Cleaving after an AoO

[Ridley's Cohort]

Generally, no, because the rules don't say that you provoke an AoO when you become helpless.

But then, I *do* think that "becoming helpless" should provoke an AoO.

So, if I had my druthers, I'd put that into the system. However, I've found that this doesn't happen enough to warrant house ruling.

So, do you? If not, why not?

Not rare at all if you are fighting creatures with a paralyzing attack, e.g. ghouls.

Provoking an AoO when you become helpless is very obviously at least as realistic as AoO+Cleave. Drinking a potion provokes an AoO but becoming unconscious does not? Bizarre.

Bad idea for the one of the reasons I dislike AoO+Cleave: it may (or may not) be realistic to kick a man when he is down, but it makes the game less fun IMO.

 

[Philip]

Using summoned creatures to set off traps - an evil act.
Using summoned creatures as part of a battle in which they might get killed - not necessarily an evil act.

What is this about the summoned creatures thing? I already tried to introduce the illusionary creatures in an attempt to stave of this tangent of the AoO+Cleave discussion.

Summoned creatures are just as magical as illusionary creatures or shadow creatures. You can dispel them with dispel magic, they wink out in an anti-magic shell, and they cannot truly die: they disappear when brought to 0 hit points. Killing them is like destroying an illusion or astral form: it was never truly there.

Wizards sending summoned creatures to their slaughter is no more evil then me sending digital hordes to their slaughter in the newest RTS game. The summoner has a creatures made of magic, I have creatures made of bits and bytes.

The only morality issue here is empathy for the droves virtual creatures dying.

 

[Lamoni]

The only morality issue here is empathy for the droves virtual creatures dying.

True, and does that mean if you summon a group of low level creatures who will certainly meet their "death," that it is evil? Is it only not evil if the summoned creatures have a good chance of surviving until the spell expires? You shouldn't treat summon monster spells the same as planar ally spells.

I am probably more loose with alignment than most people. I feel like the PC's should do what they want and are responsible themselves for choosing an alignment that their actions coincide with... and changing it if they choose to play their PC differently. Obviously, Paladins need to be played more strictly, but if the PC thinks they are being lawful good that is good enough for me. If the PC needs an atonement spell it will be for something that they did knowingly.

 

[Philip]

It not being fair sounds like the same person who would complain about getting hit by the fireball when he was invis, or someone stepping on a trap which hits him as well, or someone easedropping on your conversation and hearing whatever secret plan is being discussed.

I still think the fairness issue is unclear.

Fairness is if someone gets what he feels that he or she deserves. Unfairness is if someone gets what he or she doesn’t deserve or does not get he or she feels that she does deserve.

Cleave+AoO is not truly unfair from a character's point-of-view, but from a player's point of view. As said, a rogue PC may inadvertently set off a trap which damages another character, which the other character may think of as unfair, but it is not unfair to the player. Why, you ask?

It is unfair from a game-rules point of view. As atom crash pointed out, the rules form a framework, a kind of player-DM contract. It is like playing Risk with the additional rule that you lose an army whenever the player sitting on your left hand loses two. Maybe such a new rule is not unbalancing, it just feels unfair, because it breaks with the general premise of the Risk ruleset. If you ever played Magic and Magic Unglued, you know they try to be fair in Magic, but they are not fair in the Unglued variant. In Unglued you can lose because you wear jeans.

Thw whole DnD rule framework is built on the premise that you can only place yourself in danger. An unfair spell would be a spell that kills a enemy if it fails his save, but kills your closest ally instead if it makes its save. (Note this is not a comparison to AoO+Cleave, its an illustration of the unfairness of the rules).

Actually, unjust would be a better word than unfair, since injustice is unfairness according to a certain set of norms, in this case the 3.5 ruleset.

 

[Philip]

True, and does that mean if you summon a group of low level creatures who will certainly meet their "death," that it is evil? Is it only not evil if the summoned creatures have a good chance of surviving until the spell expires? You shouldn't treat summon monster spells the same as planar ally spells.

Nope, it is not. It is evil if you enjoy the sight of the creatures dying, knowing they don't stand a chance. It is evil if you summon those creatures and torture them to their virtual death yourself, gloating at their pain-filled expression.

If you're neutral you couldn't care less one way or the other. You wouldn't feel much empathy (they are not your friends after all), but you wouldn't enjoy it as well.

Good characters should feel some sympathy for the dying creatures, but not as much that it would stop using them, they would just not use the summons frivolously.

 

[Storm Raven]

Summoned creatures are just as magical as illusionary creatures or shadow creatures. You can dispel them with dispel magic, they wink out in an anti-magic shell, and they cannot truly die: they disappear when brought to 0 hit points. Killing them is like destroying an illusion or astral form: it was never truly there.

Except that summoned creatures are not "virtual creatures". They are real, as real as anything else in the setting, they just happen to have the side effect of the magic that compels them to service that they don't permanently die if they are killed during their service.

Yet they do exist. They suffer pain when wounded. They experience fear when frightened. They do die, although only temporarily. Equating them with RTS game constructs doesn't work: they have real existence.

Suppose, for example, you were subject to a summoning spell. Does the fact that you would reform 24 hours later make it not an evil act to summon you and carve your body into small pieces? Would your suffering be any less real just because it was not permanent?

 

[Scion]

I still think the fairness issue is unclear.

Very unclear. Even unjust isnt terribly helpful. Those lines are placed at different places by anyone, just like the cinematic issue.

One could say it is unfair that the enemy gets to use magic, or unjust that he has access to some feat that the player didnt know about, or any number of things.

In the end this comes down to: is is allowable by the raw? is it abusive?

the answer to the first is definately yes, and the second is a definate no. An extra attack every now and then at the cost of a feat and only with other conditions just isnt huge.

Ahh well

 

[Philip]

Cenematic: " it just doesn't make sense for X situation to occur."
ok, this is a game, the activities portrayed therin take place in a fictional realm not necessarily subject to the same conditions as are present in our reality. We're talking magic here people and that applies no less to the "mundane" classes of fighters and rogues than it does to the spellcasters.

The cinematic component has nothing to do with fictional realms and or the use of magic. I think a world, even one with magic, needs internal consistency. Why? It helps the suspension of disbelief. (I think it even says so somewhere in the DMG)

What AoO+Cleave does to me, as a player, is make abundantly clear that I am playing some tactical miniatures game, instead of feeling immersed in a live and death struggle against the forces of evil with my stout companions at my side. It is like inserting Jar-Jar Binks or midi-chlorians into your favorite SF movie. Sure, there you can have loads of fully logical explanations to do so, it does not change the fact that doing so takes away some of the magic, the experience, the immersion, the suspension of disbelief. It 'jars' with the rest.

We had AoO+Cleave situations coming up in almost every battle. The two front-line fighters move next to the BBEG en the Cleric circles so that he is in exactly the right position that when the lesser undead are subject to his turning, they end up running right past the BBEG and the two fighters, and thus setting up the fighters for some AoO+Cleave goodness. I have extreme difficulty (although I don't contend it is impossible) to conjure up some believable reason why the cleric should circle the lesser undead so that when they flee they do so past the fighters. Such situations jar my suspension of disbelief, although they are tactically sound from a gamist POV.

 

[Philip]

Very unclear. Even unjust isnt terribly helpful. Those lines are placed at different places by anyone, just like the cinematic issue.

One could say it is unfair that the enemy gets to use magic, or unjust that he has access to some feat that the player didnt know about, or any number of things.

In the end this comes down to: is is allowable by the raw? is it abusive?

I don't think it comes down to that. My argument is that some people may be banning it even though it is allowed by the RAW and it is not abusive/broken besides. I am just trying to explain why I (and maybe some others) feel that way.

A spell that kills human clerics named 'Al'Qadir' without the benefit of a save or SR and can only be cast by dragons may not be abusive and be allowed by the RAW, but is sure as hell is unfair to the player of said cleric. Unjust even.

I propose that such a spell goes against the basic premise of the game, the unwritten contract, the norms between players-DM's.

What is unfair and fair, and just and unjust is always in dispute, of course. That is why we are having this discussion. I only know that I, and the friends I play D&D with, either find the AoO+Cleave unfair, or don't care much you can or can't do it. Thus AoO+Cleave is banned from our game.

 

[Philip]

Yet they do exist. They suffer pain when wounded. They experience fear when frightened. They do die, although only temporarily. Equating them with RTS game constructs doesn't work: they have real existence.

My characters think the same about summoned monsters as I do about digital creatures. They might seem real, but they're really not. Switch of the ccomputer's power or activate the anti-magic field, and both disappear instantly. They might seem to die gruesomely, but when you restart the game/recast the spell, they just re-appear as if nothing has happened.

They don't leave behind pools of blood, they don't have graves where you can grieve for their heroic deaths. They don't have a real existence.

Maybe in your game they do, and that would pose all kinds of interesting moral dillema's. In my game they don't, so the same dilemma's don't exist.