Cleave
Whenever you hit an opponent with an axe, there's a 75% chance you cleave their armor, giving them a -1 penalty to their AV. This penalty can stack a number of times up to half your strength modifier, rounded up, +1 on a critical hit. |
Description
Cleave reduces its target's armor as a creature attacks, so sebsequent attacks penetrate more often for more damage. 
Charging Strike (Axe) makes Cleave more powerful during a 
Charge attack.
Messages
When the player Cleaves a target, text appears in the play area over the target, showing the total value of the Cleaved debuff.
*cleave (-X AV)* |
When something Cleaves the player, text appears in the play area over the player character, identifying the item that has the AV penalty.
Armor cracked* |
The first time the player Cleaves a target, this message appears in the message log after the "You hit...." message:
You cleave through the target's armor. |
When the player Cleaves a target that already has the Cleaved debuff, no extra message appears after the "You hit...." message in the message log. The only way to notice is to see the text pop up in the play area, or [L]look at the target to see a larger number in the debuff:
cleaved (-X AV) |
Limits
Cleave cannot reduce a creature's AV below 0.
| Strength | Maximum AV penalty |
|---|---|
| 1-21 | 1 |
| 22-25 | 2 |
| 26-29 | 3 |
| 30-33 | 4 |
| 34-37 | 5 |
| 38-41 | 6 |
| 42-45 | 7 |
| 46-49 | 8 |
It only matters when a target has been Cleaved up to the limit, then is hit by another axe attack that procs both critical (usually 5%) and Cleave (75%). A rare situation.
Charging Strike applies a -2AV penalty, which can exceed the limit.
Factions That Teach Cleave
Cleave is not taught by any of Qud's persistent factions. However, procedurally generated factions such as village factions can teach randomly chosen skills as part of their water ritual.
