In my revisiting of feats for my campaign, I'm wondering what would happen if I allowed Power Attack as a combat option instead of a feat. In my house rules, it would just be under Special Attacks in the combat chapter instead of being listed as a feat. I'm talking 3.5 Power Attack here, not the PF version. The PF version would just not be used.
My initial rationalization is that it seems like a feat tax for all serious melee characters anyway, as they really wouldn't function well without it. And it would be the default way of scaling damage output as the game rises in level to do level appropriate damage.
I should add that I only reference the core PF rules. I'll be selectively adding APG elements if my players are interested in them.
Ditto for Deadly Aim. An interaction of significance here is I've changed the Manyshot feat to emulate a cone effect that allows an archer to target multiple creatures in the cone as a standard action (you know, like in the movies).
Any thoughts as to the implications of this in PF core only?
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Your obviously playing in some kind of higher power game then what would be considered core so I don't know if any feedback you get here will be meaningful. For example, Power Attack was changed for Pathfinder because it was so easily abused in 3.5 given the other feats that existed in a game (When someone of moderate level could easily deal a base damage of over 200 points without any penalty to hit things got silly after all.)
Also it's hard for it to be considered a feat tax when so many of the melee classes have access to bonus feats for that specific reason. With the exception of Paladin (whose got tons of other tricks to play with) your looking at almost every other melee class having at least access to some extra feats as they level up.
Maybe you'd have more fun starting your group at a higher level to allow them to have more feats and be more powerful rather then just ramping up everything? Either that or not using hit points at all but running a more cinematic game (which seems to be your intent) and just having all but the most powerful monsters felled in a single blow.
Our group currently allows a list of automatic feats... Power attack is on the list. It doesn't seem to throw off our power curve very much, since while we get extra feat slots, the monsters do too (How many monsters have things like power attack and weapon finesse on their stat blocks?), and it gives the enemies another layer of strategy to toy with as well. That said, we use the PF version of the feats, so I'm unsure how the -5 for +5 bonus will end up affecting the game as opposed to our -1/+2 maximum ATM.