Can you Cleave after a Cup De' Grassey?


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That's not possible, an attack roll is 1d20 + attack bonus.

The attack bonus is not 0 in this case, it's undefined, therefore the attack roll gives no result and you cannot compare it to the AC to see, whether the attack was successful or not!

Sidenote: Of course, the term "attack bonus" is completely misleading as it implies positivity and can very well be a negative number! ;)

Bye
Thanee
 


Hypersmurf said:
The text of the Cleave feat, of course, says "same bonus" :)

Yes it does.

Was it you who was arguing earlier in the thread that "bonus" meant "attack bonus" earlier, or was it someone else?

At any rate, an attack roll is defined as a D20 roll plus the base attack bonus to hit (plus any other modifiers). If the attack bonus to hit is undefined because CDG does not have one, how do you calculate it? This question (or ones like it) have never been answered.

The Cleave feat does not say "at the attackers BAB", it says "at the same bonus". How can you add in a non-existent bonus? It is not zero. It is non-existent. You cannot do the D20 + bab + modifiers calculation because one of the terms is not defined.
 

Ok Hyper I see that I will have to take this one point at a time.
Power Attack in the rules portion uses the phrase

“On the character's action, before making attack rolls for a round, the character may choose to subtract a number from all melee attack rolls and add the same number to all melee damage rolls.”

There are some very clear things that you can parse out of the statement.
Power attack is declared on a person’s action.
Power attack amount is declared before the attacks not after.
Power states clearly “before making” before making them happen.

Let’s look at the English language. If I say that “On Sunday, before making the bread, I had to decide to add less salt and more sugar. Nowhere in the sentence does it waffle.
The day is Sunday
the action is making the bread
the subaction is changing the recipe

There is nothing in that sentence that would imply that the bread didn’t get made. The way that bread was made might be changed or maybe not but that bread was made. Period!

The word making or make is clear:
“to cause to happen to or be experienced by someone”
in this case it is clearly “to cause to happen”

You would like for the sentence to say:
“On the character's action, before (choosing, or, deciding to) making(e) attack rolls for a round, the character may choose to subtract a number from all melee attack rolls and add the same number to all melee damage rolls.”

Making is not conditional. It is definitive.

Nothing in the rest of the feat would change “making” to a conditional statement.
If you think it is otherwise show me a sentence that follows your example.
 

Thanee said:
That's not possible, an attack roll is 1d20 + attack bonus.

The attack bonus is not 0 in this case, it's undefined, therefore the attack roll gives no result and you cannot compare it to the AC to see, whether the attack was successful or not!

Sidenote: Of course, the term "attack bonus" is completely misleading as it implies positivity and can very well be a negative number! ;)

Bye
Thanee

You have a second vote here. The bonus cannot be assigned if it is not defined. Period! Undefined does not = 0. Further you are right that it can be a negative number. A fighter with BAB 6 with total attack bonus of 7 attacks using power attack of 5. Thus he attacks @ 2/-3. If you were to hit with the second attack and drop the foe, triggering cleave your attack roll would be at
-3 for that attack. That is not a positive number.
 



Altamont Revenard said:
(I'm assuming that no FAQ entry has given a clear definition of what "dropping" someone means)
Hypersmurf said:
About the only consistent clarification is that "Tripping doesn't count".

As far as I'm aware, everything else is still up for debate :)

-Hyp.
Like, say, picking somebody up and dropping them? Like, say I'm carrying a halfling, and he's my enemy, I can drop him and get a free melee attack too? ;)

"Dropped" really needs to be defined better. There are two interpretations, one or both of which might be valid.

First "Dropping" is something that is done to others, whereby "Dropped" would be the past tense of the verb "To Drop." You could point at the dead orc next to you and say, "I dropped that orc."

Second, "Dropped" could be an adjective describing a person/creature to whom the action-verb has already been applied. You can point at a person on the ground and say "That person is dropped." It is a description of a current condition.

I would rule (YMMV) that both definitions apply to the cleave feat. Once you "drop" somebody, they are considered "dropped." I would also rule that being "dropped" involves a tranfer of position from being standing or upright to being prone on the ground. Therefore, if somebody is already prone on the ground, the "drop" condition cannot be applied to them, and cleave cannot function, whether you CDG or make a normal melee attack. If, however, they are helpless in a standing position (i.e., Held), then a CDG (and possibly a regular attack) has a potential for completing the "dropped" condition, and therefore you can cleave.

And in other news...

Hyp, you're getting very fond of the "flavor text" argument. Unfortunately, I can find nowhere in the book where it defines the term "flavor text" (or "D&Dese" for that matter) or in any way indicates that some paragraphs have more rules-clout than others. I don't suppose you can provide a page number? :D

(damn, we are geeks. I just wasted 10 minutes of work time typing this post. And I had fun doing it.)
 

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