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I was thinking about Power Attack and similar abilities; I love power attack and feel it is a great feat with a good balance of attack penalty and damage bonus. However, the non-full BAB classes tend not to be able to afford the attack penalty. The feat scales with BAB which is great for keeping the feat useful and would seem to keep it reasonable for the slower BAB progressions. In reality though these characters often are struggling to hit and even a 2-3 point penalty can be too much.
I wonder if allowing the character to choose how much penalty (with the damage bonus determined by penalty amount) to make the feat more versatile. This would allow the 6th level rogue to choose a -1 for a +2 instead of having to choose either -2 or nothing. This could also be extended to the other feats such as combat expertise which use a similar mechanic.
I am not sure how much effect this would have in play (options paralysis might lead to the same situation as now either all or none) and I am concerned about the level of meta-gaming this might introduce (e.g., my character power attacks slightly with a -1 att and +2 dmg). I feel the power attack notion should be useful for any primarily melee focused build. This change would make it easier to incorporate these abilities into more situations (even fighters have times when they can't do a full power attack or use combat expertise) and for more character types.
When your base attack bonus reaches +4, and every 4 points thereafter, you may choose to increase the penalty by an additional –1 causing the bonus to damage to increase by +2.