Whirlwind Great Cleave?

[Number47]

1) It is exceedingly rare to get to use whirlwind plus great cleave together. You should allow, don't shaft players.

2) According to the Sage, not only do you get your Cleave or Great Cleave, but you resolve that immediately before you finish whirlwinding.

3) Slugs have DR. No, really. Have you ever tried stomping one?

 

[MerakSpielman]

Plus, if you ruled that cleave/great cleave intrurrupted an action, you couldn't use them as part of a full-attack action, where I think it's pretty clear that they should be allowed.

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We could use worms.... but do they really die when you cut them in half?

 

[Darklone]

My HOUSERULE to the bucket of snails problem is this: One Cleave at one enemy per round.

 

[Number47]

Not to mention, that although everyone always pictures a Whirlwind as being surrounded by eight foes, that will almost never happen. Three foes, four if you're lucky.

 

[Murrdox]

Plus, if you ruled that cleave/great cleave intrurrupted an action, you couldn't use them as part of a full-attack action, where I think it's pretty clear that they should be allowed.

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We could use worms.... but do they really die when you cut them in half?

No... I wouldn't have it do that... Let me clarify - take a fighter with 3 attacks and whirlwind as an example.

If he uses his full round action to simply ATTACK, cleaving does not interupt his attacks, because they are separate attacks.

A whirlwind is ONE attack that requires multiple attack rolls - like throwing shukiken. Thus, interupting this attack in the middle of it with a cleave or a trip ends your attacks.





However, I don't keep up with the Sage advise all the time - we only ran into this sort of a situation ONCE in my group, and this is what I came up with. If the Sage says you get all your cleaves as well as your whirlwinds, then I'm fine with that.

Of course, I still wouldn't allow the bucket of snails/slugs/rats thing.

How about a bag of holding with Dire Weasels?

 

[Delgar]

The bucket of snails/rat is a farily silly analogy. IF a player were to try this, just require them to take a standard or full round action to spread the snails around. I don't think this will be much of a problem with the new 3.5 rules for SWARMS.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the feats are assuming that a foe is taking up a square (i.e. small or bigger). That way there is only a limited number of foes that could ever be attacked making it not really all that powerful. If a player is going to pull out the cheese with a bucket of snails/rats let him do it and then follow suit with the exact same cheese.

Delgar

 

[Forrester]

The bucket of snails/rat is a farily silly analogy. IF a player were to try this, just require them to take a standard or full round action to spread the snails around. I don't think this will be much of a problem with the new 3.5 rules for SWARMS.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the feats are assuming that a foe is taking up a square (i.e. small or bigger). That way there is only a limited number of foes that could ever be attacked making it not really all that powerful. If a player is going to pull out the cheese with a bucket of snails/rats let him do it and then follow suit with the exact same cheese.

Delgar

I can't believe I'm being pulled into this moronic argument again.

There is nothing in the feat that assumes the enemy is taking up a full square. And even if there was, it's still insanely good. A wiz can summon a bunch of lame-os and have them surround his buddy the fighter. The fighter will move from having one attack at his best BAB against the Big Bad to three or four or even more. When the party fighter is now doing 100pts of damage a round against the Big Bad instead of just 20 . . . you'll see how cheesy it is.

And the best way of handling problems like that is NOT to just Use It Against The Players, unless you want the campaign to devolve into Who Can Think of Stupid Munchkin Tactics First? Because the players, there are more of them . . . they'll always win . (Though I can see someone running an unabashed Munchkin Powergamer Sultans of Swat rules-abuse "campaign" just to see what they can get away with. If that floats your boat, well, who am I to stop you?)

 

[Dimwhit]

A whirlwind is ONE attack that requires multiple attack rolls - like throwing shukiken. Thus, interupting this attack in the middle of it with a cleave or a trip ends your attacks.

And how did you arrive at this? I don't have the PH handy, but I recall it saying something to the effect that with Whirlwind, you get one melee attack, at your highest bonus, at each opponent withing 5' of you. That says to me one separate attack for each oppononent. Not just one separate roll, but an individual attack against each one.

I may be wrong. I don't think I am, but I may be.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Simply put: People are so afraid of the 'bucket of snails' tactic that they're perfectly willing to rewrite the rules to avoid it,

BUT

They're completely unwilling to accept the fact that they've done so, so they claim that their rules-rewrites are just 'interpretations'.

There's a whole bunch of other parts of the rules which (for some incomprehensible reason) inspire the same result. I think Gate is usually one of them.

The solution?

House rule it. The best suggestion I've seen so far is that each cleave attack is directed at a random foe within range. Which means if you try the bucket-o-snails, you're much more likely to great cleave through all the snails than to attack your intended target.

It still means the whirlwind/great cleave fighter has a benefit for his abilities (he can go through masses of opponents like butter), but it's not so readily abuseable.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I brought it up as a joke folks... but if we must argue it (again) I feel I should point of that whirlwind attack only works on "opponents"... and snails generally won't count.

Rats, maybe.