Helping New-ish Player understand her abilities as a fighter.

[killem2]

She's a TwoHanded fighter archtype with a few different feats and class abilities to keep track of. Cleave, Great Cleave, Cleaving Finish, Improved Cleaving Finish, Furious Focus, Backswing, and Overhand chop.

So far I am working on a flow chart for her but I have this graphic below to explain Cleave and Great Cleave.

i explained to her:

With Cleave and Great Cleave feats you must choose ahead of time if you are going to perform those actions and if you do, that is consider a standard action.

https://s12.postimg.org/7mrka03wt/cleave1.png
https://s12.postimg.org/w4jnxw6h9/cleave2.png


For Cleave I have down:
If you choose Cleave this is what you will be able to do in one turn.In this example you can strike the Red X first. If you deal damage Cleave will allow you to make one more attack against an enemy that is next to the Red X. In this example the Red Dot is who is next, so that is who you can attack. Regardless if you deal damage or not this is where Cleave ends.

For Great Cleave I have down:
If you choose Great Cleave this is what you will be able to do in one turn. Note the orc with the red X on it. That is the one you started damage on. Great Cleave will allow you to then make another attack against the red dot. If you damage him, you can damage the blue dot. If you damage him you can make another attack against the green dot, and so on. As long as each enemy is next to the one you just hit and you can reach them, you can keep going. 


Once you hit all of the targets possible this is where Great Cleave ends as you can’t go back and hit someone again in the same single turn. 



That is the difference between Cleave and Great Cleave


Now when we throw Improved Cleaving Finish into this here is where I get a little confused on what to explain next.


https://s14.postimg.org/z7sh9skzl/CLEAVE3.png


She declares the use of Great Cleave, deals damage to the Red X. Say she deals damage to Orange, then Blue, then Green. If she drops Green to zero, can she then turn and hit Red with and attack and if she deals damage to that orc with the Red Dot, will Great cleave allow her to attack the yellow Dot?


Another question to bring up is:

Let say she can do the above, and she Kills Yellow dot. Can she turn and make a Cleaving Finish attack against Red X and if she drops Red X, move to Orange?

And if she Drops Orange, can she move to Blue, and if she drops Blue, Cleaving Finish Green?

[John Longarrow]

Which flavor of 3.5 are you using?

Have to ask because in standard Cleave is only triggered if you drop an opponent and its automatic, so no making a decision ahead of time.

[exelsisxax]

Don't try to explain anything, the feats are idiot proof. Have her read them. They're only a burden because you apparently gave something like an 8th level fighter to a total noob. Any particular reason that's happening?

With improved cleaving finish, you can attack forever as long as you keep killing. The problem is that it doesn't work nicely with normal cleaving. If you drop someone, choosing to use cleaving finish instantly ends any cleave, regardless of how many attacks you made or targets available. If you instead continue the cleave, you can't "bank" the kill. You forfeit it, and can't make cleaving finish attacks until you drop someone else, and make the same choice again(unless it's your last great cleave hit).

[killem2]

Don't try to explain anything, the feats are idiot proof. Have her read them. They're only a burden because you apparently gave something like an 8th level fighter to a total noob. Any particular reason that's happening?

With improved cleaving finish, you can attack forever as long as you keep killing. The problem is that it doesn't work nicely with normal cleaving. If you drop someone, choosing to use cleaving finish instantly ends any cleave, regardless of how many attacks you made or targets available. If you instead continue the cleave, you can't "bank" the kill. You forfeit it, and can't make cleaving finish attacks until you drop someone else, and make the same choice again(unless it's your last great cleave hit).

Well, I could give her a level 1 fighter along side the rest of the 10s. She wanted to be a fighter. So I let her be fighter.


This is for pathfinder by the way.