Cleave and Attacks of Opportunity

[Darklone]

Me neither. But it's the old problem that a BBEG with mooks is easier to beat than without mooks

 

[Elric]

Blind Kobolds forever! Seriously, there is nothing in the rules that prevents you from abusing Great Cleave/Combat Reflexes/lots of blind kobolds (or badgers summoned by a sorceror friend), but it is rather silly. Pax's house rule looks good to me.

 

[Pielorinho]

[house rule]

The way I, personally, would handle the interaction between Cleave and an AoO that drops it's target, is, I wouldn't count that attack against the characters AoO limit for the round. That gives a benefit clearly in the spirit of Cleave, but, doesn't open up the BBEG to free extra attacks just because his FLUNKIES act like careless fools. ^_^

[/house rule]

I like it!
Daniel

 

[jgsugden]

Are you one of those people?

I've never seen why it's illogical, nor do I hate it...

This subject has been handled many times. For a thorough discussion, search these boards or the WotC boards if you don't have search access here.

My house rule to cover the situation: You may not cleave off an AoO, but you gain an extra AoO that round (as if you had combat reflexes or your dexterity were 2 higher for combat reflexes purposes) if you fell an opponent on an AoO. This effectively allows you to 'cleave' into someone else that provokes an AoO, but not into someone that has not dropped their defenses.

 

[mikebr99]

Don't be getting mad at your DM from killing you (via a Giant's cleave)... get mad at the Sorcerer!

YMMV


Mike

 

[Hypersmurf]

Are you one of those people?

Not me - I have no problem with AoO->Cleave.

-Hyp.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

While Cleaves off AOOs are definitely allowed, this sounds suspiciously like the "blind kobolds" argument. If the sorcerer/badger were allied with the giant, the proper ruling would be no AOO against an ally.

I can understand prefering either position with regard AoO+Cleave, but I believe rather strongly if you feel the need to bandaid it in this manner you should disallow it in the first place. After all, you are not preventing it from happening, just arbitrarily discouraging anyone from doing it on purpose.



How about 'Little Blue Moderator'?

 

[borc killer]

One of the only house rules we have is that you can not use any 'special' attacks during an AoO. 'Special' would mean something other than the standard listed attack for the monster or PC... so a dragon's standard attack is his bite (I think) so the only thing we let him do is bite... no cleaving, no grabs, no trips, no sunders, no nothing unless it is listed as the normal single attack.

The main reason we started this was because of improved trip and the fact that standing up from prone provokes AoO so the whole party took tripping weapons and proceeded to make a slightly over powered ability into a massive pain in the arse. So we all set down and came up with a fix… and we decided AoO only allowed for a single normal attack. Which makes a lot of since when you think about AoO as brief moments of variability because then the person making the attack should only have a split second to do it and would use their most basic attack for that.

I have to say that this has really made things run much smother and keeps everything balanced because it effect PCs just as much as monsters.

Anyway it works great for us…

Borc Killer

 

[ASH]

All house rules aside, its perfectly legal. The whole momentum idea is the one that I tend to believe....

 

[Hypersmurf]

All house rules aside, its perfectly legal. The whole momentum idea is the one that I tend to believe....

Now describe stabbing an opponent ten feet to the north, and Cleaving into an opponent ten feet to the south, with a longspear, using the "whole momentum idea"

-Hyp.