Question about cleave

[mage4fun]

I am not sure if I understand this correctly, but let me put the feat Cleave here and please clarify something for me:

Cleave (Combat)

You can strike two adjacent foes with a single swing.

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.

Based on what it states, "you can make a single attack" does this mean that if you are of a high enough level to have multiple attacks you have to fore go your additional attacks on a chance that you might hit your primary target and then hit a second?

Or if I am a level 6 fighter with a +8 / +3 BAB and I have the cleave feat and I am fighting two creatures that if I hit one I get a free cleave attack on the second and if I hit again with my second attack do I also get to hit the second once again?

[Spyderz]

If you are cleaving, you forgo any additional attacks. This is a drawback if you have multiple attacks, however, it has the nice plus in that you can move and then cleave so you'd possibly hit 2 targets.

[Nightwish]

Yeah, they nerfed that aspect of it a bit. In 3.5, you could take your full round of attacks, and one additional cleave attack if one of your attacks dropped your foe.

But they made up for it by removing the stipulation that you had to drop or kill one of your targets in order to get the cleave attack.

[mage4fun]

OK, been a bit since I played and trying to separate what was 3.5 from what is pathfinder. Enough similarities to keep playing and enough differences to make you check the rules.

[Grick]

mage4fun wrote:

Based on what it states, "you can make a single attack" does this mean that if you are of a high enough level to have multiple attacks you have to fore go your additional attacks on a chance that you might hit your primary target and then hit a second?

Full Attack: "If you get more than one attack per round because your base attack bonus is high enough, because you fight with two weapons or a double weapon, or for some special reason, you must use a full-round action to get your additional attacks."

That full round action is the full-attack action.

Cleave uses a standard action. You can't take both a standard action and a full round action in the same turn.

A similar situation is if you use your move action to do something, you can't then take a full round action to full-attack, you're left with only a standard action, which you can use to attack, but only once. (Or cleave!)

mage4fun wrote:

Or if I am a level 6 fighter with a +8 / +3 BAB and I have the cleave feat and I am fighting two creatures that if I hit one I get a free cleave attack on the second and if I hit again with my second attack do I also get to hit the second once again?

A level 6 fighter should have a BAB of +6. (+6/+1)

To use cleave, you make one attack at one creature within reach. If you hit, you get to make a second attack at a different creature that is also within your reach, and that is adjacent to the first creature you hit. You're limited to two total attacks.

If you want to make more similar attacks, you need Great Cleave which lets you continue in a chain, as long as you keep hitting the foes, they're within reach, and adjacent to the last creature you hit.