Cleave on an AoO?

[welby]

Pretty much what the topic says. With the feat cleave, can I kill someone with an AoO, and use the feat cleave?

 

[Thurbane]

Pretty much what the topic says. With the feat cleave, can I kill someone with an AoO, and use the feat cleave?

Yes, but only once per round, unless you have great cleave...

CLEAVE [GENERAL]

Prerequisites: Str 13, Power Attack.

Benefit: If you deal a creature enough damage to make it drop (typically by dropping it to below 0 hit points or killing it), you get an immediate, extra melee attack against another creature within reach. You cannot take a 5-foot step before making this extra attack. The extra attack is with the same weapon and at the same bonus as the attack that dropped the previous creature. You can use this ability once per round.

Special: A fighter may select Cleave as one of his fighter bonus feats.

 

[starwed]

Note that this leads to various weird situations, though, since you can get a free attack on one of your enemies, even though they have done nothing to provoke it.

Not so bad with just Cleave, but Great Cleaving on AoO can lead to just plain stupid situations. (Like the famous bag'o'rats fighter.)

The best houserule I've seen is that, if you drop a foe with an AoO, Cleave grants you an extra AoO rather than an immediate extra attack.

 

[Hussar]

Note that this leads to various weird situations, though, since you can get a free attack on one of your enemies, even though they have done nothing to provoke it.

Well, of course. The guy you AOO'd is dead, so, with cleave or great cleave, you ALWAYS get a free attack against someone who didn't provoke.

 

[Darklone]

Oh yeah... the good old situation where the BBEG fighter is weaker with his mooks than without them...

That's why he sends the mooks ahead in the movies!

 

[starwed]

The guy you AOO'd is dead, so, with cleave or great cleave, you ALWAYS get a free attack against someone who didn't provoke.

The distinction is the number of attacks you can make against one target.

When used on your turn, cleave increases the number of foes you can attack, but not the number of attacks you can make against any one foe. You could have always attacked your secondary target instead of the original target whom you dropped. When used with AoO, you get extra free attacks against a foe that he can't avoid, and wouldn't have been open to except for the completely unrelated actions of someone else... with Combat Reflexes and something like Robilar's gambit, the BBEG will wish he left his minions at home.

It's just an illogical situation that you can bring more hurt onto someone because of how others move across the battlefield. Oh look, that wounded cleric is casting a spell to heal herself! My half-ogre fighter drops her with his spiked chain, and cleaves into the BBEG standing 50 feet away... Thank the gods that her actions a left hole in his defenses!

Now, I know that logic isn't always the best standards for adjudicating D&D rules. ^_^ But this particular rule also leads to weird meta-gaming situations. (Hmm, I'd better not finish off his minions now, so that I can cleave off them to get the most of Combat Reflexes.) Best to use the simple fix I referenced earlier.

 

[frankthedm]

The best houserule I've seen is that, if you drop a foe with an AoO, Cleave grants you an extra AoO rather than an immediate extra attack.

And thus if someone else drops thier guard during that round {AoO], you cleave into them.

 

[Nail]

It's just an illogical situation that you can bring more hurt onto someone because of how others move across the battlefield.

You've never been in a fight with multiple participants, have you?

Back OT: Yes, you may Cleave any time you do enough damage to a creature to make it drop. What action that lead to that damage (like an AoO melee attack) is irrelevant.

Just So You Know, welby, this is one of the oldest thread topics on these forums.

 

[FireLance]

Time for me to trot out the invisible dire lemmings scenario again.

As a few people have mentioned, there's nothing in the rules to stop you from Cleaving off an AOO. I'm one of the people who don't like it though. To me, an AOO occurs when someone has dropped his guard in combat, but that shouldn't make anyone else more vulnerable to an attack.

I like to use the invisible dire lemming example to illustrate this. Let's say there are two fighters, A and B, facing each other in combat. B has Combat Reflexes and Great Cleave, and has true seeing cast on him. Someone (maybe an ally of B) suddenly releases a pack of invisible dire lemmings (like dire rats, but more suicidal) and they run behind B. As they do so, they provoke AOOs for movement from him. B gets several attacks on the dire lemmings because of Combat Reflexes, and he easily kills each with one blow and Cleaves into A. The dire lemmings don't distract A because he can't see them. As far as A is concerned, he's keeping a wary eye on B, and defending himself normally against him. However, B suddenly erupts into a flurry of motion, landing several solid blows on A.

Yes, it's a pretty contrived scenario, but I hope it serves to illustrate why I don't think Cleaving off an AOO should work. Naturally, YMMV.

 

[Jhulae]

Time for me to trot out the invisible dire lemmings scenario again.

As a few people have mentioned, there's nothing in the rules to stop you from Cleaving off an AOO. I'm one of the people who don't like it though. To me, an AOO occurs when someone has dropped his guard in combat, but that shouldn't make anyone else more vulnerable to an attack.

I like to use the invisible dire lemming example to illustrate this. Let's say there are two fighters, A and B, facing each other in combat. B has Combat Reflexes and Great Cleave, and has true seeing cast on him. Someone (maybe an ally of B) suddenly releases a pack of invisible dire lemmings (like dire rats, but more suicidal) and they run behind B. As they do so, they provoke AOOs for movement from him. B gets several attacks on the dire lemmings because of Combat Reflexes, and he easily kills each with one blow and Cleaves into A. The dire lemmings don't distract A because he can't see them. As far as A is concerned, he's keeping a wary eye on B, and defending himself normally against him. However, B suddenly erupts into a flurry of motion, landing several solid blows on A.

Yes, it's a pretty contrived scenario, but I hope it serves to illustrate why I don't think Cleaving off an AOO should work. Naturally, YMMV.

Um, if anyone tried the invisible 'dire lemmings', they should be slapped, just like with the 'bag 'o rats'. Just thinking of someone trying that scenario is assinine.

But, taking that scenario to an actual 'reasonable' level, If there were a bunch of actual invisible combatants, such as rogues, who were hoping to get the drop on the fighter with great cleave, the fighter would *still* look like he was in a 'flurry of action' to A.

Regardless, yes, you get a cleave on an AoO if you drop the target who provoked.