Vital Strike Changes

[PretzelCoatl]

Hi, all,

So I have a player in my game that's using a vital strike build, and I was a little prepared to be more worried than I turned out to be. The character is pushing about the max damage he can for a guy with a big weapon, as far as I can tell, and while his damage numbers are "big" and "scary", on a per round basis he doesn't actually do more damage than the rogue or monk. He just does so a little more reliably, since he has more accuracy, and more often, since he doesn't have to worry about full attacks (except for when the monk does dimensional dervish).

The main thing that bothers me about this is that the player had to pour in a lot of his feat/money resources to accomplish this: i.e., being mostly on par with or a little ahead of the other melee classes. Specifically, what bothers me is that this feat chain is low-middling useful in 95% of builds and potentially game breaking in a very small number of them (again, the character in question isn't game breaking; the feat just has the potential for it), which runs counter to the spirit of the feat, I think.

When I look at the feat, I see it as a being intended to be a solid option for moving and making an attack, during the many-and-odd rounds when a full attack isn't permitted, rather than being the focus of builds. The idea is, I feel, that you can get more damage than normal on your single attack, though never as much as you could with a full attack, and I feel that the implementation of the feat falls short of this mark.

What I'm wondering about is if anyone has ever played around with ideas on rejiggering this feat to make it more useful for that kind of scenario.
I was specifically playing around with a few ideas, if no one else has experimented with this before, and I'd love some feedback.

Option 1) Each tier of vital strike increases the damage of the standard attack by a percentage. I was thinking 25%.
For example, a normal strike does 1d8+12 (average 16). A vital strike would do 2d8+12 (average 21). This new version would do (1d8+12)x1.25 (average 20).
At improved, it would be +75% damage, so a RAW vital strike does 4d8+12 (average 30), and this would do (1d8+12)x1.75 (average 28).

The idea here is that the the dice used seem to be the reason that VS builds get wonky at higher levels. Large amounts of dice being multiplied create a rapidly escalating effect. By shrinking the multiplier and applying it to the entire attack, we get a scenario where the resulting effect is stronger than a single attack, but doesn't have the exploding dice phenomenon of an intelligent cannon golem.


Option 2) Same as above, but 50% per feat.


Option 3) Change vital strike's feat tax substantially, and limit its ability to scale and multiply off large weapons, such that it reads as follows:

Vital Strike (Combat)

You make a single attack that deals significantly more damage than normal.

Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +6.

Benefit: When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage. Roll the weapon’s damage dice for the attack twice and add the results together before adding bonuses from Strength, weapon abilities (such as flaming), precision-based damage, and other damage bonuses. These extra weapon damage dice are not multiplied on a critical hit, but are added to the total. You may only add a maximum of 2d6 to the damage roll when using this feat.

At BAB +11, you instead roll the weapon's damage dice three times, and the maximum that can be added to the damage roll is 4d6. At BAB +16, you roll the weapon's damage dice four times, and the maximum that can be added to the damage roll is 6d6.


Option 4) I dunno, something else? I'm very much open to suggestions here, these are just the thoughts that hit me in the moment. Again, my goal here is to reduce, at least by a little bit, the feeling players have of being chained to a full attack and to make this feat a viable option without requiring it to be the sole focus of a character's life.

[pabelfly]

I'd be wary of playing with the mechanics of Vital Strike. As the player gets more effective size increases, which they can achieve as they gain more levels or gain more money to invest, the damage from Vital Strike can ramp up considerably.

My question is, is the player happy with their character? If they're happy, I'd think about whether you need to make any changes. Some players don't mind simpler or slightly weaker characters as long as they get to play the character they want to play and they feel like they're contributing in combat, even if they're not the star player of the game.

From what I can see, it sounds like the problem isn't the damage of the build, but not having much else beyond their attack style. Other ways around this might be giving them a second weapon, since any weapon will work with Vital Strike. If you want them to have stuff to do out-of-combat, you could give them an innate bonus to intelligence so they have more skill ranks, or an option to change the base stat if you want to boost one of their saves, or other stuff in a similar vein.

[ciopo]

Vital strike only increasing the weapon damage is kinda what keeps it form overshadowing full attacking.

A neat way to preserve that but make it more appealing, I feel, would be letting it multiplying everything, EXCEPT the bonus from power attack/ deadly aim / pirhana strike

Or if you want to get weird, make vital strike increase the damage bonus from PA/DA/PS when full attacking, that way it's a bit of a wash?

that becomes much more homebrewey tho.


gut feeling, i would go with the 50/100/150% increases and increasing everything except PA/DA/PS damage

so at 6th level, if a normal PA attack is 2d6+10+6, a vital strike would be 3d6+15+6 (31.5), whereas a full attack would be 4d6+32, assuming everything hits

Hell, I'm even tempted to say keep it at 100/200/300 , just exclude PA/DA/PS.

Or other combination, like only multiplying STR(/DEX/PRIMARY ABILITY MODIFIER) bonus but not "other" bonuses to damage, that way "on the sheet" it's relatively simply to write down, since "as before" the only temporary combat buff that would impact it are changes to STR, which 99% of the time means getting enlarged, just as it was before.

I think I convinced myself to go from "multiply weapon damage" to "multiply weapon damage and ABILITYMOD bonus", so that's my feedback to you as how you could buff it to be more in line with full attack, without having to warp playstyle around it

[Kitsuneymg]

Make improved and greater VS feats part of the base feat. As in you get the for free when you hit the requisite bab.

There. Done. Now VS is a single feat option that adds an alternate action to a character without requiring dedicating too much to the build.

If you don’t like this and still want more, then go look at Spheres of Might and play with that system. (It can be divorced from the rest of the Spheres system easily enough.) Sure, lancer is busted, but that’s about the only truly broken thing about it.

For reference: SoM uses the attack action almost exclusively. It adds alternate attack actions that all stack with vital strike, but usually adds riders and BFC options instead of just raw damage. It does not beat full attack damage potential, but adds a lot more to do with martial characters than trying to get full attacks off.

[Rynjin]

In 1st party you will never find a way to make Vital Strike "gamebreaking" outside of Mythic Vital Strike. Unless you're using Mythic, then, Vital Strike will always be subpar. Put that concern aside.

If you want some quick mafs, here's the strongest baseline Vital Strike build I can think of, circa level 12 or so. So you have Vital Strike and Improved Vital Strike. Devastating Strike. Power Attack. All three Shikigami Style Feats, plus Catch Off Guard and Improvised Weapon Mastery. Find a way to be treated as a size category larger for the weapons you wield (in 1st party Tieflings can potentially do this).

You lug around an improvised weapon with a baseline 3d6 damage. It is treated as three size categories larger, boosting its damage to 8d6. Slap an Enlarge Person on, and you're getting a whopping 12d6 out of it. Add Str (let's call it a 24, for +10 damage) and Power Attack (-4/+12), plus Devastating Strike (+4) and the enhancement bonus from Shikigami Manipulation (around a +3 at this level).

That is a massive, insane, 36d6+29 damage. Golly!

Anyway, on average that is 155 damage. That's basically the maximum you can eke out of Vital Strike, the very ceiling. And it relies on random chance in character creation (rolling the correct "wield a weapon sized larger for you" option on the d100 table for Tieflings); otherwise you lose 8d6 of those dice and 28 damage. The average CR 12 enemy has 160 HP, so you can actually oneshot it (accounting for various other static damage mods I left off)...which is on par with the 1 round it would take an optimized full attacker to kill it. And it's all or nothing; very high risk. And it would actually take you 2 rounds to kill it if you missed out on that random roll during charop.

And this is, again, to my knowledge the CEILING for Vital Strike. The absolute limit of optimization. It takes a dedicated 8 Feats (making it effectively locked to Fighter only) to reach damage roughly on par with what a Barbarian gets out of JUST Power Attack and taking the Beast Totem Rage Power line so they can always full attack on turn 1.

So, how do you fix Vital Strike? First, crunch the Vital Strike Feat chain down into one Feat that scales at the same breakpoints.

Second, you make Vital Strike be done as part of an attack, so long as you only make one attack that turn. This removes the incompatibility that Vital Strike has with...basically everything. This means you could use it on a Charge, or as part of a Spring Attack.

Third, add a single Feat that increases your effective size (scaling with BaB, at the same breakpoints as the Vital Strike line) while wielding any weapon whenever you Vital Strike, so the player isn't locked into using Improvised Weapons.

This brings the Feat cost of Vital Strike down to just 3 Feats, but doesn't make the power come online any earlier; that part is VERY important, as the damage output I mentioned would be hella broken if it came online much earlier than it does.

2-3 Feats is a very fair tax to play a character who is about as effective on a single move and attack than standing and full attacking. And make no mistake; even for a character with this Feat line and max optimization, it's usually better to full attack.

[Darg]

Just like spring attack, part of vital strike's utility is its ability to be used with a move action. If a player likes that aspect just let them. As mentioned it'd be really hard to make it break anything and it excels in situations where you can keep on the move to prevent enemies from full attacking you.

[exelsisxax]

In 1st party you will never find a way to make Vital Strike "gamebreaking" outside of Mythic Vital Strike. Unless you're using Mythic, then, Vital Strike will always be subpar. Put that concern aside.

If you want some quick mafs, here's the strongest baseline Vital Strike build I can think of, circa level 12 or so. So you have Vital Strike and Improved Vital Strike. Devastating Strike. Power Attack. All three Shikigami Style Feats, plus Catch Off Guard and Improvised Weapon Mastery. Find a way to be treated as a size category larger for the weapons you wield (in 1st party Tieflings can potentially do this).

You lug around an improvised weapon with a baseline 3d6 damage. It is treated as three size categories larger, boosting its damage to 8d6. Slap an Enlarge Person on, and you're getting a whopping 12d6 out of it. Add Str (let's call it a 24, for +10 damage) and Power Attack (-4/+12), plus Devastating Strike (+4) and the enhancement bonus from Shikigami Manipulation (around a +3 at this level).

That is a massive, insane, 36d6+29 damage. Golly!

Anyway, on average that is 155 damage. That's basically the maximum you can eke out of Vital Strike, the very ceiling. And it relies on random chance in character creation (rolling the correct "wield a weapon sized larger for you" option on the d100 table for Tieflings); otherwise you lose 8d6 of those dice and 28 damage. The average CR 12 enemy has 160 HP, so you can actually oneshot it (accounting for various other static damage mods I left off)...which is on par with the 1 round it would take an optimized full attacker to kill it. And it's all or nothing; very high risk. And it would actually take you 2 rounds to kill it if you missed out on that random roll during charop.

And this is, again, to my knowledge the CEILING for Vital Strike. The absolute limit of optimization. It takes a dedicated 8 Feats (making it effectively locked to Fighter only) to reach damage roughly on par with what a Barbarian gets out of JUST Power Attack and taking the Beast Totem Rage Power line so they can always full attack on turn 1.

So, how do you fix Vital Strike? First, crunch the Vital Strike Feat chain down into one Feat that scales at the same breakpoints.

Second, you make Vital Strike be done as part of an attack, so long as you only make one attack that turn. This removes the incompatibility that Vital Strike has with...basically everything. This means you could use it on a Charge, or as part of a Spring Attack.

Third, add a single Feat that increases your effective size (scaling with BaB, at the same breakpoints as the Vital Strike line) while wielding any weapon whenever you Vital Strike, so the player isn't locked into using Improvised Weapons.

This brings the Feat cost of Vital Strike down to just 3 Feats, but doesn't make the power come online any earlier; that part is VERY important, as the damage output I mentioned would be hella broken if it came online much earlier than it does.

2-3 Feats is a very fair tax to play a character who is about as effective on a single move and attack than standing and full attacking. And make no mistake; even for a character with this Feat line and max optimization, it's usually better to full attack.

This is not fully maxed. You can use felling smash to turn that vital strike hit into a free trip attempt that with greater trip will provoke. a bit more damage. However, there are 2 ways of making one AoO as a vital strike (vital punishment vig talent and gorum DFT (greatsword only, you'll lose some size increases)), which combined with the greater trip can double your build's potential damage*. doesn't work on everything but it's a hell of a fight-opener.

+1 to condensing the VS primary line into just VS itself, and then the devestating strike branch also into just a single feat. makes it a substandard but non-stupid choice for classes with bonus feats.

*the gorum DFT by RAW only lets you vital strike on the AoO, not improved or greater but let us pretend it wasn't stupid like that

[Rynjin]

I was just talking about "max damage on a single hit", but those options are very cool, yeah.

[PretzelCoatl]

I'd be wary of playing with the mechanics of Vital Strike. As the player gets more effective size increases, which they can achieve as they gain more levels or gain more money to invest, the damage from Vital Strike can ramp up considerably
Agreed, I am quite wary. That's why I came here instead of just implementing the changes, and also put specific stops into the above feats to prevent the ramp up you described.


My question is, is the player happy with their character? If they're happy, I'd think about whether you need to make any changes. Some players don't mind simpler or slightly weaker characters as long as they get to play the character they want to play and they feel like they're contributing in combat, even if they're not the star player of the game.
The player is...happyish. But these changes wouldn't be affecting them and wouldn't be for them. I have no intention of nerfing or changing their character. These changes would be for future characters or future campaigns. I'm not interested in nerfing him midstream, especially when his damage isn't out of line with a regular full attack.

In large part, this is for me. As a GM I am also a player, and this concept quite irks me. As mentioned, I feel that vital strike is *intended* to be a better standard attack, and not a substitute for a full attack. I'd like to create a scenario where players can take the ability to do exactly that, without it being a massive feat investment.







Re: Vital Strike Changes
Vital strike only increasing the weapon damage is kinda what keeps it form overshadowing full attacking.

A neat way to preserve that but make it more appealing, I feel, would be letting it multiplying everything, EXCEPT the bonus from power attack/ deadly aim / pirhana strike

Or if you want to get weird, make vital strike increase the damage bonus from PA/DA/PS when full attacking, that way it's a bit of a wash?

that becomes much more homebrewey tho.


gut feeling, i would go with the 50/100/150% increases and increasing everything except PA/DA/PS damage

so at 6th level, if a normal PA attack is 2d6+10+6, a vital strike would be 3d6+15+6 (31.5), whereas a full attack would be 4d6+32, assuming everything hits

Hell, I'm even tempted to say keep it at 100/200/300 , just exclude PA/DA/PS.

Or other combination, like only multiplying STR(/DEX/PRIMARY ABILITY MODIFIER) bonus but not "other" bonuses to damage, that way "on the sheet" it's relatively simply to write down, since "as before" the only temporary combat buff that would impact it are changes to STR, which 99% of the time means getting enlarged, just as it was before.

I think I convinced myself to go from "multiply weapon damage" to "multiply weapon damage and ABILITYMOD bonus", so that's my feedback to you as how you could buff it to be more in line with full attack, without having to warp playstyle around it

I don't have an issue with homebrewey, at least not in this case. I'm ok with a pretty substantial revision to how this works.
Why do you feel that multiplying everything but the PA(and equivalent) damage bonuses is the way to go, as opposed to just increasing all damage? This seems like slightly more complicated math and I'm not seeing that multiplying the PA bonuses would be overwhelming here.




Re: Vital Strike Changes
Make improved and greater VS feats part of the base feat. As in you get the for free when you hit the requisite bab.

There. Done. Now VS is a single feat option that adds an alternate action to a character without requiring dedicating too much to the build.

If you don’t like this and still want more, then go look at Spheres of Might and play with that system. (It can be divorced from the rest of the Spheres system easily enough.) Sure, lancer is busted, but that’s about the only truly broken thing about it.

For reference: SoM uses the attack action almost exclusively. It adds alternate attack actions that all stack with vital strike, but usually adds riders and BFC options instead of just raw damage. It does not beat full attack damage potential, but adds a lot more to do with martial characters than trying to get full attacks off.

I feel like you may have not read my entire post. My option three was to do pretty much just what you suggested, so it's definitely something I am considering. What do you think of the proposed option?

I will look into Spheres of Might when I get a chance, though that seems like a bigger adjustment than I was hoping to make with just this relatively minor feat change.







Re: Vital Strike Changes
In 1st party you will never find a way to make Vital Strike "gamebreaking" outside of Mythic Vital Strike. Unless you're using Mythic, then, Vital Strike will always be subpar. Put that concern aside.

This is very helpful, thank you. I don't mess around a lot with weirder sourcebooks, or even the less common first party stuff, so this sets my mind at ease quite a bit.


If you want some quick mafs, here's the strongest baseline Vital Strike build I can think of, circa level 12 or so. So you have Vital Strike and Improved Vital Strike. Devastating Strike. Power Attack. All three Shikigami Style Feats, plus Catch Off Guard and Improvised Weapon Mastery. Find a way to be treated as a size category larger for the weapons you wield (in 1st party Tieflings can potentially do this).

You lug around an improvised weapon with a baseline 3d6 damage. It is treated as three size categories larger, boosting its damage to 8d6. Slap an Enlarge Person on, and you're getting a whopping 12d6 out of it. Add Str (let's call it a 24, for +10 damage) and Power Attack (-4/+12), plus Devastating Strike (+4) and the enhancement bonus from Shikigami Manipulation (around a +3 at this level).

That is a massive, insane, 36d6+29 damage. Golly!

Anyway, on average that is 155 damage. That's basically the maximum you can eke out of Vital Strike, the very ceiling. And it relies on random chance in character creation (rolling the correct "wield a weapon sized larger for you" option on the d100 table for Tieflings); otherwise you lose 8d6 of those dice and 28 damage. The average CR 12 enemy has 160 HP, so you can actually oneshot it (accounting for various other static damage mods I left off)...which is on par with the 1 round it would take an optimized full attacker to kill it. And it's all or nothing; very high risk. And it would actually take you 2 rounds to kill it if you missed out on that random roll during charop.

And this is, again, to my knowledge the CEILING for Vital Strike. The absolute limit of optimization. It takes a dedicated 8 Feats (making it effectively locked to Fighter only) to reach damage roughly on par with what a Barbarian gets out of JUST Power Attack and taking the Beast Totem Rage Power line so they can always full attack on turn 1.

So, how do you fix Vital Strike? First, crunch the Vital Strike Feat chain down into one Feat that scales at the same breakpoints.

Second, you make Vital Strike be done as part of an attack, so long as you only make one attack that turn. This removes the incompatibility that Vital Strike has with...basically everything. This means you could use it on a Charge, or as part of a Spring Attack.

Third, add a single Feat that increases your effective size (scaling with BaB, at the same breakpoints as the Vital Strike line) while wielding any weapon whenever you Vital Strike, so the player isn't locked into using Improvised Weapons.

This brings the Feat cost of Vital Strike down to just 3 Feats, but doesn't make the power come online any earlier; that part is VERY important, as the damage output I mentioned would be hella broken if it came online much earlier than it does.

2-3 Feats is a very fair tax to play a character who is about as effective on a single move and attack than standing and full attacking. And make no mistake; even for a character with this Feat line and max optimization, it's usually better to full attack.

I'm into the concept of letting vital strike be used with other single attack things.

I also like the idea of reworking the feat tax such that players have the option to go in for a single feat to do as I originally described (just as a versatility option, have a decent standard attack when moving) and also make VS the core of their build (always using VS instead of full attacking). However I do kind of feel like the VS-instead-of-full-attack option should be slightly less damage than a full attack, since the accuracy is so much beter.

Can you explain to me how
> Third, add a single Feat that increases your effective size (scaling with BaB, at the same breakpoints as the Vital Strike line) while wielding any weapon whenever you Vital Strike, so the player isn't locked into using Improvised Weapons.
This works? How does this prevent players from just using bigger improvised weapons with the feat?

I agree with the idea of placing a valve on how early those damage benchmarks can be achieved. Do you think my original proposals won'






Re: Vital Strike Changes
Just like spring attack, part of vital strike's utility is its ability to be used with a move action. If a player likes that aspect just let them. As mentioned it'd be really hard to make it break anything and it excels in situations where you can keep on the move to prevent enemies from full attacking you.

Agreed, I have no interest in nerfing the character or stymieing the player's fun.

[Rynjin]

Can you explain to me how
> Third, add a single Feat that increases your effective size (scaling with BaB, at the same breakpoints as the Vital Strike line) while wielding any weapon whenever you Vital Strike, so the player isn't locked into using Improvised Weapons.
This works? How does this prevent players from just using bigger improvised weapons with the feat?

It's because effective size increases to the same thing don't stack even from different sources, so only one of them would work at a given time.

[Maat Mons]

Personally, I like how 3.5 handled Manyshot, and would use that as a model.

In terms of expected damage, 2 attacks at -0/-5 is very similar to 1 double-damage attack at -2.5. There’s some wonkiness with the single double-damage attacks being better at dealing with DR and the two attacks giving you twice the chances of scoring a critical. And you’d need to pick either a -2 penalty or a -3 penalty, because non-integer penalties on die rolls only work in an abstract, mathematical sense.

Similarly, 3 attacks at -0/-5/-10 is very similar in expected damage to 1 triple-damage attack at -5. And 4 attacks at -0/-5/-10/-15 is very similar in expected damage to 1 attack at -7.5.

Really, putting aside interactions with critical hits and DR, all that switching from 4 attacks at x1 damage to 1 attack at x4 damage does for your DPS is allow you to ignore iterative attack penalties and avoid losing DPS from having to move. So yeah, “the same damage, but more reliable” is exactly the expected result.

Of course, the feat chain doesn’t actually multiply all of your damage, just part of it. Since making multiple attack would multiple all of your damage, using the feats means you have less potential damage on the table. You do still get the DPS benefits of avoiding iterative attack roll penalties and not reducing your damage in turns where you have to move. But that puts you in the position of having a factor pushing your DPS up, and another factor pushing your DPS down. The net effect could be better or worse.

Spending 3 feats to opt into a combat style that could be better or worse than baseline, depending on other factors, doesn’t sound great to me. But I guess it’s better than two-weapon fighting, where you have to spend 4 feats.

[PretzelCoatl]

Personally, I like how 3.5 handled Manyshot, and would use that as a model.

In terms of expected damage, 2 attacks at -0/-5 is very similar to 1 double-damage attack at -2.5. There’s some wonkiness with the single double-damage attacks being better at dealing with DR and the two attacks giving you twice the chances of scoring a critical. And you’d need to pick either a -2 penalty or a -3 penalty, because non-integer penalties on die rolls only work in an abstract, mathematical sense.

Similarly, 3 attacks at -0/-5/-10 is very similar in expected damage to 1 triple-damage attack at -5. And 4 attacks at -0/-5/-10/-15 is very similar in expected damage to 1 attack at -7.5.

Really, putting aside interactions with critical hits and DR, all that switching from 4 attacks at x1 damage to 1 attack at x4 damage does for your DPS is allow you to ignore iterative attack penalties and avoid losing DPS from having to move. So yeah, “the same damage, but more reliable” is exactly the expected result.

Of course, the feat chain doesn’t actually multiply all of your damage, just part of it. Since making multiple attack would multiple all of your damage, using the feats means you have less potential damage on the table. You do still get the DPS benefits of avoiding iterative attack roll penalties and not reducing your damage in turns where you have to move. But that puts you in the position of having a factor pushing your DPS up, and another factor pushing your DPS down. The net effect could be better or worse.

Spending 3 feats to opt into a combat style that could be better or worse than baseline, depending on other factors, doesn’t sound great to me. But I guess it’s better than two-weapon fighting, where you have to spend 4 feats.

Interesting, ok. So you're suggesting something like this?

Vital Strike (Combat)
You make a single attack that deals significantly more damage than normal.
Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +6.
Benefit: When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage. This attack suffers a -3 penalty. This attack does double damage on a hit (as if it were a critical hit - Roll the damage (with all modifiers) two times and total the results).
When your BAB reaches +11, your penalty increases to -5, and your attack does triple damage. When your BAB reaches +16, your penalty increases to -8, and you deal quadruple damage.


I do see where you're coming from mathematically, and I agree that this is similar. I do kind of feel like it's too good though. Not gamebreaking, but in the sense of...why ever perform a full attack again when you could just do this, which I think is inherently bad design. Though I like this concept. It's essentially what I suggested originally, but with a penalty on the attack for more damage.




It's because effective size increases to the same thing don't stack even from different sources, so only one of them would work at a given time.

I see. I was not aware of this. I was under the impression that you could perform the following operations to increase "size"
* Physically buy a larger bastard sword (medium character's bastard sword is now large. they take a -2 penalty and the weapon is treated as two handed, as long as they have EWP).
* Cast lead blades on themself. (The sword is now treated as huge).
* Cast enlarge person (the sword is now treated as gargantuan).

Are you saying this is not correct, and these can't all be done? If not, I humbly apologize; I'm just not understanding, and some additional clarification would be wonderful.

[ciopo]

I don't have an issue with homebrewey, at least not in this case. I'm ok with a pretty substantial revision to how this works.
Why do you feel that multiplying everything but the PA(and equivalent) damage bonuses is the way to go, as opposed to just increasing all damage? This seems like slightly more complicated math and I'm not seeing that multiplying the PA bonuses would be overwhelming here.

My rationale is buffing vital strike while leaving some kind of edge to full attack, and those modifiers are somewhat easy to take outside the equation, as they are generally static and only really change with leveling, as opposed to other various kind of bonuses.

On power attack in particular, having it multiplied with vital strike specifically is a sinergy with furious focus that seems counter to what you want to achieve here, since it would go from "-1/+3" to "-0/+6" which is not insignificant and could well tip over to "I'll vital strike even if I can full attack"

[HeraldOfExius]

As an alternative to being a tiefling and getting that 1% chance of using large weapons without a penalty, you could use Effortless Lace (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons/specific-magic-weapons/effortless-lace/), which completely removes the normal attack penalty for using a weapon that's one size larger than you are.

[Rynjin]

I see. I was not aware of this. I was under the impression that you could perform the following operations to increase "size"
* Physically buy a larger bastard sword (medium character's bastard sword is now large. they take a -2 penalty and the weapon is treated as two handed, as long as they have EWP).
* Cast lead blades on themself. (The sword is now treated as huge).
* Cast enlarge person (the sword is now treated as gargantuan).

Are you saying this is not correct, and these can't all be done? If not, I humbly apologize; I'm just not understanding, and some additional clarification would be wonderful.

I thought you were asking why a hypothetical generic size change increase Feat wouldn't stack with Shikigami Style, my bad. All of those things should stack (once). But for example Lead Blades would NOT stack with Shikigami Style, or the theoretical Feat. You can only have a single "effective size increase" and a single "real size increase".


As an alternative to being a tiefling and getting that 1% chance of using large weapons without a penalty, you could use Effortless Lace (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons/specific-magic-weapons/effortless-lace/), which completely removes the normal attack penalty for using a weapon that's one size larger than you are.

This doesn't really work. Effortless Lace doesn't give you the ability to wield a weapon not sized for you, so you can't wield eg. a large Greatsword (the equivalent of what I was mathing out there).

It works for a large one-handed or light weapon (eg. a large Longsword...which is statistically identical to a medium Greatsword), or specifically the Bastard Sword (boosting base dice to 2d8), but doesn't get you to the same damage output as actually wielding a large 2H weapon.

[Maat Mons]

For the question of “Why ever perform a full attack again when you could just do this?” I’d like to look at critical hits.

Due to the way multipliers work in D&D, if you score a critical hit with a x2 weapon on an attack that already has an x4 multiplier, the end result is a x5 multiplier. That is, you get +1 normal-attack’s-worth of extra damage.

On a full attack, each attack has a chance to be a critical, and thus add +1 normal-attack’s-worth of damage to your damage that round. And you get 4 chances to score a critical. That means critical hits are doing 4x as much for your DPS on a full attack as they are if you do a single attack at x4 damage.

For, say, a greatsword, with a 10% crit chance and a x2 multiplier, you’re getting, on average, +0.4 normal-attack’s-worth of extra DPS on a full attack at 16+ base attack bonus. Compare that to +0.1 normal-attack’s-worth of extra DPS on average from the single attack with a x4 multiplier. 4.4 / 4.1 = ~1.073, so a 7.3%-ish benefit to DPS by full-attacking.

If we look at a Keen scimitar, or a normal scimitar with the Improved Critical feat, it instead becomes 5.2 / 4.3 = ~1.209, so a 20.9%-ish benefit to DPS.

And if we really want to stack things in favor of full-attacking, add in a Speed weapon or the haste spell it’s 6.2 / 4.3 = ~1.442, a 44.2%-ish benefit.



I also don’t think it would be bad design if someone who took a feat wanted to use that feat almost every round. That’s not the situation that would arise here, but that hypothetical situation seems like it would be fine to me.



Finally, even if the feat were designed such that it wound up with exactly the same average DPS as full-attacking, I’d still favor full-attacking. It’s just more consistent. You’d need 4 rolls to go against you to do no damage in a round where you try a full attack. In a round where you try a Vital Strike, one bad roll is enough to make you useless that round.

[PretzelCoatl]

I thought you were asking why a hypothetical generic size change increase Feat wouldn't stack with Shikigami Style, my bad. All of those things should stack (once). But for example Lead Blades would NOT stack with Shikigami Style, or the theoretical Feat. You can only have a single "effective size increase" and a single "real size increase".


Ahh, I see, ok. Thank you for clarifying, I believe I am caught up now. :smallbiggrin:


My rationale is buffing vital strike while leaving some kind of edge to full attack, and those modifiers are somewhat easy to take outside the equation, as they are generally static and only really change with leveling, as opposed to other various kind of bonuses.

On power attack in particular, having it multiplied with vital strike specifically is a sinergy with furious focus that seems counter to what you want to achieve here, since it would go from "-1/+3" to "-0/+6" which is not insignificant and could well tip over to "I'll vital strike even if I can full attack"

Understood, thank you for the clarification. :smallbiggrin:


For the question of “Why ever perform a full attack again when you could just do this?” I’d like to look at critical hits.

Due to the way multipliers work in D&D, if you score a critical hit with a x2 weapon on an attack that already has an x4 multiplier, the end result is a x5 multiplier. That is, you get +1 normal-attack’s-worth of extra damage.

On a full attack, each attack has a chance to be a critical, and thus add +1 normal-attack’s-worth of damage to your damage that round. And you get 4 chances to score a critical. That means critical hits are doing 4x as much for your DPS on a full attack as they are if you do a single attack at x4 damage.

For, say, a greatsword, with a 10% crit chance and a x2 multiplier, you’re getting, on average, +0.4 normal-attack’s-worth of extra DPS on a full attack at 16+ base attack bonus. Compare that to +0.1 normal-attack’s-worth of extra DPS on average from the single attack with a x4 multiplier. 4.4 / 4.1 = ~1.073, so a 7.3%-ish benefit to DPS by full-attacking.

If we look at a Keen scimitar, or a normal scimitar with the Improved Critical feat, it instead becomes 5.2 / 4.3 = ~1.209, so a 20.9%-ish benefit to DPS.

And if we really want to stack things in favor of full-attacking, add in a Speed weapon or the haste spell it’s 6.2 / 4.3 = ~1.442, a 44.2%-ish benefit.



I also don’t think it would be bad design if someone who took a feat wanted to use that feat almost every round. That’s not the situation that would arise here, but that hypothetical situation seems like it would be fine to me.



Finally, even if the feat were designed such that it wound up with exactly the same average DPS as full-attacking, I’d still favor full-attacking. It’s just more consistent. You’d need 4 rolls to go against you to do no damage in a round where you try a full attack. In a round where you try a Vital Strike, one bad roll is enough to make you useless that round.

This is definitely true, there are pros and cons to using vital strike entirely in lieu of a full attack, even with an idealized VS build compared to an idealized full attack build. Critical versus accuracy, mobility versus raw damage, reliability versus consistency, the list goes on.

My issue isn't that the player spent three feats and now wants to use them all the time. I'm ok with that. My issue is that this feat chain *only exists* for those that use it all the time. In my opinion (and that's not a trite turn of phrase, I'm quite aware this is subjective), the intended use of the feat is to allow a physical character an option for an attack that is better than a regular standard action but still worse than their full attack when they need to move and make their attack. The issue, again in my opinion, is that the feat as is does that very poorly. It's really only viable when you spec fully into it. The feat tax is just too heavy for most people to consider picking up the feats if they aren't a dedicated vital striker.

That's the issue I see and what I'd like a solution for, and what my original ideas bounced again.

A logical conclusion is to lower the feat tax, but doing so immediately makes a normal VS build substantially better, since they now have a number of free feats (not necessarily inherently bad, but not my goal here). Hence why I proposed to alter the feat(s) such that they don't need to be the cornerstone of a build. Rynjin's idea was quite good and followed this same idea (lower the tax, make it more universally available, but add other options for those that want to spec into it). Personally, however, I'm of the opinion (again not just a turn of phrase, I'm aware this could be contentious) that a single standard attack *should* be weaker than a full attack, which is why I would like to see VS more as a movement option and less as a combat specialization, if that makes sense.

[Prime32]

Change vital strike's feat tax substantially, and limit its ability to scale and multiply off large weapons
I think the simplest way to handle that would be to change Vital Strike's effect to "deal extra damage equal to your BAB".

At BAB +6 that's Vital Strike (greatsword) average bonus damage minus 1, regardless of your weapon.
At BAB +11 it's equivalent to Improved Vital Strike (greatsword) minus 3.
At BAB +16 it's Greater Vital Strike (greatsword) minus 5.

Now imagine that Vital Strike is built into the attack action rather than requiring a feat... and that abilities like Weapon Training grant double the bonus when you make a single attack.