Vital Strike revisited

[stuart haffenden]

Vital Strike (Mythic)
You can strike your foes with incredible force.
Prerequisite: Vital Strike.
Benefit: Whenever you use Vital Strike, Improved Vital Strike, or Greater Vital Strike, multiply the Strength bonus, magic bonus, and other bonuses that would normally be multiplied on a critical hit by the number of weapon damage dice you roll for that feat.
Extra damage from sources that wouldn’t normally be multiplied on a critical hit isn’t multiplied by this feat.

So if you have a greatsword and greater VS, your regular 2d6 becomes 8d6 - so would you multiple your strength/enhancement total by 8?

[Aelryinth]

by 4.

if you crit, you add the multiplier, so you'd be x5.

==Aelryinth

[Sir Thugsalot]

Cao Phen wrote:

Are you sure Furious Finish is situational? If combined correctly, it simply maximizes your damage, per swing.

If combined incorrectly, you are left suddenly fatigued and bereft a boatload of hitpoints adjacent to a badly wounded but still very much alive and pissed off BBEG.

Quote:

Let us say you are a barbarian of 8th level, at level 9, you take a level of Oracle and obtain the Lame Curse. The level equivalent of the curse is now 5, which makes you immune to fatigue. With that, you now have every round you rage a Furious Finish.

So now you've dipped into a non-BAB class to grab a feature to address Furious Focus' built-in nerf, permanently crippled your Fast Movement, and leave your barbarian not raging during all the bad guy's turns (so, no fifty extra hitpoints and no extra saving throws and no rage-triggered powers in effect). -- You basically just turned off all your class abilities!

Tell me how Furious Focus is not the most insidious hissing live grenade which the fiendish writers at Paizo ever managed to get gullible players to swallow.

I'm convinced they bathe in schadenfreude.

[LoneKnave]

You can rage cycle. You can end your rage with furious finish, and then start raging again, since you are not fatigued. You can also just pick an archetype that replaces your fast movement.

Also, Oracle has some pretty nice self buffs, one BAB is not much of an offset for those.

[Sir Thugsalot]

Read the last sentence of Furious Focus:

"....you are fatigued (even if you would not normally be)."

-- A Lame Oracle would not normally become fatigued. (Queue bickerfest between you and your GM, whose eyes narrow to slits after ten seconds.)

Say, have I told you how much this feat sucks yet? I'm just getting started.

[blackbloodtroll]

Sir Thugsalot wrote:

Read the last sentence of Furious Finish:

"....you are fatigued (even if you would not normally be)."

-- A Lame Oracle would not normally become fatigued. (Queue bickerfest between you and your GM, whose eyes narrow to slits after ten seconds.)

Say, have I told you how much this feat sucks yet? I'm just getting started.

FIFY.

[LoneKnave]

While it does suck from the perspective of starting a bickerfest, I'm pretty sure mechanically it's still ok. Even if you go with it going through fatigue immunity (would that mean an android or a vampire barb would get fatigued? I find this highly unlikely, although by RAW I guess that would be the case), you can still get past that with stuff like the fatigue removing mercy.

[ZenFox42]

Please see the Paizo thread "Is Vital Strike worth it or not? Here's Proof!" for a mathematical analysis of Vital Strike, and the situations in which it is and isn't worth using.

The bottom line (fourth post on second page) is :

When using VS you get half again as much weapon damage as compared to a full-round attack, but if the creature's DR is LESS than your damage bonus, you incur a reduction in that damage,
so only use VS when the creature's DR is close to or higher than your weapon's damage bonus.

And if you're up against DR=0 opponents, don't use VS once your weapon damage bonus is greater than (roughly) twice the weapon's average damage.
For example, a greatsword's (2d6) average damage is 7, so don't bother using VS against DR=0 if your damage bonus is greater than about 14.

(If your weapon's damage is XdY+Z, then "Z" is what I'm calling the "damage bonus")

[Sir Thugsalot]

LoneKnave wrote:

While (Furious Focus) does suck from the perspective of starting a bickerfest, I'm pretty sure mechanically it's still ok.

The interpretation may fly in PFS (dunno); home games? Forget it. Rule Zero is king.

ZenFox42 wrote:

When using VS you get half again as much weapon damage as compared to a full-round attack, but if the creature's DR is LESS than...

You're torching a straw-man, because nobody is arguing that Vital Strike is better than a full attack sequence.

Vital Strike is there for you when don't have that option available to you (i.e., when you most need the extra output).

Is it a Surprise round? Are you tripped? Slipped? Weapon unready? Staggered? Disabled? Does the BBEG have Spring Attack, Flyby Attack, Spirited Charge, a breath weapon or at-will Invisibility or DimDoor? Are the monsters evading you to target other PCs?

Guess who's probably not getting a full-attack.

Vital Strike works with *any* weapon: melee, ranged, light, natural, non-proficient, improvised -- it doesn't matter. It has no feat or stat prerequisites. It doesn't saddle you with any penalties. You can use it with readied attacks.

[Kazaan]

Sir Thugsalot wrote:

Read the last sentence of Furious Focus:

"....you are fatigued (even if you would not normally be)."

-- A Lame Oracle would not normally become fatigued. (Queue bickerfest between you and your GM, whose eyes narrow to slits after ten seconds.)

Say, have I told you how much this feat sucks yet? I'm just getting started.

PRD wrote:

Tireless Rage (Ex): Starting at 17th level, a barbarian no longer becomes fatigued at the end of her rage.

This is what Furious Focus is referring to. If you have Tireless Rage (or equivalent) that makes Rage no longer make you fatigued, Furious Focus disregards it and you become fatigued anyway. But if you are immune to fatigue, that immunity isn't suppressed.

-------

Regarding the topic at hand, I was thinking about an Unarmed Strike Vital Strike build involving the Brother of the Seal PrC yesterday.

Brother of the Seal progresses your Unarmed Strike damage, Stunning Fist effects, and Flurry of Blows, lets you count your Unarmed Strikes as one size larger, and eventually lets you repeatedly punch people into each other with Awesome Blow with nearly any attack and each subsequent target they get knocked into takes your Unarmed Strike damage. Additionally, given the wording of Awesome Blow (you can't push them closer to you than their starting square to account for larger natural reach), you could hit them from the diagonal, knock them 10 feet alongside you so they end up still adjacent to you, then Vicious Stomp them when they fall prone. 9 levels of BotS + 6 Monk or 10 BotS + 5 Monk, along with Monk Robes, will give you 4d8 Unarmed Strikes which, with IVS, will hit for 12d8 damage and knock the target 10 feet which you can either set up for an additional 4d8 from Vicious Stomp, knock them into a wall for 1d6+9, or knock them into another person to deal 4d8 to that person and knock them 10 feet back; lather, rinse, repeat. Drunken Master can provide the Ki points to fuel the Awesome Blow usage on bigger targets and you still have your FoB capabilities so you essentially optimize both your full-attack and your single target. Each one, on its own, may be less than a fully devoted build, but the power lies in the versatility.

[nate lange]

everybody seems to be missing one of the best/most important uses for vital strike... it works as a readied action! everyone is focusing on max damage output, but VS is great for actually thinking/playing strategically. everyone knows that high level casters can be devastating in combat; you know what really levels that playing field- readying an action to interrupt casting... i made a crossbowman a while back who was a anti-caster specialist; every round he would ready a vital strike to interrupt and the caster would have to make a concentration check to actually cast. he got up to 11th level (with Imp VS) and even without gravity bow or oversized weapons or anything i think his average damage was like 33 or so, and most casters he'd only miss on a natural 1. you know who's good at making a DC [43+spell level] concentration check- nobody (even if you're fighting a 13th level caster with a +9 casting stat, its still literally impossible for him to make the check, for a 0th level spell).

[Sir Thugsalot]

Quote:

"....you are fatigued (even if you would not normally be)."

Tireless Rage (Ex): Starting at 17th level, a barbarian no longer becomes fatigued at the end of her rage.

This is what Furious Focus is referring to. If you have Tireless Rage (or equivalent) that makes Rage no longer make you fatigued, Furious Focus disregards it and you become fatigued anyway. But if you are immune to fatigue, that immunity isn't suppressed.

What's "normal"?

-- There ARE precedents in this game for immunities being overridden; and Paizo is infamous for arbitrariness in not defining things clearly, thereby leaving it up to your GM. (And Tireless doesn't come up 17th anyway...are you waiting to take Furious Finish until then? I doubt it.)

Quote:

everybody seems to be missing one of the best/most important uses for vital strike... it works as a readied action! everyone is focusing on max damage output, but VS is great for actually thinking/playing strategically. everyone knows that high level casters can be devastating in combat; you know what really levels that playing field- readying an action to interrupt casting... i made a crossbowman a while back who was a anti-caster specialist; every round he would ready a vital strike to interrupt and the caster would have to make a concentration check to actually cast. he got up to 11th level (with Imp VS) and even without gravity bow or oversized weapons or anything i think his average damage was like 33 or so, and most casters he'd only miss on a natural 1. you know who's good at making a DC [43+spell level] concentration check- nobody (even if you're fighting a 13th level caster with a +9 casting stat, its still literally impossible for him to make the check, for a 0th level spell).

Bingo.

[Jamie Charlan]

Except if he'd just SHOT the mage with a full attack [readied uses up the rest of the turn after all and had to be done before the wizard's initiative] from not-a-crossbow, the mage would be dead and not casting anything. Unless he's immune to arrows, but then he'd have bounced the one bolt too. Or he had deflect arrows and laughs off the vital strike, while the other 5-6 arrows would've hedgehogged him. DR's no issue in most cases, your arrows or later on enhancement bonus ensure you punch right through.

[nate lange]

at 11th level most wizards can survive a full attack from an archer. they'll probably have stone skin up if they thought they were gonna be in a fight (far more likely than the wizard knowing deflect arrows... also, can you use deflect arrows in that situation- the readied action interrupts casting, wouldn't you have to abandon the spell to use deflect arrows?). stone skin will drop each arrow to what 5-10 damage maybe, but the vital strike will still do 20+ which sets a good DC.

i should say too, though, that the crossbowman build was really designed with long range combat in mind (locking down a caster before they got a few rounds to summon/buff before combat). when you factor in penalties for a couple range increments suddenly those last 2-3 shots aren't looking quite as much like a sure thing. really, my point was just that Vital Strike has some solid strategic uses, which is great because not every combat can be a toe-to-toe dpr race (or, at least, for many of us that style of play can get extremely boring).

[Jamie Charlan]

If by the levels you face DR 10/Adamantine you're not bypassing that entirely, you've more to worry about than what you picked as feats. By level 11, if your wizard has more than 100 HP, well good bloody job -it's way too often barely above sixty there- but probably still not enough.

Plus, if he went before you, his spell went off. You're readying for maybe his next one, or he could just decide to burn off a spell trigger instead and leave you standing there wondering why you're freezing AND on fire when your readied still has yet to trigger.

It's true that vital sets a decent DC, but a dead wizard has no casting DC left, and for how often you need to move and fire compared to how often you can just fire and the difference in damage, it ain't worth it much. Not three feats plus devastating strike at least.

Now If it grew naturally like power attack, or at least if you've got Mythic strike, now that's a different story. All of a sudden you've got a standard attack nearly worth a full attack all on its own, and leaving you free to spend that move action.

[Sir Thugsalot]

Quote:

Except if he'd just SHOT the mage with a full attack....

What part of "You don't always get to do that!" are you failing to comprehend?

For the millionth time: nobody argues that Vital Strike does as much damage as a full-attack. To argue as if such were so is to commit a straw-man logical fallacy.

[SiuoL]

I have this character, bloodrager, with +5 strength at the moment and I want to give him a +2 Courageous Furious Growing Impact Nodachi. Also he will have mythic tiers. He got impossible speed at the moment, and I'm planning to give him mythic spell casting with Enlarge person and mythic Vital Strike. By the time he gets Furious Finish and Greater Vital Strike, I think he will have +9 strength, +3 from greater bloodrage, the nodachi will give it another +2. So +14 Strength. When I get enlarged with Mythic Enlarge Person, I get another +2 on strength. So +16 strength. If I activate my weapon's growing ability. It will be two size larger, on top of Enlarge to huge. 1d10>2d8>3d8(huge)>4d8(Impact)>6d8(Growing). So with Furious Finish and mythic power attack, I should have ((6x8)x4[from greater vital strike and Furious Finish])+((16x1.5[two handed stength])x4[mythic vital strike])+((15[mythic power attack with 16+BAB]x1.5[two handed] round down)x4[mythic vital strike])+(4[weapon enchantment] x 4)= 192[weapon damage]+96[strength]+88[mythic power attack]+16 weapon enchantment= 392

So 70ft movement speed with 392 damage without any other magical weapon or buff and only on a single hit so only needed to roll once and only have deal with Damage Reduction once. Is it acceptable or too weak? Also if I take Indomitable (Fatigue) because I picked Mythic Dual Path, will I still be fatigued?

[Avoron]

Unfortunately, enlarge person doesn't stack with the growing weapon property because of this FAQ.

Other than that, it looks okay, although mythic tiers bring things to a whole new level, so it's not doing much out of the ordinary. Well made as far as weapon-based vital strike builds go.

There hasn't been an official answer to your last question. James Jacobs has said here that the answer is no, you will not be fatigued, and I'm inclined to agree. Although I hear he doesn't like to be quoted on rules issues.

[Greg Everham]

Sir Thugsalot wrote:

Quote:

"....you are fatigued (even if you would not normally be)."

Tireless Rage (Ex): Starting at 17th level, a barbarian no longer becomes fatigued at the end of her rage.

This is what Furious Focus is referring to. If you have Tireless Rage (or equivalent) that makes Rage no longer make you fatigued, Furious Focus disregards it and you become fatigued anyway. But if you are immune to fatigue, that immunity isn't suppressed.

What's "normal"?

-- There ARE precedents in this game for immunities being overridden; and Paizo is infamous for arbitrariness in not defining things clearly, thereby leaving it up to your GM. (And Tireless doesn't come up 17th anyway...are you waiting to take Furious Finish until then? I doubt it.)

Quote:

everybody seems to be missing one of the best/most important uses for vital strike... it works as a readied action! everyone is focusing on max damage output, but VS is great for actually thinking/playing strategically. everyone knows that high level casters can be devastating in combat; you know what really levels that playing field- readying an action to interrupt casting... i made a crossbowman a while back who was a anti-caster specialist; every round he would ready a vital strike to interrupt and the caster would have to make a concentration check to actually cast. he got up to 11th level (with Imp VS) and even without gravity bow or oversized weapons or anything i think his average damage was like 33 or so, and most casters he'd only miss on a natural 1. you know who's good at making a DC [43+spell level] concentration check- nobody (even if you're fighting a 13th level caster with a +9 casting stat, its still literally impossible for him to make the check, for a 0th level spell).

Bingo.

Would a belt that just turns fatigue into a 1d6 of non-lethal damage make you happy? Here, if you play with a bunch of GMs that are being absolute fools about it, this item is a +2 Con buff and makes you equally unable to get fatigued. Rage cycle your way to dumping hundreds of damage each round.

Cord of Stubborn Resolve:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/c-d/cord- of-stubborn-resolve

[Greg Everham]

IF you want builds that do crazy damage via Vital Strike, much akin to Raving Dork's Hippo, the Goliath Druid can break the feat open. Esp when stacked with a level of Titan Fighter. You can be Huge sized and carry a weapon that is Gargantuan, but it's got Impact so it counts as Colossal. Goliath Druid also has access to the Rage Domain, so you can pull off Furious Finish to maximize all those d6s. I'm pretty sure that walking up to something and smacking them for literal hundreds of damage is going to leave it with the Dead status condition. Very few things come back from having that condition applied to them.