Revised Path: Draft Power Attack and Vital Strike

This is a first draft of revised Power Attack and Vital Strike feats, for a potential Revised version of PF1. You can read about my design goals for such a project, and see an index of articles about it, here.

Some of my goals here are to simplify how these feats work, clarify how they are described, broaden their usefulness, and move their effectiveness towards the middle. What I mean by that is I want these to remain attractive options but not be something people feel every combatant character must have, allow them to be used in more situations, and both make them more effective for character concepts that don’t work well with them in PF1, while making them less effective for character builds that maximized their effectiveness in that game system.

I also shortened the main Vital Strike feat line, and named it so that in an alphabetical list of feats, Vital Strike comes before Vital Strike Improvement.

These are now the Draft 1.1 versions of these revisions.

I’ve added a few concepts here, new to PF1.

Base Damage: Effects that add to your base damage are added before any damage multipliers, such as from a critical hit.

Final Damage: Effects that add to your final damage are added after any damage multipliers, such as from a critical hit.

Original Damage Die: The damage an attack does before being modified by any class feature, feat, effect, enhancement, or effect. For example, the original damage die on a Medium longsword is 1d8.

Weaponlike: Many effects and rules note they apply to “weaponlike” attacks. Weaponlike attacks include all attacks made with weapons (and improvised weapons), as well as unarmed attacks and natural attacks. A small number of spells (such as spiritual weapon) are also defined as weaponlike.

Power Attack [Combat]
Prereq: Bab +1
Benefit: Before making any attacks in a round you may choose to use this feat. Until the beginning of your next turn, all your weaponlike attacks take a -2 penalty to their attack roll, and add your base attack bonus to final damage.

(Art by warmtail)

Vital Strike (Combat)
Prereq: Bab +6
Benefit: When taking a standard action or full action that allows you to take a single weaponlike attack (such as an attack action or Charge), for that attack you add additional damage dice to your final damage equal to the attack’s original damage die. For every critical damage multiple above x2 the attack has, you add another damage die to the final damage. The additional damage die is added to your final damage.

For example, a greatsword (base damage dice 2d6, critical multiplier x2) does 4d6 with a Vital Strike, while a great axe (base damage die 1d12, critical multiplier x3) does 3d12.

Vital Strike Improvement (Combat)
Prereq: Bab +11, Vital Strike
Benefit: You add an additional damage die to your Vital Strike attacks. If your base attack bonus is +16 or higher you instead add two additional damage dice.

Support This post ends a fairly lengthy silence here on my blog, which was brought on by the side effects of my chemotherapy. I began a ton of blog posts, but couldn’t focus long enough to end any of them. This week is my break between my first and second course of chemo, so I plan to complete and post all those entries, which should generate a lot more content than a typical week.

I’ll post as best I can for the two weeks after that, but I expect that next week will be spottier than this week, and the week after that may well be another dry spell. I’ll do my best to make it up in the following week, during my next break from chemo.

If you want to help me cover cancer treatment costs, right now, the main ways to offer your support are to join (or increase your pledge level to) my Patreon or, if you prefer, donate directly through my Ko-Fi account – https://ko-fi.com/owenkcstephens