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The wording on Vital Strike has changed a bit since the game came out, and now includes reference to 'the weapon's damage dice' (rather than the original 'damage dice')...
Vital Strike (Combat)
You make a single attack that deals significantly more damage than normal.Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +6.
Benefit: When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage. Roll the weapon's damage dice for the attack twice and add the results together before adding bonuses from Strength, weapon abilities (such as flaming), precision based damage, and other damage bonuses. These extra weapon damage dice are not multiplied on a critical hit, but are added to the total.
... While the whole 'attack action' thing precludes you from using Vital Strike on the 'free' melee touch attack you get when you initially cast a spell like shocking grasp, in the past nothing in the Feat's wording seemed to stop you using Vital Strike at a later point when using an attack action to deliver the shocking grasp (via holding the charge).
Does the new wording preclude this tactic now? Does it preclude using Vital Strike with natural attacks, or (non-Monk) unarmed attacks?
And yet for instance ray spells are treated as weapons. You can certainly take Weapon Focus (ray). Just playing devil's advocate.
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And yet for instance ray spells are treated as weapons. You can certainly take Weapon Focus (ray). Just playing devil's advocate.
Interesting thought, but the feat requires an "attack action" which I don't believe spellcasting falls under. Spellcasting is its own standard action separate from the standard action "attack action", if I recall.
Interesting thought, but the feat requires an "attack action" which I don't believe spellcasting falls under.
ProfPotts isn't talking about Spellcasting, he's talking about making a touch attack with a held charge as a standard action.
Even if the standard action to make a melee touch attack is an attack action, the spell damage is still not a weapon (unlike a ray) so it doesn't benefit from Vital Strike.
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Interesting thought, but the feat requires an "attack action" which I don't believe spellcasting falls under.ProfPotts isn't talking about Spellcasting, he's talking about making a touch attack with a held charge as a standard action.
Even if the standard action to make a melee touch attack is an attack action, the spell damage is still not a weapon (unlike a ray) so it doesn't benefit from Vital Strike.
To clarify: I was actually addressing Anguish's thought about Vital Strike appliying to rays, since they could be considered a weapon. Using a ray attack requires a spellcasting action, which is separate from the attack action, hence, rays don't qualify under Vital Strike.
Going back to ProfPotts orginal question, a held touch spell can indeed be delivered via an attack action, but I don't believe meets the definition of a weapon, disallowing its use under the Vital Strike feat.
To clarify: I was actually addressing Anguish's thought about Vital Strike appliying to rays, since they could be considered a weapon.
Ahh, whoops. Right you are.
So what would the extra damage dice would apply to scorching ray, for example? A ray does 4d6 damage. Would you give 4d6 more damage? What happens when you get several rays for which several attack rolls are necessary. What happens to vital strike at this point?
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So what would the extra damage dice would apply to scorching ray, for example?
While scorching ray is a weapon, you can't fire it using the attack action, so you can't use Vital Strike with it.
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Yes - in 3.5 any spell which required an attack roll was a so-called 'weaponlike spell', and you could take Feats and such for them, classing 'rays' and one type of 'weapon', and 'melee touch spells' as another. (Page 132 of the old Rules Compendium as well as several other books, if anyone's that interested...).
In Pathfinder the Weapon Focus Feat specifically calls out 'rays' as a viable choice, but doesn't mention 'touch spells'. Are there any ray spells which can be used with an attack actions, rather than going off with the actual spellcasting?
It seems a pity that any time something which could make Vital Strike worth the Feat investment crops up it seems to be shut down...
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Actually, I'm pretty sure that produce flame does count as a weapon, it says so right in the spell text:
Alternatively, you can hurl the flames up to 120 feet as a thrown weapon.
So categorically only rays count as weapons, but produce flame has a built in exception.
Using Vital Strike on an unarmed attack is not the same thing as using it to double a shocking grasp, which I believe is the true intent of the OP.
Spiritual weapon creates a weapon, but the description says it attacks as a spell.
Flame blade (looks like a light saber: "sword-like beam") might work, but you don't get a str bonus to it.
Seems like it should work with lead blades. A long sword is 1d8->2d6, so an extra 2d6 damage when you only attack once.
Off topic of spells, but related to vital strike: vital strike doesn't work on a charge, because that is not an attack action.
What about when you charge with a mount? Then the mount is charging, and you are not.
"If your mount charges, you also take the AC penalty associated with a charge. If you make an attack at the end of the charge, you receive the bonus gained from the charge."
You aren't charging, your mount is. Support for this idea comes from the fact that you could even get a full attack with a bow while your mount is charging: "You can make a full attack with a ranged weapon while your mount is moving. Likewise, you can take move actions normally."
Seems like it is possible to interpret that when your mount charges, and you take one attack at the end, you could use vital strike.
EDIT:
This has been discussed before:
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2obbu?Vital-Strike-Charge#4
And the consensus was yes, you get vital strike when attacking from the back of a charging mount.
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Yes - the intent is to double (or eventually triple, for those Magus characters out there) the damage of a 'weaponlike' held charge touch attack spell.
Vital Strike is all about the base damage, but crunching numbers shows time and again that it comes up short against just unleashing a full attack. That makes its usefulness situational at best, which is fine for a Feat, but for a whole Feat chain..? Which is why you'll constantly read on the boards that the Vital Strike Feat chain is a trap.
If you could use Vital Strike with a held shocking grasp then it at least becomes a nice option for higher level Sorcerers or Wizards, and a very nice option for the Magus. Being able to inflict 20 (or even 30) dice of damage with a level 2 intensified shocking grasp (but only when using a held charge as a melee touch attack via the attack action - no combining with Spell Combat or Spellstrike or whatever) seems worth a Feat or two, even if it's still a pretty specialised use.
I agree that the new wording on the Feat excludes that possibility though - Pathfinder doesn't have 'weaponlike' spells, as far as I can tell (and let's be honest, if it did I'm sure someone would be bound to come up with some other uber-combo of spells and Feats to 'break' the system in less than five minutes...).
As it is, the Vital Strike Feat chain does seem to be inviting you to invest a lot of character resources into increasing your damage in situations you're still going to be actively avoiding...
i'd say you can't use vital strike on touch attacks similar to how you can't use power attack on touch attacks...
you could vital strike a Held shocking Grasp...
make a normal unarmed strike to hit...double the UA strike damage with vital strike...then shocking grasp discharges normally
the electricity doesn't get more powerful...just your fist
The thing with Vital Strike is that it's used as part of a melee attack, whether through a weapon (for the Magus' case), or through a Natural weapon.
For PC's making a melee touch attack, it multiplies the weapon damage dealt. With the example of Shocking Grasp, it is not a weapon (it's a spell), and therefore does not get multiplied. The other "weapon" is the hand used to deliver the attack, and since you're rolling 0D0, 2/3/4 times 0 is 0.
Now then, let's say we have a Dervish Dance Magus using Spellstrike and he has Vital Strike. He has the spell charged on the weapon, and he makes an attack action against the target. Since he hits the target, the spell discharges, and he deals damage. The weapon he used (a Scimitar) now deals 2D6 + regular modifiers, and the spell applied to the weapon discharges, dealing its own listed damage.
It's an okay method if you only get one attack, and have other incentives to only use one attack. It isn't going to work with spells unless the spells themselves become weapons (such as the Flame Blade spell or whatever it's called).
Solution:
Javelin of Lightning.
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The thing with Vital Strike is that it's used as part of a melee attack, whether through a weapon (for the Magus' case), or through a Natural weapon.
Let's not confuse people here: as in the rules text quoted in the first post, Vital Strike can be used with an attack action with a weapon... it doesn't have to be a melee attack - you can Vital Strike with a single shot from a bow under the correct circumstances too (in fact one imagines the Crossbowman Fighter archetype from the APG is one of the few characters who will almost ceratinly be taking Vital Strike).
The question is what classes as a 'weapon'. In 3.5 certain spells explicity did get treated as 'weaponlike'... but there doesn't seem to be any equivalent rule in Pathfinder, hence the shocking grasp thing no longer working (it essentially worked until the wording on Vital Strike was changed to include the 'weapon' element). Spells which can be argued to be 'weapons' (or, I guess, magically produce 'weapons') seem to tend to have (relatively) low damage dice anyway, so face similar mechanical issues to regular uses of Vital Strike - i.e. it's not really giving enough bang for the buck it costs.
@Cheapy: Javelin of Lightning's an interesting case. It becomes a lightning bolt when thrown, so you should still be using the attack action and a weapon... So should that work with Vital Strike? Or is it a '... weapon ability (such as flaming)...' sort of deal?