Cleaving after an AoO

[Scion]

How exactly do you stab through him with a mace?

Now you are having trouble with cleave itself, not with aoo + cleave.

 

[KarinsDad]

now we are pretending things? I think I see why it does not make sense to you then

I'll just pretend that you let your guard down in a number of ways and get a full spectrum of aoo's on you then. Why not?

Precisely.

It is exactly like this.

Why should person A let down his guard because person B imagines that he does?

Why should person A let down his guard because person B kills person C?

No difference.


The fireball example is irrelevant to the topic at hand and just a smokescreen.

Yes, other people's actions affect ours in combat.

But, saying that Cleave works on AoOs is like saying that you can get hit by an arrow because an archer was able to bounce it off your buddy standing 300 feet away from you and he damaged both of you with it.


You are trying to justify a GAME MECHANIC.

You are not trying to justify something that really makes sense in real combat.

Cleave makes very little sense as is in real combat. It's just a mechanics driven silly little feat that someone thought "Hey, wouldn't this be cool?"


It's like Power Attack. The additional damage of Power Attack should be subdual damage, not real damage.

That way, you cannot Power Attack and slash apart an Adamantine Door with your dinky little iron longsword. A feat should not really be able to give you the ability to do 2x or 3x the amount of damage that your strength and weapon allows. IMO.

In my last campaign, it was a little bothersome when PCs could Power Attack through a stone wall in a matter of moments. Some rules just do not make sense and shouldn't be justified.

PS. While hijacking this thread to Power Attack, it is also stupid that it cannot be used for light weapons. They tried to fix the nonsensical portion of this in 3.5 in a nonsensical manner.

 

[Philip]

The BIG difference between a regular Cleave and an one on a AoO is that I considered the first one deliberate.

Someone with the Cleave feat knows how to set up his attacks so that they have the possibility of hitting more than one opponent.

AoO are not deliberate. They are unexpected opportunities in the normal flow of combat. Therefore I disallow any and all special attack actions on AoO's, including cleave.

Person A drinks a potion, Fighter B hits A, kill him, and proceeds to with a sunder attack on the shield of Person C, destroys it, gets an extra attack on person C due to his Combat Brute feat, makes a trip attack and trips person C, and then gets another attack due to his Improved Trip, and uses it to disarm person C. I think that's just plain weird. Having person C sitting on the ground, without a shield and a weapon, just because person A dropped his guard.....

 

[Abstraction]

How exactly do you stab through him with a mace?

Or grab his arm with a shield in one hand and a sword in the other?

Or stab through his plate armor?

And why doesn't your opponent get time to step back while you are playing Errol Flynn here?

The point is that it is a nonsensical side effect of AoOs and it wasn't fixed and people are trying to come up with extreme cinematic attempts to justify a bad rule.

Why bother? Just fix it.

Now you're just being silly. Of course the cinematics are different for each situation. Why does Cleave not make sense to you on an AoO, when all those things you mention still wouldn't make sense on your turn? For that matter, it sounds like you want to houserule that plate armor cannot be stabbed through. Ever.

The feat works well mechanically. The feat works well stylistically. Just watch any sword and sorcery movie.

 

[jodyjohnson]

We disallow it.

Primarily on the grounds that AoO exists as a mechanic to give a negative consequence to doing stupid things in melee.

Whenever it evolves into a way to increase melee damage I get warry. Any feats which use the AoO as a offensive means to increase damage goes against this.

I'll exempt Combat Reflexes because it doesn't actually force anyone to draw an AoO - it's more of a disincentive to meta-game AoO (he used his AoO therefore I can do whatever).

Cleave off AoO, Bull-rushing/moving opponents to force them to draw AoO, feats which specifically force opponents to draw AoO, etc. all go against my personal sensibility regarding AoO as a means to punish doing stupid things in combat.

 

[Scion]

Precisely.
It is exactly like this.
Why should person A let down his guard because person B imagines that he does?
Why should person A let down his guard because person B kills person C?
No difference.

I am afraid that you are simply making up silly situations which make no sense in order to prove that something you do not like makes no sense.

It isnt working.

If you wish to break the rules of the game (by pretending to be able to make an aoo and thereby do so) then go right ahead, but this is bad.

This is not about letting ones guard down, this isnt about someone having something bad happen to them for no fault of their own.

It is about one person having the skill to perform an unusual action and doing it. That is all.

The fireball example counters your arguement perfectly, it illustrates that sometimes bad things can happen to you without it being your fault. But, it doesnt really matter for the main point for this thread.


I think that your entire gripe is simply with Cleave itself. It is a difficult feat to really think about, it works in very odd ways. However, the point is not that it is hard to think about, the point is how it works and what it does.

By the raw it is definately allowable. By common sense it is also allowable. I have given reasons why this is so, you have given reasons why your common sense dictates otherwise. Obviously one can come to either conclusion with common sense so we then have to fall to is, 'is it unbalanced?'. In my opinion it is not, the list of things that have to go just right is pretty high for just a single extra attack.


I will agree though that not being able to power attack with a light weapon is silly, but that is also neither here nor there for this thread.

AoO are not deliberate.

Yes they are. You get to choose whether or not to take the opportunity. You get to choose which weapon to use. You get to choose what other feats you might want to apply to this action and how to go about enacting them.

Also, there are feats such as karmic strike which center completely around useing the aoo in a very deliberate manner.

You can say that you cannot plan for it directly in most cases sure, but then you cant plan for cleave either so that point doesnt really help your case. If one has a situation where they get to make a strike why can they suddenly not plan that attack just as much as any other? Especially when they could have used any number of other feats in its place?

 

[atom crash]

From the www.wizards.com glossary definition of attack of opportunity:

A single extra melee attack per round that a combatant can make when an opponent within reach takes an action that provokes attacks of opportunity. Cover prevents attacks of opportunity.

Wow! What a horrible definition. They use the term itself to define the term.

From the SRD:

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.

In abstract terms, an attack of opportunity is the result of a character's actions making him or her more vulnerable to attack during battle. You should not be able to damage someone who did not let their guard down during an attack of opportunity.

Sure, as the fireball example illustrates, sometimes bad things can happen to you without it being your fault. But keep in mind that we're not talking about fireballs (or any other area effect). You can't use a fireball during an attack of opportunity, so that point is moot.

But I'm not interested in a justification either way. I'd like to settle this according to the rules. Let's look at the rules a bit further.

From the combat section of the SRD:

Making an Attack of Opportunity: An attack of opportunity is a single melee attack, and you can only make one per round. You don’t have to make an attack of opportunity if you don’t want to.

An experienced character gets additional regular melee attacks (by using the full attack action), but at a lower attack bonus. You make your attack of opportunity, however, at your normal attack bonus—even if you’ve already attacked in the round.

An attack of opportunity “interrupts” the normal flow of actions in the round. If an attack of opportunity is provoked, immediately resolve the attack of opportunity, then continue with the next character’s turn (or complete the current turn, if the attack of opportunity was provoked in the midst of a character’s turn).

Combat Reflexes and Additional Attacks of Opportunity: If you have the Combat Reflexes feat you can add your Dexterity modifier to the number of attacks of opportunity you can make in a round. This feat does not let you make more than one attack for a given opportunity, but if the same opponent provokes two attacks of opportunity from you, you could make two separate attacks of opportunity (since each one represents a different opportunity). Moving out of more than one square threatened by the same opponent in the same round doesn’t count as more than one opportunity for that opponent. All these attacks are at your full normal attack bonus.

The added emphasis is mine. One attack of opportunity per round. Ok, now Cleave:

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.

Ok, so Cleave gives you an extra melee attack, but an attack of opportunity only allows you one melee attack. By a strict reading of the rules, Cleave won't give you an extra melee attack during an attack of opportunity because you only get one attack during an attack of opportunity. Combat Reflexes is the only exception that gives you more attacks of opportunity, but even Combat Reflexes doesn't give you more than one attack for a given opportunity.

 

[Scion]

By that same reasoning you could not cleave at the end of a charge even if you took down your opponent.

 

[KarinsDad]

Ok, so Cleave gives you an extra melee attack, but an attack of opportunity only allows you one melee attack. By a strict reading of the rules, Cleave won't give you an extra melee attack during an attack of opportunity because you only get one attack during an attack of opportunity. Combat Reflexes is the only exception that gives you more attacks of opportunity, but even Combat Reflexes doesn't give you more than one attack for a given opportunity.

Wow!

Nicely done atom. What a concept! Use the rules to show what the rule is.

Ok, the answer to the original post is that it cannot be done.

Next.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Hell, BAB <= +5 only allows "one melee attack."

Can you Cleave then?