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I am annoyed with the default Cleave power in PF2. It had so much potential but it is just not good enough to be worth taking. Why? Because
1) it costs you your reaction so it directly competes with Attack of Opportunity
2) it occurs in your turn so it suffers from the Multiple Attack Penalty of 5. If you have another action you can just take another swing anyway so where is the real value in this power? Another attack at minus 10 - I'm not impressed!
3) its at level 6 which is chock full of other good barbarian powers.
So this is my suggestion for a change.
Cleave. Make this attack at a penalty of 2. It does not count towards, and is not affected by your multiple attack penalty. This power gains the Flourish trait. If the target is out of your reach you may take a step towards it before making this attack. Cleave is a level 4 barbarian class feat not a level 6 feat.
Great Cleave. Your Cleave continues, keep making strikes until you make a strike that doesn’t kill or knock a creature unconscious. Make all these attacks at a total penalty of 2. These attacks do not count towards, and are not affected by your multiple attack penalty. You may take a step between each strike, but no more than 2 steps total in this cleave sequence.
Yeah this is a major change and now a really strong power - but realise it is competing with Attack of Opportunity for the same reaction. The purpose of this is to stop Attack of Opportunity and Reach from dominating combat tactics. The flourish is to stop edge multiclass cases with two reactions.
Let us be real it is quite unlikely that any more than a couple of extra hits will happen with Great Cleave, but very occasionally you will see a big cleave sequence.
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How do you feel about targets needing to be adjacent to each other, rather than just within reach? Because that's a thing too.
I actually agree that Cleave seems lackluster and would be down for it getting buffed.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
How do you feel about targets needing to be adjacent to each other, rather than just within reach? Because that's a thing too.
I actually agree that Cleave seems lackluster and would be down for it getting buffed.
Sure I'm open to it.
The spirit of the power requires some sort of adjacency. Note that I am adding a step to try and ease the reach problem. So I guess so long as you can get to the second target I suppose we could remove that.
Maybe Paizo can just release another level 4 barbarian feat with something similar to this....
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Maybe the intention was as an extra attack without MAP as the standard rule seems to be MAP doesn't effect Reactions, but this is a weird case as it is mid-turn, which no other reaction seems to be.
I wouldn't mind having it as a free action that can be used once per turn, with no other changes, though.
Maybe the intention was as an extra attack without MAP as the standard rule seems to be MAP doesn't effect Reactions, but this is a weird case as it is mid-turn, which no other reaction seems to be.
I wouldn't mind having it as a free action that can be used once per turn, with no other changes, though.
There are a few other mid-turn reactions. Some of the dragon tail lash things trigger off a strike against the dragon, which can include an AoO. And the Purple Worm has a fast swallow reaction. But it is not the norm, yeah.