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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 2753365" data-attributes="member: 3424">I'll take these three comments together. I agree that Cleave has nothing to do with someone dropping their guard. This is why I'm fine with Cleaving off a normal attack. To me, a Cleave is an attack, or a sequence of attacks, so powerful that the attacker can drop a weak opponent effortlessly and then turn his attention to another opponent. To put it another way, Cleave allows you to drop a weak opponent as a free action. However, because you can't tell ahead of time whether you're going to drop a weak opponent, you make your attack roll against the weak opponent first. If you drop the opponent, your attack against the weak opponent becomes a free action, and you can continue making whatever attacks you are entitled to as if you had not attacked the weak opponent.So, on C's turn, C makes an attack roll against B and drops him. C may continue making whatever attacks he is entitled to as if he had not attacked B. C then makes another attack roll against A. Cleave has nothing to do with someone dropping their guard, but AOOs do. If B drops his guard, he provokes an AOO from C. C gets an extra attack roll against B. However, if C drops B and Cleaves into A, it's as if C has got an AOO against A. I don't like that because in the normal course of combat, C would only have got one attack roll against A, but now he gets two even though A was defending himself normally. A did not do anything to provoke an AOO, but he has effectively been targeted with an AOO by C.I think the idea that Cleave makes dropping a weak opponent a free action works best for me. If B provokes an AOO from C, and C drop him with the AOO, C may continue making whatever attacks he is entitled to as if he had not attacked B. However, because A did not provoke an AOO, C can't Cleave into A.</blockquote>

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