several players, myself included, just give up their last attack because they didn't want a 5% chance to throw their weapon into an ocean or whatever to crop up.
Vital Strike become more valuable when your GM uses the critical fumble deck,
*edit* Fumble decks are heavily biased against martial.
I'll just throw it in:
Vital Strike should a) work with Spring Attack and b) just add 2d6 damage per feat.