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A Vital Strike cannot be used as part of a full attack. There is a distinction between the action: "attack" and "full attack." Basically, Vital Strike says that you can opt to deal double the weapon's base damage on a normal attack, but not on a full attack.
That is, your interpretation that a full attack does not count as an attack action is correct, and that you may not make the first attack of a full attack a Vital Strike.
An attack action is a type of standard action, a full attack is a type of full-round action. They're different things.
You have to declare that you're using a full attack before you start swinging away, so you can't combine it with Vital Strike.
Ninja in the Rye, that is not completely correct. You do not have to declare your type of attack action until after the first attack. However, any actions which are irrevocably Standard or Full Attack actions will commit you to that action. Vital Strike is one such action.
Deciding between an Attack or a Full Attack: After your first attack, you can decide to take a move action instead of making your remaining attacks, depending on how the first attack turns out and assuming you have not already taken a move action this round. If you’ve already taken a 5-foot step, you can’t use your move action to move any distance, but you could still use a different kind of move action.
- Gauss
Ninja in the Rye, that is not completely correct. You do not have to declare your type of attack action until after the first attack. However, any actions which are irrevocably Standard or Full Attack actions will commit you to that action. Vital Strike is one such action.
Deciding between an Attack or a Full Attack: After your first attack, you can decide to take a move action instead of making your remaining attacks, depending on how the first attack turns out and assuming you have not already taken a move action this round. If you’ve already taken a 5-foot step, you can’t use your move action to move any distance, but you could still use a different kind of move action.- Gauss
Interesting, good call.
You can take attacks of opportunity if you made a vital strike, but vital strike does nothing to the damage on the AOO's.
Yes. To put it another way: an AoO is an attack, not an attack action. Vital Strike takes a standard action.
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Guys, a vital strike does not stack with any full round action at all. An attack action is a specific type of standard action. It cannot be combined with a full action.
It also can't be combined with any other Standard Action attack, like Cleave. Nor can it be used with other actions that allow only a single attack in a turn, like Spring Attack.
Vital Strike is awful unless you're playing Mythic, or a huge Wildshaped Druid, or something.
Vital Strike is a somewhat reasonable answer to losing all of your iterative attacks from moving more than 5'. If it multiplied your bonuses as well as the number of dice rolled I believe it would become a necessary go-to feat for just about every martial class.
Vital Strike is a great feat for monsters. It's actually a really good feat for any martial until level 6 - even then it's not bad until you spend more time trying to setup full attacks than worrying about single attack damage.
As to the wording - it's not worth arguing about - the official ruling is you can't use it with anything else.
The 'attack action' as a standard action is only used around 3 times all the material available rules wise in pathfinder - (I could be wrong but in the great sunder thread someone did a search it was very low).
The wording itself is a holdover from 3.5 that needed official clarification in that system to make clear (because it's not) - so the easiest thing to do is either make a ruling that you can use it once in an attack chain (which would make the feat pretty much a must have - but not really overpowered in my opinion) or pretend the wording is like *every other feat that uses a standard action*.
IE - Change this: "When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage"
To this: "As a standard action, make a single attack that deals additional damage"
If you change the wording not only will it keep your brain from hurting - but it reads like the rest of the rules at the same time - bonus!
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Q: "Can Vital Strike be combined with-"
A: "No."
Vital Strike ... It's actually a really good feat for any martial until level 6
Too bad it has a BaB +6 requirement.
To put it another war: Asking whether you can use Vital Strike as part of a full attack is like asking whether you can cast fireball as part of a full attack. They're separate actions.
Q: "Can Vital Strike be combined with-"
A: "No."
Vital Strike ... It's actually a really good feat for any martial until level 6Too bad it has a BaB +6 requirement.
Irony is not a type of ore :)
To put it another war: Asking whether you can use Vital Strike as part of a full attack is like asking whether you can cast fireball as part of a full attack. They're separate actions.
Magus. Technically not a full attack, but treated the same.
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The wording itself is a holdover from 3.5 that needed official clarification in that system to make clear (because it's not) - so the easiest thing to do is either make a ruling that you can use it once in an attack chain (which would make the feat pretty much a must have - but not really overpowered in my opinion) or pretend the wording is like *every other feat that uses a standard action*.
Considering the feat was created for the Pathfinder RPG and didn't exist in 3.5, you can't really call the wording a holdover from 3.5 :)
To put it another war: Asking whether you can use Vital Strike as part of a full attack is like asking whether you can cast fireball as part of a full attack. They're separate actions.Magus. Technically not a full attack, but treated the same.
Hush, you. : D
I'm aware that's what he was referring to, but Paizo didn't need to use that wording for this particular feat unless they themselves wanted to. Especially considering they changed the wording of all* the feats that used the "attack action" wording from the 3.5 PHB (which indicates that they knew the term could be confusing).
So, since it was a Paizo decision to use a wording that they could have otherwise more-or-less eliminated, and also keep that type of wording in the game without additional clarification of what an "attack action" was, I don't think it can be called a "3.5 holdover" in the normal sense of what people tend to refer to when they use that term.
(* Combat Expertise's wording was changed to say "attack or full attack action" rather than "the attack action or the full attack action", while both Shot on the Run and Spring Attack were changed to full-round actions).
Yes; I suppose I should have quoted the whole sentence: "You can only choose to use this feat when you declare that you are making an attack or a full-attack action with a melee weapon." While it is, as you say, functionally identical, it's written in a way that doesn't require the "attack action" to be a thing, as the wording would still work without it (although that would make it grammatically wonky).
Anyway, my point was that they changed the wording of existing "attack action" feats to either remove the "attack action" altogether, or modify the wording so it was clearer, and themselves decided to add new feats using that wording.
Again - in the great sunder thread we had a author pipe in and note that the 'rules' given to content authors indicate to *avoid* using the attack action language if at all possible.
Perhaps the 'intent' was there - perhaps it was an oversight (Paizo admits to making mistakes - look at the NPC codex age category for Assimars Tieflings - years of a set rule oopsed in a new book) - it happens. It's not like it was a feat that did nothing.
Once the CRB was published the question came up - the used the *same* explanation used in 3.5 as a basis and then proceeded to follow an internal publishing rule of avoiding the language. That tells me it was a mistake - major? No. Just bad wording for something that could have used *fewer* words and eliminate confusion.
All the above says it is a holdover from 3.5 - eliminating the 'attack action' wording doesn't hurt the feat - it would however make it clear to the vast majority of players that for 14 years now mostly fail to spot the difference between 'the attack action' and 'the full attack action'. A distinction that had to be clarified over and over again with many people not understanding = failure to have clear rules = failure of the rule itself = bad design. Hardly damning considering 99% of the rules are fine - there are some bad apples though.