
Beek Gwenders of Croodle |

The barbarian in my campaign recently used cleave to strike to villains which were respectively on his north and east "facing", so they were not sharing a common line but just a corner, diagonally. Should I consider them as contiguous for Cleave matters? Also there was a wall between them (marked as a X on the diagram below)
VX
BV
Could the Barbarian use Cleave against both Villains?
This also brought me to another question, what if the two Villains had cover?
BX
VV

Charender |

The barbarian in my campaign recently used cleave to strike to villains which were respectively on his north and east "facing", so they were not sharing a common line but just a corner, diagonally. Should I consider them as contiguous for Cleave matters? Also there was a wall between them (marked as a X on the diagram below)
VX
BVCould the Barbarian use Cleave against both Villains?
This also brought me to another question, what if the two Villains had cover?BX
VV
Cover or obstructions do not matter, but the targets must be adjacent. So you cannot cleave to targets that are flanking you.
I do believe that diagonal squares count as adjacent. For example, burning skeletons deal damage to everyone in adjacent squares. If that did not effect diagonals, then people could attack them without getting burned by their firey aura.
Cover or concealment would effect the attack roll, and might cause the barbarian to miss though.

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Yes. As long as the 2nd target is adjacent to the 1st, and both are within your reach at the begining of the attack. Cleave does not have to be a continuous swing, per say. With the wording, it might be more along the lines of a double impailment with a lance, or that you hit so hard with your hammer that it nocks the 1st target into the 2nd one, hard.
Cover and/or concealment does not protect against cleave, well not any more than any other attack. Obviuously if you can not attack something you can't see or can not hit behind a wall, you can not hit them with cleane, either.