Power Attack

Power Attack

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

Description

Offensive Combat Stance: This feat exchanges part of your attack bonus for extra melee damage. It reduces your hit bonus by 5, or by 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.

Notes

• Prerequisite for Cleave and Great Cleave, which are some of the most powerful area-of-effect damage abilities for melee characters.

• 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 draw the monster's aggression, then move behind it and attack to gain a +2 flanking bonus.

• Power Attack is particularly good for killing slimes, oozes, and puddings. Those monsters 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.
• Fighters may select this feat as one of their fighter bonus feats.
• Monks may select this feat as one of their martial arts feats.