Armor Up - Developer Diary #3

[bennyson]

I'm a bit concerned about the requirements needed for the new Paladin cleaves. The intention was stated that they should replace the feats (Cleave/ Greater Cleave) and thus freeing feats for Paladins. That is a great idea! Now when we take a look at the requirements - and especially the levels in which you aquire the abilities to cleave - it suddenly beginns to feel like a bad trade.

Feats
Cleave: needs Power Attack as prerequisite. Thus you can take it as your second feat -> third level, Humans or Fighters at first level.
Geat Cleave: needs Cleave and BAB+4 as a prereqisite. Thus you can take it as your third feat -> sixth level, Humans or Fighters from fourth level on.

Enhancement Tree
Exalted Cleave: Needs Paladin level 2. -> Second level. Nothing wrong here...
Avenging Cleave: Needs Character level 12 (Paladin level 5). -> Twelfth level!!!

The thought of playing a melee character to level twelve without Greater Cleave makes me shudder. And the option to choose Great Cleave as soon as possible and let Fred do his psychochirurgical heresy (yes Heresy!) on my divinely anointed soul seams... not elegant.

Second - and probably more substantial - part of that problem is that you can only take Tier 5 from one Tree. Great Cleave is not an ability you want to miss on a Paladin, so (at least for my playstile) the choice is either Knight of the Chalice or keeping the Cleaves as feats. Of course we could take them as feats, but then the initial intention (freeing much needed feat slots) is lost...


Different options for possible workarounds:
- You could make Avenging Cleave a Tier 4 enhancement.
- You could get rid of the shared cooldown with Cleave/ Great Cleave.
- You could make Exalted Cleave a optional prerequisite for Great Cleave, so you can have Cleave (Feat) OR Exalted Cleave (Enhancement) as a prerequisite for Great Cleave. Although i guess it could be difficult to code (without bugs) and it breaks the general way in which feats need prerequisites.

My favorite solution:
Get rid of Passion. Make Avenging Cleave weaker (like a normal Great Cleave) but obtainable at Tier 4. Give us a Tier 5 enhancement that improves Avenging Cleave to the one now suggested.

Other thoughts:
- Why not keep the old Holy Sword spell and just ad the intended new Holy Sword as a different spell? Although the old Holy Sword was only usefull in very specific situations, there is probably no need to get rid of it.

Because the "old" Holy Sword spell becomes a waste of effort to cast because once you get to epic levels, the weapons it creates become obsolete.

Second, the "new" Holy Sword spell is far more similar to its PnP version than the old one, while they have their differences, they are similar in purpose, to buff your weapons. I'd rather the spell as a whole gets changed instead of letting it sit there gathering dust.

About Avenging Cleave, I am against lowering its power and tier because other classes cant get their most powerful enhancement cleaves until level 12ish with 5 levels of their class. Also, Avenging Cleave will inflect a stack of Vulnerability (1% extra damage from all sources of damage) to ALL enemies hit by the cleave. Am also guessing that it will stack up to 20 and since its applied after you hit a group of enemies with Avenging Cleave, your party's damage will benefit.

my own concern is, how much AP will these abilities cost and will we have enough AP left from KOTC will we be able to spend in other trees.