two weapon strike/cleave combo?

[Belkregos]

two weapon strike/cleave combo?

any opinions on this?
two weapon strike states this is one attack per round

cleave states the cleave attack is with the same weapon and same bonus as the attack that drop the enemy

so witch is it?

what do you guys think?

same deal with explosive power/cleave?

 

[Clovenhoof]

First off, I'll say that TWS as officially written is a good idea, but not taken far enough. Essentially it is a feat that enables you to do something with Dual Wield that you could do with a Two-handed weapon without any extra feat. In other words, TWS exists to bring TWF a bit closer to par.

For this reason, in my game TWS is not a feat but a combat move that anyone proficient with Two-Weapo Fighting can use. Moreover, they can use it as often per round as they have off-hand attacks. Of course, each TWS uses up one primary and one off-hand attack.

Analogous, while none of my group's TWFers have the Cleave Feat (yet), I am pretty sure I would allow the two-weapon strike to follow through. So if a player with TWF and Cleave drops a foe, they'll get a free extra TWS against another target.

These houserules have made TWF more attractive, and effectively achieve a more exciting fighting style than the "Bigger Hammer" solution encouraged by combining D&D 3.5 Power Attack rules with damage-reducing armour.

Even if you stick to the TWS rule as written, you can still allow to combine Cleave with it. Any why not, it surely won't break the game.

 

[librarycharlie]

IIRC, isn't two weapon strike the one that allows you to hit with two weapons for one damage roll?

That's definitely worth a feat. Dual wielded open Katars with 18 strength =4d6+6 damage. It's a fairly regular save vs. death roll. Bump the strength even a bit and every round someone saves or dies.
As a bonus, they're light weapons (no offhand penalty) and finessable through armor.

Even with the best two-handed weapons you're only getting 2d8+6 with the same strength (new edition damage down from 2d10). The average damage on the katars is 2 points higher. As the weapon specialization feat points out, that 2 points is worth a feat.

Also, combined with the feat that allows your full strength bonus on offhand weapons... it's incredibly deadly.


As a GM, I'd say cleave will either work with the main-hand weapon, or not at all, depending on the nature of the attack. There are some weapons for which cleaving is difficult to imagine (punching dagger, for example). This would be to prevent a strength 24 or so barbarian from using mighty cleave on everyone who failed their fort DC (20+) ad infinitum.

 

[Ichabod]

Believe it's been confirmed that bardiche still does the same damage as greatsword, which would mean they both do d10+d8 (ignoring the Akbitanan entry that says 2d10 for greatsword).

Any character with Cleave also has Power Attack. Unless Katar gets around the restriction, being a light weapon, it can't be used with PA.

At BAB +1, a bardiche wielding, 18 STR dude is likely to be dealing d10+d8+6+2.

At BAB +4, that jumps up to d10+d8+6+8 for full PA.

If the character has both an 18 STR and would still choose to finesse attack, the character has pretty good combat attributes; or, the minus to hit with Power Attack is going to wash with a lower DEX character choosing to finesse instead of melee. The pure STR dude will pretty much always armor pierce (I don't believe I've ever seen our barbarian fail to armor pierce) and can largely ignore DEX.

So, I'm not really worried about a dual wielding Katarist. The game has such a massive discrepancy between two-handed fighting and everything else (setting aside sneak attack), that having something else not suck should be considered a good thing.

 

[librarycharlie]

[note: I don't have the new edition and know only secondhand what damages are done there]

This takes into account power attacking, but overcoming DR isn't a simple matter. A guy with a good suit (DR7) and helm (DR2 more) requires the attacking strength 18 dude to have an AP 6 weapon to pierce. Bardiche has an AP of 5 (total of 9 with +4 strength). If the armor isn't pierced, the attacker is dealing 10 fewer points, enough to counter the Power Attack bonus and subtract 2 more from the final damage.

Bardiche attack roll is at -4 and damage is d10+d8+6+8-10: Average 14

Dual open Katar attack is at -10 (big penalty!) and damage is 4d6+4+2: Average 20

So basically, you're at at 30% decreased chance to hit, but a greatly increased chance of dealing massive damage.

They're fairly equivalent. For high BAB characters, the power attack becomes a more attractive option.

Odd rules question though. The book (again, older edition, not latest) says, "subtract a number from all melee attack rolls and add the same number to all melee damage rolls. This number may not exceed your base attack bonus."

It seems that the phrase "This number" is referring to the latter figure of melee damage. Generally, it's not an issue, but for two-handed weapons, the damage is increased to "twice" the number subtracted.

So, does a character with BAB 4 and a two handed weapon get to take a maximum of -2 to hit and +4 to damage, or at most a -4 to hit and +8 to damage?

I'm not curious so much about house rules as I am to see if this was officially clarified somewhere or in the next edition.

 

[Krushnak]

For cleave you make the same attack again if that was the attack that dropped your foe.

Theres an awesome combat maneouvere in the Shem source book for dual wielders. if you hit with every one of your attacks you only count dr against the attacks once instead of against each individual attack.

 

[Trodax]

So, does a character with BAB 4 and a two handed weapon get to take a maximum of -2 to hit and +4 to damage, or at most a -4 to hit and +8 to damage?

He can go for +8 damage at a -4 penalty at the most (link).

 

[librarycharlie]

Groovy clarification. Makes PA a LOT better than most other feats, since BAB (for warriors) rises higher than anyone's parry or dodge bonus.