Ultimatecalibur
Explorer
@Ultimatecalibur <!-- END TEMPLATE: dbtech_usertag_mention --> I might be wrong regarding Cleave, but the wording is completely different from Whirlwind:
Cleave: "On a hit, roll the expertise dice in place of the weapon’s damage dice."
Whirlwind: "If you hit one of the additional creatures, roll the expertise die you spent, using it in place of the weapon’s damage dice and adding no bonuses to the damage."
Damage is normally: [W]+bonuses for damage.
Cleave says: roll [E] instead of [W], so it is: [E]+bonuses
Whirlwind says: rolle [E] instead of [W] and no bonuses, so it just [E]
It might be sloppy wording, but since you only get it when you drop an enemy I found it logical. You were right about the reach-thing though.
I meant "auto cleave" in that given a number of targets equal to 1+number of available expertise dice, Whirlwind attack can make the same amount of attacks as Cleave would without requiring that the preceding attack to have killed a target.