Cleave: Give me room to work, my minions!

[Squire James]

In reply to the -29 HP "problem", when someone asks how a fellow fallen PC is doing you vary your responses.

"You think he's dead. You'd need to spend an action and a Heal check to be sure."

"He's probably hanging on by a thread."

"He's only MOSTLY dead. You can go ahead and search him for loose change if you want."

"You don't think his <insert body part here> should be at that angle. Or readily visible, for that matter!"

"He's probably wishing he could call this fight a draw!"

There's plenty of ways to describe an ambiguous situation... none of these are inconsistent with the PC getting up after healing a bunch of damage. If the PC's ask how, just say "He got better." Or something like that.

 

[AllisterH]

Odd. My 16th level fighter has used those feats during every session (those sessions that had combat encounters, anyway). I've benefited from Cleave and Great Cleave so many times that I can't even begin to count them (often those extra attacks every round or so have saved the whole party).

I'm honestly shocked.

cleave and Great cleave (w/o the bag of rats trick) are the definition of "SYSTEM MASTERY" feats AND also "Fighter feats don't scale so fighters suck" feat problem.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

A few thoughts.

For the literraly minded, a bag of rat was never a bag of rat. Typically it's a summon monster III used to get 1D4+1 weak monster (i.e Fiendish dire rat). These would then be used to attack a fighter with a reach weapon, great cleave and combat reflex so that he can kill them and gain several free attack against a big bad monster. A legal and efficient tactic but an awful violation of the spirit of the game.

For the 4e sceptic who hadn't noticed, the bag of rat trick is dead. There is never going to be a scheme where you can generate artificial target for the fighter and it will be a better strategy than just attacking the damn monster instead. The prime reason for it is that cleave can't be performed as an AoO.

Now, back to the OP, attacking a minion in order to hurt the boss is a valid tactic. But is it better to hit the tougher monster and kill a minion on the same attack with cleave, or kill the minions and do 3 points of damage to the tough monster? Hmmm. You might sometime choose the second option if the boss has a much higher AC than the minions but it'll usually be better to do the first. And the fact that it isn't clear which is better at all time is what makes it interesting from a gameplay POV.

Concerning the monsters, is it better to bring your minion or not? Well, Cleave only works on an adjacent opponent. Up to 4 monsters can attack without being adjacent to each other. And you could have minions five minions attacking without being adjacent with the brute. All in all, bring you minion. Even the fighter wants to use them against the brute, he'll probably only get one ore two shot that way.

 

[Henry]

For those of you who didn't find much use with 3e's cleave, did your DM have very many fights with lots of lesser monsters, or were most fights a small number of more powerful ones? For our group, cleave has seen use I would estimate at least once per every two or three game sessions. One of my most memorable game moments was a Dwarf Barbarian in about 2001 who savaged a group of three giants, they all broke morale and ran, and he charged them while they ran, cutting one down...

...and then the second...

...and then the third! (8th level Barbarian, Great Cleave.) Everyone at the table was standing and cheering like a bunch of goofballs.

 

[small pumpkin man]

Odd. My 16th level fighter has used those feats during every session (those sessions that had combat encounters, anyway). I've benefited from Cleave and Great Cleave so many times that I can't even begin to count them (often those extra attacks every round or so have saved the whole party).

I assume you don't have a Wizard? I tend to find that if the Fighter is using Great Cleave, a fireball equivelent would do the same job more efficiently.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I'll put my hand up for cleave/great cleave seeing a lot of use.

Sure the wizard launches a fireball. In fact that's better! The fighter can then charge in and finish off the survivors, triggerring cleave after cleave...

And seriously - level/2 x d6 (ie - successful saves) vs 2d6+str+magic+some power attack tends to come out pretty even.

Rogues with cleave are quite scary too. Especially against the traditional "two guards either side of a door with an alarm in reach and scary reinforcements to come".

 

[VannATLC]

Yup.

The only really successfuly implementations of Cleave I've seen come from an Elven fighter/Rogue DW'ing thinblades, with improved critical.

Fortunately, the guy playing the Elf in question is actually an actor in his real life job, so we had a rather talented Errol Flynn in the party. He made it fun, despite the fact he dominated most combat.

Otherswise, I've seen cleave work through liberal application of Cheese.

A goliath wielding with Monkey-Grip, wielding a Huge Great-axe, for instance.

 

[Kraydak]

I'm honestly shocked.

cleave and Great cleave (w/o the bag of rats trick) are the definition of "SYSTEM MASTERY" feats AND also "Fighter feats don't scale so fighters suck" feat problem.

Power attack is bad (in Core, it can be made decent with splats). Great cleave is hideous. *Cleave*, on the other hand, is good. Not, perhaps, good enough to make up for PA, but good. If you are using enough splats to be PA good, Cleave becomes flat out excellent (damage pumps favor cleave).

 

[AllisterH]

For those of you who didn't find much use with 3e's cleave, did your DM have very many fights with lots of lesser monsters, or were most fights a small number of more powerful ones? For our group, cleave has seen use I would estimate at least once per every two or three game sessions. One of my most memorable game moments was a Dwarf Barbarian in about 2001 who savaged a group of three giants, they all broke morale and ran, and he charged them while they ran, cutting one down...

...and then the second...

...and then the third! (8th level Barbarian, Great Cleave.) Everyone at the table was standing and cheering like a bunch of goofballs.

Definitely the latter situation. The problem in our group is that many monsters of CRs of 3 and lower than the party simply aren't a threat to the party unless they get seriously buffed beforehand.

At very low levels (1-3), the DM was very hesitant on using too many low CR threats since PCs were so fragile that they themselves would be running the odds of getting a TPK and at high levels, low CR threats tended NOT to be worth spending one of the fighter's precious feats on (given that the wizard or cleric or druid in our party would have a spell that did the job better for a cheaper cost).

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

For those of you who didn't find much use with 3e's cleave, did your DM have very many fights with lots of lesser monsters, or were most fights a small number of more powerful ones? For our group, cleave has seen use I would estimate at least once per every two or three game sessions. One of my most memorable game moments was a Dwarf Barbarian in about 2001 who savaged a group of three giants, they all broke morale and ran, and he charged them while they ran, cutting one down...

...and then the second...

...and then the third! (8th level Barbarian, Great Cleave.) Everyone at the table was standing and cheering like a bunch of goofballs.

I need to ask.

How the hell could you possibly have cleaved three giants?

First of all, I'm guessing these were hill giants so after a run they would have been 120 feet away while typical barbarian charge is 80 feet. I'm guessing haste is involved though that still leave me with the real mind twister :

They are Large (2x2 squares). You rarely enough have two within reach, I can't think of a probable scenario when three fleeing giants are within reach of the same weapon. They were fleeing in a tight, convenient, 'L' formation, or what?