Cleave penalty + Great Cleave Penalty?

[DarkReignfall]

At the end of the description of the Cleave feat it states that using Cleave gives the user a -2 penalty to AC until their next turn. At the end of the Great Cleave description it says the same thing. My question is do these negatives stack?

I think they do because if you are incurring a penalty for cleaving by over extending yourself, why then wouldn't you incur a further negative by over extending yourself even further to great cleave. Any thoughts yay or nay? Thanks for your input.

[Sniggevert]

I personally run it as either/or, not both. This is because Great Cleave really supercedes Cleave in its entirety. If you declare that you are trying to cleave through your foes, and you have Great Cleave, that one feat allows you to attack as many adjacent foes that you can keep hitting. So, in actuality, once you have Great Cleave, you don't ever actually JUST Cleave anymore, your Great Cleave may only stop early.

I hope that makes sense.

Quote:

From PRD:

Benefit: As a standard action, you can make a single attack at your full base attack bonus against a foe within reach. If you hit, you deal damage normally and can make an additional attack (using your full base attack bonus) against a foe that is adjacent to the previous foe and also within reach. If you hit, you can continue to make attacks against foes adjacent to the previous foe, so long as they are within your reach. You cannot attack an individual foe more than once during this attack action. When you use this feat, you take a –2 penalty to your Armor Class until your next turn.

[James Jacobs]

You can't use Cleave and Great Cleave at the same time, since both require a standard action to use. Once you have Great Cleave, you don't really use Cleave anymore since Great Cleave does everything Cleave does but better.

So you only get hit by the AC penalty once.

[DarkReignfall]

Okay that's exactly the clarification I was looking for. Thank you both very much for the timely response.

[Count Duck]

Indeed one penyalty only! Think ahead. -4 AC for great cleave. All melee classes are going to be depressed!