Attack bonus feats

[blue_the_wolf]

there are plenty of feats that let you trade attack bonus for damage.

why cant i find any that let you trade damage for attack bonus?

I mean you have things like weapon focus that raise your to hit.

but there is nothing like a reverse power attack that lets you trade 2 or even 4 damage for a bonus to hit.

[J3Carlisle]

My guess is that it has to do with the order you roll the dice. You dont know how much damage you will be dealing until after you try to hit

[blue_the_wolf]

so you mean they dont do it because damage is not guaranteed. they may be giving you a bonus to hit with no penalty if you miss.

but then again if you miss you wouldnt get a bonus anyway... and if you hit your properly penalized.

I wonder if it has to do with so many abilities simply requiring you to hit.

I mean if you have a poisoned weapon and give up a little damage in order to get the poison in that kind of negates your damage penalty.

... I still wish there were a -damage +hit bonus. even if the damage penalty is large.

[loaba]

You can always elect to not use Power Attack or Deadly Aim.

[Christopher Rowe 151]

What about a feat version of the Barbarian rage power Reckless Abandon. Give up AC for a bonus to hit (scaling either like combat expertise (-1/+1) or power attack (-1/+2))?

[Archaeik]

I don't see a big deal with the damage being reduced lower than zero, hence converting the hit to 1 point of nonlethal damage (you're only staggered if your nonlethal damage >= current hp -- to fall unconscious it needs to be == to your TOTAL hp)

To answer the question, I imagine it's a matter of not liking the flavor.
Have you looked into 3rd party material? (I mean for examples of precedent/proof of concept)

[Set]

Where such a feat would work best, IMO, would be in the case of a class that gains a level-scaling bonus to damage (like the 1st edition Monk, which did +1 damage with weapon attacks / 2 levels).

Power Attack seems to be keyed off of the BAB of the character, but, for the most part, D&D/PF classes don't get level-based damage or AC bonuses, so feats that allowed one to make a 'Reckless Attack' (-AC, +damage) or a 'Precise Attack' (-dam, +atk) aren't as likely.

Granted, if using something like Class Defense Bonus rules, from Unearthed Arcana, where characters *do* get an AC bonus based on the number of levels they acrue, something like 'Reckless Attack' might work better.

Mutants & Masterminds has these sorts of feats, swapping around numbers between Atk, Dam, AC (defense) and DR (toughness) in a variety of ways, but uses a different damage system, which makes it easier to rationalize, I suspect.