Why is Vital Strike Melee only?

[Wraith]

Title says it all. Not the way it works in the PnP game.

[Notabot187]

1.Look at the chart for gravity bow. A large heavy crossbow base damage is 2d8 as is the large bastard sword. A 2d8 weapon with gravity bow becomes 3d8. Also you are very much wrong about not being able to get 4.5 or more damage from a size step. Also read the damn faq. A size increase of 1 increases the position of dice on that chart by TWO not one, TWO.

2. I already know this. (As an aside mythic vital stike does stack static bonues, making it great in wrath of the rightous' surprise round only combats) The bonus still is substantial, and the last few attacks in a full attack have massive penalties and rarely hit. -5, -10 and - 15 are much worse than - 2...

3. Crits aren't important, but x4 crits on massive weapon dice are nothing to be ashamed of. 12 or more extra d8s are good. Also the build auto confirms at late levels.

Complaints about cheese when talking about a full twenty level build when discussing character optimization is hilarious. You should really look up the old AM BARBARIAN builds from before the nerfing of Lance attacks and pounce. Not to mention the come and get me builds.

[Autocthon]

Originally posted by Notabot187:

1.Look at the chart for gravity bow. A large heavy crossbow base damage is 2d8 as is the large bastard sword. A 2d8 weapon with gravity bow becomes 3d8. Also you are very much wrong about not being able to get 4.5 or more damage from a size step. Also read the damn faq. A size increase of 1 increases the position of dice on that chart by TWO not one, TWO.

I concede. I missed that line. But my point regarding damage overall stands.

2. I already know this. (As an aside mythic vital stike does stack static bonues, making it great in wrath of the rightous' surprise round only combats) The bonus still is substantial, and the last few attacks in a full attack have massive penalties and rarely hit. -5, -10 and - 15 are much worse than - 2...

I've done the math. For vital strike to do better expected damage over time than an iterative attack requires either a very specific set of circumstances (narrow band of hit chance, a bunch of conditionals involving weapon damage dice). Even for the build I assume you're talking about you can expect a significant damage increase just by using the Overwatch Style to get 4 shots a round at damage instead of 1.

3. Crits aren't important, but x4 crits on massive weapon dice are nothing to be ashamed of. 12 or more extra d8s are good. Also the build auto confirms at late levels.

If you were to do the math you'd find that the build isn't doing any particularly special damage over time. A standard bowman (a crossbowman loses one of those) rocking Manyshot + Rapid Shot + Haste has effectively 4 attacks per turn at full BAB before iteratives and gets three shots at critting.

Crits are important too. You're confusing "happen infrequently" with "don't happen". A 19-20 crossbowman with a x4 crit damage making a full iterative attack with Rapid Shot + Haste gets three attacks at full BAB (considerably higher expected damage off that than off of vital strike, +37 flat damage OP) and has a roughly 30% likelihood of critting. That means that your "unimportant" crit represents a +90% damage in those first three attacks. And you have three iteratives to follow.

For a 3d8 attack +37 flat ("Vital Crossbowman build) 25% of your damage is coming from flat modifiers, the majority of which are multiplied on crit.

Complaints about cheese when talking about a full twenty level build when discussing character optimization is hilarious. You should really look up the old AM BARBARIAN builds from before the nerfing of Lance attacks and pounce. Not to mention the come and get me builds.

Not complaints about cheese. Relying on build that the DM basically has to say "Sure why not" is my point. And none of the standard "let's make vital strike not a waste" builds work in PF:K anyway for various reasons.

[Notabot187]

3 iteratives that don't hit don't matter. If you have a 95 percent chance to hit the enemy (your roll of 2 is their AC) your 2nd attack has a 70 percent chance of hitting, your 3rd has a 45, and your 4th has a 20 percent chance. The last two are not to be counted on. ACs late game with enemy buffs and circumstances means you won't always even get numbers that good to attack into, and encounters where you have it easy, and your 4th attack only needs 10s or better? Go ahead and full attack, the build can do that if its an easy target.

Vital strike gives you flexibility to do other things. Move and attack, Vital strike. Surpise round, Vital Strike. Hard to hit target? Vital strike. Easy or numerous targets with low HP? Full attack or Overwatch.

Also, crits are kinda meaningless for a build that regular shots 1 shot kills mooks (APL greater than or equal to CR) yeah, 10 percent of the shots will auto confirm in either firing mode, but you still have to hit the AC if you get a 19, and with -15 that isn't always going to happen.

I concede vital strike is useless in Kingmaker, for the reasons I originally stated. Required archetypes, feats, and weapons don't exist in it. But in P&P there are a few interesting and effective build despite being a trap option early on in the system (it requires a LOT of splat books). IIRC there is also a way to abuse the high damage dice of certain firearms, modern weapons, and future tech weapons, which in the adventure paths Reign of Winter and Iron Gods are quite nice. But that is getting into the niche applications.

On the melee side its actually decent for wildshaping and animal companions with large amounts of dice on their attacks. I think you can get around 36-48 dice on a single attack if you do it right. I'm pretty sure that many dice will greatly outweigh the "lost" static bonuses you would get if all your attacks hit.

[Autocthon]

Originally posted by Notabot187:

3 iteratives that don't hit don't matter. If you have a 95 percent chance to hit the enemy (your roll of 2 is their AC) your 2nd attack has a 70 percent chance of hitting, your 3rd has a 45, and your 4th has a 20 percent chance. The last two are not to be counted on. ACs late game with enemy buffs and circumstances means you won't always even get numbers that good to attack into, and encounters where you have it easy, and your 4th attack only needs 10s or better? Go ahead and full attack, the build can do that if its an easy target.

4 Attacks at full BAB, followed by (in your hypotheical situation) a 70% chance to hit, a 45% chance ot hit and a 20% chance to hit. Yo uca't disregard the last three attacks because they're unlikely to hit. The first 3 full damage attacks with 95% chance to hit will total out to over 4x the damage of a vital strike in your hypothetical scenario, with a 4th attack for good measure. Haste. Rapid Shot. Manyshot. Your average damage per round even without them is
likely better than gambling on a vital strike.

If vital strike quadrupled added damage modifiers? Maybe. Otherwise it's just a (decent) bonus when you can't do a full attack. Which is (marginally) more relevant in PnP than in PF:K

Vital strike gives you flexibility to do other things. Move and attack, Vital strike. Surpise round, Vital Strike. Hard to hit target? Vital strike. Easy or numerous targets with low HP? Full attack or Overwatch.

Move? Vital Strike cost you 3 feats but sure.
Surprise round? Spent 3 feats on it so sure why not.
Hard to hit target? Under no circumstances do you waste your full round on a vital strike. It won't do nearly as much damage on average as using your full attack.

Also, crits are kinda meaningless for a build that regular shots 1 shot kills mooks (APL greater than or equal to CR) yeah, 10 percent of the shots will auto confirm in either firing mode, but you still have to hit the AC if you get a 19, and with -15 that isn't always going to happen.

I was only factoring crit chance for the three attacks you'll be making at full BAB man. Not the ones that are unlikely to crit. And (as I've repeatedly said) normal attacks don't even do that much less damage than vital strike without excessively weighting it in their favor. So getting three shots at critting (and making three shots at your hypothetical 95% hit chance) is miles better than vital strike.

For instance in the magical 16d8 scenario the attack has +37 static bonus. Meaning your static bonuses with a weapon that doesn't even get attribute bonuses are still nearly *33% of vital strike's average damage. It takes a truly ludicrous number of dice to make vital strike worth it. So unless you literally have no way to make an iterative (or equivalent in the case of overwatch) attack vital strike is a bad choice.

I concede vital strike is useless in Kingmaker, for the reasons I originally stated. Required archetypes, feats, and weapons don't exist in it. But in P&P there are a few interesting and effective build despite being a trap option early on in the system (it requires a LOT of splat books). IIRC there is also a way to abuse the high damage dice of certain firearms, modern weapons, and future tech weapons, which in the adventure paths Reign of Winter and Iron Gods are quite nice. But that is getting into the niche applications.

Splat books tend to do that. But even "the" vitalstrike builds are not really that impressive. Big numbers don't mean effective DPR.

On the melee side its actually decent for wildshaping and animal companions with large amounts of dice on their attacks. I think you can get around 36-48 dice on a single attack if you do it right. I'm pretty sure that many dice will greatly outweigh the "lost" static bonuses you would get if all your attacks hit.

Depends on the dice size. Depends on the flat modifiers. Dependson whether they can reaosnably expect to crit. Most natural attacks have either multiple attacks at full BAB or a string of attacks at BAB-5. BAB-5 assuming you have an actual chance ot hit is generally not bad (2 attacks at BAB-5 are actually more than equivalent to one full BAB attack if you started at 75% hit, even better after you factor crit factors).

The window where vital strike is "worth" replacing an iterative if possible is very narrow. Like super narrow. Which means it's (up to) 3 feats that could have been spent on reliable flat damage or other forms of combat utility.

Getting vital strike "online" as a useful combat option takes too long and requires way too much investment for what you get out of it. Other feat combos come online earlier, other feats are less situational, any flat damage bonus will be on average more effective throughout the game.

Vital strike just ends up being a bit of a gimmick. Hell even "The Vital Crossbowman" is actually just using vital strike to fill hole - Overatch Style is actually doing most of the heavy lifting (and a full attack would do more damage than Vital Strike in any given round, assuming an enemy can survive the hit, because they have rapid shot, free reload, and can theoretically have haste giving them 3 full damage attacks a round for a net gain over vital strike).

*Edited: % damage of average damage was a little high.

[Super-XIX]

If the Warpriest was in this game, I would totally play a Vital Striking Gorumite with the whole Weapon of the Champion feat tree. But it isn't, so no dice.

[Notabot187]

I think you are missing the point about being viable or not. Over killing the eneny by 300 or 3000 is a pointless exercise past a certain point.

[Autocthon]

Originally posted by Notabot187:

I think you are missing the point about being viable or not. Over killing the eneny by 300 or 3000 is a pointless exercise past a certain point.

It is. But vital strike isn't even guaranteed to overkill an enemy. Against particularly weak enemies sure, but your average gain for vital strike even if yo uassume a 3d8 weaopon is 40 damage.... Which is basically like making one extra attack at full BAB. That's for Greater Vital Strike on a dedicated crossbowman build.

It's not so much about viable as it is about reliable. You can't consistently pull off one shots with vital strike the same way you can pull off a one round kill with iteratives.

[Myrryr]

Vital strike is just more effective in melee to begin with unless you're a giant. The weapons just have higher base damage. A butchering axe (or chainsaw in Iron Gods) deals base 3d6. Make it large (doable with titan fighter/irongrip gauntlets), put Impact and Enlarge person and that alone brings you to 8d6 before the actual vital strike multipliers. 24d6 at greater vital.

But can you go... higher? Yes! If you use mythic enlarge person, you go up to 12d6, or 36d6 with greater vital strike. However, does require mythic, and also opens up mythic vital strike, which is just brokenly overpowered as hell.

[buddha]

What a cruel joke this is. Why on Earth would they have the text not reference this being melee only??!?! I took this feat, already questioning if it might be a waste, mostly from curiosity, to know how the wording works in regards to damage bonuses. Turns out it was more of a waste then I originally thought.

[mbradtke]

the feat says so about dmg bonuses, it is only base dmg, some feats are melee only and vital strike is not alone here, you can guess from the icon and sommon sense, usually if it doesnt somehow indicate it is a range feat, it is melee

[asame_akio]

Originally posted by buddha:

What a cruel joke this is. Why on Earth would they have the text not reference this being melee only??!?! I took this feat, already questioning if it might be a waste, mostly from curiosity, to know how the wording works in regards to damage bonuses. Turns out it was more of a waste then I originally thought.

They probably took the text directly from the official pen and paper rules, where vital strike isn’t melee-only, as earlier posters pointed out. Unfortunately, whether accidentally on purpose, Owlcat has limited it to melee-only in Kingmaker, and since this game can no longer be updated, it’s going to stay that way.

That said, again echoing earlier posters, the only reason to take vital strike on ranged is for flavor, and the content necessary to elevate it to being a decent option are missing in Kingmaker, making it a bit of a waste for a ranged character, even if it did work as intended.