hammer the gap feat

[kui_trans_girl]

so i was reading thru the feats and saw hammer the gap and it sounds soooo fun. im thinkin when the game finishes downloading ima try a rogue with hammer the gap first thing.

what feats and rogue talents do yall think would make hammer the gap more useful?

[Shadenuat]

U know it's just +1 damage > +2 damage > +3 damage right. That's unless the chain of attacks is not broken by a miss.

[InEffect]

Still better than deadly aim.

[kui_trans_girl]

ya im totally into iti just feel like theres gotta be feats and rogue talents that make the most use of it. relying heavily on that feat sounds fun to me

[InEffect]

even if you squeeze the most out of it it's going to be 9 attacks per round which will amount to just 36 extra damage IF you never miss. The feat is luxury at best.

[Morgian]

This is better than deadly aim? :)
Well, OK, deadly aim is only for archers...but this one is useless for everyone.

[Dixon Sider]

You want a higher BAB character than rogue for hammer the gap I would believe. You want to get extra attacks faster

[Notabot187]

Hammer the gap is decent on a couple different natural attack builds that aren't in this game. As it stands though, weapon specialization is probably better, and that isn't saying a huge amount.

The reason for this is iterative attacks fall off quickly, and those are the attacks that count most for hammer the gap. Natural attack builds have all their attacks at full BAB, and their secondaries at -5. Period. There are a couple of P&P builds that can acquire a very high number of natural attacks that count as primary. With good buffing those builds should be hitting on 75 percent or better vs APL = CR +4 and lower encounters (the normal range in the P&P guidelines for encounter building).

In this game I would skip it unless there is a build that can abuse it, hasted flurrying monks I guess would make decent use of it.

[Dorian Gray]

I believe 'hammer the gap' damage is included in the critical damage calculations. So that is a plus.

[InEffect]

deadly aim and power attack are equally useless in practical application. You pay 30% of your damage for 24 damage per hit at best(for a 2hf) and that 30& should be subtracted from power/deadly damage too, so 2HF actually would gain around 17 damage per hit at the cost of 30% of his total damage output, roughly. And that's assuming you hit on 2+. if you hit on 10+ you lose 60% of your damage and the situation gets progressively worse from there.
So yeah, power attack and deadly aim are two most harmful feats in the game. Power attack at least has a benefit of being a prerequisite for dreadful carnage and cleave feats. In comparison, even marginal usefulness of hammer the gap and whatnot is awesome.

[Shadenuat]

You're assuming that you always do Full Attack which is not the case.

[InEffect]

Originally posted by Shadenuat:

You're assuming that you always do Full Attack which is not the case.

I am actually assuming all attacks are made at full BAB. Reality is even worse than that.

[Shadenuat]

I'ma not sure I'm following your math.

[InEffect]

lets say you had 10+ to hit. Then you add -6 power attack. now you need 16+ to hit. Your damage was cut by 30%, but in reality you lost 60% of your previous damage, because relative chances dropped drastically. DPS drops by 5-7% per 1 point of AB only if you hit on 2+. They higher you need to hit the bigger is the chunk that power attack cuts out of your DPR, so unless that 24 damage somehow constitutes double your average damage power attack will both increase RNG and will likely result in net loss of damage. It can somewhat be remedied by an x4 crit from something like a serpent prince and some such, but it will only bring back 8AB worth of DPR and it's more to the power of crits than power attack. extra 100 damage from power attack(and that's on a 2HF) on a crit will cover maybe 1 or 2 misses, not 6 of them.
That logic can clearly be seen at extremes. if you go from 19 to hit to 20 you lost 50% of your damage - same applies prior to that.

[haplok]

Originally posted by Shadenuat:

You're assuming that you always do Full Attack which is not the case.

Well, if you don't, you're better off using Vital Strike or maybe Cleave. Not that anyone will pay attention to these things in real-time. Turn Based however...

[kui_trans_girl]

well i know half my feats is gonna go to a boon companion so ican get a cute leopard. and i know ill do the eldritch scoundrel thing for fun. and my first feat is gonna be hammer the gap. im just not sure what other feats and rogue talents compliment hammer the gap. im very okay not doing as much damage as if i had picked stronger feats i just wanna pick what i can to help out hamemr gap feat be as useful as i can make it. im already planning on dipping one level into something to get the leopard so i could do a level dipi n something else potentially if that would make the feat more useful