Power Attack. It looks fine at lower levels but as you get into the teens it’s just plain unbalanced.

Generally you get 1 for 2 (fighting defensively) or 1 for 1 with a feat (Combat Expertise). PA is the only feat or action that we can find that gives you a 2 for 1 return on investment (with a 2 handed weapon of course). On a critical with a 2 handed weapon this means you will get 4/1, 6/1, or even 8/1 RoI! No other Feat comes close to that! And this for the investment of 1 feat at first level. Joe put it best. A fighter with a 2 handed weapon already gets 1.5 Strength on their damage. And all fighters are trading the same thing (Base Attack Bonus) for the same thing (Damage), so why should wielding a 2 hander give you more damage on a PA? (As an aside, the 3.0 rulebook did not double PA damage for 2 handers. We think this was added without any testing in 3.5 to make 2 handers more attractive).

The brokeness of PA became clear to us with the “perfect storm” character in our current game. Matt’s current character (Avati) is a Fighter/Bladedancer (FR prestige class) who fights with a glaive (x3 crit). On a 10 point PA critical, before even rolling dice, the damage is at 87! Average crit damage in this case is 121, max damage in the 160 range. There are not many creatures in the Monster Manual with average hit points over 160. This has caused Kelly to tweak our opponents greatly so that they can’t easily be 1 shotted by Avati, which certainly causes a problem for the rest of the party if Avati goes down.

What to do, what to do. We talked about this at length. We proposed a number of different solutions. We tried some of them. They were not…satisfactory. Then we tried one that seems to work well, so far. We may change it again in the future, but for now, here is the Power Attack feat for ZitT games. The part in BOLD is our addition. We think this will allow PA to be a valid tactic to use in combat without unbalancing the game on crits. Only time shall tell if we are right.

POWER ATTACK [GENERAL]

Prerequisite: Str 13.

Benefit: On your action, before making attack rolls for a round, you may choose to subtract a number from all melee attack rolls and add the same number to all melee damage rolls. This number may not exceed your base attack bonus. The penalty on attacks and bonus on damage apply until your next turn. The bonus damage from Power Attack does not multiply on a critical hit.

Special: If you attack with a two-handed weapon, or with a one-handed weapon wielded in two hands, instead add twice the number subtracted from your attack rolls. You can’t add the bonus from Power Attack to the damage dealt with a light weapon (except with unarmed strikes or natural weapon attacks), even though the penalty on attack rolls still applies. (Normally, you treat a double weapon as a one-handed weapon and a light weapon. If you choose to use a double weapon like a two-handed weapon, attacking with only one end of it in a round, you treat it as a two-handed weapon.)

A fighter may select Power Attack as one of his fighter bonus feats.

I have been cajoling the ZitT crew for months for their character info. Repeated email seemed to have no effect, yet I persisted. Finally! Joe sends me his writeups today, at which time I realize that during these months and months I never published my own character info. Great example I am.

That said, here are Joe’s characters. The pages are basic now, as I’m not totally sure on a format but would be even more of a doofus if I did not put it up now!