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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LokiDR" data-source="post: 499578" data-attributes="member: 6239">I don't see cleave or great cleave come up much, ever.  There is a durid/barbarian in my game who says on occasion "I never get to use that feat."  If I throw the kind of low level mooks at the party that he can cleave, the party wont be hurt.  Is it fun to slaughter peons when they can't hurt you?The monster manual has a large number of "brutes", large monsters who hit hard, have lots of hp, and maybe a few special abilities.  These act like melee fighters most times, because they are.  When the PCs send out the melee fighters, the get hit by AoOs but the monster doesn't advance.  Now the monster is hurt a little, so he attacks the fighter.  Archer hits it, melee hits it, monster dies.Only when the melee type is dead does the archer fear for their life.  If the monsters appear right next to the archer, it starts differently, but eventually degrades to melee on monster.  Darkness forces the melee in and the archer will hang back, same result.  Tower shields on most monsters don't make much sense.  Some of the other counters work, but get excessive if used every other combat.  Melee types should dominate half the time, right?  Barbarians are called meat, but there was an archer in a game I played called the elven machine gun.  What would you rather be called?My experience in 3e is that archers are easier to powergame, take less damage, dish out more damage, and then have little to no weakness that the melee type doesn't.  Melee is the place for hirelings and archery is for PCs, and I like playing melee characters.</blockquote>

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