Improved Cleaving Finish not working as intended ? (turn based)

[Matt]

I have a merc with decent melee damage, the Improved Cleaving Finish feat, and I've seen this happen several times (in fact, most of the time) when he had 3+ ennemies in range:

1) Attacks 1st ennemy, kills it, uses Cleaving Finish
2) Attacks 2nd ennemy, kills it, uses Cleving Finish
3) Attacks (apparently) the 1st ennemy again (while there are still other targets), does damage but obviously doesn't kill it since it's already dead from 1st strike.

And that's it, the chain ends here.

I'm not even sure that I've seen him kill more than 2 ennemies even once, while there have been *many* occasions when this could have happened.

Is this a known bug, am I missing something ?

The merc is doing the fist attack (and the following ones) using Vital Strike, if that matters.

[Raikon]

It doesnt exceed your total number of attacks. Its not an infinite chain that goes on forever. If you have 4 attacks, you kill one, then he can only cleaving finish 3 times. Very few builds will have a character that will kill an enemy in 1 hit.

So if you have a typical 2 hander, you have like 5 attacks. Ive not seen cleaving finish hit the original target again after it dies, but enemies have to be in range also. In general I've not seen cleaving finish hit more then 3 enemies. Its difficult to chain to that many in one round. They have to be within a certain distance, you need to do that much damage, and you need to have many attacks.

With a dragonkind build that did 500 damage per hit, I think the highest cleaving finish I saw was 4, when a summoner summoned some doggos, and I ripped through all of them.

I dont play turnbased mode though.

[Matt]

Originally posted by Raikon:

It doesnt exceed your total number of attacks. Its not an infinite chain that goes on forever. If you have 4 attacks, you kill one, then he can only cleaving finish 3 times. Very few builds will have a character that will kill an enemy in 1 hit.

So if you have a typical 2 hander, you have like 5 attacks. Ive not seen cleaving finish hit the original target again after it dies, but enemies have to be in range also. In general I've not seen cleaving finish hit more then 3 enemies. Its difficult to chain to that many in one round. They have to be within a certain distance, you need to do that much damage, and you need to have many attacks.

With a dragonkind build that did 500 damage per hit, I think the highest cleaving finish I saw was 4, when a summoner summoned some doggos, and I ripped through all of them.

I dont play turnbased mode though.

Thx for the answer, the fact that it cannot exceed the total number of attacks might be the reason (the merc only has 2 attacks per round atm, Rowdy 1/Vivi 14 = 10 BAB).

However, when under a haste effect, since the number of attacks per round is 3, Cleaving Finish should trigger twice, shouldn't it ?

Also, let me clarify a few things :

* Rowdy 1/Vivi X (STR + 2 handed weapon) does an insane amount of damage, with Vital Strike. In fact, it's very common that it has enough damage to one-shot ennemies, even those at full health (I'm playing on Core - at the beginning of Act 4 atm).

* I'm 100% positive about hitting the same ennemy twice. I've checked that several times. This may be due to the fact that I'm playing with turn based mode. The combat log displays 3 messages with damage around 200, and only 2 mobs are removed from the fight.

* With Legendary Proportions + a reach weapon, it's not that hard to position the merc so that he's in range of at least 3 ennemies. I've paid attention to that.

I'll post a screenshot next time it happens.

[Raikon]

Yes haste attacks affect it. It basically goes down your list of attacks. Ive cleaving finished with the mythic gore attack before.

[Matt]

Here's an example :

First image, before making an attack with VS. As you can see, Rulf is clearly in range of 4 mobs (2 Mariliths and 2 Nalfeshnees) and maybe a 5th one (the Balor in the back).

Before VS[ibb.co]

Second image, message log after the attacks.

I had made sure that 1 Marilith and 1 Nalfeshnee were on low health (110-, you can check that with the monsters icons on the top of the screen of the 1st image), so that I had the best chance to chain 3 attacks. Hence, each of the 3 hits should be a kill (the remaining Marilith and Nalfeshnee are both on full health).

Also, the 3rd attack targets a Nalfeshnee. Since the remaining one is at full health, then it must have targeted the one that had already received 299 damage... which is more than its total health anyway.

After VS[ibb.co]

One last thing : Rulf's BAB is 10, so only 2 attacks per round normally. Yet he does his damage 3 times... (no Haste buff atm) but only kills 2 mobs.

[Raikon]

Well the information is pretty limited on your characters attacks. Even a 10 BaB character can have bite attacks, gore attacks, haste attacks, etc.

I dont nessarily see an issue with the seond foto, he vital strikes, then cleaving finishes 2 more vital strikes.

While cleaving finish only uses your actual attacks, they can proc off attacks of opurtunity. If an attack of opurtunity finishes off an openant, you will cleaving finish onto a mob. It still uses up one of your attacks though.

[Raikon]

you would need to hover over the atcual attacks. So i could see what attack each one is doing. Like 1of3 2of3 3of3

[Raikon]

Here is an example of the dragon i mentioned earlier. It takes about 2 attacks to kill these unfair mobs. The dragon has 8 attacks, and killed 4 of the mobs. As you can see that last mob is undamaged, because I didnt have anymore attacks. The damage happened so fast you can still see most of it on screen.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2852908946

[Matt]

Will do that. However, there is still a problem for me, with 3 attacks (=1 attack + 2 Cleaving Finish) and only 2 mobs taking damage and dying.

[Raikon]

If two mobs die, then having 2 cleaving finishes makes sense. Thats why you need to hover over your attacks to see what they are. I dont know if your character is getting an extra attack from somewhere.

It could very well also be a problem with turn based, or using vital strike. You just havent given enough information to narrow it down.

[Matt]

1st attack[ibb.co]
2nd attack[ibb.co]
3rd attack[ibb.co]

All 3 attacks are on full Attack Bonus, which seems logical since the 1st one triggered Cleaving Finish twice (this is still shown on screen).

Still only 2 mobs died and the remaining ones were unarmed. The Nalfeshnee had 230 HP total, so should be dead after the 1st attack that did 299 damage, and yet receives another 180 damage.

[Matt]

Originally posted by Raikon:

If two mobs die, then having 2 cleaving finishes makes sense.

Nope, because I made sure to check that all the other mobs were unharmed after all 3 attacks had taken place. And anyway, the 1st attack already should have killed the Nalfeshnee.

[Raikon]

Take a photo of your martial screen.

[Matt]

look at those HPs :

poor guy[ibb.co]

Clearly, the first strike (299) should have killed it (especially since it was at 110 HP or so) and the 3rd strike (180) is the one that brought it to -391 HPs). The small discrepency (20 or so) is due to the added damage from Sun Marked.

[Matt]

Originally posted by Raikon:

Take a photo of your martial screen.

here it is[ibb.co]

[Raikon]

Yeah just the two attacks, so one of the cleaving finishes shouldnt have happened, unless the kill was on an attack of oppurunity which didnt look like the case.

So that makes one cleaving finish redundant. I wouldnt praise owlcat on this, but the cleaving finish you werent supposed to have seems to have gone to a character dead anyways. That aside it seemed to work correctly.

I cant go into detail on whether they all should be full attack bonus, since a dragons attacks all have the same attack bonus. I dont remember further then that.