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I know that these have Power Attack as a prerequisite so it is implied that it is to be used with melee weapons, but is there anything RAW preventing an archer to pick up Great Cleave to be able to lay down covering fire against a group of charging orcs or the front line of an oncoming infantry squad in a large-scale type battle?
I know that these have Power Attack as a prerequisite so it is implied that it is to be used with melee weapons, but is there anything RAW preventing an archer to pick up Great Cleave to be able to lay down covering fire against a group of charging orcs or the front line of an oncoming infantry squad in a large-scale type battle?
You can strike two adjacent foes with a single swing.
Prerequisites: Str 13, Power Attack, base attack bonus +1.
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 first and also within reach. You can only make one additional attack per round with this feat. When you use this feat, you take a –2 penalty to your Armor Class until your next turn.
You can strike many adjacent foes with a single blow.
Prerequisites: Str 13, Cleave, Power Attack, base attack bonus +4.
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.
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Having looked at the feats, it appears you CAN use ranged weapons with Cleave. However, the target must be within your reach (usually 5 feet for medium and smaller creatures) to be subject to the cleave attempt so it does little to stop charging orcs at a distance. In other words, you do NOT have to use a melee weapon, but you DO have to be in melee to use it.
Reminds me of how Legolas skewered two Urukai with one arrow in the first Lord of the Rings movie.
Actually, no, by RAW. The wordings of Cleave and Great Cleave specify that you can make attacks against enemies within your "reach". Ranged weapons have no reach. They have "range". Since your longbow has an effective "reach" of 0 feet (which is why they don't threaten), you cannot use (Great) Cleave with it.
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Hmmm...I guess this is something I need to work up a homebrew on. Given that archers are generally not subject to reduced iterative due to movement, making these feats function exactly as cleave/great cleave might be too overpowered, maybe an arrowstorm feat that lets the archer pepper an area and subject targets in the affected area to a reflex save or damage? There's some potential there methinks.
Rapid Shot and Manyshot sort of already cover this.
Actually, no, by RAW. The wordings of Cleave and Great Cleave specify that you can make attacks against enemies within your "reach". Ranged weapons have no reach. They have "range". Since your longbow has an effective "reach" of 0 feet (which is why they don't threaten), you cannot use (Great) Cleave with it.
Actually, the combat chapter specifically says that most medium and smaller creatures have 5 foot reach while Large and larger creatures have 10 or more feet of reach.
You are probably mistaking reach for threatened area, which DOES require a melee weapon of some kind (or a natural attack/Improved Unarmed Strike feat). You can't threaten without reach, but you can have reach, but not threaten.
Every creature in the game has reach (even when it says "0 ft." in which case your reach only covers your square).
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Actually, no, by RAW. The wordings of Cleave and Great Cleave specify that you can make attacks against enemies within your "reach". Ranged weapons have no reach. They have "range". Since your longbow has an effective "reach" of 0 feet (which is why they don't threaten), you cannot use (Great) Cleave with it.Actually, the combat chapter specifically says that most medium and smaller creatures have 5 foot reach while Large and larger creatures have 10 or more feet of reach.
You are probably mistaking reach for threatened area. You can't threaten without reach, but you can have reach, but not threaten.
Every creature in the game has reach (even when it says "0 ft." in which case your reach only covers your square).
So basically you could, but you'd open your self up to an AoO from every creature adjacent to you...ouch!
So basically you could, but you'd open your self up to an AoO from every creature adjacent to you...ouch!
That's right. Definitely not an optimal trick unless you are a large or larger creature blasting critters with lesser reach.
Actually, no, by RAW. The wordings of Cleave and Great Cleave specify that you can make attacks against enemies within your "reach". Ranged weapons have no reach. They have "range". Since your longbow has an effective "reach" of 0 feet (which is why they don't threaten), you cannot use (Great) Cleave with it.Actually, the combat chapter specifically says that most medium and smaller creatures have 5 foot reach while Large and larger creatures have 10 or more feet of reach.
Well, if you read the next sentence, you learn that "reach" only applied to melee attacks.
Most creatures of Medium or smaller size have a reach of only 5 feet. This means that they can make melee attacks only against creatures up to 5 feet (1 square) away.
Emphasis mine.
Reach is for melee. Range is for, well, ranged.
Reach is for melee. Range is for, well, ranged.
That doesn't change the fact that medium creatures have an inherent 5 foot reach, which is all that matters with the way Cleave reads (since it doesn't limit which kind of attack you can use as part of your cleave).
is there anything RAW preventing an archer to lay down covering fire against a group of charging orcs or the front line of an oncoming infantry squad in a large-scale type battle?
Quick answer: No, there is nothing.
This is because there are no machine guns in D&D or Pathfinder. And, frankly, ask the guys at Normandy, or Iwo Jima, even a bunch of machine guns doesn't stop the infantry squad; it just chews them up and makes them pay for every inch, but eventually they get through.
(yes, yes, I know the purpose of heavy caliber suppressive fire in deterring an enemy advance).
Historically, there is a reason why medieval armies had units of archers on the battlefield. Those archers would rain feathered death on the enemy, but even that only served to thin the charging enemy ranks in all but the most extreme cases (and in those, the number of trained archers was staggering, or at least the ration of archers to infantry was heavily in favor of successful withering archery storms).
Realistically, suppressing fire with a bow is just not even remotely possible, in much the same way as suppressing fire with a 9mm pistol is not possible in modern warfare.
That said, yeah, I get it, not everyone wants realism to intrude on their style of fun. So I posted some help on your other thread, trying to tone down your Epic feat into something mechanically reasonable at mid-levels. Hop on over there and take a look.
Reach is for melee. Range is for, well, ranged.That doesn't change the fact that medium creatures have an inherent 5 foot reach, which is all that matters with the way Cleave reads (since it doesn't limit which kind of attack you can use as part of your cleave).
You can make a (great) cleave attack while wielding a ranged weapon. They can make a melee attack (unarmed if nothing else) against any targets within their reach which, as I have shown, if for melee attacks only. You just can't use your ranged weapon to do so because it has no reach. Your medium sized character does...with his unarmed attacks.
You can make a (great) cleave attack while wielding a ranged weapon. They can make a melee attack (unarmed if nothing else) against any targets within their reach which, as I have shown, if for melee attacks only. You just can't use your ranged weapon to do so because it has no reach. Your medium sized character does...with his unarmed attacks.Reach is for melee. Range is for, well, ranged.That doesn't change the fact that medium creatures have an inherent 5 foot reach, which is all that matters with the way Cleave reads (since it doesn't limit which kind of attack you can use as part of your cleave).
Well, you are clearly reading the rules differently than I, so I guess we will just have to agree to disagree.
(Great) Cleave...can only be applied to Reach and not Ranged sources.
You may swing that bow like a quarterstaff (some can be used in this manner without fear of damage to the bow) at anything within your reach but since the bow's method of attack is RANGED...you can not fire the weapon (or any other weapon that has range) with (Great) Cleave.
Period.
The feat(s) are intended for melee sources.
Here's my answer to no cleave/great cleave for ranged Lemme know what ya'll think.
Link doesn't work for me, but is Hail of Arrows from the Arcane Archer PrC what you were thinking of?
In lieu of his regular attacks, once per day an arcane archer of 8th level or higher can fire an arrow at each and every target within range, to a maximum of one target for every arcane archer level she has earned. Each attack uses the archer's primary attack bonus, and each enemy may only be targeted by a single arrow.
was looking at this, a whip and firearm allows you to have a 15ft reach.
i don't see anything that requires you to use the weapon that grants you the reach to Cleave. Blam Blam Blam.... 3 dead
how would this work with a Dragon Pistol's scatter?
Sometimes devs write just the bare minimum word-count to convey the rule. Writing extra word-count to explain the obvious is just a waste of words. And, since more words means more paper and more ink, it also means a more expensive rulebook or a less profitable one - neither of which is conducive to good game design.
So players like us sometimes have to just say "yeah, it's obvious what they meant" and forgive the devs for not adding word-count to rule out every possible exploit, perhaps even thank them for not doubling the size of the book and making us pay twice as much for it.
Maybe, in an extreme rules-lawyerish way we could say "it doesn't explicitly say that I must have reach with the weapon that is using this feat", and maybe that's even true. But I don't think anyone, ANYONE, reading that post thinks this is anything but an exploit.
So no, I can be 99% certain that the devs did not intend these feats to ever be used with a ranged weapon, not even at 5' reach/range. And I can be 100% certain that they definitely did not intend for you to have a whip on your belt or in your backpack or held in a third hand and then be able to use a ranged weapon with these feats up to 15' away (or not even if you manage to do it with just two hands either).
If exploiting the devs' effort to keep word-count down is your thing, then go for it. But don't expect too many GMs to buy into that reasoning.
(Side note: It's weird talking to ghosts from 5 years ago, one of which is myself...)
It goes without saying. That said, it won't be terribly effective in most cases, and (at GM discretion) it risks damaging the bow.
I know this thread is over 8 uears old, however, not a single DM has brought up using bows as *improvised weapon*.
One could very well attack with a bow as a melee improvised weapon.
At that point it is a melee attack. As an example if you throw a melee weapon it is treated as a ranged attack.
It is the attack type, not the weapon type that causes the restriction.
That is why RD's idea that you can make a melee attack with a bow while it is being used to make a ranged attack made no sense. Ranged attacked are not melee, and don't have reach.
After reading though everything it seems like if you have snapshot then you could cleave using a bow and arrows. However, both enemies would have to be within the 5 foot reach granted by snapshot.
It seems kind of weird thematically though, shooting 2 arrows at two enemies right next to you and it being a "cleave". However, looking at cleave, the wording doesn't actually specify that the extra attack must be with the same weapon as the initial attack.
This gets really strange when combined with lung and improved unarmed strikes. As it would let you shoot someone next to you and then "cleave" the guy behind him (who is 10 feet away from you) with your foot.
edit: Cleave seems like it should be melee only, if you interpret reach as range it becomes incredibly OP as an archer with great cleave would be able to literally shoot every enemy within 100 feet of them, so long as they keep hitting.
Granted it's a different system (with slightly different effects), but the 3.5 version of Cleave specifically stated that it is 'an extra melee attack' and 'is with the same weapon that dropped the previous creature'.