One Heavy Hit 3.5

[LairdMaon]

Iteratives are great.
They are fantastic ways to get multiple attacks.
POW! HA! CHOP! SLASH! STAB!

But what about those times when you are in that perfect position to land that epic single blow with all your being?

Is there a way to sacrifice Iteratives to empower a single, more effective strike? And, if not, what could such a mechanic look like?

[pabelfly]

Pathfinder has Vital Strike. It's a pretty good feat chain, ls long as you aren't stacking a bunch of methods to increase damage dice size.

[LairdMaon]

Pathfinder has Vital Strike. It's a pretty good feat chain, ls long as you aren't stacking a bunch of methods to increase damage dice size.

Not bad, but it feels lacking. Doubling the weapon damage dice makes sense until you give up more then a single iterative attack.

[bekeleven]

This topic just makes me think of decisive strike monk from phbii. You exchange flurry for the ability to make one double-damage strike as a FRA (and it buffs AoO too).

That and the titan bloodline, which lets anybody regardless of size wield a gargantuan Warhammer without penalty.

(Although my Pixie still had a reach of 0 feet with it.)

[InvisibleBison]

You can always just describe your full attack as being a single hit.

[Anthrowhale]

At ECL 10 a cleric can use a Duskwood Greathammer(1d12) + Greater Mighty Wallop (from a friendly wizard increasing damage to 4d6) + Brambles (+10 enhancement) + Divine Power(BAB+10) + Power Attack(->+20 damage) + Sense Weakness + Surge of Fortune (to autocrit with an x4) to deal 176 damage in a single hit.

[LairdMaon]

For example, I'm picturing Ahab finally seeing his white whale dead in his sights. He rears back with the harpoon he'd saved for just this occasion and chucks it with every ounce of his self.

[Darg]

Craven.
Power Attack
Fighter ACF Overpowering Attack (PHII)
Driving Attack

Watch as you punt someone into the stratosphere. This can be optimized much further, but I simply wanted to get the fun across.

[Gruftzwerg]

By default this would be an Ubercharger build without pounce (maybe utilizing Cleave line).
Charge normally sole allows you a single attack and there are ways to stack charge damage multipliers (up to x6 dmg IIRC). You need a flying mount (Spirited Charge + flying dive charge) and a lance focused build to get the most multipliers.
But depending on what you want there are tons of variations of this build type.

Edit:

Craven.
Power Attack
Fighter ACF Overpowering Attack (PHII)
Driving Attack

Watch as you punt someone into the stratosphere. This can be optimized much further, but I simply wanted to get the fun across.
Reminds me that I once did 4 ubercharger builds with Driving Attack (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?517187). You can literary send your enemies flying outta the battlemap. Maybe of interest to get some inspiration.

[spectralphoenix]

Not bad, but it feels lacking. Doubling the weapon damage dice makes sense until you give up more then a single iterative attack.

That's what Improved/Greater Vital Strike are for. Here's a decent guide to the chain, if you're interested. (https://rpgbot.net/pathfinder/characters/vital_strike/)

[LairdMaon]

That's what Improved/Greater Vital Strike are for. Here's a decent guide to the chain, if you're interested. (https://rpgbot.net/pathfinder/characters/vital_strike/)

Oh, yes. This is very good. Very good, indeed.

[Inevitability]

Smite is also what you're describing and can get pretty high with the right tricks: the most recent Junkyard round had a lot of smite-using builds.

There's also a PrC, Triadic Knight, that at level 7 can make a triple smite as a full-round action, expending three attempts in one go and getting thrice the damage boost. With other multipliers, it adds up!

[Khedrac]

Sadly, the closest thing in 3.5 is:

Awesome Blow [General, Fighter]
Prerequisites
Str 25, Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush, size Large or larger.

Benefit
As a standard action, the creature may choose to subtract 4 from its melee attack roll and deliver an awesome blow. If the creature hits a corporeal opponent smaller than itself with an awesome blow, its opponent must succeed on a Reflex save (DC = damage dealt) or be knocked flying 10 feet in a direction of the attacking creature’s choice and fall prone. The attacking creature can only push the opponent in a straight line, and the opponent can’t move closer to the attacking creature than the square it started in. If an obstacle prevents the completion of the opponent’s move, the opponent and the obstacle each take 1d6 points of damage, and the opponent stops in the space adjacent to the obstacle.

[pabelfly]

Oh, yes. This is very good. Very good, indeed.

The other thing about Vital Strike is you can actually have several different weapons and you'll still do alright with each of them. For example, you could switch between a sword and a bow, and the Vital Strike feat line is going to boost your damage output for both your bow and sword.

[Crake]

in a 3.pf game that I ran once, I allowed a character to create a mithril rifle that shot large sized bullets, and the bullets were made out of alchemical platinum, increasing their damage to huge size, and then allowed them to have the spell gravity bow affect firearms, so their shots did gargantuan damage. Then they took vital strike, so their 1d10 rifle was hitting for 8d8 damage at level 6, which was pretty cool to see. Really got to play into the sniper archetype

[Rebel7284]

- Insightful Strike (Greater) can be a fun thing to optimize.
- Iaijutsu Focus can also be helpful

[Maat Mons]

Maybe a bit of a tangent, but I never quite understood the appeal of the Vital Strike line. Yes, shifting your weapon’s base damage dice from your low-attack-bonus iteratives to your high-attack-bonus first attack is a factor that works to increase your average damage. But you also lose out on the damage from Strength, Power Attack, and whatever else that those iterative attacks would have done. Granted, those attacks could have missed, preventing you from dealing that damage anyway, but sometimes getting damage from Strength, Power Attack, et c. multiple times per round seems better than only ever getting it a maximum of once per round. That and the fact that the extra damage from Vital Strike isn’t multiplied on a critical hit both work to decrease your average damage. It seems to me the net effect would be negative even for moderate damage bonuses.

[FactualArcher]

Lots of strike maneuvers from tome of battle buff one attack. Iaijutsu was also mentioned earlier, but it gets a lot stronger when you add in Iaijutsu master

[Chronos]

Huh, I'm reading through this thread wondering why nobody has mentioned Tome of Battle yet, and there it is in the very last reply. Yeah, that.

They're only "giving up iteratives" in the sense that most maneuvers are a standard action, though.

[Telonius]

Assassin's Death Attack would technically fit the image, but probably not what you're looking for.

[Soranar]

mounted combat

x2 from using a lance
x3 from valorous enchant
x4 from spirited charge
x5 from rhino's rush spell

then add in a smite like attack

killoren has a racial smite
factotum can add his INT to damage against anything
paladin and the like have smite evil

finally there's always the monk ACF that gives you double damage (decisive strike)

[ShurikVch]

It's not 1st-party (and [epic]) - but how about the One Shot (https://nwn2.fandom.com/wiki/One_Shot)?

[Biggus]

x2 from using a lance
x3 from valorous enchant
x4 from spirited charge
x5 from rhino's rush spell


Also Riding Boots (MIC) so that you do x8 on a crit.

[Darg]

Maybe a bit of a tangent, but I never quite understood the appeal of the Vital Strike line. Yes, shifting your weapon’s base damage dice from your low-attack-bonus iteratives to your high-attack-bonus first attack is a factor that works to increase your average damage. But you also lose out on the damage from Strength, Power Attack, and whatever else that those iterative attacks would have done. Granted, those attacks could have missed, preventing you from dealing that damage anyway, but sometimes getting damage from Strength, Power Attack, et c. multiple times per round seems better than only ever getting it a maximum of once per round. That and the fact that the extra damage from Vital Strike isn’t multiplied on a critical hit both work to decrease your average damage. It seems to me the net effect would be negative even for moderate damage bonuses.

Well, one of the benefits of vital strike is that it's a standard action, not a full attack. Generally, you wouldn't trade a full attack for a vital strike, it's simply less damage. However, vital strike allows you to stay mobile and deal a decent amount of extra damage. It's also versatile, being capable of use with any weapon. It can also be used when you are stuck with just a standard like during the surprise round, need to stand up, nauseated, etc. Put simply, it works best used as a bonus rather than a replacement, unless mythic is in play.

[Twurps]

mounted combat
.....
finally there's always the monk ACF that gives you double damage (decisive strike)

Using the decisive strike is a full round action, and therefore can't be used with other full round actions such as charging.

[Harrow]

Not sure if these options are quite what you're looking for, but they were what came to mind when I read the question. The first is the feat Stormguard Warrior from Tome of Battle. It allows you to refrain from taking attacks of opportunity, gaining +4 to attack and damage on your next turn for each AoO you could have taken and didn't against a particular opponent. The other is from a Dragon Magazine. I don't have it in front of me, but IIRC it was a feat that could only be taken by Targeteer Fighters called Sniper that allows you to pass on attacks in a full attack, increasing your threat range by 1 for each attack that you give up, affecting a single attack.

[spectralphoenix]

Maybe a bit of a tangent, but I never quite understood the appeal of the Vital Strike line. Yes, shifting your weapon’s base damage dice from your low-attack-bonus iteratives to your high-attack-bonus first attack is a factor that works to increase your average damage. But you also lose out on the damage from Strength, Power Attack, and whatever else that those iterative attacks would have done. Granted, those attacks could have missed, preventing you from dealing that damage anyway, but sometimes getting damage from Strength, Power Attack, et c. multiple times per round seems better than only ever getting it a maximum of once per round. That and the fact that the extra damage from Vital Strike isn’t multiplied on a critical hit both work to decrease your average damage. It seems to me the net effect would be negative even for moderate damage bonuses.

Let's take a look at the math.

Suppose we have a 10th level fighter with 24 Strength, permanent Enlarge Person, a +1 Impact Greatsword, and the Vital Strike, Devastating Strike, Power Attack, and Furious Focus feats.

When Vital Striking he does 8d6 + 10 (STR) + 2 (Weapon Training) + 9 (PA) + 1 (enhancement) +6 (devastating Strike) = 56, + (0.1 * 42 extra crit damage) = 60.2 EV

With a full attack he does 4d6 + 10 + 2 + 9 + 1 = 36 + (0.1 * 36) = 39.6 EV

His attacks are +19 with vital strike, +19/+11 without.

Against a Fire Giant with 24 AC, Vital Strike gets .8 * 60.2 = 48.16
Full Attack gets (.8 + .4) * 39.6 = 47.52

Against an Adult Black Dragon with 28 AC, Vital Strike gets .6 * 60.2 = 36.12
Full Attack gets (.6 + .2) * 39.6 = 31.68

Against a Bebilith with 22 AC and 10 DR, Vital Strike gets .9 * 50.2 = 45.18
Full Attack gets (.9 + .5) * 29.6 = 41.45

Now to be fair, a fighter without Vital Strike could probably get better numbers and do something else with the VS/DS feats. And the Vital Striker could bring a Butcher's Axe if he was really serious. But with some off-the-cuff numbers, I think Vital Strike can be very competitive, especially when dealing with monsters that are hard to hit or have DR.

[SirNibbles]

Using the decisive strike is a full round action, and therefore can't be used with other full round actions such as charging.

A very charitable reading of the Way of the Shackled Beast style's 6th level bonus ability (Dragon Magazine #355, page 77) could allow you to use Decisive Strike at the end of a charge, since it's a replacement of flurry of blows. I'd personally allow a player to use it because they're already taking six levels of Monk and two suboptimal bonus feats- it's not like they're going to be breaking the game.




6th-level Bonus Ability: You may use your flurry of blows ability at the end of a successful charge.

Dragon Magazine #355, page 77

[Thurbane]

Probably already been mentioned, but martial strikes (ToB) are a decent way to add extra damage and/or rider effects onto a single attack.

[Crake]

Well, one of the benefits of vital strike is that it's a standard action, not a full attack. Generally, you wouldn't trade a full attack for a vital strike, it's simply less damage. However, vital strike allows you to stay mobile and deal a decent amount of extra damage. It's also versatile, being capable of use with any weapon. It can also be used when you are stuck with just a standard like during the surprise round, need to stand up, nauseated, etc. Put simply, it works best used as a bonus rather than a replacement, unless mythic is in play.

Part of the benefit is also that, by keeping on the move, you deny your enemy a full attack at the same time, so sure, your damage is reduced by vital striking, however, the reduction in damage for you is going to be significantly less than the reduction for your enemy, so tit for tat, you end up ahead

[eBarbarossa]

The Order of the Bow Initiate from Complete Warrior does exactly this, but only for bows.

[Nihilarian]

Calling OotBI a heavy hit is exaggerating

Surge of Fortune and Hunter's Mercy make your next attack an automatic critical. With a scythe or kaorti resin arrows and enough flat bonuses this can end up a pretty heavy hit. There's also a line of ToB maneuvers that culminates in dealing x4 damage with one melee attack.

[Maat Mons]

I hadn’t thought about DR. That’s a fair point. Though it would be situational.

As for the possibility of denying an enemy their full attacks… If the enemy chooses to chase after you, yes. You’ll full attack and move away, they’ll (maybe) get an attack of opportunity against you, then charge you, only getting one attack if they don’t have pounce. Their one attack (and maybe one attack of opportunity) may be less valuable than their full attack, so you’ll be decreasing their offensive output. If the enemy parks themselves next to a less mobile ally, you’ve really just redirected their offense from one party member to another, but if the other party member is trying to fulfill the role of tank, that’s still a benefit. Though, if you don’t have Spring Attack, I think you’d still wind up being susceptible to a full attack every-other turn.

Something that didn’t occur to me earlier is that some people might eventually aim for a Speed weapon. It’s kind of annoying that Vital Strike doesn’t give you any benefit for extra attacks you would have gotten beyond those granted by base attack bonus.

I think the suggestion of using Vital Strike as a backup for when you wouldn’t be able to full attack anyway sounds kind of nice. I mean, spending four or five feats on something you only intend to use situationally seems steep. But at 6th level, you’ve only spent one feat for the capability, so it looks pretty reasonable at that point.



Back on the topic of the thread, War Hulk could kind of fit. You’re giving up iterative attacks in the sense that you’re not advancing your base attack bonus. And that +20 Strength the class gives should make your one attack hit decently hard.

Since Awesome Blow was mentioned, I suppose I may as well point out that Fangshields Barbarian allows it to be used at the end of a charge.

[Darg]

Deep impact/fell shot/unavoidable strike allow you to expend your psionic focus to resolve a single attack as a touch attack.

Greater psionic fist/shot/weapon allow you to expend your psionic focus for an extra 4d6 damage. If you use the SRD or don't have a late print PHB, you could use spring attack + psionic meditation to still have movement in a round.

Warlock has Hideous blow. Combined with the above, hellfire warlock, several warlock items, and sneak attack + craven you can get to pretty high single strike damage. Enlarge person with a greatsword you can get to about 33d6 + str + craven + maybe power attack by level 20.

[Olive_Sophia]

Battle Jump is another option not yet mentioned (as far as I could tell). It gives you double damage on one attack after falling onto your enemy. Usually it's just one attack that is, although you can get more with pounce.

[H_H_F_F]

The Order of the Bow Initiate from Complete Warrior does exactly this, but only for bows.


Calling OotBI a heavy hit is exaggerating

Well, yeah, OotBI is one of the worst things in 3.5. However, it does do "one big hit instead of a full attack", which is what was asked here.

Also, it can be used effectively (well, relatively) with enough thought. You can look at the relevant Iron Chef round, or at my build "The Question" in the "Complete Madness" round of Junkyard wars for examples.

[loky1109]

You want one heavy hit? Look here: https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467050&postcount=25

[Morphic tide]

While rather sub-optimal compared to just throwing on more Charge or Power Attack boosts, Epic Psionic Focus lets you combine Deep Impact and (Greater) Psionic Weapon to aim for Touch AC with +2-4d6 damage.

[SirNibbles]

Northern Fist Mastery (Dragon Magazine #315, page 66) allows you to use a full round action to make a ranged attack that deals damage equal to your Unarmed Strike damage. If you choose to not use any of the following feats- Stunning Fist; Falling Star Strike; Freezing the Lifeblood; Unbalancing Strike; or Pain Touch- the attack deals double damage.

[martixy]

in a 3.pf game that I ran once, I allowed a character to create a mithril rifle that shot large sized bullets, and the bullets were made out of alchemical platinum, increasing their damage to huge size, and then allowed them to have the spell gravity bow affect firearms, so their shots did gargantuan damage. Then they took vital strike, so their 1d10 rifle was hitting for 8d8 damage at level 6, which was pretty cool to see. Really got to play into the sniper archetype

Here's what I imagine from the description:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah_JnspIzck

Otherwise Decisive strike is a personal favourite of mine and one of my players.
Mostly because it works for all attacks before the start of your next turn, which includes AoOs and that can be optimized up the wazoo.

[Psyren]

It's not quite fluffed as one hit, but Pummeling Style (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/pummeling-style-combat-style) from PF is a bit more effective than Vital Strike if you can meet the prereqs.

[thatothersting]

One thing I never see mentioned is the endlessly scaling damage of improvised weapons. Whip out your copy of Complete Warrior and take a peep at page 159, then zoom on over to the SRD

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/carryingCapacity.htm

and check the rate at which your carrying capacity grows when boosting strength. Every 5 points in strength doubles how much you can pick up, but damage increases by 1d6 for every 200 pounds of weight. So, if we give the War Hulk a peek, that +20 turns an 18 (100 pounds for a light load) into 1,600 pounds of carrying capacity. As a single object being swung at some dude, that's 11d6 before any other modifiers. Being large (at minimum) doubles the weight you can carry (and each size category above that continues to double the value) and if the object is sharp then the damage is treated as if it weighed twice as much as it actually does, making it very easy to see how this scales into absurdity quite quickly. In this case adding 1,600 additional pounds of weight translates into an extra 8d6 damage, and then doubling its effective weight by making it "sharp" (jagged stone should qualify) would be, what, an additional 16d6? So that's 42d6 dice of damage, if my very lazy typing-on-my-phone math is correct.

Of course, Complete Warrior provides a little remark about how many hands you'll need to use a given object of a given weight for your size category, but while the cap on how big an improvised weapon can be is implicit it's never directly stated, and I'm pretty sure the boulders that giants fling around weigh QUITE a bit more than CW would allow with these rules, so... pretty easy to nudge that aside for a more common-sense "Okay, so how are you holding that?" approach at any given table ("Sovereign Glue and an adamantine handle that I plugged into the mountain like it's Excalibur--and I ain't Arthur!" is a reliable answer). Can't enchant it, either, and you're never proficient with it, so it's always a -4 on attack rolls (or -2 with a certain Barbarian variant), but I'm pretty sure that the Warlock's Hideous Blow does in fact work with this, so there's that! No need to set anything up, no need to prep, no major costs, just you and the giant marble statue you borrowed from that town you're not allowed to visit any more...


It's stupid, but it's fun, and the big numbers are their own reward. For those wondering about optimization beyond raw strength, there are two feats which increase your carrying capacity that I'm aware of, one of them from... I think it's the Planar Handbook (or that other planar book whose name I'm forgetting), and the other is Drow exclusive (Underdark, I believe?), though a changeling can nab them both if you want to keep your character at medium size and work within that range, which does lock you out of War Hulk but opens up Warshaper from CW, which is handy for tables where a DM is obsessed with minimizing how many books are in use. Obviously you'll be leaving your weapon outside of most buildings, but on the plus side nobody is gonna walk away with it!

[Crake]

Here's what I imagine from the description:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah_JnspIzck

Otherwise Decisive strike is a personal favourite of mine and one of my players.
Mostly because it works for all attacks before the start of your next turn, which includes AoOs and that can be optimized up the wazoo.

Haha, the gun itself was only large sized, not huge, we all thought of it more like just casually lugging around a barrett m82, which, in fairness, is represented as 2d12 damage in d20 modern, so the 3d8 damage from a large rifle loaded with platinum rounds is pretty close, 13.5 average damage vs 13 average damage.

[Menzath]

One thing I never see mentioned is the endlessly scaling damage of improvised weapons. Whip out your copy of Complete Warrior and take a peep at page 159, then zoom on over to the SRD
.....


I cannot recall what the thread was, and sadly my Google fu seems to be lacking and I could not find it.

But a build utilized a spell/power(or was it the psywar acf?) to summon a "light" weapon, getting profiency with improvised weapons, and becoming gargantuan(colossal?) with insane strength to summon a small moon, and then chuck it.
Instead of using gimped improvised weapon damage, they would throw it into the air and let it fall onto enemies since falling object damage has better linear scaling for weight(pg.303 dmg) doing 1d6 per 200ilbs, and an additional 1d6 per 10ft fallen(max 20d6 for only the fall distance)

I think the build used a small moon around 200,000ilbs giving us about 1000d6 + 1d6 per 10ft we can throw it over our enemies. Or roughly 3500 average damage.

The reason why the weapon damage is gimped in CWar is because of weight limitations


11-50 ilbs are two-handed weapons. Halve these numbers for every size category below medium, and double them for every size category above mediumpg.159 CWar

So even at colossal that's only x16, or weights of
176-800ilbs. So that sets a hard cap of 7d6, or a sharp object would be 11d6

[ShurikVch]

How about various siege engines? It's difficult to make more than one shot per round, but every hit does significant damage...

[Clause]

In cityscape, have a feat( dont remember the name now and away of my books) that give you extra damage dealing for fall at enemy's head with your weapon in a special charge. Its like +1d6 for every 10fts, at a maximun of 200fts. So, a shadow adept 10, with charger feats and iayjutsu skill, can make his shadow clone appear 300fs on the air, falling dow the enemy, causing really serious damage. ( 1d8 from the lance+ 20d6 from the falling add+ 9d6 from iayjutsu if master accept you to use with lance+ str bonus and power attack bonuses X charge multipliers)