Elk's Powerful Charge - What Does it Do?

[Sebastian]

I can't seem to figure out what Powerful Charge does and have a player taking an elk as his animal companion. It looks like it doubles the damage dice and +2 to damage on a charge. Is that right?

[VoodooMike]

Powerful Charge was in the Eberron Campaign Setting book originally, I seem to recall.

Powerful Charge - when you charge, if your melee attack hits, you deal an extra 1d8 points of damage (if you are medium size). For large creatures the extra damage is 2d6, for huge 3d6, for gargantuan 4d6, and for colossal 6d6. The feat only works when you make a charge. It does not work when you are mounted. If you have the ability to make multiple attacks after a charge you may only apply this extra damage to one of those attacks.

[Vil-hatarn]

Powerful charge is listed under the universal monster rules. It adds an arbitrary amount of bonus damage to a charge, which is supposed to be listed for the individual creature--this seems to have been accidentally omitted for the elk companion.

[John Spalding]

All of the examples I see in the Bestiary double the base die and add either 1.5 or double strength. The elk in the write up seems to do double base die + 1.5 str. So the companion should probably do 2d8 +1.5 x Str

Rhino, str 22
gore +8 (2d6+9)
powerful charge (gore, 4d6+12)

wooly rhino, str 28
gore +14 (2d8+13)
powerful charge (gore, 4d8+18)

Triceratops, str 26
gore +17 (2d10+12)
powerful charge (gore, 4d10+16)

Unicorn, str 18
gore +8 (1d8+4)
powerful charge (gore, 2d8+8)

Minotaur, str 19
gore +4 (1d6+4)
powerful charge (gore +11, 2d6+6)

Megaloceros, str 20
gore 2d6+5
powerful charge 4d6+7

[Majuba]

I think you're pretty right. Every example I see doubles the dice, and I'm fairly certain it should do 2xStr as bonus though. Minotaur is the only skip in the pattern I see, and could be an exception (or error).

So I'd say:
Megaloceros, str 20 (actually 22 with companion bonuses)
gore 1d8+6
powerful charge 2d8+12

Improved Natural Attack would up that of course to the 2d6/4d6.

[Robert Brambley]

Majuba wrote:

Every example I see doubles the dice, and I'm fairly certain it should do 2xStr as bonus though. Minotaur is the only skip in the pattern I see, and could be an exception (or error).

Could be the exception because it might be the only biped of the bunch?

Robert

[Majuba]

That would make some sense.

And I finally saw the entry for the Megaloceros that is also 1.5x Str. Of course... that's a quadruped.

[James Jacobs]

Whether or not a creature with powerful charge deals x1.5 or x2 Str mod on a powerful charge depends entirely on the creature, actually. The monster designer picks which one fits the creature's theme and look and style. As a general rule, bigger and stronger and "thicker-legged" monsters get the x2. It also depends on what the monster's other attacks do for damage as compared to where its CR expects its damage to be on table 1–1 in the Bestiary.

[Majuba]

Alright, so the rule is no general rule. Workable! :) Thanks James!

[Garitjax]

I think it should also be noted that the companion versions of the Rhino and Triceratops don't double their die on a powerful charge like their wild counterparts. Instead the just seem increase the dice size of the attack. IE, instead of going from 2d6 to 4d6 they go to 2d8 for companions. So the Megaloceros should likely have a powerful charge of 2d8+9 at level 7 as an animal companion/mount. This was probably done to try and limit the power of companions. That being said this thread is 5 years old so this may have been looked at already but it was the first thread I found in my research for my own Cavalier mount.