I read in this thread: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1289473-dual-wield-warrior-orc-vs-redguard/ that the amount of damage dealt by a power attack is proportional to your amount of stamina. (There are some further questions one might ask about exactly what this means. But presumably, the claim is that the amount of damage dealt by a power attack is proportional to the ratio of (current amount of stamina):(full amount of stamina). In other words, the amount of damage dealt by a power attack is proportional to the percentage of your maximum stamina that you have when you execute the power attack.)

Question: Is there any other confirmation that this is the case? I did a few searches, but didn't turn up anything. (There might well be many posts on this, but I didn't want to look too closely for fear of spoilers).

In general, I am also curious about the role that stamina plays in damage calculations. Is the amount of damage dealt by a regular attack proportional to your amount of stamina? Also, do you suffer more damage from enemies if you have low stamina?

Thanks.

Wiki Link:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Power_Attack#Power_Attacks

Thanks. But this only discusses the stamina cost of a power attack, not whether the damage dealt by a power attack depends upon the percentage of your maximum stamina you have when you execute the power attack.

Having thought about it a little more (though I haven't done any testing, and I have also read this thread: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1275451-do-i-even-have-to-level-stamina) I suspect that what is going on is this. A power attack has a certain stamina cost. Suppose that that cost is X. If you have at least X stamina, then your power attack does maximum damage. But if you have less than X stamina, you don't do maximum damage. But I'm not sure whether the damage decreases gradually, depending on what percentage of X stamina you have; or whether if you have less than X stamina, your power attack simply does the same damage as a regular attack. In other words, there are a couple of possibilities. Suppose that a power attack costs 50 stamina, but you have 25 stamina. One possibility is that your power attack does (just for illustration) 50% additional damage on top of a regular attack, because you have half the stamina required to perform a "full" power attack; another possibility is that your power attack does as much damage as a regular attack, because you don't have enough stamina to perform a "full" power attack.

Of course, it might be neither of these. I guess I'm just looking for some clarification. I've always put most points into health with my stealthy-melee-archer characters, but reading around a bit makes it seem like that's a bad idea. I'd like to get to the bottom of this.

Power attack does double damage. You need a grand total of 1 point of stamina to perform a power attack. It is really that simple.

More fun facts about power attacking:
* The weight of your weapon determines how much stamina is lost from a power attack -- using heavier weapons will drain stamina faster.
* If you place a stamina absorb enchant on your weapon of choice, all you have to do to endlessly power attack your opponents is not miss (or run out of charges).
* If you power attack until your stamina is gone, it is actually in the negative numbers for a while, which is why you can't keep going... obviously, using a light weapon will make you go less negative, and thus you get a positive stamina stat faster. The only time your stamina bar is not regenerating is when it is being used or when it is full.
* As a warrior, it pays to invest into Restoration... getting the stamina healing perk can make you into a monster if you wield a one-handed weapon in one hand and the novice healing spell in the other. You can constantly regenerate health and stamina and do double damage with every swing. There is nothing stopping you from casting the healing spell and swinging your weapon at the same time.

-Loth

But in the threads I mentioned, people have claimed that there's an important difference between doing the power attack animation, and doing the full amount of power attack damage. These people claim that while you can perform the power attack animation with only 1 point of stamina, you will do far less damage. In other words, they claim that you will only do double damage (leaving perks aside) with a power attack provided you have sufficient stamina. (My hypothesis is that to do double damage with a power attack requires you to have at least as much stamina as the full stamina cost of the power attack). I'm curious if there's been any more systematic investigation of this (sure, I could do it myself, but I was hoping that it'd already been done before I started that project myself).

In my experience, my power attack damages were the same no matter how many stamina I've used to perform said attack.

srk: Check it out if you want, but I believe maybe that you're overthinking this.

-Loth