Cleave - a wee bit too powerful now?

[Kor the Lost Orc]

Getting an extra attack through this method seems a little powerful now. Fighters/Barbarians (the most likely ones to take this) already have a good BAB progression granting extra attacks. The occasional extra attack from a felled opponent seemed like a good balance. Now that an extra attack would be granted on just a sucessful hit, well this seems to over-balance the extra hits afforded by a higher BAB?

As a player I REALLY like this feat now... but it seems to be a little too good of a benefit now?

What are other people's thoughts on this? (Aside from the greedy, power-hungry players :)

[Freesword]

Keep in mind that at higher levels you are giving up your iterative attacks to use cleave or great cleave. It is a full round action to make one attack and the additional attack granted if that attack hits must be to an opponent adjacent to the one you hit who is within reach. Great cleave keeps these same restrictions on subsequent attacks and specifies you may not attack the same target more than once in a round with this feat. Neither of them make any provision for a movement or 5 foot adjustment between attacks, so if the next target is out of reach the series ends.

Slightly more useful than the old cleave which required you to drop the target, yes. Too powerful, hardly.

[tussock]

As a fair sort of powergamer, I can say that this has taken me from a two kills with a standard action to two kills with a full-round action at low level, and much less useful at high level. Clearly less powerful.

More useful against a pair of Giants (or other great mount of HP), but not much more so than your iterative attacks at the level you're facing pairs of Giants, and not as good as Backswing for that at any rate.

[Stephen Klauk]

Kor the Orc Scrollkeeper wrote:

Getting an extra attack through this method seems a little powerful now. Fighters/Barbarians (the most likely ones to take this) already have a good BAB progression granting extra attacks. The occasional extra attack from a felled opponent seemed like a good balance. Now that an extra attack would be granted on just a sucessful hit, well this seems to over-balance the extra hits afforded by a higher BAB?

As a player I REALLY like this feat now... but it seems to be a little too good of a benefit now?

What are other people's thoughts on this? (Aside from the greedy, power-hungry players :)

Wizards have area spells that can lay down the smack on up to dozens of opponents at once. Worrying about a warrior-type getting to hit two opponents at once is a bit insulting, especially when you consider you're just spreading damage around rather than focusing it on a single foe.

[Kaisoku]

It's only overpowered if you still have it work off of every attack action, instead of making it a standard action like the new rules say.

If you have to give up your extra attacks (which can be used on any target, unconditionally), then the only time this becomes extremely powerful is when you start getting into large groups of enemies that you want to all hit only once per round.
In that situation it's clearly the winner... highest attack bonus against unlimited enemies around you (great cleave) on the condition that you hit (which is likely with highest attack bonus on a high BAB combatant).

The odds that you will be within reach of 3+ enemies depends entirely on your campaign. I can tell you it's not been the "average" for my experiences. Most higher level campaigns has the front line fighter trying to block the big individuals, not wade into groups of creatures. Those are called Wizard Boom fodder.