Vital Strike and Opportunity Attacks

[HeHateMe]

Hey guys,

I had a question: if you have a Fighter with Combat Reflexes and Vital Strike, could you use Vital Strike to augment your Opportunity Attacks?
Also, if two enemies both provoke opp attacks from you, can you use Vital Strike on both of them?

Thanks for the help!

[DM Barcas]

It's a standard action, so you don't get to use it for AOOs. You can, though, ready the standard action to use Vital Strike if that's what you want.

[Laerlorn]

*sigh*

Vital Strike is source of many misunderstandings. It should be worded more clearly (or maybe it is too clear for most of the gamers to understand:/), but here we go again and I ll do my best to explain why it isnt going to work by the rules.

Vital strike requires you to take an attack action. Attack action is kind of standard action (most typically single melee attack or ranged attack).

Attack of Opportunity is not standard action and thus, you cant use Vital Trike with it.

[Name Violation]

DM Barcas wrote:

It's a standard action, so you don't get to use it for AOOs. You can, though, ready the standard action to use Vital Strike if that's what you want.

+1

The feat is horribly worded. The devs have cleared this up. Look at d20pfsrd.com clairification

[HeHateMe]

Understood, thanks guys. I think a clearer way to describe it in the book would have been "When you take a standard to attack", rather than "When you use the attack action". The unclear part to me was: do opportunity attacks could as attack actions, even if they are free action attacks? Now I know, and knowing is half the battle ;)

Anyway, thanks for clarifying!