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Hi all,

I am a fan of might. I love magic too. But in all RPG, I always start with a fighter. NWN1, KOTOR1, KOTOR2, D1, D2X, Fable, etc...
Only when I know the game better do I find myself dwelling into the world of mages and spellcasters.

And so, after years of fooling around with fighter builds, I find that fighters are better in survival. They have better hp, they carry more items. (In NWN1, my lvl20 sorc carried nothing more than her own gear. In HOTU, at least the RDD class gave my sorc something to cheer about). They also hit harder when doing toe to toe.

One of the joys of playing a mage is the ability to cast AREA OF EFFECT spells, damaging/killing many monsters/foes in one turn. An epic spell like Hell Ball is enough to make me smile.
In Fable, the Fire Blast Spell is my fav, killing, knocking back, and damaging.
The only exception was D2X barbarian's level 30 whirlwind attack. Nerfed by Blizzard. But still good.

And so, I find one of the pains of playing a fighter is being seiged, surrounded and outnumbered. Sneak attacks, attacks of opportunity, losing dex bonus to AC, etc, etc...
But in NWN1 chapter 4, I got my greatcleave and realised how wonderful such a skill is!
In HOTU, I compared my WM whirlwind to Greatcleave and still took Greatcleave despite having Whirlwind.

Now, in NWN2, I am short on feats... despite going 12lvls of fighter. Through a trainer, I realised that the level 20 cap means that I must think carefully before wasting 2 feats to get Great CLeave.
It also means that I will likely put off pwrattk, cleave and grt cleave till lvls 16-19 (way too late in the game) because I will easily choose wpn specialisation / impr criticals and the feats required for WM.

Great Cleave is particularly good for me because it is AUTOmatic. It also hits anyone running past my char. But it stops the moment my char do not score a critical or a one hit kill.

Whirlwind on the other hand has a range of only 5 feet round my char. That is not much of a turn-off. The worse thing is I have to use it... it is NOT AUTO. Means I have to decide when to use it. And with the turn based system, by the time I use it, the swarm of monsters have already started hitting me.

But... for a fighter/WM in NWN2, not taking great cleave means 3 free feats - one of which would be pwr critical...

A tough decision for a build that requires little thought....
Help!

Erm, Great Cleave ALSO has range of merely five feet. You basically cannot move in either direction.

Both feats are equal in power, one kills an infinite number of weak baddies so long as you one hit kill them and they keep coming. The other, depending on the weapon, attacks all within a 5 or 10 foot radius. Whirlwind attack is more useful for one reason, it's a guaranteed maneuver. Yeah, you have to actually click to use it, big whoop though. If you keep using it against those that surround you, it's much more successful for quickly ridding yourself of enemies.

Though, considering your fighter would have to have both a dexterity and intelligence score of 13, it's harder to get. Great Cleave might be best if you're going pure fighter route, but if you go for whirlwind and weaponmaster, taking the extra few steps, by 15th level you will be virtually unstoppable.

If I recall right, then Whirlwind also takes a full round to do, meaning you'll attack less in that round (at the benefit of possible hitting more enemies in a circle around you).
For that reason, I prefer greater cleaver above whirlwind myself if I have to choose between the two, and can't take both.

Both great cleave and whirlwind attack require full attack actions to perform. Great cleave, while it has the potential of more enemies dead, it's luck, versus whirlwind which is less enemies but immediate on all.

How can great cleave require a full combat round, when it is free attacks?

Yeah... I think great cleave are free attacks.
and splatters enemies for free given that it's one-hit kills.

Even if great cleave is also 5 ft, it's nice to have something auto. I dunno.. perhaps I am baised...very inclined towards passive feats.

Whirlwind is also great. Like you said, it's sure to hit all around. In NWN1, great cleave looks so weird... the char SPINS around smacking everyone.

Thanks. As recommended, I guess it's either one of the other. So I guess fighter/WM builds take WW for sure.

Then again, I am very interested in the 1Bard/4Fighter/10RDD/5FB build written on gamefaqs char build guide.

This build loses out on criticals since there is no WM. It also misses out on GREATER wpn specialisation. But it has a lot more useful skills, better saves and best of all.... GREAT CLEAVE and SUPREME CLeave.

By level 20, it loses out to the WM builds by 4 base attacks and 2 damage. But it has much more hit die, better skills and greater strength. The bard songs are a good mix, the frenzy is distracting. But the many immunities of being RDD is attractive. I am lured to try this build because of these... and the great cleave...

I played with a weaponmaster before and have a lot of fun. I take 8 levels as fighter then 7 levels as weaponmaster and 5 more as fighter. The build does not have any communication skills but run through the enemies like hot knife through butter. I was using a katana named kaga-to which has daze on hit, and used whirlwind to run away.

Cleave is good if you have good critical, to one-hit-kill and keep going. You have to get whirlwind to become weaponmaster, but if not i say dont bother about whirlwind.

Hmmm... now that I think of it...
I remembered why I prefered Great Cleave over WW in NWN1.

At higher levels, classes with minimum 16BAB have 4 attacks per round.
+16/+11/+6/+1. Fighters and high BAB characters have +20/+15/+10/+5.

If I am not wrong, with haste (boots of speed) that makes it 5 attacks per round.
In NWN1, when it was possible to have STR builds dual wield in epic levels, it was possible to have 7 attacks in one round.

But with WW, I get one attack on each monster that is around me. More often than not, only 5 or six monsters can surround my char.
Naturally, I found using WW takes my NWN1 char longer to clear crowds.

Is this still the same in NWN2?
As of Act 1, in the fehlis estate, I find great cleave giving me only an average of 1 or 2 hits after a kill. I was beginning to regret. I was beginning to think that WW would be better.
Isn't it true that WW nullifies the +20/+15/+10/+5 attacks to hit everyone within 5ft? Isn't that a disadvantage in higher levels?

For my fighter builds I select NEITHER great cleave or whirlwind attack.

I'll start of with why great cleave sucks:

From my experience you almost never actually get to make use of this feat. You usually stop at - cleave. So lets say you finish off an enemy, you of course then cleave right through to the next one. But unless that enemy is already weakened (it almost never is) or you are fighting enemies that are so weak you wont even get XP from them, you won't cleave through them anyway. If you are fighting enemies so weak that you can kill them in one hit, who really cares if you cleave through all of them. You'll kill them next round with a regular cleave and they aren't much of a threat probably anyway. The only reason for taking great cleave is as a prerequisite for devastating critical, but that isn't even in NWN2 so I don't even take it at all. That said, (regular) cleave is one of the best feats in the game for almost any melee class. Why? because you are guaranteed one extra attack.

As for whirlwind I find most of my melee classes focus more on STR and CON and rarely have both the 13 DEX/INT needed for WW. Also there's alot of useless (I find) prerequisite feats needed for WW anyway, and WW is really only useful if you are surrounded by an army, which doesn't happen so often.

IMO the extra fighter feats are better spent on weapon focuses and specializations for several weapons: at least one blunt and one slashing weapon as that covers all enemy damage resistances, and possibly a ranged weapon.

Hmm... thanks!

That is quite true. I usually only get two hits from Great CLeave. But there are times when I get many many hits.

Depends on the weapon.

Yes, for NWN2, without devastating critical, great cleave isn't that great.