Mighty Cleave and Cleaving Finish. How do they work together?

[Stephen Ede]

Cleaving Smash
Additional Prerequisite(s): Cleave, Improved Vital Strike, Power Attack

When you use Cleave, you can add the additional damage from Vital Strike to both your initial and your secondary attacks. If you also have the Greater Vital Strike feat, you can instead add the damage from Improved Vital Strike to both your initial and your secondary attacks.
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A mighty cleaving weapon allows a wielder using the Cleave feat to make one additional attack if the first attack hits, as long as the next foe is adjacent to the first and also within reach. This additional attack cannot be against the first foe.
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As I read it you get to add the Vital Strike damage to all 3 attacks.
Correct?

[Lemartes]

First your title doesn't match the post.

If you have all the prerequisites for Cleaving Smash(which you should if you have the feat) then you don't need a mighty cleaving weapon nor would it be of any benefit.

So you only have two attacks and you add your vital strike damage on both attacks when you use cleave.

[Stephen Ede]

Might Cleave doesn't give you the Cleave Feat, it requires you have the Cleave feat and gives you an additional attack in addition to what the Cleave feat gives you.

So the Cleave feat says if you make a Cleave Action you attack "A" and if you successfully hit you can then make an attack against "B" if "B" is adjacent to "A".

Mightly Cleave says if you make a Cleave Action and successfully hit "A" you can on top of the attack on "B" from the Cleave feat make an assitional attack on "B" or another tarhet adjacent to "A" make another attack using the Mighty Cleave ability.

That makes a total of 3 attacks.

[Ryan Freire]

Yup.

[MrCharisma]

Lemartes wrote:

First your title doesn't match the post.

I believe the title meant to say "Cleaving Smash", not "Cleaving Finish".

Now if you add Cleaving Finish on top of that you can potentially make 4 attacks as part of that standard action.

Then add Cornugon Smash and Hurtful to make it 5.

[Stephen Ede]

MrCharisma wrote:

Lemartes wrote:

First your title doesn't match the post.

I believe the title meant to say "Cleaving Smash", not "Cleaving Finish".

Now if you add Cleaving Finish on top of that you can potentially make 4 attacks as part of that standard action.

Then add Cornugon Smash and Hurtful to make it 5.

Doh. Looked at it several times but kept reading what I meant to type rather than what I actually typed.

[Stephen Ede]

Anyway Now that I get the words right (facepalm)

So you You make a Cleave Attack with the Improved Vital Strike Feat.

Using Cleaving Smash you get to apply Vital Strike damage to both the 1st attack and the secondary Cleave attack.

Do you also add it to the damage for the Attack you get from Mighty Cleave?

Apologies for screwing up the initial question heading

[MrCharisma]

Hmmm... interesting.

I can see two interpretations of RAW (Rules As Written), one says yes the other says no.

RAI (Rules As Intended) is also pretty unclear, as these two things were probably written without any concern for one another.

RAF (Rules As Fun) is that Yes they shouod work together. If you're going to invest that many feats and a weapon enhancement into something you damn well better get something out of it.

I said in another thread recently that Cleave et al are so under-valued that they rarely see action (was it your thread?). For Great Cleave (or a Mighty Cleaving Weapon) to add anything you really need at least 3 enemies to be lined up nicely, so it's not something that'll come up every combat. Since the RAW and the RAI aren't really clear it's basically GM fiat territory. I say there's no real reason to deny this to a player.

[Lemartes]

Ha! I clearly didn't real the mighty cleaving feat. I remember thinking it was lack luster years ago. Not sure how I feel about it now.

As for how it works I don't know. I can see it both ways especially with the wording in Cleaving Smash.

[Ryan Freire]

1. Mighty cleaving is a weapon enhancement.

2. Yes you get the vital strike on both attacks. Logic behind that: You can have 5 secondary natural attacks, as a result secondary does not mean strictly #2 in pathfinder but instead references an item (attacks) within a certain category(not the primary).

3. If it wasn't intended to work with both it would be written like Startoss shower