can you Vital strike a cleave?

[buddahcjcc]

Can you use Vital Strike during a cleave or do they have to be seperate attacks?

I hear Vital Strike is considered a feat trap, Im assuming thats because it limits you to one attack when you could at later levels do more damage from a full round attack and using all your attacks per round?

[Strannik]

Both Cleave and Vital Strike take a standard action, so no, you can't use them in the same round.

Vital Strike can be useful to do a bit more damage when you have to move farther than 5ft to reach an opponent. If there was more than one opponent adjacent to each other then cleave would be better.

The only decent build I've seen based around Vital Strike was a druid shape changing into a TRex. :P

So, it's not exactly a trap feat, but it definitely isn't as useful as you might hope.

[Grimmy]

I wouldn't call vital strike a trap feat (not quite). It just tends to be get your hopes up at first glance and the disappoint on further analysis.

[RJGrady]

Vital Strike does not take a standard reaction, but does require you to take the attack action. Cleave is a standard action, and hence replaces the attack action. So, no.

Vital Strike is not a "trap feat," it's a good backup source of damage when your opponent won't stay put.

[true_shinken]

Or when you won't allow them to stay put. In a duel, a dude with Crane Style, Vital Strike and a brace weapon who keeps moving around is going to ruin your day very fast.

[Kazaan]

Vital Strike is highly situational. Cleave also. They're quite useful early on when you only have 1-2 iterative attacks, but later on as Full-Attack becomes more useful, Vital Strike and Cleave become more and more situational in their application. If you're a Fighter, every 4 levels you can "swap out" a previously learned bonus feat for a new one so, if you want, you can take one or the other early on (ie. lvl 1 or 2) and then later (ie. lvl 12) trade it out for something that better suits your needs. But if you're not a fighter, it'd probably be better to just stick with benefits that can always be leveraged so you're not stuck with heavily depreciated feats

[Zog of Deadwood]

You cannot Vital Strike on a Cleave, no. As others have already pointed out, both take a standard action and cannot be combined.

However, if you have already followed the Cleave feat chain up to Cleaving Finish or Improved Cleaving Finish, then if you manage to drop something or someone on a Vital Strike you CAN use those feats, as they grant additional actions for the purposes of attacks.

[Strannik]

Zog of Deadwood wrote:

However, if you have already followed the Cleave feat chain up to Cleaving Finish or Improved Cleaving Finish, then if you manage to drop something or someone on a Vital Strike you CAN use those feats, as they grant additional actions for the purposes of attacks.

I had never noticed that, actually. Now I have to consider if it's worth all those feats...

[Cheapy]

Nope!

[Evil Dave is Evil]

Kazaan wrote:

Vital Strike is highly situational. Cleave also. They're quite useful early on when you only have 1-2 iterative attacks, but later on as Full-Attack becomes more useful, Vital Strike and Cleave become more and more situational in their application. If you're a Fighter, every 4 levels you can "swap out" a previously learned bonus feat for a new one so, if you want, you can take one or the other early on (ie. lvl 1 or 2) and then later (ie. lvl 12) trade it out for something that better suits your needs. But if you're not a fighter, it'd probably be better to just stick with benefits that can always be leveraged so you're not stuck with heavily depreciated feats

Vital strike requires a BAB of +6. You can't take it at level one or two.

[Zog of Deadwood]

Strannik wrote:

Zog of Deadwood wrote:

However, if you have already followed the Cleave feat chain up to Cleaving Finish or Improved Cleaving Finish, then if you manage to drop something or someone on a Vital Strike you CAN use those feats, as they grant additional actions for the purposes of attacks.

I had never noticed that, actually. Now I have to consider if it's worth all those feats...

Well, it kinda depends on your concept. A PC in the game I run has taken them for his polearm fighter and has (although I'm not sure the player has fully realized this) essentially turned himself into a dedicated moog-slayer. He can clear minor threats out of the way amazingly fast.

He uses a move action to get close to a mob of enemies, uses his attack action to Greater Vital Strike, and will often do enough damage to get to use the Improved Cleaving Finish feat against at least one other foe. Against relatively weak opponents he can frequently clear the field around him in a single round, even after moving. This is not without value and is of some use to the party. However, when it comes to dishing out serious hurt to major critters, he has the standard issues any melee fighter will have who depends too heavily on the Vital Strike feat chain. He either doesn't get nearly enough attacks, or he does take the iterative attacks but doesn't do as much damage when he hits.

[Kazaan]

Evil Dave is Evil wrote:

Kazaan wrote:

Vital Strike is highly situational. Cleave also. They're quite useful early on when you only have 1-2 iterative attacks, but later on as Full-Attack becomes more useful, Vital Strike and Cleave become more and more situational in their application. If you're a Fighter, every 4 levels you can "swap out" a previously learned bonus feat for a new one so, if you want, you can take one or the other early on (ie. lvl 1 or 2) and then later (ie. lvl 12) trade it out for something that better suits your needs. But if you're not a fighter, it'd probably be better to just stick with benefits that can always be leveraged so you're not stuck with heavily depreciated feats

Vital strike requires a BAB of +6. You can't take it at level one or two.

Good point. I don't commonly use it so I never really noticed. So you could take it at lvl 6 as a Fighter and then trade it out at lvl 12 or 16 for pretty good effect. If you are really up against spaced out enemies and can't adequately leverage Cleave or Full Attack, then you always have the option of keeping it. But I think bonus static damage is better than additional dice.

[Evil Dave is Evil]

Kazaan wrote:

But I think bonus static damage is better than additional dice.

I agree.