So I was thinking and came to a conclusion; is there really a problem with letting a character with the Great Weapon Mastery Feat effectively have Great Cleave? I mean, it only works for as long as they keep felling opponents and only against opponents within their reach. The only thing I can think of would be adding the stipulation that they cannot move between the triggering attack and this special free melee attack.
Follow-up thought, I think I'll just create an updated version of Great Cleave. Preliminary thoughts are...
Cleaver
Prerequisite: Proficiency Bonus of +4 or higher, Great Weapon Mastery.
The adrenaline rush of battle allows you to fell multiple opponents with devastating effeciency. You gain the following benefits:
- Increase your Strength Score by 1.
- On your turn, whenever you reduce a creature to 0 hit points with a melee weapon attack, you can make an additional melee weapon attack against another creature. This process can be repeated indefinitely, as long as you continue reducing targets to 0 hit points.
It all comes down to the DM. The Cleave Fighter back in 3.5 could decimate a hoard of enemies without a problem, so the DM wouldn't send a hoard at them unless they wanted to make their player feel special that day. Also, I've done a bit of thinking about it and I'm taking out the clause of the Critical Hit, because an Assassin Rogue could just obliterate everybody on a surprise round.
But, yes, I do understand what you're saying and I will take it into consideration. Continuous rolling can be quite boring.
I checked the ranger abilities, and at level 11, they can basically do what this feat does, just that they don't have to fell the targets, they just can use an action to attack any number of creatures within 5ft. of them. They roll each attack roll separately. Personally, I don't see a problem with my feat, aside from potentially letting a level 4 human character do so. I'll do what I can to change that.
Actually in the DMG there's a rule called "Cleaving Through Creatures" in the actions section on page 272. If you do not have a DMG I'll type the text ad verbatim from my own copy,
"If your player characters regularly fight hordes of lower level monsters, consider using this optional rule to help speed up such fights. When a melee attack reduces an undamaged creature to 0 hit points, any excess damage from that attack might carry over to another creature nearby. The attacker targets another creature within reach and, if the original attack roll can hit it, applies any remaining
damage to it. If that creature was undamaged and is likewise reduced to 0 hit points, repeat this process, carrying over the remaining damage until there are no valid targets, or until the damage carried over fails to reduce an undamaged creature to 0 hit points."
In the end it's an optional rule but one I personally like, especially on a high level Fighter with all those multiple attacks 
Here's the finished version of the feat.
Line Breaker
Prerequisite: Strength 13 or higher, Great Weapon Mastery.
The adrenaline rush of battle grants you the strength to rip through enemy lines. When you take the attack action and make a melee weapon attack that reduces a target to 0 hit points, you can immediately make an additional melee weapon attack as part of the same action. This process can be repeated indefinitely, as long as you continue to reduce targets to 0 hit points and don't move.
transcendantviewer wrote:
That is a fair point, Varden. I think I'll add that in. It'll do what I wanted, but prevent it from being abused as easily.
On second thought, it functions how I was hoping and trying to add something in like that will just add unnecessary text. The rules interactions are subtle, but there. Unlike the Ranger ability, this one's limited to how many times you succeed in felling an opponent. Fail, and it stops, but yes, it activates after each attack that does, meaning that you still get your ordinary attacks in there. These are just extra that happen immediately after.
Ah, your finalised version must've gone up while I was typing. The inclusion of "immediately after" solves my issue.
I'm thinking of trying to reword it to make the "You have to move to break the chain" mechanic more apparent, but not make the feat feel clunky. The language can drastically change how a feat is recieved.
After a bunch of language tweaks, it's done, simple, and works. Thanks for the help making this feat solid, everybody.
Varden_Khol wrote:
FrogReaver wrote:
FrogReaver wrote:
Yunru wrote:
FrogReaver wrote:
You guys are reading the PHB, right? That's right in there. This shouldn't be a topic for debate. And more importantly, why is this a debate here? I'm not trying to be rude, but I was hoping for feedback on my homebrew. Here's the final version, for anybody interested.
There is a precedence via Crawford of a single attack requireing multiple attack rolls.
But either way... I allow movement, but it doesn't really matter. When you take the action, you get one attack with every creature that *is* within 5'... not every creature that 'will be within 5' at some point on your turn'. Meaning that if there are 4 within 5', those are the 4 you get to attack, even if you move around.... you can attack those, and only those, 4.
I think some are talking about Horde Beeaker and some about Whirlwind.
For Horde Breaker I think it strongly implies that you don't move between the attacks with the "within range of your weapon" clause. If you could move, the "different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target" statement would be enough.
I'd say the context of Whirlwind is much the same when compared to Volly. On a grid, Volly can hit up to 12 targets while Whirlwind can hit up to 8 if you don't move. If you'd be able to move, that number would go up drastically. Especially if you were say, a Barbarian with Cunning Action and Haste cast on them (potentially 160 ft of movement).