Cleaving after an AoO

Cleaving off an AOO doesn't feel right for me, and I wouldn't allow it in my campaigns.

But in campaigns of DMs who do, I'd love to play an improved invisible rogue with Cleave and the Opportunist ability.
 

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Ridley's Cohort said:
IMO and IME the AoO + Cleave:

(1) Discourages weird desperate tactics that provoke AoOs, and I love weird desperate tactics.

(2) Looks suspect because it breaks the normal pacing and cause & effect dynamic of the game, and therefore interferes with my SOD.

(3) Causes confusion and slows the game down, and therefore also yanks the players out of SOD. Something about discussion that begins with "Huh? Do the rules really say that?" with lots of followup questions tend to do that to me.

(4) Works against the protagonists of our story because we do not ultimately care when NPCs die by odd rules quirks. We are biased and unfair thay way.


1) wha..? So, the fact that someone 'might' have cleave and an aoo remaining for the round and have another one of your teamates and you might be very low on hp and the 'weird' action might be one with an aoo that you cannot prevent (most are preventable in one way or another) somehow limits you this desperately? I highly doubt that. It just doesnt come up often enough for that to matter.

2) I dont see how this is true either, especially if you allow things like tripping with aoos. Same deal.

3) of course, from my point of view it would be the opposite, 'what do you mean I cant cleave? he got knocked out yes? so it qualifies for my special condition. What next, my fireball will actually not do damage unless it is a tuesday?' Changing the rules midgame or making things different just because someone thinks it would be difficult to perform such an action in the real world is just a bad way to go.

4) as I stated before, this is actually one of the few things that really works well for the pc's but very poorly for the npc's against the pcs. As such it is very nice. Anything that can help the pc's more than the npc's is a boon to that aspect of the game, especially as it is so very easy for it to be in reverse with a great number of other things.


All in all, it just seems like people dislike cleave or like taking things away from the players that might somehow help them. The first type of people shouldnt even be in this thread as they already dont want cleave to work period, the second just confuse me ;)
 


Philip said:
My characters think the same about summoned monsters as I do about digital creatures.

Only because the game environment in which they exist treats them as such, even though the rules as written don't. The fact that you may have a DM who doesn't bother with dealing with alignment implications of slaughtering friendly summoned creatures doesn't mean the rules that lead one to the conclusion that doing so is evil don't exist.

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.

They don't leave behind pools of blood, but by the rules as written they do have real existence. The fact that you have edited that part out of your brain (or simply out of the setting) doesn't change the rules as written. It just means you are playing a house rule variant, and as such, the implications of that have no place in this particular discussion.
 

Scion said:
All in all, it just seems like people dislike cleave or like taking things away from the players that might somehow help them. The first type of people shouldnt even be in this thread as they already dont want cleave to work period, the second just confuse me ;)
All in all, it just seems like people want to classify people into specific groups. Your assertion is similar to saying that people that dislike broccoli either dislike vegetables, or dislike the color green. Of course, maybe they dislike the smell, the flavor, the texture, they dislike the farmer down the road that grows broccoli, they dislike how much the stores charge for it, they hate all the references to broccoli by nutritionists, they dislike how it looks, or any number of other reasons.

You can go ahead and continue to put people into your invented categories if you want to, but just realize that it is just an oversimplification and acts as a stumbling block rather than an aid to your really understanding people's opinions.
 

Lamoni said:
All in all, it just seems like people want to classify people into specific groups. Your assertion is similar to saying that people that dislike broccoli either dislike vegetables, or dislike the color green. Of course, maybe they dislike the smell, the flavor, the texture, they dislike the farmer down the road that grows broccoli, they dislike how much the stores charge for it, they hate all the references to broccoli by nutritionists, they dislike how it looks, or any number of other reasons.

Have you even read the thread? do you have any clue what you are talking about?

People have come out and said that they simply do not like cleave, in this very thread strangly enough.

Saying that people who dislike cleave should not complain about aoo + cleave because they are coming from a position where it doesnt matter what happens, they are still against it. The same goes for people who dislike aoo's. If you think that half of the whole topic is either 'silly' or 'stupid' or a 'waste of time' then there really isnt any place to discuss the ins and outs of the combo.

So, if people dislike cleave (and no, your anology about vegetables means nothing, as the closest I can see coming with that is someone not likeing feats in general, or someone claiming that just because a person dislikes cleave that they dislike feats, which is not what is going on here) then they will pretty much automatically dislike aoo's plus cleave. Their opinions on how well balanced it is will generally not be helpful.

My assertion was merely that people who dislike one of the two parts will not be able to discuss it properly. Not catagorizing everyone here.

If you disagree with my assertion then feel free, but come up with something much more solid than, 'oh, you are just putting people in some category'. Especially when they put themselves in that category and I merely pointed it out in addition to their own comments.
 

Scion said:
Have you even read the thread? do you have any clue what you are talking about?
Yes, I have read the entire thread. I'm sorry you couldn't understand my post
My assertion was merely that people who dislike one of the two parts will not be able to discuss it properly. Not catagorizing everyone here.
I'm sorry, but I read the following from your post. "All in all, it just seems like people dislike cleave or like taking things away from the players that might somehow help them."
I apologize if you didn't mean what you posted, but in your post you didn't leave room for any other type of person. If you said 'some' people, or I don't understand why the people who think A or B post in this thread it would have been much more clear.

I am sorry you didn't like my example. My example was only there to state how categorizing people into two groups is not very worthwhile. Since this wasn't your intent you could have simply said that you were trying to say something different. In my reading through this thread, I would say that I don't recall any posts that fit into either of the categories you mentioned. I'm not saying that there aren't any, because this thread is quite long. However, the most vocal people in this thread against AoO + Cleave don't belong in either of your categories and I don't understand the point of your post if you weren't referring to any of them.
 

Remember, 'people' does not equal 'all people', just that there are people who fit the category I was talking about (who strangely enough have admitted to it, but I bet there are others who have not).

It is unfortunate that you read it a completely different way than what it says, but these things do happen, especially online. Inflection of voice assumed to be one way when it is another can completely change the meaning of what was said.
 
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Karin'sdad

if AoO Cleave is so unfair? How is cleave/great cleave by itself fair?

You dont like the fact that he is getting an extra attack and hiting you. So why would cleave be okay?

"The orc dropped the fighter on his attack and then killed me!! If the fighter didnt die he wouldnt have been able to hit me... this sucks. I hate you cleave!!" - Player Y

It sounds like your problem is with cleave and not really Aoo and cleave.

Your only arguements that I have seen are that your character didnt provoke an AoO, so why can he get hit and that summon monsters can be abused.

Well you can abuse the summon monsters w/out an AoO and your character still got hit because your ally couldnt take a punch and you are okay with that?

If you dont have a problem with Cleave please explain why Cleave is okay on its own?

just curious
 

Well, I'm a person who has no problems with Cleave or Great Cleave, and no problems with AOOs, but I do have a problem with Cleaving off an AOO.

I suppose my problem is this: To me, an AOO is an extra chance to attack a combatant that occurs because he lowered his defences. A combatant who does not lower his defences should not be subject to any extra attacks that are only possible because of lowered defences.

Similarly, to me, Cleave and Great Cleave are feats that make weak opponents irrelevant. A high-level fighter with four iterative attacks per round who is fighting a powerful opponent and several weak ones could aim all his four attacks at the powerful opponent. However, Cleave and Great Cleave allow him to cut down the weak opponents and Cleave off them to attack others, including the powerful one. However, used in this way, Cleave and Great Cleave don't give the fighter any more attacks against any single opponent than if he had focused all his attention on him. The powerful opponent is no worse off no matter how many minions he surrounds himself with. They are at worst irrelevant, and at best, they could soak up some of the attacks that would have been directed at him.

The difference between a normal Cleave and Cleaving off an AOO is the difference between being irrelevant and being a liability. Cleaving off an AOO means that some of the weaker opponents could actually become liabilities, if they provoke AOOs from the fighter. The powerful opponent could be attacked one or more additional times per round at the fighter's best attack bonus, even though he has not lowered his defences, simply because his minions have. As a DM, I could avoid the issue entirely by making sure that nobody provokes AOOs, but I feel that I shouldn't have to.

At the end of the day, Cleaving off an AOO just doesn't gel with my sense of internal logic, so I wouldn't allow it. It does with others, and so they do. That's all there is to it.
 
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