I was right about Shield Master

FrogReaver said:

There you go again thinking take means more than it does. I said that they haven’t taken it. I never said they hadnt started it

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This seems to me to be another case of reading external notions into the rules. I don't think it helps.

The rules don't distinguish starting an action from taking one. I don't think they use the notion of starting an action at all, do they? In 5e - which doesn't use a distinct declaration phase in the way classic D&D tends to and the way that many RPGs and wargames do - to declare an action for one's PC in combat is to take that action. The taking of the action may, in the fiction, be quite complex (eg nocking and loosing several arrows) or quite simple (throwing a single punch). In the mechanics, the taking of the action may require several rolls (eg an Attack action with Extra attacks) or no roll at all (most cases of casting a spell).

The wording of Shield Master is entirely consistent with this absence from the rules of notions of "starting" or "finishing" an action, and with the treatment of taking an action as the core notion. It does produce this interpretive uncertainy - if you must take the attack action before you can do such-and-such, when is it the case that you've taken the attack action? But introducing notions like "starting" and "finishing" - which have no anchor in the actual rules - won't help. It will just be a projection of a prior view of the proper answer to the question.

FrogReaver said:

To take something you can’t just have started taking it. You must complete the taking of it.

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Citation needed.

Because that's against every rule of grammar relevant to the subject.

Get it through your skull: Take. Is. Present. Tense.

If you've finished something you're not taking it because you've already taken it.

EDIT: You know what, you're right. To take an action you can't just have started taking it.
Because to start an action is to take it.
What it isn;t, is finishing an action.

Immediately afterward you would be said to have took it.

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Woop-dee-doo. Completely irrelevant. Shield Master doesn't care.
Does it say "If you took the Attack action"? No.
Does it say "If you have taken the Attack action?" No.
Then you don't need to finish the action to use Shield Master.

Yunru said:

Given that they have an actual team, and that exactly one person is saying something that doesn't match what is actually written...
I'd say we're not.
Also Rules As Written only applies to the Rules... as Written. Not "as clarified by some guy* on social media."

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*whose job it is clarify the Rules as Written as assigned by the people who wrote the Rules

FrogReaver said:

To take something you can’t just have started taking it. You must complete the taking of it. Immediately afterward you would be said to have took it.

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This is a stipulation which has no grounding in natural language (which 5e is supposedly written in) and no support in the rules text. It's the insertion into interpretation of an external idea.

The natural language example: From X takes a swing at Y you can infer that X has commenced moving his/her fist at some speed towards Y. That's it. There is certainly no implication that X's fist has reached the end of its arc of movement!

Gradine said:

*whose job it is clarify the Rules as Written as assigned by the people who wrote the Rules

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Then why doesn't he just publish straight into Errata if he's as infallible as you claim?

FrogReaver said:

No, you are in the process of taking the attack action if you haven’t completed it. If you are in the process of taking something the. You haven’t taken it yet

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Yunru said:

???

Well now you just make no sense.

Take, verb: use or have ready to use.

If you're "starting" something, you're taking it.
If you "start" something, you take it.

As for your last sentence: See every time I've asked you what it matters. Shield Master DOESN'T CARE if you've taken something, only that you take it.

Take is a PRESENT TENSE verb. You don't suddenly retroactively take something. If you are doing something, you are taking that action, whether you finish or not.

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Yep. Take is a present tense. “Mom: when you take your medicine you can have ice cream”.

Kid tries to argue like yunru that since he started lifting his medicine that he has taken it. Mom isn’t convinced and gives no ice cream till he completes taking his medicine

FrogReaver said:

Kid tries to argue like yunru that since he started lifting his medicine that he has taken it. Mom isn’t convinced and gives no ice cream till he completes taking his medicine

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Oh you didn't just!

You, Mr., are out of line. I never once argued that you have "taken" something, mid-doing it.


But let's buy into your example. If mum says "When you take your medicine, count to three in your head" when do you start counting?
Hint: It isn't after you've finished taking your meds.

pemerton said:

...how do those who think you can do the bonus action first, having the intention to attack, handle the case where some reactive ability than paralyses my PC so I can't follow through on my intention, hence don't attack, hence haven't met the triggering condition for a bonus action I already took?

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The shield bash requires the attack action, regardless of other considerations. If you don't have the Shield Master feat, the shove takes the place of an attack, so any way you parse it a character who makes a shove has taken the attack action.

If you have multiple attacks and your first attack on your turn triggers reactive paralysis, you lose your subsequent attacks unless you have an ally capable of some kind of reactive cure before the end of your turn. That same principle applies to the Shield Master bonus action.

In practice, I rule the Shield Master bonus action as if it had been written "when you take the attack action on your turn, you can use your bonus action to gain an extra attack as long as one of the attacks you make on your turn is an attempt to shove a creature within 5 feet of your with your shield." This is, in my opinion, what the the Shield Master bonus action was intended to accomplish (see, eg, Crawford circa 2015) and it is certainly what my players have in mind when they take the feat. The whole "finishing move" argument strikes me as a bull's hit. If it was a finishing move it would be an attack that did damage, to "finish" the enemy, because that's what a finishing move is. Something like the enemy must make a saving throw or be knocked prone, and you can make a single melee weapon attack against the prone target. If the attack hits, it is automatically a critical strike. That's a finishing move.

FrogReaver said:

No, you are in the process of taking the attack action if you haven’t completed it. If you are in the process of taking something the. You haven’t taken it yet

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pemerton said:

This is a stipulation which has no grounding in natural language (which 5e is supposedly written in) and no support in the rules text. It's the insertion into interpretation of an external idea.

The natural language example: From X takes a swing at Y you can infer that X has commenced moving his/her fist at some speed towards Y. That's it. There is certainly no implication that X's fist has reached the end of its arc of movement!

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But you can conclude that
1) the act of taking a swing began
2) and thus that it will end.

And more importantly the structure of when X, then Y is where the completion context comes from

When you go to college you can have a car.

The act of going to college must be completed before the car is given.

When you take the attack action you can do X.

The attack action must be completed before X is given.

pemerton said:

This isn't true for poetry, and it isn't true for legislation - both of which have received far more attention as objects of interpretation than RPG rules - so I don't see any reason to think that it would be true of the 5e rules.

The "rules as written" say that the bonus action is enlivened when you take the attack action. What counts as taking the attack action? Contra [MENTION=6780961]Yunru[/MENTION], I think that you must make an attack to take that action. Contra [MENTION=1207]Ristamar[/MENTION], I see no good reason to think that taking that action requires having taken all your attacks (eg if I am playing an 8th level fighter and delcare an attack-move-attack, when do I take the attack action? To me the answer seems to be at the start of that sequence). Jeremy Crawford no doubt has his own opinion, but I don't see where he wrote it down in the rules!

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Poetry is, by its very nature, open to interpretation. Legislation is a whole other can of worms; needless to say that the ability to apply creative judicial interpretation of law (in the United States, anyway) that runs contrary to the intent of the legislation when the legislators are there to explain their intent because that intent runs contrary to the judge's own political leanings is pretty damn huge problem but as long as both sides of the aisle love it when their side of the courts do it I'm not sure it's one that'll be resolved any time soon.

By the by, I'd personally House Rule it so that a Bonus Action triggered by an Attack Action can be used after the first attack in a sequence, if the Attack Action contains multiple attacks. That's what makes the most sense to me, from both a narrative perspective and from an ease of running play/actually playing perspective. But then I do all kinds of stuff that is technically against the rules but I can't be bothered to enforce them when it gets in the way of the fun. I also didn't write the rules in question, nor am I paid to provide clarification to said rules.

All that said, stating that declaring an Attack Action but taking no actual attacks is the same as taking an Attack Action is the same kind of nonsense legalistic applesauce the Supreme Court used when it decided [obvious political statement redacted for the well-being of all involved].