I'm working on my Dwarven berserker and wondered about pursuing the Cleave lineup of feats. I read that many on these forums find Cleave and Great Cleave underwhelming; not necessarily bad in themselves, but seemingly underpowered compared to comparable opportunities.
However, do "Cleave Through" and the "Goblin Cleave/Orc Hewer/Giant Killer" make Cleave worth another look? Specifically, given their prerequisites, are the Goblin Cleaver choices strong enough to warrant being one's feat selections, especially at later levels?
Wyrmfoe wrote: I'm working on my Dwarven berserker and wondered about pursuing the Cleave lineup of feats. I read that many on these forums find Cleave and Great Cleave underwhelming; not necessarily bad in themselves, but seemingly underpowered compared to comparable opportunities.
However, do "Cleave Through" and the "Goblin Cleave/Orc Hewer/Giant Killer" make Cleave worth another look? Specifically, given their prerequisites, are the Goblin Cleaver choices strong enough to warrant being one's feat selections, especially at later levels?
If you use a reach weapon and/or plan on being large, the dwarven cleave feats remove the major obstacle to Cleave being useful, the fact that the targets need to be adjacent to each other. Combine with a dwarven boulder helm so you can still attack adjacent targets, and you should be in good shape unless your DM likes to use solitary foes much more often than groups.
First off, thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it! Hopefully, we'll get some more folks to join in with productive comments, too.
Do you find that having to use so many of your feat slots to get a broad benefit worth the opportunity cost?
I'm very interested in these feats, but getting to Giant Killer (and, therefore, the broadest possible application of Cleave), requires seven feats:
Power Attack
Cleave
Great Cleave
Goblin Cleaver
Orc Hewer
Strike Back
Giant Killer
Is the benefit significant enough, in your respective opinions, to warrant pursuing so deep into a "tree", at the expense of other feat options?
Digging all the way down to giant killer is gonna be a daunting task, and I can assure you I wouldn't try it without being a fighter and having all their bonus feats but even do you're looking at 12th level before you can finish this tree AND its using up more than half your feats. And if im missing something please let me know but these creatures still have to be within reach, how often will you have multiple creatures 1still size category larger than you within reach or with the strike back feat taken into account, attacking you with their natural or manufactured weapons? This oak tree of feats would be absolutely priceless if you knew you were rushing head long into a giants encampment to kill them all off but aside from that and maybe very specific other times I don't see this line being worth it. And in order to know you need this feat tree ahead of time enough to build up to it is knowing a whole lot about your upcoming campaign.
TLDR?
I think its way too situational to justify taking and it turns you into a one trick pony
Grabbing Goblin Cleaver and Orc Hewer is something I might consider for a Dwarf fighter, so long as he used a reach weapon. Being enlarged and able to Great Cleave as though it were Whirlwind Attack has some merit to it.
Giant Killer isn't worth it because of the lack of multiple large creatures that are typically fought.
Mergy wrote: Grabbing Goblin Cleaver and Orc Hewer is something I might consider for a Dwarf fighter, so long as he used a reach weapon. Being enlarged and able to Great Cleave as though it were Whirlwind Attack has some merit to it.
Giant Killer isn't worth it because of the lack of multiple large creatures that are typically fought.
So, as an optimizer, I actually like cleave, great cleaving, cleaving finish, etc. As a fighter, if you manage to get a full attack on something, you're going to be doing _great_. So spending feats to make your full attack better is sort of meh.
On the other hand, if you take lunge, cleave and great cleave, you can move up to a group of enemies, and, with a standard action, do a big fireball of damage. If you have cleaving finish/greater cleaving finish, that can become even more damage.
I think Goblin Cleaver is great. Orc Hewer is good. And Giant-Killer is bad. It all comes down to spacing (and whether or not you have a party wizard who will enlarge you) - it's freaking tough to be surrounded by a large enough number of Large creatures.
On melee characters, I tend to invest in Cleave + Great Cleave relatively early, and cleaving finish/improved cleaving finish when I can. On a dwarf, I'd absolutely pick up goblin hewer if I could get enlarged regularly. I'm not sure I'd pick up any of the rest.
-Cross
The cleave line is entirely reliant on your GM letting you use it. Going up against a tight phalanx it's great, but more often monsters are spread out to get flanking bonuses and/or reduce the impact of area spells.
If you're aiming to mash tons of dudes, you could always go for lunge (and/or)combat patrol with a reach weapon instead. Still get to murder tons of dudes, no need to worry about adjacent-ness.
You Would get most mileage out of Cleave, Cleave through and Great cleave.
Maybe add lunge.
Cleave through is nice, but how about Quick Bull Rush? I don't see anywhere in the rules that you can't substitute combat manuvers for attacks in a Great Cleave. It's just that a bull rush is a standard action, not an attack action. Quick Cleave makes your Bull Rush an attack action, so you can Bull Rush in lieu of hitting to your heart's content and always position yourself to maximize your cleave.
Take Great Bull Rush, and your allies get attacks of opportunity whenever you bull rush your enemies out of threatened squares. Take Paired Opportunist, and you get attacks the attacks of opportunity, too. The downside is the 20' instead of the 30' move rate, but you probably want to layer on the armor anyway: you plan to stand in the middle of throngs of enemies using a feat that lowers your AC.
When you are cleaving, use single big weapon instead of 2 small ones or weapon and shield. You get Dwarven War Axe as a bonus feat: get it sized Large and use it 2 handed: 2d8 damage!
Double headed war axe gives a bonus to cleave
my question is, if you are not planning on taking cleaving finish feats, why not just build for whirlwind? it would be fewer feats and with a reach weapon + lunge you would get more attacks (potentially).
now if you were working in greater cleaving finish, then i would go that rout, if only because you have the ability to make an insane number of attacks in a round, when fighting a group, possibly clearing a major chunk of the board.
hit target 1, cleave into target 2 (killed), cleave target 3, go back to target 1 (killed) go back to target 3 (kiled). on just 3 targets in reach youre making 5 attacks, just think what would happen if you could hit 5 or 6 targets.
Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber
I'm taking Goblin Cleaver and Great Cleave for my Stonelord. Our party mage is kind enough to enlarge him for the big fights, so goblin cleaver means he can target size M opponents.
It's also correct thematically. He'll have the remove fatigue mercy at level 7, so the main problem with Defensive Stance (you can't move and keep your stance) goes away.
Giant killer (and the necessary strike back feat) are not very useful. On those uncommon occasions when fighting multiple large creatures it is better to become enlarged which, among other benefits, means orc hewer does the job, and it is extremely unlikely that you will fight multiple enemies larger than an enlarged dwarf. Cleave through is not that useful, the whole point of a cleave build is that you can move and cleave and if enough targets aren't in your threatened are you can move as a move action before cleaving (and you've got barb movement bonus too). The opposite is also true though, with a cleave build if you start a round with targets in range then you can cleave first and then take a move action away so you don't get hit by full attacks.
The big question is how useful this is, and the answer is that it depends. For me dwarven cleaving is great because I am so often limited to taking a standard attack action anyway and this lets me get multiple attacks from a standard attack action. If melee characters taking full attack actions is the standard in your games this isn't so effective, but still isn't bad. Combine a reach weapon with a non-reach attack which threatens (shield spikes?) for best effect. It depends on your game which is the best order to take the feats, but I found goblin cleaver and orc hewer before great cleave a better idea, very rarely have I encountered 3 opponents adjacent.
I'd never make a non-dwarf cleave build because opponents don't always stand next to each other, but with the dwarf non-adjacency feats it can really be fun with it's move & attack ability. I'd look at two levels of fighter to get the feats at lower level, as a dwarf cleaver needs 5 feats to work (power attack, goblin cleaver, orc hewer, cleave, great cleave) which means a level 9 barbarian versus a level 3 barbarian/ level 2 fighter.
I Don't like cleave to many what ifs involve to have it reproduce whirlwind. if you miss with whirlwind you still get to keep attacking, you miss with cleave it is over.
TheSideKick I don't think you can cleave in to a target more then once. So you can't go back and hit the first target all over again. even if you can it a big assumption to say you killed target 2 the back to 1 and mange to kill it also. Actually looking at it closer you would have to kill target 3 because great cleave does not let you go back into the first target. It only allows you to hit each target once. Cleaving finish is the only one I would even question on allowing you to hit the first target all over again. but that is a RAW vs RAI debate. which should be saved rules question thread.
KainPen wrote: I Don't like cleave to many what ifs involve to have it reproduce whirlwind. if you miss with whirlwind you still get to keep attacking, you miss with cleave it is over.
Whirlwind is an entirely different thing, it's full attack action where cleave is a standard attack action. If you could whirlwind as a standard attack action then whirlwind would be better, but move & cleave is easier to set up than stand and whirlwind.
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