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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 498464" data-attributes="member: 3146">I'll admit that cleave sees a lot more use at high levels than great cleave, but criticals, low-hp bad guys (wizards or rogues for instance), and other effects can make great cleave worthwhile. A melee monster could very easily drop a threatening target with his haste partial charge+power critical, cleave into another threatening bad guy, take his first two normal attacks on that bad guy, great cleave into another bad guy, and finish his routine by using his tertiary attack the third bad guy--possibly dropping him and great cleaving into a fourth.If the character in question is a raging 12th level fighter/barbarian with an effective 28 strength and a +2 frost greataxe, two hits from him deal an average of 54 points of damage which is enough to drop a variety of villains who could be fairly threatening. Three hits deal 81 hp damage on average and four hits (which is the equivalent of what the first guy in the sequence took) deal 108 hp damage before power attacking--a moderate use of power attack pumps that up to an average of 128 points of damage to the first guy. I think Great Cleave could come into play here. . . .It rather depends. If the character has good initiative (high dex, improved init), it may come up fairly regularly. If the melee character is a spellsword, Blink is a pretty reliable way of aquiring it too. Sound burst works good at low levels; Glitterdust, Blindness/Deafness, Evard's Black Tentacles (grappled opponents don't have a dex bonus against creatures outside the grapple), Power Word Stun, Power Word Blind, Holy Smite, etc keep the possibility open throughout the rest of the levels.Power Attack is a wonderful equalizer for the melee monster. Considering the number of counters to archers, it should be plenty. It appears in this case though that either the DM is letting the archers get away with murder or he's completely unaware of the means to counter archers (usually by denying Line of Sight), or the melee "tanks" in question are the most ineffective combatants since the invention of the 10 str, 6 con elf swordsman.Fair enough. The difference is that I think the new version of expert tactician is balanced but Manyshot isn't even close to it. (I think there's also a difference between using ELH and using the classbooks too).</blockquote>

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