Cleave on an AoO?

[FireLance]

Seems to me, the whole point of cleave is that you've downed somebody and your <insert weapon here> was swung hard enough to go clear through and catch someone else on the backswing...

I could be wrong, but I don't see the big difference in chopping through someone on the backswing of a normal attack or an AoO. No one was less ready for it, they were just standing in your backswing.

So, if you can attack a stronger opponent one more time (with Cleave) in a round where you take an AOO, why can't you do the same in a normal round when nobody provokes an AOO from you? Surely you can swing your weapon just as easily through empty air into the stronger opponent as you can off a weaker opponent and into the stronger one. What is it about the presence of the weaker opponent that makes the other opponent suddenly more vulnerable? And - in the invisible dire lemming example - without the stronger opponent even knowing that he is there?

 

[Hussar]

I look at it this way: Fighter and sorcerer are fighting side by side. The sorc tries to cast a spell and the dragon reaches over and bites off the head of the sorcerer, spraying a fountain of blood and bone all over the fighter who flinches. There's your opening and the dragon cleaves the fighter.

Works for me.

Then again, I tend not to over think things like this too much because they come up so rarely in my game. If you worry about the fighter cleaving multiple times into the BBEG, don't use mooks that can die in one hit.

 

[castro3nw]

So, if you can attack a stronger opponent one more time (with Cleave) in a round where you take an AOO, why can't you do the same in a normal round when nobody provokes an AOO from you? Surely you can swing your weapon just as easily through empty air into the stronger opponent as you can off a weaker opponent and into the stronger one. What is it about the presence of the weaker opponent that makes the other opponent suddenly more vulnerable? And - in the invisible dire lemming example - without the stronger opponent even knowing that he is there?

Well... First off, if no one provoked the AoO, then there's not an opening to take advantage of and swing your <insert weapon here> into. If you're swinging your weapon through empty air, my guess is that the stronger opponant is probably going to be the one getting an AoO on you. *grins*
As far as I can see, it's not that you're more vulnerable while standing next to a weaker opponant... Just that you're more likely to be hurt standing next to a fight.

It really boils down to that if you don't wanna get hurt, don't stand next to the guy who sucks at life while he tries to prove how much he sucks at it.

 

[green slime]

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!

Ahhh! There is that thought again....

Relax! Don't try to over rationalize everything. It's a game, and as such can only ever be a poor reflection on reality.

 

[FireLance]

I look at it this way: Fighter and sorcerer are fighting side by side. The sorc tries to cast a spell and the dragon reaches over and bites off the head of the sorcerer, spraying a fountain of blood and bone all over the fighter who flinches. There's your opening and the dragon cleaves the fighter.

It works in this example, but what if the sorcerer was invisible and on the other side of the dragon (the dragon could still take the AOO because it had see invisibility active)? That (and the invisible dire lemming example) illustrate the problem with distraction-based arguments for Cleaving off an AOO.

Then again, I tend not to over think things like this too much because they come up so rarely in my game. If you worry about the fighter cleaving multiple times into the BBEG, don't use mooks that can die in one hit.

It's not the cleaving multiple times that I have problems with, as long as the fighter does it on his turn. He could just as well have targeted the BBEG as the mook, after all, so offing the mook is just a bonus. My issue is with having the cleaving off the AOOs when he normally would not have been able to target the BBEG with an AOO in the first place. My preferred solution is simply to have the mooks avoid provoking AOOs.

 

[hong]

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!

It's Einstein's "spooky action at a distance". And Darklone could STILL do this better than me.

 

[FireLance]

It really boils down to that if you don't wanna get hurt, don't stand next to the guy who sucks at life while he tries to prove how much he sucks at it.

Or, in the case of the invisible dire lemming example, don't have weak creatures run behind the guy you're fighting if he is able to see them, and has Combat Reflexes and Great Cleave.

 

[castro3nw]

Naa... With that example, you ready an action to stab the guy with the Inviso-Lemmings when he jumps out and yells that you've been "punked"

 

[Hussar]

Meh, even if the sorc is on the other side of the dragon, the explosion of blood from thin air after the dragon bites the sorc in half is pretty darn distracting.

If a fighter has blown three feats on being able to do this, more power to him. It's going to come up once in a VERY blue moon that he's going to be able to reach multiple targets after multiple AOO's AND be able to drop each of them in order to gain cleave attacks against another target.

Basically, the only way this is going to happen is if the DM is deliberately giving the fighter a cookie. You would have to draw multiple AOO's with multiple opponents, each of which has to be dropable in one hit.

I can live with holes in the rules this small.

 

[phindar]

But you're still limited to one Cleave attempt per round, correct? Even if you have Combat Reflexes and a 37 Dex, no matter how many provoking dire lemmings you swat, you can only hit your actual opponent one extra time per round.

The only time it would really offend me would be if the conjurer in the group routinely summoned CR 1 monsters to run circles around the cleaving fighter every round so that he would always get an extra attack on whatever opponent he was facing (though, if the opponent had cleave, he would likely get one as well, unless the lemmings ran back and forth behind the pc). Behavior like that would get the party a visit from the CR 30 God of Dire Lemmings (unless I was running a game designed to reward players for taking advantage of loopholes, which might be fun too.)

But shy of that, in the course of normal combat, one cleave attempt per round doesn't offend me, whether it comes from normal killing, or opportunistic killing. That's what cleave does.