Cleave on an AoO?

[phindar]

That's pretty much how I see it, it just seems like a big jump to go from Cleave being limited to once per round (no matter how many people you kill), to Great Cleave having no limits on the number of uses (aside from the sheer practicality of how many people you're able to kill).

I'd never really thought of it before, because to be honest, I had forgotten Great Cleave could be used multiple times per round. (In my defense, I'm playing my first cleaver in awhile, and I haven't taken GC yet.) But combining Great Cleave with AoO's is potent because while your cleave attempts go off at the same attack bonus you strike with (so you secondary and tertiary attacks aren't as likely to hit), your AoO's always go off your highest BA. So let's say you make a guy with a Reach Weapon, Combat Reflexes, and with a good Dex (by mid to high level, probably 18 with stat enhancing items or buff spells). Ideal circumstances, a lot of provoking dire lemmings, and so on, you're looking at 7 possible Cleaves in a round (5 for AoO's and 2 normal attacks, for a character in the 6-10 range).

I don't think its unbalancing, especially compared to what the casters are doing and a comparable level, I'm just saying that its a drastic difference in effectiveness between having Cleave and getting 1 Cleave attempt per round, and taking one more feat with a low prereq and getting as many as 7 Cleave attempts per round. Most Feat trees don't have that kind of bump.

 

[Mistwell]

So say I have a BAB of +20. With cleave, I get 4 attacks on the BBEG, whereas without cleave, I only get... 4?

False. Because you are killing other things with those attacks. Only the cleaves are attacking that big bad guy. The issue I was addressing is the logic of getting many attacks on someone simply because they had weak allies dropping dead near them. It's just as illogical as the AOO. I know you want to talk about the balance of the issue, but that isn't what we were discussing. It was the logic of the thing that was at issue...and I say the logic is lacking in both normal and AOO combat with great cleave.

I think we must be simply imagining the feat functioning in very dissimilar ways. The way I see it, if you can drop a foe in one hit, Cleave lets you do it with so little effort it doesn't count towards your normal limit of attacks for the round.

But cleave doesn't speak to effort. If your hit is a critical hit on the first foe doing max damage, which was just barely enough to drop them, it cleaves into the second just as easily as if your cleave barely hit and did only 1 point of damage but happened to drop the first foe.

 

[Mistwell]

That's pretty much how I see it, it just seems like a big jump to go from Cleave being limited to once per round (no matter how many people you kill), to Great Cleave having no limits on the number of uses (aside from the sheer practicality of how many people you're able to kill).

I'd never really thought of it before, because to be honest, I had forgotten Great Cleave could be used multiple times per round. (In my defense, I'm playing my first cleaver in awhile, and I haven't taken GC yet.) But combining Great Cleave with AoO's is potent because while your cleave attempts go off at the same attack bonus you strike with (so you secondary and tertiary attacks aren't as likely to hit), your AoO's always go off your highest BA. So let's say you make a guy with a Reach Weapon, Combat Reflexes, and with a good Dex (by mid to high level, probably 18 with stat enhancing items or buff spells). Ideal circumstances, a lot of provoking dire lemmings, and so on, you're looking at 7 possible Cleaves in a round (5 for AoO's and 2 normal attacks, for a character in the 6-10 range).

I don't think its unbalancing, especially compared to what the casters are doing and a comparable level, I'm just saying that its a drastic difference in effectiveness between having Cleave and getting 1 Cleave attempt per round, and taking one more feat with a low prereq and getting as many as 7 Cleave attempts per round. Most Feat trees don't have that kind of bump.

I think you are worrying over nothing. This is all a theoretical arguement and always has been. Nobody actually has it come up in their games where a stream of weak mooks runs by you at the same time that you are in melee attacking distance of a big bad guy vunerbale to AOOs like that. After the first mook drops, the rest tend to not rush past you anymore, and the chain of attacks ends quick.

 

[green slime]

I think you are worrying over nothing. This is all a theoretical arguement and always has been. Nobody actually has it come up in their games where a stream of weak mooks runs by you at the same time that you are in melee attacking distance of a big bad guy vunerbale to AOOs like that. After the first mook drops, the rest tend to not rush past you anymore, and the chain of attacks ends quick.

Exactly. And what is a 20th level fighter slaughtering mere low level mooks anyway? What kind of DM does that fighter have?

I wouldn't expect to see many opponents that I would count on dropping in a single attack, at that level. I know my players don't. This fact alone (but I admit, it is campaign dependant) makes Great Cleave an almost complete waste of a feat, unless the DM throws the PC a bone.

 

[RigaMortus2]

To me, an AOO occurs when someone has dropped his guard in combat,

Such as when you are paralyzed or the victim of Hold Person?

 

[starwed]

Such as when you are paralyzed or the victim of Hold Person?

Those really no rationale for why you can't get AoO on such targets, but I can see how it would be a game balance issue. But the rules are pretty clear on the basic nature of an AoO:

Sometimes a combatant in a melee lets her guard down. In this case, combatants near her can take advantage of her lapse in defense to attack her for free. These free attacks are called attacks of opportunity.

 

[brehobit]

Of course it does! Great Cleave lets you do it plenty! You kill a mook next to the big bad guy, and you get another attack on the big bad guy. You take your second hit at a second mook, kill him, and take your second cleave on the big bad guy. Continue until you run out of attacks. How is that less silly than the AOO situation? Combat reflexes limits you to your Dex, and the regular situation limits you to your number of attacks based on base attack bonus, and neither are logical situations.

I'm not arguing silly. I'm arguing that in one case the baddy is himself no worse off for having mooks, in the other he is.
You said "Is it less logical than the fact that you can bring more hurt onto someone because of how quickly their allies drop when the allies are near you?"

I'd argue that "logically" you shouldn't be significantly worse off for having allies. The standard cleave during the attacker's turn doesn't make you worse off (better in fact as the first attack might miss) but an attack of an AoO does make having allies worse. That, I think, is less logical.

 

[phindar]

I think you are worrying over nothing.

I think the part where I said, "I don't think its unbalancing" indicates that I am not particularly worried about it. My point is just that its an odd leap in a feat tree to go from being allowed 1 thing, to an unlimited number of things. I'm saying it wouldn't offend me if there were a few more stepping stones in there, because in the context of the system, things tend to come in stages.

I've seen Great Cleave used twice to what I would call near-maximum effect. Once was a AE Giant (with natural reach and combat reflexes) getting charged by waves of zombies (unintelligent undead with few enough hit points to be wiped out by his attacks. The other was a dwarf fighter in a Sigil game who got swarmed by dretches. He cleaved 9 off his first attack, took a 5' step, and cleaved 6 more. (He had more attacks that round, but he'd killed every enemy within reach so there wasn't much he could do about that but wait for the other 30 to swarm in.)

Two great (ideal even) uses of Great Cleave. In practice, it worked a lot like Whirlwind Attack, except that we're talking about 2 feat prereqs to WA's 4. Granted, its a bit of apples and oranges because GC and WA work differently (you don't have to drop people to keep WA'ing), but my point is you build incrementally to WA, whereas GC is a lot cheaper, and involves a significant jump in effectiveness. Not too many things in the system do that.

 

[mikebr99]

If you have a problem with cleaving (off an AoO, or anytime for that matter), you could consider a houserule that makes the Cleaver decide on a clock-wise or counter clock-wise motion for the entire great cleave to proceed on... this stops the multiple attacks on the BBEG.

YMMV

Mike

 

[phindar]

While it sounds like I'm attacking Great Cleave, what I'm actually wondering is if Whirlwind is overpriced. I've never seen anyone take it-- I've seen them work towards it, but the games didn't last long enough for them to get it, or if they did, they never used it memorably enough to matter. As opposed to Great Cleave, which people take quite a bit. But I don't really have a dog in the fight, at this point I'm just supposin'.

I mean, what if you made Combat Reflexes a prereq of Great Cleave, and then made Cleave attempts AoO's (as an earlier poster suggested)? That would limit the number of cleave attempts per round, plus make the feat more expensive (1 more prereq plus you'd need a decent dex to take advantage of it).

But again, its not that I think Great Cleave is too powerful, just that it seems very cheap for what you get.