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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Inigo Carmine" data-source="post: 2475585" data-attributes="member: 34044">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.</blockquote>

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