Charging, Cleave, Spring attack and AoO...

[Thanee]

How is that any different than when not doing it on an AoO? There's absolutely no difference as far as the target of the cleave is concerned. In either case, he is doing nothing differently to let his guard down. So, in fact, your choice to not allow the cleave is completely arbitrary.

The difference is, that it's not the turn of the cleaving character.

You cannot attack others when it is not your turn, unless they let their guard down.
The second target has not done so, therefore cannot be attacked by you.

Normally, the second target could have been attacked with the original attack, too.
On an AoO, this is not possible. That's the difference!

It's absolutely not arbitrary, it's an extension of this part here...

"The extra attack is with the same weapon and at the same bonus as the attack that dropped the previous creature."

Basically, the attack has the same 'restrictions' (not in the RAW, it just has same weapon, same bonus listed there, but I'm not talking about the RAW, as I made clear in my first post already) as the original attack and while it is a completely new attack in the rules, it is certainly meant to represent the same attack, just following through. An attack of opportunity is an attack, which is only able to target a single creature, the one that provoked the AoO. I place the same restriction on the potential follow-through attack, which means, that it cannot be done, since the only viable target, the one that just dropped, cannot be attacked with it, since you can only attack another target with Cleave.

It seems more like you just want to not allow cleaves at all.

Interesting conclusion!

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

Can you do an attack that counts as a standard action during a AoO?

If you check out the actions in combat section closely, you will find that there are some actions, which actually replace an attack and are no standard actions or free/move/full-round actions on their own. Disarm, Grapple, etc are such actions.

Those can be used instead of an attack, whenever you get to do an attack, be it from a standard attack action, a full-round full attack action, or an attack of opportunity. Whenever you make an attack, you can substitute one of these 'attack actions' for it.

Then there are standard actions, which resemble an attack, i.e. Manyshot. Those cannot be used in place of an attack, but rather have to be performed as a standard action on your turn as usual.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Infiniti2000]

The rationale behind the AOO is that it is a specific circumstance that happens concerning one enemy. As Thanee says, the AOO signifies someone lowering their guard.

Sure, but that has nothing to do with my point. During a normal attack or during an AoO, when you cleave to a new target, nothing that new target did caused his guard to be lowered to allow the cleave, in either case. So, why separate out the case during an AoO?

Cleaving is not a property of attacks of opportunity. It is a property of an attack. Justifying its removal based on your flavor is, despite what Thanee claims, is arbitrary. IMO, there would be no difference to disallow, say, weapon focus to function during an AoO (aside from the 'same bonus' clause obviously).

...if a pack of dire lemmings (use dire rat statistics, but more suicidal) suddenly appears on the scene ...

If that happens, you have more serious issues than worrying about Cleave. You should be worrying about finding a sane DM. So, why does someone always bring up the bag o' rats nonsense when this issue is discussed?

 

[Inigo Carmine]

If that happens, you have more serious issues than worrying about Cleave. You should be worrying about finding a sane DM. So, why does someone always bring up the bag o' rats nonsense when this issue is discussed?

They bring it up becuase its a good illustration of why Cleaving off of an AoO doesn't make sense and also because it's easy to explain in one paragraph. If you want a more reasonable situation where the exact same abuse occurs, i can provide you with one.
===================

1) Setup: party goes up against BBEG. To make it even better, let's say the BBEG has natural reach and is using a spiked chain (threatenes everything within 20 ft of him), and of course has combat reflexes and great cleave, and a 16 dex. The BBEG is in a room with a couple dozen prisoners (commoners from the nearby village) in some cages. Maybe he's undead, or just has heavy fortification armor, but either way, the rogue knows he's going to be useless as a combatant in this fight. So when the party bursts into the room, the rogue decides to free the prisoners from the cages (that way, even if the party dies, those people will probably live).

Ok, battle is joined and the party is duking it out with the BBEG (minus the rogue). Due to the way the prisoners are cramped up, the rogue can only free a few each round. To get out of this place though, they need to run within 20 ft of the BBEG. Each round, 5 or 6 commoners run through the BBEG's threatened area, provoke an AoO, and consequently have a 95% chance of getting killed (BBEG rolls anything higher than a 1 to hit). BBEG cleaves off of 4 each round (can make 4 AoOs) into the rest of the party, therefore getting more than twice as many attacks per round on the party (not to mention all attacks are at his highest bonus) than he normally would.

Now, there is the excuse someone mentioned of: "it made an opening that the person thought was covered by his ally, or distracted and/or unnerverd him just enough to let an attack slip by". Let's dispell this one. The party certainly wasn't expecting the commoners to cover the BBEG's flank and keep pressure there or something. Also, despite the rogue's apparent altruistic intetions, lets say the rest of the party are evil SOBs themselves and couldn't care less about the commoners, therefore their wholesale slaughter really isn't unnerving them. In fact, they would probably kill the commoners after the battle anyways. They're only killing off the BBEG instead of allying with him becayse he keyed their car at the last BBEG convention.

As a result, the party takes about 70% more damage per round than they normally would of, and drops like flies. There really was nothing unrealistic about this scenario (BBEG convention aside) up until the fact that this guy is a better opponent when he has commoners running in packs 20 ft behind him.

There. It didn't even require a bag of rats, but it did take more than a simple paragraph to set up.

 

[Scion]

Sounds like the big guy had a huge amount of investment into doing this, it was a very specific situation, and one of the pc's did something very dumb which the bad guy could, because of his investment, take advantage of.

Perfect example of why cleaving off of aoo's 'should' be allowed. It makes people think in more tactical terms along with giving someone in extremely unlikely circumstances the ability to actually 'use' his special training.


As a corallary, an invisible character is walking down the hall with a noninvisible character. A bag guy spots the visible guy and casts fireball on him. The invisible pc is upset because his character was punished for the other character being spotted when he was not.


It all comes down to the situation. It isnt 'but I didnt do anything wrong!' it is 'The other guy had the proper abilities to take advantage of a certain situation'.

It is a hard way to change modes of thinking of course, especially if you are the one in the position of being 'wronged'. But then, if the other guy hadnt had the ability to take advantage of this situation he would've had some other ability which would come up at other times.

Maybe instead of having cleave he could have had improved trip. This means that by getting cleave he had to give up the ability to do something else. Let the guy actually use his ability! He payed for it, just in case there was a circumstance that actually let him use it.

 

[Infiniti2000]

It's not bag of rats, but it's the same ludicrous setup. You have to make a lot of ridiculous assumptions to set that up. So many assumptions, in fact, that it will never ever occur. So, you are creating a houserule for a perceived imbalance that will never occur. Like I said, when such things happen, you have far more to worry about than Cleave.

 

[FireLance]

It's not bag of rats, but it's the same ludicrous setup. You have to make a lot of ridiculous assumptions to set that up. So many assumptions, in fact, that it will never ever occur. So, you are creating a houserule for a perceived imbalance that will never occur. Like I said, when such things happen, you have far more to worry about than Cleave.

Of course it's a ludicrous set-up. It is deliberately ludicrous, to show the extent of the problem. However, the problem doesn't disappear when it's just one guy cleaving off an AOO without Combat Reflexes and Great Cleave. It just gets smaller. The difference between the ludicrous set-up and a normal cleave off an AOO is one of scale.

On a small scale, cleaving off an AOO is not unbalanced. As Scion said, you can look at it as special training to take advantage of a situation. However, the implication of allowing this is that you should also allow great cleaving off multiple AOOs should the ludicrous set-up (or something similar) arise in game. If you don't have a problem with the ludicrous set-up, then by all means allow cleaving off AOOs in your game. However, if you do have a problem with that (as I do), it strikes me as odd to take a position that cleaving off AOOs is fine on a small scale, but not on a large scale.

 

[RisnDevil]

On a large scale, it may not be mechanically sound, but can easily be justified to make sense though. First of all, combat is not only taking place during your turn. It is assumed that you are active, mobile, aware, parrying oncoming attacks, feinting at the enemy, and all other manner of things when it is not your turn. So, although you were not relying on those commoners to help you out, they were an extra distraction. BUT, for sake of arguement, even if they weren't a distraction at first, they would quickly become a distraction as the PCs all of a suddent notice the attacks that were directed at them, aren't now, and would look to find out why. PLUS, when people die, especially brutally, they make noise. LOTS of noise, that can be heard over fighting. THAT is quite distracting and even unnerving. Even then, as brought up, the character invested alot of "practice" (feats) into being trained to take advantage of these situations, why not let them?

 

[Thanee]

They bring it up becuase its a good illustration of why Cleaving off of an AoO doesn't make sense and also because it's easy to explain in one paragraph.

Well, at least in my case, I do not worry about bag-o'-rats stuff.

See my explanation above, why I do not allow it.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Christian]

Sure, but that has nothing to do with my point. During a normal attack or during an AoO, when you cleave to a new target, nothing that new target did caused his guard to be lowered to allow the cleave, in either case. So, why separate out the case during an AoO?

I think you're missing her point. The reason to separate out the case during an AoO, is that you can only attack an opponent outside of your turn when they drop their guard. On your turn, you could attack either enemy A or enemy B; Cleave lets you attack both of them at once. Outside of your turn, you could attack only enemy A, because only enemy A dropped his guard; Cleave lets you attack enemy B anyway. The upshot is, the clear purpose of the feat is to give you extra attacks on your turn, not get attacks of opportunity against characters who haven't provoked them. The RAW clearly allows the latter, but many DMs prefer to restrict it to the former ...