Alternate uses to power attack?

[TheCrowing1432]

Ive made my fair share of uberchargers before and I well know the use of power attack.

But I often see its a recommended build on things that arent planning on going the shock trooper route.

Are there other uses of power attack? Because dropping your to hit for damage seems like a bad idea from what i can tell.

[Red Fel]

Ive made my fair share of uberchargers before and I well know the use of power attack.

But I often see its a recommended build on things that arent planning on going the shock trooper route.

Are there other uses of power attack? Because dropping your to hit for damage seems like a bad idea from what i can tell.

There are a lot of ways to increase your to-hit. There are upper thresholds, beyond which additional to-hit is useless. But as a melee, if your primary build function is damage output, DPR is everything. There's no such thing as too much damage. So you want to maximize your damage. Power Attack does that. There are any number of ways you can overcome the to-hit penalty, but the damage bonus is too valuable for you to waste.

That's a major reason that, as a rule, any non-TWF melee build should probably include PA, almost as a feat tax. If you're not TWFing, you're better off two-handing a weapon (frankly, if you are TWFing, you're still better off two-handing), and if you're two-handing a weapon, the bonus of PA is one of the more substantial damage boosts you can grab.

[TheCrowing1432]

There are a lot of ways to increase your to-hit. There are upper thresholds, beyond which additional to-hit is useless. But as a melee, if your primary build function is damage output, DPR is everything. There's no such thing as too much damage. So you want to maximize your damage. Power Attack does that. There are any number of ways you can overcome the to-hit penalty, but the damage bonus is too valuable for you to waste.

That's a major reason that, as a rule, any non-TWF melee build should probably include PA, almost as a feat tax. If you're not TWFing, you're better off two-handing a weapon (frankly, if you are TWFing, you're still better off two-handing), and if you're two-handing a weapon, the bonus of PA is one of the more substantial damage boosts you can grab.

Besides True Strike and increasing your relevant stat (Dex or Str)

How many other ways are there to increase your to hit, while using power attack without dropping your to hit past relevant levels?

[eggynack]

PA does increase your damage some, even without shock trooper. How much depends on a lot of factors. Here be a power attack calculator (http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/power/).

[Kelb_Panthera]

Too many to name. I think person_man has a compilation thread somewhere.

Even when you start to dig into your to-hit, which can easily exceed the point where you only miss on a 1, with PA the potential damage gained often exceeds the potential damage lost by the reduction in accuracy.

[A_S]

The most common way I see for PC's to get into "AB = +(who cares it hits)" territory is to find some way to convert their attacks into touch attacks. Touch AC's for most opponents are ridiculously low, and don't really increase much at all with higher CR's. If you have Wraithstrike or similar up, you're going to have plenty of spare AB to throw into Power Attack.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Well lets start with the basics. Your vanilla Melee-Man will have BaB=HD. Which means you always have HD worth of boni to drop for HDx2 worth of damage. Your vanilla Melee-Man likley has Strength as his first or second best stat. Lets pin that at a range of 16 to 25 on the low end from 1st to 20th. Higher range can be gained, but lets use this lower bound for a typical, non-cheesy Vanilla Melee-Man. Thats between +3 and +7, which grants not only +6 to +14 from Power Attack, but also flat +4 to +10 from being Strength to begin with. Then you have your weapon, which will scale from +1 to +5 between level 2 (about when most Vanilla Melee-Men grab at least a Masterwork if not +1 weapon) to level 20 where you either have a +5 weapon or get yours enchanted to that level by the Cleric or Wizard. And if your going really unoptimized, Weapon Focus is another +1.

Thats, between a to-hit of +6, easy, at level 2. All the way up to +32 at level 20. Both not even going into the more obscure or less consistent sources. Know, I now some enemies, at level 20, require that whole +32. Pit fiend, I'm looking at you.

Haste is another +1. Bardic Inspiration is +2 (or more, I can't remember). Flanking can be another +2. True strike, as you mentioned, is +20 which means it's "Full-Power Attack in a Spell". And any numerous spells that are castable on others that you can ask your friendly Full Caster to buff you with. Or just Gish. Gishing is good.

[Red Fel]

Mesi touched on one of the easiest: your weapon. Every melee worth his feats has at least one melee weapon with a big number attached to a plus sign. Remember that the enhancement bonus of a weapon is applied to both attack rolls and damage rolls.

So let's imagine you're in an ideal world and you have a +5, two-handed weapon. That's +5 to hit, +5 damage. Then let's say we subtract 5 for Power Attack purposes. Your to-hit is now a wipe - you lose the +5 from your weapon, but you still have your BAB and any other modifiers. You then add twice that (+10) to your already improved (+5) weapon damage, for a total of +15. No net loss, massive net gain.

And everyone else is right. There are so many ways to increase your BAB, from buffs to feats to specific enhancements to myriad other bonuses. There are also ways to decrease the target's AC - as A_S mentioned, using touch attacks is pretty awesome. Your teammates may also have ways to debuff the enemy, making him an easier target. And when you're targeting a lower number, do you really need all that extra to-hit?

Think about it this way. Say you're fighting a Dragon, Elemental, or other massive sack of hit points. If you exceed its AC by a grotesque amount instead of a slight amount, what happens? Nothing. If you deal 50 damage instead of 25, though, what happens? (Aside from nothing unless you one-shot it?) Shorter fight. Damage means something, and when damage is all you do, no number should be wasted. And let's be clear - any to-hit in substantial excess of the target AC is wasted. And AC doesn't scale well. To-hit skyrockets, and AC does not; having a way to channel that soon-to-be-useless excess to-hit into the always-valuable category of "and now your liver is decorating that tree" is efficient, dagnabbit.

All melees should be efficient. It's just good adventuring.

[OldTrees1]

Ive made my fair share of uberchargers before and I well know the use of power attack.

But I often see its a recommended build on things that arent planning on going the shock trooper route.

Are there other uses of power attack? Because dropping your to hit for damage seems like a bad idea from what i can tell.

Yes. Power Attacking for 1 allows Large/Powerful Build PCs to knock their foes back(via the Knockback feat)

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Get the feat Knock-Back in Races of Stone, when you power attack for at least -2 you get a free bull rush on anyone you hit, and add your PA bonus damage to the check. Get armbands of might and it adds +2 to Str checks such as bull rush, and when you power attack for at least -2 they increase your damage from power attacking by an additional two points. So that item makes your -2 power attack add +6 damage and +8 bull rush when using knock-back.

Wraithstrike is a 2nd level spell that makes all your melee attacks resolve as melee touch attacks, so you ignore your opponents' armor, shield, and natural armor bonuses. Since that's most of a given opponent's AC, you can power attack for your full BAB and still easily hit. You can get that on a wand and put it in a wand chamber on your weapon, per Rules Compendium the activation time of a wand is the same as the spell's casting time which in this case is a swift action. A single level in anything that gets that on its spell list, such as Wizard, Sorcerer, or even Spellthief, can use a wand of that without any problems. If you're casting it normally you can use Persistent Spell to make it last all day, or just (Lesser Rod of) Extend Spell so it lasts two rounds instead of just one. Note that spontaneously cast spells with metamagic applied only have their casting times increased if the normal casting time is a standard action or longer, swift action spells like Wraithstrike don't get their casting time increased when you use (Lesser Rod of) Extend Spell on a spontaneous caster such as a Sorcerer. There are tons of ways to add Persistent Spell to one of your buffs without paying the normal spell slot increase, such as an Illumian with the Naenhoon runeword, or using a class feature of Spelldancer or Incantatrix. A Cleric can even use Anyspell from the Spell domain to cast that and make it Persistent.

[Tohsaka Rin]

Deep Impact is a psionic feat that makes one melee attack roll resolve as a touch attack.

It's part of the Psionic Strike tree, and isn't too hard to get, if you take a psionic race/class. Heck, if you have a couple feats to spare, you can waive those requirements too.

I won't lie though, without being naturally psionic, it does hurt to get.

Worth it to be able to drop a touch attack every round/2 rounds, ad infinitum, though.

EDIT: Best of all, you can basically laugh at an anti-magic field. You're PSIONIC, HAH!

[*.*.*.*]

EDIT: Best of all, you can basically laugh at an anti-magic field. You're PSIONIC, HAH!

Transparency is the default rule, if memory serves

[Essence_of_War]

Deep Impact is a psionic feat that makes one melee attack roll resolve as a touch attack.


The "Emerald Razor" maneuver basically lets you do this trick as well. A warblade you could use it every other round if they recover between (during which they're still allowed to make regular attacks!).

[Flickerdart]

Power Attack is great when combined with a rapier-wielding Arcane Duelist, since you are basically getting free BAB damage. It's also very handy for a bull rushing build since you can add the number you PA for to your STR check with a feat.

[frost890]

The others summed it up but you do not always need the attack bonus. Not everything you face will have a high AC. If you knock out the wizard before he can web/blast you it is better then taking the damage. I dont know about pathfinder but in 3.0/3.5 casters need to make a check dc VS damage delt, making the dc higher always helps you.

[Flickerdart]

I dont know about pathfinder but in 3.0/3.5 casters need to make a check dc VS damage delt, making the dc higher always helps you.
That only matters when they provoke an AoO and you hit them, though. If they move away or cast defensively, PA doesn't help at all.