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After playtesting the Vital Strike feat tree, I think it's nice and works out well. most of the time, it seemed that sacrificing that low attack to get a bonus damage di on the other attack(s) was useful.
playing around with Vital Strike did bring up one issue: two-weapon fighting. There wasn't any clear direction on the interaction between these feats in the Beta. I ruled that when using VS and TWF, any attack sacrificed couldn't be transferred to the other hand. So, a Ranger couldn't give up an off-hand attack to deal more damage with his o-hand. This made sense to us because on- and off-hands might be different weapons and damage types. Clarifying text under VS would be nice.
Another question we had were in regard to the timing of these feats as a function of BAB. More specifically, why these feats don't scale with BAB. Since characters gain a second attack at BAB+6, why not move the requirement for VS from BAB+11 to BAB+6. This seemed to make more sense to us; 2 normal attacks or 1 vital strike (instead of the current implementation, which is 3 normal attacks or 2 vital strikes).
The same goes for IVS, make the requirement BAB+11 instead of +16 and you can get your 3 normal attacks, 2 vital strikes, or 1 improved vital strike.
This opens up an additional feat, Greater Vital Strike, that would require BAB+16 and allow to condense 4 normal attacks into 3 improved vital strikes, 2 vital strikes, or 1 greater vital strike.
This has the advantage of scaling directly with BAB (instead of step behind), handing another feat option to marital classes, and following the already established feat/improved feat/greater feat structure. After our playtest, we tried this out and it worked very well, allowing martial classes to get the biggest bang out of their highest BAB attack, but at a higher risk of putting all their eggs in one basket (so to speak).
Which brings up the last modification we tried. When fully condensing all attacks (under the above modifications) into a single attack, we allowed the single attack roll as a standard action instead of a full-round action (if a character used these feats and took more than one attack, it was still a full-round action). The result was that the Fighter took some of our combats from a toe-to-toe slugfest into a more dynamic "stick and move." We found that this went a small way to closing the gulf between Fighter (spend a full round to do your damage) and Wizard (do all your damage as a standard action). Quite accidentally, we found that the Fighter with VS feats could fight a respectable retreating action. Also, when combined with the Dodge-Mobility-Spring Attack tree, the single attack from Spring Attack (or Shot On the Run for that matter) became much more meaningful.
I realize this playtest-modify-playtest might go beyond what Jason is asking for, but with some slight modification and opening up, i think these VS feats could be a real boon to the martial classes that choose to invest in them. This would go some distance to addressing the disparity in economy of actions between the Martial characters and Caster.
Just some things to think on.
-Skeld
I would like to see some clarification regarding how these feats work with characters that use TWF. I'm assuming that you can drop the lowest attacks from your total attack routine, but I'd like to confirm that you can do this and are not in fact limited to dropping the last two attacks from your primary weapon's attack routine.
Good points, both in clarification and in pointing out the lack of optionality.
So does anyone else have any thoughts on the overall "balanced-ness" of Vital Strike? I have a duelist-fighter-rogue in my 13th level campaign who is getting 6 attacks per round (dual weapon fighting). For him to drop his lowest attack to do double damage on all attacks (which also gain benefits of sneak attack on all attacks due to his wand of grtr invis) is a pretty sweet deal.
Does anyone have further thoughts/math to say how this is *not* crazy tough?
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? anyone?
So does anyone else have any thoughts on the overall "balanced-ness" of Vital Strike? I have a duelist-fighter-rogue in my 13th level campaign who is getting 6 attacks per round (dual weapon fighting). For him to drop his lowest attack to do double damage on all attacks (which also gain benefits of sneak attack on all attacks due to his wand of grtr invis) is a pretty sweet deal.
Does anyone have further thoughts/math to say how this is *not* crazy tough?
Well, He's not getting "double damage", just double dice damage. With light or one-handed weapons (and at least one is probably light) that means about 1d6, maybe 1d8, extra per attack. Considering the sneak attack damage, and duelist level bonus to damage from Precise Strike, that extra d6 is pretty minimal.
Throw some Barb 2's at him - Uncanny Dodge. Unless he's a 6th level rogue, no sneak attack from greater invis.
Well, He's not getting "double damage", just double dice damage.
Exactly. And that's why the optimal Vital Striker is a TWF monk. Mnk16/ftr4 will qualify for IVS as he has BAB +16. He will have 9 unarmed attacks. With Monk's Robes and Improved Natural Attack his base damage is 4d8. As he will be always enlarged make that 6d8. Now triple that to get 18d8 per attack. And he still has 7 attacks left after sacrificing the worst two attacks.