Power Attack

This feat exchanges your BAB for extra melee damage. It reduces your hit bonus by 5, or your BAB, whichever is lower. Then your successful attacks will have their damage increased by the same amount. Two-handed weapons get twice that damage bonus, but light weapons get no bonus at all. (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 togglable stance. Casting a spell ends this mode. This feat has a cooldown of 10 seconds.

Prerequisite: Strength 13+

A fighter may select this as one of his fighter bonus feats. A barbarian can learn an enhancement to increase the hit penalty, further increasing the damage.

Tips
 * Fighters can use the Action Boost Attack enhancement to negate the to-hit penalty from Power Attack.


 * 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.


 * When another fighter has drawn the monster's aggression, switch to Power Attack, so the flank bonus offsets the hit penalty.