Cleave: Give me room to work, my minions!

[Enkhidu]

You are entitled to think the power sucks, however, the example you've given for why you think it sucks is the most feeble drek I have ever read. Do you think that a rule has to be totally air-tight against the biggest BS interpretation to have any merit? Does logic, imagery, spirit, or playability not factor in at all?

It is so incredibly obvious that the "bag of rats" trick is NOT a possible interpretation of the rules for Cleave, that the rules shouldn't have to state otherwise.

Fitz

This post makes me laugh, laugh, and laugh some more. Silly poster, didn't you know there's a whole forum here on ENWorld (not to mention the smackdown forums over at WotC's boards) that are dedicated to this type of thing?

 

[Belphanior]

This was the first thing I thought of when I first read Cleave (ok, no, the first thing was "hey look it's not the same as 3.x cleave"). Then I started using a little math and came to the conclusion that this "loophole" is useless unless you're fighting opponents with extreme differences in AC. Like, a boss you can only hit on a 20 and minions you can hit on a 2.

So I shrugged and gave it the same response I did with the new Dispel Magic and Skill Challenges: it makes for a good game so who cares about the theoretical cornercases?

And as for using this trick to kill the tarrasque... yeah right, as if he won't have weapon resistance 5 or higher. (My personal bet is on "resist all 15" and regeneration.)

 

[Chibbot]

@ the bag of rats v. terrasque idea:
If your fighter has enough HP/AC to go toe to toe with the Terrasque and survive long enough to kill it by doing 3pts of damage around, then by all means go ahead. But if your fighter is really that powerful, you might as well just directly attack the Terrasque, because the fight will only last 2 or 3 rounds anyway.

I think it sucks because it makes no sense. Why should the adjacent enemy receive 3 pts of damage? The rules doesn't take into account the adjacent target's AC. What if the adjacent is invisible, what if he is under the Displacement spell?
And why 3 pts of damage? The 18 STR fighter with a greataxe and the 12 STR fighter with a dagger both deal 3 pts of damage? What if I'm wielding a Flaming sword? Shouldn't the adjacent enemy get some fire damage too? What about a poisoned dagger, shouldn't the adjacent enemy be poisoned too? What if I deal 1 pt of damage to the primary target, does the adjacent take 3 damage?

We don't actually know the calculation that goes into it yet. There is likely some formula that involves how much bonus damage you do from your attack normally, I would assume. And it likely will increase as you increase in level, getting better versions of Cleave, if thats what you want.

And I think it sucks because the rule got worse. 3E Cleave was just good and simple, hit an enemy and gain an attack against other enemy. Too powerful for 4E? Make it per-encounter. Don't like it? Make it an attack roll against two adjacent targets, if hit, each target receives half-damage.

Automatic 3 pts of damage to adjacent enemy simply sucks.

A bonus auto 3 points of damage at level 1 is actually great, minion or not. Its true, against the level 4 solo dragon, doing 3 points of "splash" damage each round is vastly inferior to doing d10+5 points of damage, but in that situation, when you are actually fighting the dragon, you will probably just be attacking the dragon. I know that I certainly would. Even if I were toe-to-toe with a dragon, and surrounded on all other sides by minions, I would attack the dragon, not the minions. Depending on what powers are available, I would almost certainly hit the dragon, and then cleave into one of his minions.

Against monsters who aren't a solo encounter for adventurers several levels above me though, doing some splash damage to a guy every round really stacks up, and does make a difference. Its a big help once you bring down target A from 100% to 0% and then move on to target B, only needing to drop him from 70% to 0%.

 

[occam]

If that's how the fighter would like to spend his last moments on earth I'd say that is perfectly fine. When the Tarrasque takes a chunk out of him, he'll learn his lesson.

Yeah, I don't think it'll matter much in practice. I mean, if your tactics for taking down a dragon are to cleave rats tossed out from a bag for an automatic 3 points of damage to the dragon... well, you better have a lot of fighters stocked up on rats. (Let's see, you can surround a large dragon with 12 fighters, for 36 points of damage per round, and a young black dragon has 280 hp... yeah, good luck.)

I think this fits with the 4e design ethos. If a rule can result in weirdness given some fiddly corner case, but the design of the game prevents that weirdness from being severley abusive, don't bother mentioning it; game design wins out over realism. 3e would usually try to address those corner cases, which resulted in a lot of rules cluttering up the text that didn't make much difference in play.

Of course, that depends on the game being designed in such a way that those abusive corner cases aren't lying around all over the place. In this particular instance, you should probably avoid designing very large, low-hp, high-AC monsters... I think that's a pretty safe design assumption.

 

[occam]

I think it sucks because it makes no sense. Why should the adjacent enemy receive 3 pts of damage? The rules doesn't take into account the adjacent target's AC. What if the adjacent is invisible, what if he is under the Displacement spell?

And why 3 pts of damage? The 18 STR fighter with a greataxe and the 12 STR fighter with a dagger both deal 3 pts of damage? What if I'm wielding a Flaming sword? Shouldn't the adjacent enemy get some fire damage too? What about a poisoned dagger, shouldn't the adjacent enemy be poisoned too? What if I deal 1 pt of damage to the primary target, does the adjacent take 3 damage?

And I think it sucks because the rule got worse. 3E Cleave was just good and simple, hit an enemy and gain an attack against other enemy. Too powerful for 4E? Make it per-encounter. Don't like it? Make it an attack roll against two adjacent targets, if hit, each target receives half-damage.

Automatic 3 pts of damage to adjacent enemy simply sucks.

All good questions, and I hope we have answers to at least some of them when we see the full rules. The main advantage, of course, of the Cleave rule as written (which we're not sure is even correct or complete), is that it's dead simple in play.

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

I just played a game called Nomic for the first time last week. It was enjoyable to jump through loopholes despite rambling, paragraph-long rules designed by other players specifically to avoid doing so, but I'd just as soon not recreate the experience for D&D. In Nomic, the core of the game is rules-lawyering. While I might do a bit of that in D&D, I'd much rather keep the story and action at center stage.

4E Cleave is fine. It's clean, it's elegant, it does it's job, and it does a miserable job of exploiting the "weaknesses" like the one you presented.

And if this is your basis, 3E Cleave wasn't a very good rule, either. As it was written, you got a free attack when you "dropped" an opponent. This is the only situation in the PHB that the term "drop" is used, and thus it's up to a certain amount of interpretation. You could, for example, trip him, which drops him to the ground. Certain enemies don't really "stand," and therefore don't really "drop, either" -- the gelatinous cube, for example. The language is ultimately ambiguous.

Further, regardless of whether you include just "reducing an enemy to enemy to 0 or fewer hit points" as the definition of "dropping," it doesn't make any visual sense, either. If you're literally cleaving someone in half, why can they get up from a single Cure Light Wounds afterwards? Why does it work with bludgeoning weapons? Piercing weapons? Does it work with weaponlike spells like Shocking Grasp? If yes, why should it need power attack?

Consider these questions, then consider "But what if I fill a bag of rats and put it next to the dragon?" Which of these is easier to resolve?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

II think it sucks because it makes no sense. Why should the adjacent enemy receive 3 pts of damage? The rules doesn't take into account the adjacent target's AC. What if the adjacent is invisible, what if he is under the Displacement spell?
And why 3 pts of damage? The 18 STR fighter with a greataxe and the 12 STR fighter with a dagger both deal 3 pts of damage? What if I'm wielding a Flaming sword? Shouldn't the adjacent enemy get some fire damage too? What about a poisoned dagger, shouldn't the adjacent enemy be poisoned too? What if I deal 1 pt of damage to the primary target, does the adjacent take 3 damage? .

I have no problem with an actual mechanical complaint such as this one. It's the rediculous loopholes complaint that I don't get. I maintain that rules should NEVER have to explicitly state that obvious stupidity should not work. We'd have 400 page books full of entirely useless information if that were the case.

+1 Pan of Pancakes
Makes enough pankakes for four grown men
Does NOT make eggs & bacon
Three could eat 'em all but they'd be full.
You might be able to squeeze in two women and a child with two men.
Uh.. Giants take 3 portions.
If you're illergic to wheat you might not want any
and on and on...

That's what a DM is for, after all. I'd personally HATE a rules system that had to state every possilbe interpretation of the rules, no matter how rediculous.

Fitz

Oh and I'm glad I made Enkidu laugh.

 

[eleran]

I think if the first thing you think of is a bag of rats when reading thru rules, you might want to choose a different hobby. I hear model airplanes are a lot of fun, and rarely require rats be slaughtered.

 

[HeinorNY]

I think if the first thing you think of is a bag of rats when reading thru rules, you might want to choose a different hobby. I hear model airplanes are a lot of fun, and rarely require rats be slaughtered.

So if I don't like some of the rules I should quit RPG? That's what you are saying? I think if the first thing you think of is "this guy souldn't play RPG" when reading thru a thread, you might want to stop entering RPG boards.

Let me correct you: If the first thing I think of is a bag of rats when reading thru a rule, that probably means that rule is poorly designed, or it's dumb, or it's broken, or it could create discussion on the table, or it could open a can of worms, etc.

Really, I just think 4E Cleave doesn't deliever all the fun 3E Cleave used to do. It's one of the ultra-simple ultra-boring 4E rules.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Really, I just think 4E Cleave doesn't deliever all the fun 3E Cleave used to do. It's one of the ultra-simple ultra-boring 4E rules.

How often did 3E Cleave deliver anything at all? Because it was pretty situational.

Cheers, LT.