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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Madriver" data-source="post: 698998" data-attributes="member: 9540">I understand what you're saying, but I don't agree with the logic and conclusion. I don't understand why it is a bad thing for a character to get a cleave off of a foolish act by another character, that is one of the points of the feat, to provide an extra attack when the opponent drops. To me it doesn't matter from where the point of view comes from, a cleave is a cleave. At least with some of the other nerfing rules you can justify and explain the action, but with this house rule you can't. What is the justification that allows you to not cleave on certain attacks? How do you suspend disbelief? On an AoO I can perform every other special attack in the book (disarm, trip, etc.), but for some reason I can't cleave into another foe. Is my attack any less powerful? Is it supposed to be some sort of finesse attack, taking advantage of an opponents weakness? If the later, then how do you explain a reach fighter waiting to be rushed and getting AoO's against his attackers? That obviously is not finessing.When you nerf an ability it helps to have a reason and logical justification for it, not just an arbitrary "seems keystone coppish" (which I don't believe anyway, I love the visual for cleaving). One type of fighter build is a reach weapon fighter (not necessarily spiked chain) who relies on Spring Attack, Combat Reflexes, and Cleave, try explaining this rule to them, who rely more heavily on AoO's then on their regular attacks. How is it dumb luck? It is an acknowledged part of the game (cleave) and the PC's or creatures know all about AoO's and how they affect characters. If you're so worried about the monster taking an AoO and killing two PC's, then don't let him take the AoO, justify it by saying he sees the retreating PC as not being a threat anymore and is saving a possible AoO for the remaining PC's (the creature doesn't know if he will hit the retreating PC and may end up wasting an attack on someone who is unimportant to him at the moment). Just an example. You keep coming back to one scenario where the cleave off of an AoO would penalize the party, how about other scenarios. How do you explain not having cleave available when a creature passes through your threatened area? How about if a spellcaster starts casting in your threatened area, why no cleave there? The guy is standing still and it is just like a regular attack. There are many ways to help the PC's if they are in a jam, it is up to the ingenuity of the DM, but shouldn't require the elimination of abilities.Don't forget, at least for lower level PC's and creatures without Great Cleave, if they use their cleave on the AoO then they can't use it on their regular attack round.We seem to be going in circles. You don't like it, I do...I can live with that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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