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You are ignoring a huge benefit of Power Attack by omitting from your analysis the third action to attack.
Someone already crunched the numbers with the same conclusion. It’s nice to see it done again to highlight the problem. It is worse once you get your first magic weapon.
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Power attack should just double the amount of damage as per doubling rules. This would make it exactly equivalent to double slice if using 1d12 weapon compared to double 1d6 weapon, but slighly less damaging if using 1d8 (1h) weapon, balanced by the free hand.
Power attack should just double the amount of damage as per doubling rules. This would make it exactly equivalent to double slice if using 1d12 weapon compared to double 1d6 weapon, but slighly less damaging if using 1d8 (1h) weapon, balanced by the free hand.
Power attack to just double damage? Sounds interesting. Is it too good at that point? really its getting rid of the -5 for a second attack and you can apply DR only once versus it. Have to check the math it might be too good that way. Also would it do x4 on a crit or x3?
Oh hey what if it just doubled dice? So if your potency rune makes you do 3d12 it would add 3d12 (presumably 6d12 at level 10 on?)
I think doubling might be a bit too good. But scaling higher than it currently does would certainly be beneficial.
how about +1 die every 5 so 1-5 +1 die 6-10 +2 etc?
After checking my math and comparing with Double Slice, I believe even just doubling he damage dice would be too good.
I would like to see that. Doubling the damage means basically nothing more than getting +5 to your secondary attack, with the added bonus of applying only once resistance but with the additional penalty that, given the normal doubling rules, a crit would only increase your damage by 50%. It is better than attacking twice? It should damn be, it's a feat whose only purpose is exactly that.
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The nitty gritty: Ready to see why Power Attack is not worth it? Let's take a look.
What about when the enemy has any amount of resistance to your attacks?
What about when the enemy is dangerous to attack?
What about when you do a normal strike first and your options are power attack as 2nd and third action or normal attack twice more?
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What about resistances as that was where I really liked power attack in 1e and felt not fun and really weak to say play a 2 weapon fighting character against something with DR in 1e. I have not played a fighter yet but have got to use double slice but unfortanetly had the wrong type of weapons out and didn't really want to take two actions to draw new ones double slice felt really cool to use.
Since there are no rules about doubling damage twice like in PF1 (because the only thing that doubles damage is a critical hit), under that option, a crit would do 12d12+20, or simply too much.
Yes there is. Page 299.
Multiplying
When more than one effect would multiply the same
number, you don’t multiply more than once. Instead, you
combine all the multipliers into a single multiplier, with
each multiple after the first adding 1 less than its value. For
instance, if one ability doubled the duration of one of your
spells and another one doubled the duration of the same
spell, you would triple the duration, not quadruple it.
Power attack should give a circumstance bonus to hit. The Martail classes in general don’t have any way to increase to hit. Currently the average chance to hit most creatures your level is around 40-60%. If power attack increased to hit, then you would be trading an attack/action for a better chance to actually land a hit plus an increased chance to crit.
This is because of the new +10 crit rule. Adding a plus to your hit is like weapon focus and improved critical at the same time. Hence no weapon focus feat, a simple feat,yet gone.
Feats also rarely add much damage due to the magic weapon factor (increasing weapon cage dice instead of +1 to damage)
These two factors make martial feat design very tricky.
My conclusion by comparing it to Double Slice is that any and all combat tactics which tax an action that otherwise could be spent attacking needs to include at least a +3 bonus on attack rolls to better the odds of landing a single crit, compared to a double.
I used a similar, if not the same formula.
I'm happy we get the same results.
Power attack should give a circumstance bonus to hit. The Martail classes in general don’t have any way to increase to hit. Currently the average chance to hit most creatures your level is around 40-60%. If power attack increased to hit, then you would be trading an attack/action for a better chance to actually land a hit plus an increased chance to crit.This is because of the new +10 crit rule. Adding a plus to your hit is like weapon focus and improved critical at the same time. Hence no weapon focus feat, a simple feat,yet gone.
Feats also rarely add much damage due to the magic weapon factor (increasing weapon cage dice instead of +1 to damage)
These two factors make martial feat design very tricky.
They really don't, you just have to use new math to figure it out compared to PF1.
The issue with the comparisons to PF1 with respect to the new crit system is that your crit chance most of the time for what's intended to be a sufficient build (+4 ability modifier to hit/damage) is typically only ever going to get you around 10-15% crit chance by looking at the actual AC numbers in the Bestiary we have.
Since crits always double, they must be compared to just making two or more attacks instead, and when your odds to crit on a primary are 15%, then your chance to land a hit on a secondary attack are only 10-15% worse than landing a regular hit.
Using the OP example, if I have a 55% chance to hit on a primary, and a 15% chance to crit on it, then on my secondary I'll have 40-45% chance to hit still, and betting on 45% chance to land a second hit is way better than betting on 15% chance for my primary attack to be a crit on its own.
Thus the math says it's always better to count on multiple attacks with respect to hits anyway. Any time you have to lose out on an attack to enhance a primary attack, a bonus is needed to make up for what you lose in simply not using that feat or ability, especially if the plan is to make sure everyone has to buy a bucket of dice to enjoy this edition of the game.
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What about when the enemy is dangerous to attack?
What about when you do a normal strike first and your options are power attack as 2nd and third action or normal attack twice more?
Power attack has the [open] trait and thus must be used as a primary attack, forcing any and all other attacks you make to be tertiary.
(looks it up)
Point is conceded.
What about when the enemy is dangerous to attack?
I need more context to answer this properly.
But my solution from doing math problems tells me that Power Attack should include a bonus to attack rolls, and improve your odds of landing a crit by somewhere between 10-15% thanks to the way the math distributes in order to balance its hypothetical damage weight, which might by virtue make the enemy less dangerous.
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If a creature deals damage to you when you hit it, hitting it becomes less of a complete gain. If it is a significant strike-back, being able to gather your damage in less hits becomes more valuable.
Find out how common this is and compare the statistical odds of running into it, at which levels you would, and power attacks potential damage value at those levels.
Conclusion: Using Power Attack is ALWAYS worse than just attacking twice, and this is true in all cases except at the very beginning of the game (and that's only without the spell Magic Weapon).
Nice analysis.
They definitely need to redesign power attack.