I thought Whirlwind Attack was on the top 10 list of most taxed combat feats in pathfinder.
It's up there. That doesn't mean that the feat itself isn't good.
I agree the tax is high however, all the feats in the chain are good so it's less painful.
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A ranger with the combat style of Sarenrae (source: Inner Sea Combat) can bypass all prerequisites of Whirlwind Attack and simply take it at level 6. But he might find out that Dodge would have been handy to evade the attacks from the survivors - and that Mobility would have been helpful to get into position in the first place. Or to retreat.
Ok, back to the original topic: Cleave. When judging a feat, please keep in mind what a feat's usual power level is: A minor bonus, like +1 attack bonus, +1 AC or +2 damage. Each of these bonuses boosts your combat prowess by something like 10% (e.g. you also hit on a 9 now, not just at 10 or better). The 10% is a very rough number to show the rather small magnitude. Weapon Focus usually doesn't win the battle for you.
Now there is Cleave which, in the best case, doubles your damage output, meaning +100%. If it would boost you that much every round, it might be more broken than Leadership (in the heavily exploited powergaming version). In case you don't see added value on reliability, Cleave working only 10% of the time is totally ok - 10% of +100% is +10%, roughly the power level of Weapon Focus. So you get occasional damage spikes thanks to Cleave - which even out over the course of many battles.
Cleave doesn't scale that much, that's correct. It scales like your single standard action attack - better AB, more damage per hit, more criticals, more rider effects. That's all nice, but can't keep up with the speed monsters improve. Full-attacks are capable of keeping up. But, it can't be stressed enough: Sometimes you simply can't do full-attacks. Then the next best thing is to use your standard action in the best way possible - and at high level Cleave still has the chance to deal twice as much damage as a normal single attack.
A ranger with the combat style of Sarenrae (source: Inner Sea Combat) can bypass all prerequisites of Whirlwind Attack and simply take it at level 6. But he might find out that Dodge would have been handy to evade the attacks from the survivors - and that Mobility would have been helpful to get into position in the first place. Or to retreat.
Ok, back to the original topic: Cleave. When judging a feat, please keep in mind what a feat's usual power level is: A minor bonus, like +1 attack bonus, +1 AC or +2 damage. Each of these bonuses boosts your combat prowess by something like 10% (e.g. you also hit on a 9 now, not just at 10 or better). The 10% is a very rough number to show the rather small magnitude. Weapon Focus usually doesn't win the battle for you.
Now there is Cleave which, in the best case, doubles your damage output, meaning +100%. If it would boost you that much every round, it might be more broken than Leadership (in the heavily exploited powergaming version). In case you don't see added value on reliability, Cleave working only 10% of the time is totally ok - 10% of +100% is +10%, roughly the power level of Weapon Focus. So you get occasional damage spikes thanks to Cleave - which even out over the course of many battles.
Cleave doesn't scale that much, that's correct. It scales like your single standard action attack - better AB, more damage per hit, more criticals, more rider effects. That's all nice, but can't keep up with the speed monsters improve. Full-attacks are capable of keeping up. But, it can't be stressed enough: Sometimes you simply can't do full-attacks. Then the next best thing is to use your standard action in the best way possible - and at high level Cleave still has the chance to deal twice as much damage as a normal single attack.
Good analysis.
my GM plays every encounter as if every enemy is a tactical genius.Well, that there's yer problem.
Yea... I send lots of mooks at my players, and they tend to be far closer to the dumbass side of the scale than the genius one. The player with cleave is the best performing party member.
But yea, I'd say it's a niche feat. Loses utility as you gain more levels and varies in usefulness according to your GM/campaign's style.
I would like to say that it is pretty easy to retrain Cleave
Two, relatively minor points.
1) Your AC drops by 2, so according to your rule of thumb, that reduces your combat effectiveness by 20%
2) You have to attack 2 different creatures, which means that if your goal is to knock down 1 creature specifically, the extra attack does nothing to increase your combat effectiveness.
Now, if after some number of rounds, you knock down 2 creatures instead of 1, that's certainly better than nothing, but it's not as good as two attacks which knocked down 1 in half the time, then the other.
So +100% is not quite correct. I would put it closer to +50% (including -20% from the AC penalty). And, given how often I've personally observed situations where it would be the proper tactical choice, that's not good enough.
Hmm, valid points. On low level you have the chance to bypass these problems by simply killing both foes with a single Cleave, but that doesn't work later on.
You can usually switch to full-attacks in the second round - which reduces (but not negates) point 2).
Technically you can get rid of the -2 AC penalty with Nimble Striker, but playing catfolk (or even taking Racial Heritage (catfolk)) is a steep price.
I would also say that a -2 AC would be 10%.
Each individual number on a d20 is worth 5%.
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I second that vital strike is more useful than cleave.
If I normally hit on a 9, but I get a +1 to hit, that's a 5% absolute increase on a d20, but a +10% increase on how often I hit.
I did go to bed last night at 5:30 am and got up at 8 for work so maybe that's it but I'm not sure how you're getting the 10%.
My guess is 9 = 45% chance to hit
10 = 50%
5/50 = 10%
So I guess I meant in an absolute sense, of course taking into account your last point when applicable can obsolete that.
Someone mentioned taking advantage of choke points. Choke points are great, but not always for the purpose of Cleave. If they can only get through one at a time, you can't use Cleave. If they can get through two at a time, great, you can Cleave them, but there are also two baddies swinging at you at the same time instead of one, and meanwhile you're taking a -2 penalty to AC.
Also it just plain baffles me that you must have Dwarf DNA to ignore the adjacency requirement. Wouldn't a taller race with longer arms have an easier time cleaving between two targets with more space between them? It seems like there's no reason for a racial restriction on it, other than "we need more racial feats to fill this book".
Someone mentioned taking advantage of choke points. Choke points are great, but not always for the purpose of Cleave. If they can only get through one at a time, you can't use Cleave. If they can get through two at a time, great, you can Cleave them, but there are also two baddies swinging at you at the same time instead of one, and meanwhile you're taking a -2 penalty to AC.
Also it just plain baffles me that you must have Dwarf DNA to ignore the adjacency requirement. Wouldn't a taller race with longer arms have an easier time cleaving between two targets with more space between them? It seems like there's no reason for a racial restriction on it, other than "we need more racial feats to fill this book".
Good post.
Actually, with longer arms you have to generate more angular momentum, and the lower center of gravity will help mitigate the unbalancing effects of the angular momentum. Besides, give the poor stunties a break, they are mobility impaired you know :)
I see the reasons brought up on its changing utility. Valid as far as they go. If you are a module locked group, then Cleave is likely to become weak. The encounters where Cleave shines are not as likely in modules, because those fights can eat up playtime, and a standard assumption of a module is to finish off an episode per play session, like TV.
Lousy trap though, retraining is pretty easy for feats.
It is still more interesting than +1 attack with 1 weapon, then +2 damage, then another +1 attack........
Someone mentioned taking advantage of choke points. Choke points are great, but not always for the purpose of Cleave. If they can only get through one at a time, you can't use Cleave. If they can get through two at a time, great, you can Cleave them, but there are also two baddies swinging at you at the same time instead of one, and meanwhile you're taking a -2 penalty to AC.
Two baddies swinging at you is the ideal number to make use of Cleave. Any less and you can't make use of cleave. Any more and you're a liability. Chokepoints are significantly helpful for cleave, as long as you can hit two enemies (otherwise they're still good but yeah not good for cleave). It's fairly common for chokepoints to allow 2 and only 2 enemies, due to 90% of all maps apparently being drawn on a 10 ft scale (grumble grumble >_>).
So it sounds like your problem is more with the -2 AC than anything. Which I can agree with.
I think that the best thing that can be said about Cleave is that the character's who want it the most (2 handed weapon power attackers who can do the most damage with a single attack) also have a lot of feats to burn (they only REALLY need Power Attack, after all). So even if they CAN'T retrain it later, it's still not a big deal.
I think we are all including great cleave in this for scaling right?
Thanks Ozy.
I never really put it in those terms. I always just went with absolute values and then took into account only miss on a one and only hit on a 20 situations.
Corsair fighter makes cleave a bit better. Not that it's a great archetype.
Cleave is a trap because it's rarely useful, and not all that good when it's used. "Not adjacent to each other" is pretty much the standard positioning of... Well... Pretty much everything.
Any enemy with half a brain will go for flanking or something like that. Even if they move with no coordination, they're still more likely to end up not adjacent to each other.
Besides, feats are scarce. Even for fighters, they are still one of the scarcest resources in the game. Sacrificing one of them for something that rarely gets used (and is not very good when it does) is big price to pay. Therefore: Cleave is a trap.
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Cleave is a useful feat.
I'm referring of course to Cleave from 3/.5
[The Cleave feat] is a situationally useful ability that effectively doubles your damage in a fairly common situation.
A lot of folks on this thread, myself included, deny the "fairly common" bit above. I think that's one of the major disagreements.
I went through a number of AP modules and demonstrated, at least sufficiently to convince myself, that even if the GM goes out of her way to make the opponents position themselves in a way to make Cleave useful, it will still only be useful in roughly half the encounters. If she decides to make the opponents smart enough to know about flanking, the proportion drops even further, down to roughly one in five.
For Cleave to be a worthwhile feat, the GM needs to make sure her opponents position themselves like idiots, and needs to write specific encounters that make sure there are enough hostiles available... and enough hostiles of the appropriate type, as well (why on earth would a pair of dragons stand back-to-back?)
Back in the 1980s, there was a thoroughly implausible movie called Gymkata, a pulp-action movie starring gymnast Kurt Thomas, who destroyed untold mooks which his athletic turns and twists on.... a pommel horse. Why on earth is there a pommel horse sitting in the middle of a small Ruritanian village? As one critic put it, "[i]t's a little known fact that the Third World bases most of its civic infrastructure on parallel bars and pommel horses." But since Thomas was a gymnast, not an actual martial artist, the director, scriptwriter, and set designer had to find a way, irrespective of credibility, to put the equipment Thomas was trained on into the stunts.
With a friendly GM, Cleave can be a great feat. But I think that could be said for any feat, or any aspect of the game whatsoever. Without a friendly GM -- not just a friendly GM, but an extremely friendly to the point of obsequious GM -- I fear you'll spend most of your time wondering why you didn't just take Dodge.
[The Cleave feat] is a situationally useful ability that effectively doubles your damage in a fairly common situation.A lot of folks on this thread, myself included, deny the "fairly common" bit above. I think that's one of the major disagreements.
I went through a number of AP modules and demonstrated, at least sufficiently to convince myself, that even if the GM goes out of her way to make the opponents position themselves in a way to make Cleave useful, it will still only be useful in roughly half the encounters. If she decides to make the opponents smart enough to know about flanking, the proportion drops even further, down to roughly one in five.
For Cleave to be a worthwhile feat, the GM needs to make sure her opponents position themselves like idiots, and needs to write specific encounters that make sure there are enough hostiles available... and enough hostiles of the appropriate type, as well (why on earth would a pair of dragons stand back-to-back?)
Back in the 1980s, there was a thoroughly implausible movie called Gymkata, a pulp-action movie starring gymnast Kurt Thomas, who destroyed untold mooks which his athletic turns and twists on.... a pommel horse. Why on earth is there a pommel horse sitting in the middle of a small Ruritanian village? As one critic put it, "[i]t's a little known fact that the Third World bases most of its civic infrastructure on parallel bars and pommel horses." But since Thomas was a gymnast, not an actual martial artist, the director, scriptwriter, and set designer had to find a way, irrespective of credibility, to put the equipment Thomas was trained on into the stunts.
With a friendly GM, Cleave can be a great feat. But I think that could be said for any feat, or any aspect of the game whatsoever. Without a friendly GM -- not just a friendly GM, but an extremely friendly to the point of obsequious GM -- I fear you'll spend most of your time wondering why you didn't just take Dodge.
I remember wanting to see that when I was young.
I saw a trailer for it on youtube a while ago and I am glad I never got to see it.
Well done for referencing it in a rules thread. ;)
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[The Cleave feat] is a situationally useful ability that effectively doubles your damage in a fairly common situation.A lot of folks on this thread, myself included, deny the "fairly common" bit above. I think that's one of the major disagreements.
I went through a number of AP modules and demonstrated, at least sufficiently to convince myself, that even if the GM goes out of her way to make the opponents position themselves in a way to make Cleave useful, it will still only be useful in roughly half the encounters. If she decides to make the opponents smart enough to know about flanking, the proportion drops even further, down to roughly one in five.
For Cleave to be a worthwhile feat, the GM needs to make sure her opponents position themselves like idiots, and needs to write specific encounters that make sure there are enough hostiles available... and enough hostiles of the appropriate type, as well (why on earth would a pair of dragons stand back-to-back?)
Back in the 1980s, there was a thoroughly implausible movie called Gymkata, a pulp-action movie starring gymnast Kurt Thomas, who destroyed untold mooks which his athletic turns and twists on.... a pommel horse. Why on earth is there a pommel horse sitting in the middle of a small Ruritanian village? As one critic put it, "It's a little known fact that the Third World bases most of its civic infrastructure on parallel bars and pommel horses." But since Thomas was a gymnast, not an actual martial artist, the director, scriptwriter, and set designer had to find a way, irrespective of credibility, to put the equipment Thomas was trained on into the stunts.
With a friendly GM, Cleave can be a great feat. But I think that could be said for any feat, or any aspect of the game whatsoever. Without a friendly GM -- not just a friendly GM, but an extremely friendly to the point of obsequious GM -- I fear you'll spend most of your time wondering why you didn't just take Dodge.
You mean you don't take the Improved Pommel Horse Maneuvers feat on all of your characters?
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Cleave is a powerful feat if you don't use its actual rules.
Our GM was hammering us with a frost worm, making an attack on every member of the party in reach as long as it hit, up until I realized that Great Cleave doesn't remove the adjacent requirement. None of us were overly upset due to the excitement of a dangerous foe appearing, and had that mistake not been made the fight probably would have been pretty average.
I just change the "adjacent to each other" requirement to "within your threatened area" and it works much better. A friend of mine suggested allowing it to be used in a full-attack, but when it does, it ends the full-attack in exchange for the "cleave attacks", which then use the same BAB as whatever attack initiated them.
I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds like a cool idea.
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Gymkata pommel horse scene. It is truly awful filmmaking.
The cleave/vital strike chains seem pretty useful to certain Warpriest builds that count as full BAB for feats but don't actually get full BAB for iteratives.
Now for a fighter I'd say cleave is extremely useful as a bonus feat. Since fighters can retrain bonus feats for free at 4th, 8th, and 12th, cleave is a feat that can significantly increase your damage output at early levels and then can be replaced with a feat that has a requirement of BAB 6+ later on in their career.
Still niche though. And still a trap for many builds though.
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Gymkata pommel horse scene. It is truly awful filmmaking.
The unbelievable part of that scene isn't the pommel horse, is how the mob armed with spears that outnumbers him 50-1 doesn't just stab him from reach instead of closing one by one to let him kick them.
Gymkata pommel horse scene. It is truly awful filmmaking.The unbelievable part of that scene isn't the pommel horse, is how the mob armed with spears that outnumbers him 50-1 doesn't just stab him from reach instead of closing one by one to let him kick them.
That's kind of what I mean about a not just friendly but obsequious GM. It's the same issue with Cleave; flanking provides such an advantage that the mooks would be fools not to use it if they can. But if they try to flank, does that mean that the GM is "go[ing] out of his way to avoid positioning npcs so they can be cleaved"? (Envall, upthread)
I really feel like Cleave could be salvaged pretty well if Cleaving Finish and Great Cleave got smooshed together so that Great Cleave let you whack anyone you threatened.
Yeah, but you play with the rulebooks you have, not the rulebooks you want. Especially if you're playing in PFS, but also if you're too short of time to go through and write MeFinder. (My metaphorical hat is off to Kirth, but I have no interest in following their lead.)
I honestly question whether Cleave is worth more than Skill Focus: Craft (Underwater Basketweaving) since the latter will increase your downtime wealth generation.
I never see opportunities to use Cleave on either side of the table.
Thanks Ozy.
I never really put it in those terms. I always just went with absolute values and then took into account only miss on a one and only hit on a 20 situations.
Going with absolute values rather than relative ones is usually the more appropriate way to go when analyzing how something works. It avoids the subjective skew of a +1 meaning a 100% improvement for someone who only hit 5% of the time (and now does 10% of the time) vs 5.5% for the guy who hit 90% of the time and now hits 95% and replaces it with "the character hits 5 more times out of 100 tries".
Going with absolute values rather than relative ones is usually the more appropriate way to go when analyzing how something works. It avoids the subjective skew of a +1 meaning a 100% improvement for someone who only hit 5% of the time (and now does 10% of the time) vs 5.5% for the guy who hit 90% of the time and now hits 95% and replaces it with "the character hits 5 more times out of 100 tries".Thanks Ozy.
I never really put it in those terms. I always just went with absolute values and then took into account only miss on a one and only hit on a 20 situations.
For improvements where the base success rate is greater than 50%, I tend to measure the improvement in the reduction of the failure rate. Thus, your 5.5% increased success rate example is a 50% reduction in failure rate.
Going with absolute values rather than relative ones is usually the more appropriate way to go when analyzing how something works. It avoids the subjective skew of a +1 meaning a 100% improvement for someone who only hit 5% of the time (and now does 10% of the time) vs 5.5% for the guy who hit 90% of the time and now hits 95% and replaces it with "the character hits 5 more times out of 100 tries".Thanks Ozy.
I never really put it in those terms. I always just went with absolute values and then took into account only miss on a one and only hit on a 20 situations.
Less confusing too. Thanks. :)
my GM plays every encounter as if every enemy is a tactical genius.
I do the exact opposite.
If a player takes cleave, I make sure that minions group up so they can use the feat.
And no, I don't have them avoid flanking - I have them swarm. If you have 10 minions and they all want a flank, there are going to be plenty adjacent to one another.
Just like if I have a rogue with trap finding, I put in more traps. If nobody has trapfinding, then I rarely in any traps.
I specifically build encounters to synergize with my PC's abilities. It always baffles me when I hear about GMs that don't let their players use their abilities. What's the point of that?
Besides, there are plenty of real world reasons to be adjacent to one another and allow for cleaves. Shield walls anyone?
Also, just checking, but since cleave is a standard action, can you not close on two adjacent targets (or more with great cleave) and then cleave them? That lets you take two attacks after closing rather than one. That seems pretty useful even at high levels.
Also, just checking, but since cleave is a standard action, can you not close on two adjacent targets (or more with great cleave) and then cleave them? That lets you take two attacks after closing rather than one. That seems pretty useful even at high levels.
Yes.