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I think there should be generic class feats, like Power Attack, in the final version. I'd houserule that myself if it isn't a thing.
Just ran some numbers. Barbarians don't want power attack. Do to the bonus static damage that rage gives them barbarians are better off attacking twice than using power attack.
Just ran some numbers. Barbarians don't want power attack. Do to the bonus static damage that rage gives them barbarians are better off attacking twice than using power attack.Maybe at the higher levels that's true but at low levels it really seems to hurt as the second and third attacks for me tended to miss in the playtest because my weapon training is subpar compared to the fighter. Maybe its just a low level thing but I would rather attack twice with power attack than risk that -10 with the third attack. It just seems to be useless option for my barbarian as he cannot raise a shield or power attack like a fighter.
It's true at low levels too though it's less dramatic. You still have a -10 on the second strike with power attack since it counts as two strikes though so that doesn't really make a difference.
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No one wants Power Attack, it's a trap as written.
No one wants Power Attack, it's a trap as written.
It's good for a while but no it doesn't scale well to be useful at high levels. And it really doesn't keep up with dual slice.
EDIT: Probably everyone should retrain it once they get a +4 weapon I think that is the break point. Or +2 and some damage runes like fire.
Doesn't power attack get better at higher levels? It is really weak at lower levels but once that second part kicks in at level 10+ it seems to get a lot better.
It does get better the problem is weapon base damage gets better too and gets better faster and high weapon damage makes multiple attacks better.
Two attacks with a +4 weapon each dealing 5d12 base damage ends up being better than one attack dealing 7d12 even with the -5 on the second attack for the first case. Of course that's just calculating average DPR vs level appropriate foes.
But that's really a high level play concern I think power attack is a good option for fighters for a majority of their career it just falls behind two attacks when you have really high base weapon damage. It also falls behind double slice for the same reason.
Doesn't power attack get better at higher levels? It is really weak at lower levels but once that second part kicks in at level 10+ it seems to get a lot better.
The tl;dr is that as you get magic weapons, you're rolling fewer dice from power attack as compared to the dice from the weapon. That makes power attack a lot less valuable.
Like, Power Attack with a +5 d12 weapon at level 10 is what, 8d12? Only 2d12 of those are from power attack. That's 25% of the weapon's dice damage. If the weapon isn't magical at all, that's 3d12; then power attack is 66% of the damage instead, way better.
They spelled out the levels you can expect to get potency runes in this edition pretty clearly. The power attack scaling could improve a lot by using those numbers as a guideline for it's scaling.