Cleave / great cleave AC penalty questions

[CapeCodRPGer]

I noticed in Pathfinder the feats Cleave and Great Cleave give a -2 to your AC when you use them. Do the penaltys stack? If a fighter with both cleave and great cleave uses cleave to take out another monster, then takes out another one with great cleave in same round, does he get a -2 or -4 to AC? Also is it a -2 everytime you get an extra attack with great cleave?

[DM_Blake]

CapeCodRPGer wrote:

I noticed in Pathfinder the feats Cleave and Great Cleave give a -2 to your AC when you use them. Do the penaltys stack?

No.

CapeCodRPGer wrote:

If a fighter with both cleave and great cleave uses cleave to take out another monster, then takes out another one with great cleave in same round, does he get a -2 or -4 to AC?

-2.

CapeCodRPGer wrote:

Also is it a -2 everytime you get an extra attack with great cleave?

No.

The reasoning behind these answers is that Great Cleave supercedes Cleave. You notice the dscription of Great Cleave never says anything like "When you use your Cleave feat to strike a second foe, you may use Great Cleave to strike a 3rd foe". In fact, other than in the Prerequisites, it doesn't mention Cleave at all.

So Great Cleave is not piggybacking on top of Cleave.

Instead, you simply use Great Cleave whenever you want to attempt to strike multiple foes as a standard action - it's like you don't even have Cleave at all.

You absolutely never use "cleave to take out another monster, then takes out another one with great cleave". Not ever. Read Great Cleave again, you'll see that how it's worded makes this statement true.

That's why the penalties from the two feats don't stack - you never use them both in any round.

As for your last question, you'll note the wording says "When you use this feat, you take a –2 penalty to your Armor Class until your next turn."

The benefit of Great Cleave, per the text, indicates that you use Great Cleave as a standard action. It doesn't matter how many foes you strike during that standard action - you have only used one Great Cleave standard action.

So, when you use this feat as a standard action you take a -2 penalty to your Armor Class until your next turn."