I think Power Attack needs to be worth using at all times if my character chooses to take it.Why the heck would "needs to be worth using at all times" be a desirable situation to be in? A game where there are multiple types of situations that require different actions from the Fighter sounds a heck of a lot more fun than one where you just mash the Power Attack button all day long.
It's not a video game, so when I'm in combat and my job is to kill monsters, I don't want the feats I take to kill the monsters to be not useful.
How is this difficult to understand?
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Having a variety of options and a dynamic combat engine is usually considered an asset mostly because it makes the game more engaging due to more player involvement rather than just hammering the same inputs over and over ad naseuem.
Precisely. Sometimes it should be an obvious win to use something like Power Attack. Sometimes something else should obviously be better. Sometimes it should be unclear. Then the amount of effort you put into unlocking Power Attack (i.e. a class feat or whatever) should be tuned so that it's not stupid to take it AND it's not stupid to not take it. At all portions of the game there should be multiple reasonable choices, from character building to the actual fights.
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I think it is enough for feats to be frequently useful.
A feat that can only be used on the first Tuesday of a month when it is raining and the moon is full is one that I would pass on.
A feat that enhances your damage inflicted when you have (for example) a 25-75% chance of hitting would be worth taking.
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It's not a video game, so when I'm in combat and my job is to kill monsters, I don't want the feats I take to kill the monsters to be not useful.
How is this difficult to understand?
When you say, you don't want it to not be useful, do you mean,
"I want it to always be useful"or
"I want it to usually be useful"?
Because the first is an unreasonable standard. Spell Focus (Enchantment) doesn't help when you cast illusion spells, but it was good for enchanters. Pounce doesn't help when you're already adjacent, but it was one of the best martial abilities. Weapon Focus only applies to one weapon, but you took it for the weapon you were going to be using. Certain Strike won't be useful against creatures with DR, but it's good against creatures without it.
Similarly, Power Attack looks like it helps when you're making full attacks, and it's stronger the larger a weapon's damage die is. You can pick your weapon, and I suspect there will be players who like making full attacks.
It's not a video game, so when I'm in combat and my job is to kill monsters, I don't want the feats I take to kill the monsters to be not useful.
How is this difficult to understand?
When you say, you don't want it to not be useful, do you mean,
"I want it to always be useful"
or
"I want it to usually be useful"?Because the first is an unreasonable standard. Spell Focus (Enchantment) doesn't help when you cast illusion spells, but it was good for enchanters. Pounce doesn't help when you're already adjacent, but it was one of the best martial abilities. Weapon Focus only applies to one weapon, but you took it for the weapon you were going to be using. Certain Strike won't be useful against creatures with DR, but it's good against creatures without it.
Similarly, Power Attack looks like it helps when you're making full attacks, and it's stronger the larger a weapon's damage die is. You can pick your weapon, and I suspect there will be players who like making full attacks.
It's actually the contrapositive, I don't want it to always be useless.
I'm fine with tactics mattering, I'm fine with other options being just as good.
I'm not fine with feats not being usable because the math engine is bad. There's a reason Vital Strike stopped existing in RAE.
It's actually the contrapositive, I don't want it to always be useless.
I'm fine with tactics mattering, I'm fine with other options being just as good.
I'm not fine with feats not being usable because the math engine is bad. There's a reason Vital Strike stopped existing in RAE.
Okay. It's not always useless. I wrote a script that lets you check that for yourself how the expected damage compares. Hit run, and enter the numbers.
Is your script full-attack only?
Yep. That’s where Power Attack is useful.
I think my numbers were different because I wasn't doubling the PA die on a crit.
I'm curious about when it is worth power attacking if you don't have a full attack, or want to do something else with your third action. Mind adding a condition?
We did the math on this earlier, when DR is a factor or when taking -5 to hit is detrimental are the only conditions where Power Attack is useful when not full attacking.
Given the developers have told us to expect to land critical hits more often, it seems the latter will happen less and less often as you increase in level, by design. Hence it became a reasonable conclusion to plan on Power Attack being an artificial 3 action attack, a false choice, if you will.
I think my numbers were different because I wasn't doubling the PA die on a crit.
I'm curious about when it is worth power attacking if you don't have a full attack, or want to do something else with your third action. Mind adding a condition?
Even sneak attack multiplies on a crit, so I think it’s a fair assumption that PA does.
Can’t right now, and I’m probably not putting more time into it- that’d just roll into applying DR, and so on. There’s the clone option if folks want.
Anyway, Power Attack shows a solid damage bonus on full attacks, based on the available information. Do you mind cooling it on calling it useless and in need of rework?
Anyway, Power Attack shows a solid damage bonus on full attacks, based on the available information. Do you mind cooling it on calling it useless and in need of rework?
Yes, I do mind.
If it's execution makes it only worth using on full attacks, I'd rather see it designed to be an actual full attack that makes you better instead of a false option that newer players who are less mathematically inclined won't understand how to use because it was designed poorly. When new players stop having fun because of a bug in the system, we need to fix that bug. I don't want players to be punished by the game engine for not understanding the system.
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We did the math on this earlier, when DR is a factor or when taking -5 to hit is detrimental are the only conditions where Power Attack is useful when not full attacking.I think my numbers were different because I wasn't doubling the PA die on a crit.
I'm curious about when it is worth power attacking if you don't have a full attack, or want to do something else with your third action. Mind adding a condition?
You say that, buy you haven't defined "when taking -5 to hit is detrimental". Is that at to-hit 10? 15? I'd take something that works for 100% of full attacks and ~30% of two-action situations. We don't know the range of possible values. You can assume that to-hit values will stay within 5-10, but you might be wrong. If the range is 7-12, and the inflection point is 11, that's 33% of two-action situation.
Given the developers have told us to expect to land critical hits more often, it seems the latter will happen less and less often as you increase in level, by design. Hence it became a reasonable conclusion to plan on Power Attack being an artificial 3 action attack, a false choice, if you will.
What is the false choice? Are you talking about taking Power Attack or about using Power Attack?
If you take Power Attack, one assumes you like the full-attack combat style, and you'll use it when you have the opportunity. If you prefer a different style of combat, take a different option.
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Yeah, we don't have all the information yet, and we're not always being clear about our assumptions for reasonable values.
I think the best practice would be to make formula with variables we can plug the numbers into once we have them. Set ourselves up for the playtest by defining what questions we're asking and what we hope to determine once we have the rules.
Yeah, we don't have all the information yet, and we're not always being clear about our assumptions for reasonable values.
I think the best practice would be to make formula with variables we can plug the numbers into once we have them. Set ourselves up for the playtest by defining what questions we're asking and what we hope to determine once we have the rules.
I agree with this. Algorithms are our friends! :)
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Yeah!
That's why I've approached the question as trying to define the "space" where Power Attack is useful given some common variables: weapon die, static bonus, actions available, required-to-hit
How that Power Attack Value space intersects with the Gameplay Experience space of available encounters is how I plan to evaluate Power Attack as an option.
Your analysis was based on shaky assumptions and very subjective criteria. It's a valid criticism of this process to say we don't have all the information yet. It is important to acknowledge the unknowns and how different numbers in August affect the analyses.
I made no such assumptions, I used the information given to analyse how useful of a feat Power Attack really is going to be in comparison to just making multiple attacks, since I have play test data on this subject playing RAE. (Vital Strike was never a good choice in that system).
As such, I didn't include the math for critical hits because I don't have the exact numbers on it, but even so the actual math on what happens to Power Attack doesn't change with those figures, so you can still compare them mathematically. All we really know is that the game is intended for crits to happen more often, and that they are assumed in the game math, but even so comparatively it means Power Attack adds two-to-four dice instead of one. Because we knew this, we now know that Power Attack only helps you with big weapons whose output can consistently supersede your flat bonuses, whose minimum expected value we found to be around 5-7, depending on your build. We have a lot more variables than I think you guys are giving us credit for.
Just because you don't have all the answers doesn't mean you can't find them. I've been asking the question about reroll mechanics since Power Attack came out and now we have them confirmed.
Understanding the flaws of what we have helps us understand what else has to be there for the game to make sense, otherwise the game breaks and no one will want to play a broken system.
I just went back and read a few of the other posts you mentioned, and yes, they do seem to be needling you in a couple of them. The keep civil advice applies to everyone, and it's on the moderators to step in if they have to. Let's not make them have to. We all want Pathfinder 2 to be the best it can be. =]