Power Shot Feat Tree

[Lord Iames Osari]

Power Shot [General]
By overdrawing and taking your bow to the breaking point, you can fire more powerful shots than normal from your bow.
Prerequisites: Point Blank Shot, Str 13.
Benefit: As a standard action, you may fire a single shot from your bow, subtracting a number from your ranged attack roll and adding the same number to your ranged damage roll. This number may not exceed your base attack bonus. This feat also allows you to use composite bows with a Strength bonus exceeding your own at no penalty to your attack roll.
Special: A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Improved Power Shot [General
You can fire an overdrawn shot with greater accuracy.
Prerequisites: Point Blank Shot, Power Shot, Str 13.
Benefit: When using Power Shot, you may fire a single shot from your bow, subtracting a number from your ranged attack roll and adding twice that number to your ranged damage roll. The penalty may not exceed your base attack bonus.
Special: A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Rapid Power Shot [General]
You have become so adept at overdrawing your bow that you can now do so while firing multiple shots in quick succession.
Prerequisites: Point Blank Shot, Power Shot, Rapid Shot, Str 13.
Benefit: When making a full attack with a bow, you may choose to subtract a number from all ranged attack rolls and add the same number to all ranged damage rolls. This number may not exceed your base attack bonus.
Special: If you have Improved Power Shot, then the damage bonus is double the penalty to attack rolls. The penalty to attack rolls still cannot exceed your base attack bonus.
Special: A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

It's like Power Attacking for rangey-types.

[Haruspex]

I can understand Power Shot and Rapid Power Shot. But Improved Power Shot I'm not so sure about. Does "bow" include composite versions?

[Lord Iames Osari]

By "bow" I mean any bow that isn't a crossbow. So yes, composite versions are included.

And Improved Power Shot is basically like Leap Attack.

[FoeHammer]

Just a little fluff mishap. As someone who does archery, holding the bowstring back dosen't improve your shot enough to provide any real benefit. maybe something along the lines of 'By learning how to take your bow to it's breaking point ...' would fit more into reality. (Wait, this is D&D...Oh, well)

[Lord Iames Osari]

Oops. My mistake.

[FoeHammer]

No problem.

[Lord Iames Osari]

But mechanically, you don't see any problems?

[adanedhel9]

I've done something similar for my games... but is there a reason that this is three feats for the same effect at range as one feat in melee? Yes, Power Attack is possibly too good for a single feat. But (assuming that you haven't changed Power Attack) I don't see any reason why you shouldn't offer the same option to archers (or any other ranged combatant, for that matter) as you do to the melee combatants.

[Lord Iames Osari]

Well, there really isn't a ranged analog to the distinction between one-handed and two-handed weapons. Improved Power Shot is meant to be a ranged equivalent to Leap Attack. I suppose I could get rid of Rapid Power Shot and let Power Shot work with full attacks...

[Yakk]

What if it let you draw arrows on an over-strength bow and gain the benefit?

...

Instead of Power Shot, why not Called Shot? Same mechanics -- less chance of hitting for increased damage when it hits, but instead of being based off of Str it is based off of Dex.

...

Are you aiming to replicate Power Attack, or create a balanced feat? Cap the player at -Dex to hit as well as -BaB for a less likely to be abused version.

...

Rather than the "Flurry of Arrows" thing of Rapid Power Shot, what if we did something mechanically very similar yet very different in flavor.

"Perfect Called Shot":
Requires Improved Called Shot.

By taking a full-round action, you can make a perfect called shot. You lose your Dex bonus to hit and gain twice your Dex bonus to damage. This shot automatically threatens an x2 critical.

If you confirm your critical and you have at least +6 BaB, you may consume 5 points of BaB and roll to re-confirm, repeating until you miss or run out of BaB. Each re confirmation increases your critical damage multiplier by x1.

...

This creates "almost" a BaB iteration, implemented in a single perfectly placed arrow that does insane damage.

It also is workable with "slow load" weapons like crossbows.

[FoeHammer]

But mechanically, you don't see any problems?


No everything looks great crunch-wise.

[Lord Iames Osari]

What if it let you draw arrows on an over-strength bow and gain the benefit?
Hmmm. I'll think about it.

Instead of Power Shot, why not Called Shot? Same mechanics -- less chance of hitting for increased damage when it hits, but instead of being based off of Str it is based off of Dex.
Meh. The thing with called shots is, players will want to say "I I aim for his eyes" or "I shoot at his nads". Called shots just don't work with D&D, IMO.

Are you aiming to replicate Power Attack, or create a balanced feat? Cap the player at -Dex to hit as well as -BaB for a less likely to be abused version.
Well, Power Attack suffers from accumulated exploitations in the form of Leap Attack and Shock Trooper, especially the latter. I don't think these feats, by themselves, are particularly overpowering.

Rather than the "Flurry of Arrows" thing of Rapid Power Shot, what if we did something mechanically very similar yet very different in flavor.

"Perfect Called Shot":
Requires Improved Called Shot.

By taking a full-round action, you can make a perfect called shot. You lose your Dex bonus to hit and gain twice your Dex bonus to damage. This shot automatically threatens an x2 critical.

If you confirm your critical and you have at least +6 BaB, you may consume 5 points of BaB and roll to re-confirm, repeating until you miss or run out of BaB. Each re confirmation increases your critical damage multiplier by x1.

...

This creates "almost" a BaB iteration, implemented in a single perfectly placed arrow that does insane damage.

It also is workable with "slow load" weapons like crossbows.

Hmmm. This has possibilities that I like. I may adapt it, if you don't mind.

[paigeoliver]

These are simply too good. There is a reason why the D&D rules don't have "Power archery" in them to begin with. A melee fighter has to move to close with his enemies before power attacking. An archer doesn't.

Archers are already mildly superior all around to melee fighters, however they are usually very weak against opponents with DR. This tree not only removes that problem it exaggerates the archers general power.

A decent archer who wins initiative can already basically assassinate an equal level wizard. With this they can get most other fighters as well.

Plus proper archers (fighters, not rangers) have plenty of feats to take this tree.

Assuming these are supposed to be fighter bonus feats (if they exist than they should be), then archers will have them plenty early.

Class, fighter, human

1. Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot.
2. Weapon Focus.
3. Power Shot.
4. Weapon Spec.
6. Improved Power Shot, Rapid Power Shot.
8 Weapon Mastery.

I play archers a lot. My living greyhawk archer (just hit 9th), regularly needs to roll a 2 or better to hit with her last arrow. I could easily be power shotting for 5 each round with no effective loss of accuracy, but now I am doing 30 (40 hasted) extra damage per round.

Halfling version of this has to wait until 9th level but look at the damage under normal circumstances for that level (hasted).

Halfling Fighter 9, Dex 22, STR 16, +3 bow.
Hit bonus +9 BAB, +6 dex, +1 halfling, +1 point blank, +3 enhancement, +1 focus, +2 mastery, +2 haste = +25 to hit.

Now, normally a halfling archer of this level wouldn't be able to output feats to damage in any meaningful way (exception of barbarian level and extra rage with higher str bow).

Normally he would fire 4 arrows at +23, +23, +23, +18 for 1d6+11 each. Likely hitting with all of them for an average damage of 55 damage. Kills any 9th level wizard with less than 18 con.

But, with these feats that same archer can now fire 4 arrows at +18, +18, +18, +13 for 1d6+21 each. Still statistically likely to hit with all of them, but even with one missing the average damage is 73 per round. Killing any 9th level wizard with less than 22 con. Killing any 9th level rogue/bard with less than 20 con, killing any 9th level cleric/ranger with less than 18 con, killing any 9th level fighter with less than 16 con. If that 4th arrow hits it kills any character of the same level that isn't a hit point build.

The average damage isn't the problem, as it is easy to make a fighter build that can do way more than that. The problem is the ability to put that damage wherever you want, round after round without ever having to worry about moving or getting less than a full attack action.

When coming up with new fighting stuff I generally see if it allows me to easily make an otherwise BALANCED character capable of killing most equivalent characters with a full attack action. If so, then the new stuff is too powerful.

I haven't run the numbers, but feel of the pants tells me that this will get more and more unbalancing as the levels go higher.