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Power Attack is literally fine.
I had a fighter with snagging strike and a gunslinger with fake out in one party, turned out to be more interactive and engaging than double slicing,Seems to heavily depend on a specific combination though. Sudden charge is always useful, no matter the party.
Snagging Strike just needs a moderately decent party, but Sudden Charge is the one that can be useless. Static fights or fights without sufficient space or enemy spread to need the extra movement speed are fairly common, at least in my experience. That said, the situations where you really want Sudden Charge are also not exactly uncommon.
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Sudden charge is both a really cool feat , and a secret TPK engine at the same time. “Hey look I can race across the battlefield faster than anyone else in the party!” Has created a lot of spiraling encounters in games I have seen. I agree it doesn’t have to be, and is a great feat, but it is also pretty much “Leeroy Jenkins” the feat. It’s ability to be used badly is pretty close to on par with power attack’s ability to be used badly.
The biggest difference is that narratively, sudden charge does exactly what it seems like it should, while power attack is only situationally the most powerful attack. I get that the answer is “rolling dice is fun”but it is a little silly that “Attack MOAR!” Is the default option over aim or be intentional or calculating with your attacks in PF2 across the board. Like everyone will tell you that attacking as much as possible is not a great strategy in PF2, but attacking 3 times is the easiest thing to do and in numbers is incredibly effective as long as you can still crit on a 20. It is the strategy NPCs and monsters are pretty much expected to use and “aim” to be more accurate with you attack is not something any characters can do by default.
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After seeing a level 3 barbarian perform a suicide charge against a jungle drake (that was right after them in initiative) after winning initiative I don't think it's that great. It wasn't too useful when I ran Abomination Vaults either. Power attack is fine, does exactly what is written on the tin.
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Sudden Charge is a great bang for your buck feat. Almost always worth picking up given it is only a level 1 feat.
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All the problems people have listed above get solved just by exercising a bit of prudence and restraint. Sudden Charge and then stride halfway between them and your party; they now have to waste one action getting back to you, potentially more if you invested in movement speed. Charge forward then stride to the side and now they have to choose between engaging your teammates or chasing after you.
Even past round 1, it's amazing if you need to reposition unless you have a better Flourish for the situation, because the extra Stride guarantees you'll be able to outmaneuver anything in close proximity. Weave between enemy ranks without having to deal with enemy reactions or hazardous terrain, go in deep to destroy high priority targets, use it to set up flanks for free, that kind of stuff.
It's incredibly versatile turn to turn, which makes it fun to boot.
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Yes. Some players do not understand right away how teamwork is important in PF2. That is not the feat's doing though.
The feat is still a staple for those who can access it. Far more than Snagging Strike IME.
It is not at the level of AoO, but it is not that far behind.
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I think calling it "metagaming", even, is a bit harsh. In-character, it's your characters coordinating their attacks--making eye contact, raising their swords in unison, that sort of thing.
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Trying to train my players, especially after so long playing with a 5e gm who discourages people making tactics because discussing in combat what to do is metagaming, that it's ok to strategise and plan and I'm encouraging them to do so has definitely been a thing.
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The PCs have been fighting alongside each other for a while. The fighter has probably learned to tell when the rogue wants to flank.
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Not everyone plays S.W.A.T. simulator were everyone knows exactly what to do when entering a building.
I mean we're talking about experienced adventurers having a modicum of coordination in a wargame adjacent tabletop. Not really that big of a deal that players might want to use some teamwork.
Also "training your players" sounds awful.
How is learning to play a game awful?
Guy's just trying to get their players to strategize together and play more tactically, maybe "training" isn't the nicest-sounding word but it's still a form of conditioning if you think about it. Delaying or playing around initiative orders with things like Ready isn't metagaming - it's part of the game, even if initiative is an abstraction. Nothing wrong with people taking a high lethality game seriously; it's part of what makes the game exciting if you ask me.
As for the coordination bit, in my experience that can clearly be a case of "my character would know better than me". Like a trained adventurer knowing to walk with their weapon at the ready in hostile or dangerous territory, or knowing to keep a lit lantern on their person when it might be needed.
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Yeah, coordination is a part of PF2, and teaching your fellow players how to play PF2? That's just, like, providing a good introduction to the game.
Teaching might be a better word then.
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I think it's silly to seize on wording choices and use them to read the user in the worst faith possible, honestly. I wish this community didn't have so much of that.
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Thanks, I appreciate you folk for not assuming I wasnt just playing a game with my friends and trying to help them have a better time because of a single word usage on a semi silly post.
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I was not saying that they were bad, I was saying the choice of words was strange. No idea how you all took it as me saying they were bad.
Also, again, not everyone is playing trained adventurers (which is the equivalent of mercenary S.W.A.T.). A group that is playing as a group of strangers that happened to have a common goal. A group of newbies that is just starting to get their bearings. A group that learned to fight, but never learned to coordinate.
There are many ways to play. Not saying that teamwork is bad, but that absolutely needing teamwork is bad.
The issue is that PF2 was built around being a tactically rich game where teamwork and tactics are all but required to beat tougher encounters. You can't really escape the fact that even at level 1 a group that can't work as a team is going to struggle.
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Players that want to play a group of strangers who don’t know each other is totally possible in PF2. The issue is how long does that last? We don’t play out our characters whole lives. They spends many hours/days/years doing things behind the scenes, and” talking about what just happened in that fight that nearly killed us” has to be one of them right?
Also, a good tactical game would expect four level 1 PCs who are supposed to not know each other and struggle to be much less capable and efficient than a team of 4 PCs who grew up training together. A GM needs to be aware of this because tactics are pretty consistently a 3 to 6 level swing in encounter difficulty (positive and negative modifiers). Tactical proficiency is a player skill, not a character skill. If NPCs are consistently going to played at a higher tactical level than the party, then the game difficulty increases immensely. This is a GM player skill to figure out as well and takes as much time to develop as players developing tactical skills.
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People heading into combat like to know who they're working with and that they can operate tactically and do their part to win. I don't see why a fantasy RPG would be any different.
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Popping back in to say again power attack is fun bc rolling lots of dice is fun. Great feat, don't change a thing! If it was 100 percent of the time optimal smooth brains like me would continue to have stagnant turns AND be powergaming.
Power Attack was never a designed to be a better Strike but a strong damage strike at cost of something.
During 3.5 Power Attacks was a trade-off some number of attack bonus for same number of damage bonus. In PF1 it was improved to be 1 to 2 giving +2 dmg for each -1 attack. This makes it works situationally good depending from your opponent AC due the high delta of AC of different enemies with same CR in these editions. So basically power attacks are more effective vs opponents with very low AC where your hit rate is high enough.
In PF2 this high AC variation basically gone (only slimes have very low AC now) and the critic depends from your hit-rate. So the trade-off is now in the form of number of actions instead making Power Attack useful against opponents with physical resistance instead and when you get Furious Focus.
My point is that it was never designed to be just a stronger strike since the very beginning but an option to benefit against some opponents and situations.
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We House Ruled a "fix":
- Power Attack becomes a clear upgrade, not a mere occasionnal sidegrade, and remains useful at all levels.
- Assumed that it will be used relatively regularly, too.
We changed it to:
Power Attack: <> (1 Action)
Traits: Barbarian, Fighter, Flourish, Press.
In order to deal a mightier blow, you gain momentum to push your strength beyond its limits, focusing everything on offense to the detriment of defense. However, this leaves you momentarily reeling and unbalanced.
- Make a Strike with a melee weapon wielded in two hands. That attack loses any potential Precision Damage.
- The attack's base damage adds twice your Strength bonus instead of addding it only once. Note that for Critical Hits, this is added before the doubling of the total weapon damage.
- Until your next turn, you become Clumsy 2.
It's funny because your "fix" accomplishes none of your stated goals. Giving yourself Clumsy 2 on Press in return for 4-7 flat damage (and also disabling precision damage) is so insanely bad that I'd take it on maybe the Giant Barbarian at most (because they're clumsy 1 anyways), and it'd stop seeing use very quickly.
... Ranged Fighting Style gets Point Blank Shot: Also a *very* nice upgrade. +2 to hit with all of your preferred fighting style attacks...
Um... it's a static, non-scaling +2 circumstance bonus to damage, not to hit.
Exacting Strike is a very good feat for a 2 handed fighter that is a pure upgrade. I don't understand why Power Attach would be seen as "the 2 hander feat" when it is just fine on 1 handed finesse builds.
Exacting Strike is a very good feat for a 2 handed fighter that is a pure upgrade. I don't understand why Power Attach would be seen as "the 2 hander feat" when it is just fine on 1 handed finesse builds.
Why do people love Exacting Strike so much? It seems so boring.
I can see how would somewhat useful in reducing the third attack option, but it doesn't work with Haste and a lot of the time that third action is moving or doing something else.
Is there something I'm missing? It mainly looks good for a third attack if you miss the second attack and still have an action to spend on it.
Exacting strike works fine with haste, you can just regular strike with your first attack or your last attack, plus some times you need to move. It isn’t a “use every round” feat, but when you just want to attack as much as possible, it is a great feat. It pairs well with backswing too.
It definitely isn’t a 2 handed weapon only feat, but neither is sudden charge or power attack.
Exacting Strike is a very good feat for a 2 handed fighter that is a pure upgrade. I don't understand why Power Attach would be seen as "the 2 hander feat" when it is just fine on 1 handed finesse builds.Why do people love Exacting Strike so much? It seems so boring.
I can see how would somewhat useful in reducing the third attack option, but it doesn't work with Haste and a lot of the time that third action is moving or doing something else.
Is there something I'm missing? It mainly looks good for a third attack if you miss the second attack and still have an action to spend on it.
Basically due whiteroom math!
Exacting Strike is the first feat to give some math advantage to melee two-handed fighters once it allows to try a failed 2rd action Strike again using your 3rd action.
Outside the whiteroom it isn't that good because you need all your 3-actions to use it so if you need to use an action to do anything more like move you are unable to use it.
In practice probably Intimidating Strike is more efficient once its effects helps the entire party and don't improve the MAP at same time that avoid MAD.
I have a player who likes Lunge too. He says that with a reach weapon this prevented him to waste actions moving (and in practice this really happened many times).
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I mean, the vast majority of fighter feats are situational feats. For situations where attacking three times is possible, having exacting strike makes spending three actions attacking with a Meteor hammer a nice option. Fighters get enough feats to have situational options.
A 2 hander with Knockdown, exacting strike, sudden charge and sweep is never going to use all of their options in every combat, but there is going to be very few situations where they don't have a great attack option lined up when the situation calls for it. I often found my fighter standing next to an already prone enemy at the start of my turn and then why I am not going to attack 3 times?
Wait, isn't a power attack fighter the standard when it comes to dps? I have heard that that is what people use for a baseline damage.
No and as I said before it never was since the very beginning in D&D 3.0, sacrifice hit rate to get some more damage only worth when your opponent AC was very low. So Power Attack ever was situational.
Now in PF2 its a good alternative to deal damage vs opponents with physical resistances once that do multiple Strikes will trigger the resistance multiple times. But after level 6 if you get Furious Focus it really becomes a real Strike dmg boost.So why is it considered bad now?
Because some people sometimes thinks that because the feat has Power in its name means that it's necessarily better than Strike twice what isn't true in most cases.
Well, mathematically even vs resistance (which are rare if you campare % to monster number) there won't be much damage difference FF PA->Strike vs Strike->Exacting Strike->X simply due to statistical chance for second attack missing in both cases. Yes, IF FF PA and Strike both hits it will net better result, obviously. But that's not how statistic works. Throughout the whole campaign/adventures you will overall have always better result with Exacting Strike. Not only that but PA loses more to Exacting Strike the further you go from D12 die + the more damage property runes you add (as PA doesn't scale with those, while number of attacks do). So even resistance argument does not help PA ON AVERAGE.I think Power Attack just allows fighter PCs to better punch through an enemy's resistances. It works as intended, so no need for errata.
The fact that every other fighting style has a "defining feat" may or may not be true, but that sort of symmetry isn't a design principle of 2E. For example, there's INT- and WIS-based prepared casters, but no CHA-based prepared casters.
This type of thinking of what ruins ttrpgs for me
When statistics trump sense
Well, mathematically even vs resistance (which are rare if you campare % to monster number) there won't be much damage difference FF PA->Strike vs Strike->Exacting Strike->X simply due to statistical chance for second attack missing in both cases. Yes, IF FF PA and Strike both hits it will net better result, obviously. But that's not how statistic works. Throughout the whole campaign/adventures you will overall have always better result with Exacting Strike. Not only that but PA loses more to Exacting Strike the further you go from D12 die + the more damage property runes you add (as PA doesn't scale with those, while number of attacks do). So even resistance argument does not help PA ON AVERAGE.I think Power Attack just allows fighter PCs to better punch through an enemy's resistances. It works as intended, so no need for errata.
The fact that every other fighting style has a "defining feat" may or may not be true, but that sort of symmetry isn't a design principle of 2E. For example, there's INT- and WIS-based prepared casters, but no CHA-based prepared casters.
This type of thinking of what ruins ttrpgs for me
When statistics trump sense
Then the options that "make sense" ought to be correctly tuned so that they are the best option when it logically makes sense to use them.
Wait, isn't a power attack fighter the standard when it comes to dps? I have heard that that is what people use for a baseline damage.
So why is it considered bad now?
I also agree with the others. Sure you can potentially more damage from attacking 3 times with exacting stike. But the probability of you hitting 3 times in a row is lower than only hitting once (or twice). It like flipping heads 3 times in a row.
It was the standard for melee damage in Pathfinder 1st Edition. Not second edition. And the second edition version doesn't really resemble it at all.
PF2 Power Attack has specific niche uses like helping you get through high DR or when you have a low attack bonus relative to enemy AC.
But in general, making two normal strikes will deal more damage on average. That's probably why people consider it to be bad now, because it's not an always on damage booster like the previous version. Now you have to think about when it's useful. People don't like that.
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The only errata Power Attack might need is a name change, both to avoid potential OGL nonsense (it's such a generic name that I doubt it'd be an issue anyways, but maybe Paizo already changed it out of an abundance of caution) and to better communicate what its purpose is so people don't feel disappointed that it isn't good at things it was never meant to be good at. It's meant to work around resistances or otherwise exploit temporary buffs or opportunities that only impact a single Strike, it's not meant to be (nor does 2e's design goals permit) a general bread-and-butter attack that you try to do as much as possible. The only exception to this general design principle is the Flurry Ranger.
The only "buff" I'd offer to 2h builds is more feat options at level 1 that are maybe generically good to better exploit that they don't really need any feats to work well. Maybe feats that explicitly only work well with 2h non-reach weapons and not 2h reach weapons, since the drop from d12 to d10 damage IMO isn't by itself enough to compensate for the many advantages reach grants you. Reach fighters are really the most visible "OP" end of the current Pathfinder meta whose only real drawback is the very slight damage nerf relative to non-reach weapons and the lack of a martial d10 hammer or flail reach weapon, since stunlocking with that crit effect is so powerful. But since the latter is confirmed as being nerfed into something far more reasonable, I could see an argument that a Fighter feat to make taking a greatsword or greataxe be a bit better would make some sense. Maybe in the form of feats that temporarily grant you Reach that won't stack with existing Reach weapons.
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Two strikes dealing more damage *ON AVERAGE* is the huge qualifying bit there. If you maintain a spreadsheet across your entire campaign bc final metrics mean the world to you then yes you might say "aww shucks power attack isn't 100 percent optimal and is therefore trash". However, in the real world where plenty of turns have only one of your strikes hittings, then that power attack has the intended reward of letting you roll oodles of dice and flooding your brain with endorphins from BIG DAMAGE NUMBAHS as God intended. I had a blast with my great sword precision ranger power attacking and commanding their pet