Can you cleave after making an AoO?

[mikebr99]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can you cleave after making an AoO?

Sure it is. You off somebody, and, because it was so easy to off them, you can keep going.

heh..

But the initial offing has nothing to do with the cleave feat (probably its prereq.s though).

You make the bad guy fall, THEN the Cleave feat kicks in and carries the weapon into the next guy.

 

[Tony Vargas]

1) I can hit and kill your friend, and I can cleave into you.
2) I can hit and kill your friend, but I cannot cleave into you.

That's the basis of your argument. You have provided no logical reason as to why you can have one but no the other.

Well, here or some possibilities for the second case:

The character you want to cleave into is out of your reach.

The character you want to cleave into is behind 100% cover.

The character you want to cleave into is ethereal, and you don't have a ghost touch weapon.

...

Cleave does, indeed, give you an extra melee attack - that is /just like/ the attack that dropped your foe, allowing the cleave (it uses all the same modifiers). If you don't have a valid target, you can't hit anyone with that attack.

The extension of that, here, is that the only valid target of an AoO is someone provoking an AoO. It's a reasonable enough idea.

With a little stretching, you can even get the idea to aply to the infamous "bag o' rats" (you just have to rule that, since Whirlwind lets you attack each person in range once, anyone who's already been Whirlwinded is no longer a valid target).

Yes, the interpretation is a stretch, but it's still a valid reading of the rules, and gives much better results than the more litteral interpretation. The more litteral interpretation leads to truely perverse results, like casters summoning up monsters and ordering them to attack thier fighter /friends/ so as to give the fighter extra atacks. Lame.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Funny. I always thought the idea of Cleave was hitting someone else because you just cut someone in half, red-misted them, or pounded them into the ground. Nah. Can't be. That'd just be silly.

That's the same thing - albeit, a more specific example. A 15 STR fighter can have Cleave and can 'cleave' someone with a thrust from a shortsword... I don't think he'd be cutting anyone in half in that instance.

Remember that the 3E combat system assumes a lot of strikes and defenses in the course of the round. When you drop & Cleave off someone, you may, indeed, be continuing a might swing, or you may just have easily dispatched them with a single blow, leaving you time to make several thrusts (and thus, an attack roll) at a fresher opponent.

 

[kreynolds]

Well, here or some possibilities for the second case:

The character you want to cleave into is out of your reach.

The character you want to cleave into is behind 100% cover.

The character you want to cleave into is ethereal, and you don't have a ghost touch weapon.

Tony. You have an exceptional knack for derailing the topic of a thread. None of your examples has anything to do with the topic at hand. Please follow along.

If you don't have a valid target, you can't hit anyone with that attack.

Again, this isn't even on topic.

The extension of that, here, is that the only valid target of an AoO is someone provoking an AoO. It's a reasonable enough idea.

Nope. Not good enough. Cleave over-rides that. In fact, Cleave directly over-rides the basis of AoOs. An AoO can only be taken against the individual that provoked the AoO. You can't use it on anyone else. Cleave defies that rule. When you hit someone and drop them during an AoO, you can cleave into someone else. Why? Because an AoO is an attack, thus applicable to Cleave. Still why? Because you dropped your target and can continue your attack into the next person.

With a little stretching, you can even get the idea to aply to the infamous "bag o' rats" (you just have to rule that, since Whirlwind lets you attack each person in range once, anyone who's already been Whirlwinded is no longer a valid target).

Yes, the interpretation is a stretch, but it's still a valid reading of the rules, and gives much better results than the more litteral interpretation. The more litteral interpretation leads to truely perverse results, like casters summoning up monsters and ordering them to attack thier fighter /friends/ so as to give the fighter extra atacks. Lame.

There are many ways to "fix" the "bucket o' snails" problem, but this one seems reasonable. I agree that the tactic is lame too. Personally, I ruled that when you Whirlwind, you pick a direction to do it in, you attack in the order of your swing, one right after another, and you can't change it midway.

 

[mikebr99]

Cleave defies that rule. When you hit someone and drop them during an AoO, you can cleave into someone else. Why? Because an AoO is an attack, thus applicable to Cleave. Still why? Because you dropped your target and can continue your attack into the next person.

Geez kr.. I thought we this point across on Friday... and still this thing lives!!! the untimate perpetual motion machine...

 

[kreynolds]

That's the same...<snip>...at a fresher opponent.

What does this have to do with anything? Playing semantics are we? Perhaps reading a bit too literally? Tony, you're a bright and intelligent person, but you're not really adding anything to the conversation, except maybe new candidate topics for new threads.

 

[kreynolds]

Geez kr.. I thought we this point across on Friday... and still this thing lives!!! the untimate perpetual motion machine...

Apparently not. I dread to think of what might happen if I broke the secret that water was not made of mercury. (That's a joke people)

 

[mikebr99]

Apparently not. I dread to think of what might happen if I broke the secret that water was not made of mercury. (That's a joke people)

LOL

Better erase that before someone sees it!!!

 

[Tony Vargas]

Nope. Not good enough. Cleave over-rides that.

So you can Cleave into someone who has full cover? Who's out of your threatened range, as long as he's in the immediate vicinity of the fellow you dropped?

I don't think so.

Cleave lets you take a melee attack with the same modifiers as the original attack. Clearly, you can't use that melee attack on anyone you couldn't normally use a melee attack on. Reasonably, you could also rule that you couldn't use the cleave attack on anyone who wasn't a valid target for the original attack. You could also rule it the other way, and say that you can cleave into someone who hasn't provoked an AoO.

Thing is, that leads to lame results, for instance:

Fighter (combat reflexes & great cleave, among other things) is locked in melee with a powerful enemy. The fighter's caster buddy, a Cleric, happens to have Summon Monster 3 prepared. Now, the Cleric might want to use searing light - he'll be making a ranged touch attack at -4 to hit the baddie, and only inflicting a few dice of damage. Or, he /could/ use his summoning spell to call up d4+1 celestial badgers, and, since he speaks celestial, command them to attack, not the baddie, who's AC is way to high for the little buggers to hit, but the fighter. Why? Because badgers are tiny creatures and will provoke an AoO from the fighter. The figher effortlessly hit and kill each attacking badger before they can actually hit him, and Cleave into the main baddie, at his full BAB, each time.

Now, aside from this tactic being absurdly potent (5 full-BAB attacks from a greatsword wielding mid-level fighter probably equating to something like 10d6+50 damage, vs 4d6 for an 8th level searing light), it's just plain lame. It is, simply, an undesireable result of a an overly litteral ruling, and easily prevented with a more thoughtful, less obvious, but still basicly legal ruling.

Use whichever ruling you like, but expect your players to react to it as best suits thier interest.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There are many ways to "fix" the "bucket o' snails" problem, but this one seems reasonable. I agree that the tactic is lame too. Personally, I ruled that when you Whirlwind, you pick a direction to do it in, you attack in the order of your swing, one right after another, and you can't change it midway.

That's exactly the off-the-cuff ruling we went with the first time it came up in our game. It's very close to the same result as you get with restricting Cleave to 'valid' targets (you just rule anyone who's already been whirlwinded as no longer valid, and anyone who's just been cleaved as the next target of the whirlwind - you end up being able to vary the order, a little, but, in the end, still can't get in more than one Cleave and one Whirlwind on any one target).