When to use Power Attack, Deadly Aim, or Piranha Strike? Find out here!

[MechE_]

So I spent about 6 hours of my Saturday tooling around with Excel in order to create something to help other forum users determine when it's a good idea to use power attack, deadly aim, or piranha strike. I've summarized my findings down a little bit, but since the first finding is that "There is no such thing as 'always' when talking about attack for damage trade-offs..." (which I already knew), I've also tried to make the calculator very easy to use.

The file can be found by clicking THIS LINK. The password is paizo.

General Guidelines:
• There is no such thing as "always" when talking about attack for damage trade-offs...
• It is generally a good idea to use damage for attack trade-offs on full BAB classes (including a monk when flurrying) when fighting lesser enemies. Especially if you are using power attack with two hands.
• On 3/4 BAB classes, unless you have no other damage mechanic (sneak attack, bane, or other precision damage), damage for attack trade-offs are almost certainly not worth using against BBEGs.
• If the above two guidelines don't cover the situation, then damage for attack trade-offs are probably god for low AC monsters and bad for high AC monsters. Run the numbers to be sure, that's why you're here!
• Having access to attack buffs, specifically inspire courage, can make damage for attack trade-offs much more worthwhile.
• Be smart about damage for attack trade-offs. If you miss on a roll that threatens a critical from your highest BAB attack, it's probably time to stop using them!

Best of luck with it and I hope some people find it helpful!

Feel free to report any problems in this thread and if I'm ambitious (and remember) I will fix them later. (Don't bother reporting that I misspelled piranha strike. I realized that one after i uploaded the file.)

Disclaimer:

I'm a Mechanical Engineer, not a computer programmer. If you try to break the file, you will do so. I believe it's very useable though.

Disclaimer Two:

The file is locked because in my experience with similar tools used in a manufacturing environment, the more you leave to chance, the more some people break it and those same people tend to be the most vocal about the "broken program" after they deleted some vital cells...

[MechE_]

Update: Friend of mine found a bug. (Not sure how everyone else missed it - the BAB combo box could not be modified, lol.) I've corrected the error, fixed my misspelling of piranha strike, and uploaded the file again.

You can find the new download link here. No password to download this time.

[revloc02]

Nice work. Thanks! (I love this kind of stuff.)

[MechE_]

For everyone's information, the sheet contains no macros, just some ActiveX controls (a few combo boxes and some check boxes). It doesn't require setting your Excel to allow macros, which could be a security concern for some people. (Though, ActiveX controls have separate allowance settings, but I've never modified those and the sheet works fine on both machines I tested it on.)

Also, I wised up and put the file in my Google Drive so that I don't have to keep posting different links.

Here is the permanent link. Note, you will have to download it to use it. and it requires Microsoft Excel.
(I have Office 2010, but it should be backwards compatible through 2003 if I had to guess. Not sure though, didn't test that.)

[MechE_]

Since some of the regulars aren't around on the weekend, I'm gonna push this up to the top real quick.

In addition to comparing power attack, pirhana strike, and deadly aim's damage per round (DPR), it's useful for simply figuring out theoretical dpr with known attack modifiers, damage modifiers, etc.