Fighters and Cleave

[The Sideromancer]

Cleave is a pretty iconic fighter option. I'm not sure there's much that simply gets across "great at fighting" like bringing down two attackers in one stroke. It wasn't amazing in PF1 unless you were a dwarf, but one with everything going was truly spectacular.

The playtest fighter cannot gain cleave. It's Barbarian only. Patterns tell me it would be available at 12 in Core once the multiclass for Barb is online, due to the "half your level" on getting class feats via multiclass.

So after We've dropped three feats, our fighter can cleave, right? Well, not fully. Cleave has the rage trait, restricting it to during that status. So we can cleave 3/4 of the time, but not if you go toward the standard fighter equipment. Because you can't rage (and thus cleave) in heavy armour.

It is, as far as I can tell, impossible to make something you could do as a first level fighter in the PF1 CRB, or heck, even the PF1 beginner box. I would request that Cleave and Great Cleave be Fighter feats in addition to Barbarian feats and lose the rage trait.

[Skull]

Dont have the pdf on me atm. Iirc sweep was similar to cleave and fighters had access to it? I did go through some classes late last night, so might be wrong.

[JRutterbush]

They're trying to give each combat class their own identity in combat feats, rather than having all physical combatants basically wanting the same types of physical combat feats. I think it works better this way, and helps make the two more distinct. Cleave means the Barbarian wants to dig in and finish one foe to get a head-start on the next one, while Sweep means the Fighter wants to spread damage around a bit more, which gives each of their "hit two guys" type feats their own distinct feel.