Power Attack

Power Attack

• Cooldown: 6 seconds
• Usage: Active, Toggled Stance
• Prerequisite: Strength 13+

Description

This feat exchanges part of your attack bonus for extra melee damage. It reduces your hit bonus by 5, or your Base Attack Bonus, whichever is lower. Then your successful attacks will have their damage increased by the same amount. Two-handed weapons get twice that damage bonus. (Unarmed strikes count as one-handed.) Typically, this means one-handed weapons get +5 and two-handed get +10 to damage.

This feat is a stance. It may be toggled on and left active indefinitely. When deactivated, there is a 10 second cooldown before it can be used again.

Note

• A Barbarian can learn an enhancement to increase the hit penalty and damage bonus. Warforged and Half-Orc characters may do so as well, and the two enhancement lines stack.

• Fighters, Paladins, and Humans can use an Attack Boost enhancement to partially negate the to-hit penalty from Power Attack.

• Another method of gaining an attack bonus: let another character has drawn the monster's aggression, then move behind it and attack to gain a +2 flanking bonus.

• The more damage your attack does normally, the less likely Power Attack is to be beneficial. If you have something like a Bane weapon (which does 2d6 extra), then Power Attack will often be a net loss. However, Power Attack is almost always good in these 3 situations: an enemy with damage reduction, an enemy with such a high AC you can only hit on 20, or an enemy with such a low AC you can even hit on 2.

• Power Attack is particularly good for killing slimes, oozes, and puddings. Those monsters have a poor AC, but damage your weapon on every hit. Power Attack means you'll need fewer hits to kill it, saving repair costs. In fact, with a high Strength and Power Attack, you can destroy most slimes by punching, for zero weapon damage.
• A Fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.
• A Monk may select this feat as one of his martial arts feats.