Sage Advice Compendium Update 1/30/2019

[Arial Black]

Actions have not been divisible in 1e, 2e, 3e or 5e except when an exception is made through an item, spell or ability.

This is not true.

In 3e, as soon as swift/immediate actions were introduced, they could be taken at any time on your turn (for swift) and any time at all for immediate.

Free actions were in 3e at its beginning, and you can take them any time on your turn.

A swift action is identical to a free action, except you can only take one swift action per turn.

Swift and free actions certainly can be taken between attacks of a full attack in 3e. It says so in the rules.

It says in the 5e rules that you can take your bonus action, if you have one, at ANY time on your turn. Meanwhile, nowhere does it say that 'actions are indivisible'. You're asserting a 'rule' that does not exist to disregard a rule which does exist!

 

[Maxperson]

View attachment 104703

I hate bad memes. Everyone knows that storm troopers couldn't hit a dead horse.

 

[Maxperson]

This is not true.

In 3e, as soon as swift/immediate actions were introduced, they could be taken at any time on your turn (for swift) and any time at all for immediate.

Free actions were in 3e at its beginning, and you can take them any time on your turn.

A swift action is identical to a free action, except you can only take one swift action per turn.

Swift and free actions certainly can be taken between attacks of a full attack in 3e. It says so in the rules.

It says in the 5e rules that you can take your bonus action, if you have one, at ANY time on your turn. Meanwhile, nowhere does it say that 'actions are indivisible'. You're asserting a 'rule' that does not exist to disregard a rule which does exist!

Yes it is true. Swift and immediate actions create a SPECIAL EXCEPTION to the general rule, which matches what I stated.

 

[Hriston]

So many things about this ruling on Shield Master bother me. Allow me to enumerate them.

1. It goes against the RAI for bonus actions. You were supposed to be able to “choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action’s timing is specified,” and Shield Master doesn’t specify a timing for the bonus action shove. All it does is require that you take the Attack action on the same turn. Jeremy Crawford’s earlier tweets on Shield Master confirm that this was the intention for the feat, and it’s only since he began emphasizing the RAW in his rulings that he changed his mind about bonus actions. Rather than issue rulings that go against the RAI, he should issue errata for the way bonus actions are written, although I don’t think either is necessary. For an example of a bonus action that does specify timing, look at Flurry of Blows. It says you can use your bonus action “Immediately after you take the Attack action on your turn”. If the intent was for Shield Master and TWF to specify timing, they could have been written like Flurry of Blows, but they weren’t, and Jeremy Crawford isn’t claiming they were. Notice, he acknowledges the feat’s lack of timing specificity in his recent ruling when he says, “During your turn, you do get to decide when to take the bonus action after you’ve taken the Attack action.” But the feat doesn’t say, “after”. It doesn’t specify the shove’s timing, so you should be able to do it at any point during your turn you want.

2. It confuses causality at the table with causality in the fiction. A fictional character has no awareness that s/he is taking the “Attack action” or a “bonus action”. Those aren’t things in the fiction. They’re things at the table with which only the player is concerned. The fictional character, on the other hand, is concerned with attacking and shoving one or more creatures, perhaps landing blows with a weapon and shoving a creature with a shield. In the fiction, the character doesn’t derive the ability to shove a creature with a shield above his/her normal ability to attack from having satisfied the precondition of a “feat”, but rather because s/he is a Shield Master! What’s special about this character (among other things) is that when fighting, s/he’s good at getting extra shoves in. At the table, the player can activate these extra shoves by taking the Attack action and using them in combination with the character’s other fictional actions, but there’s no compelling reason that the chronological order of events in the fiction needs to follow the order in which rules preconditions are satisfied at the table. Which brings me to...

3. The idea that the character needs to be “locked in” to the Attack action before making the bonus action shove doesn’t require the in-fiction chronology to follow the logical order of the feat. The fact that shoving a creature without the feat requires the use of the Attack action takes care of that. You can shove, then if you take the Attack action, the shove is your bonus action. If you don’t, then the shove is your Attack action. You’re taking the Attack action either way, so why force the fictional character to be concerned with satisfying the non-fictional precondition of the feat. It’s just unnecessary.

 

[Azzy]

I hate bad memes. Everyone knows that storm troopers couldn't hit a dead horse.

Hey, maybe stormtroopers are marginally better in melee than they are at ranged combat.

 

[Maxperson]

1. It goes against the RAI for bonus actions. You were supposed to be able to “choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action’s timing is specified,” and Shield Master doesn’t specify a timing for the bonus action shove. All it does is require that you take the Attack action on the same turn. Jeremy Crawford’s earlier tweets on Shield Master confirm that this was the intention for the feat, and it’s only since he began emphasizing the RAW in his rulings that he changed his mind about bonus actions. Rather than issue rulings that go against the RAI, he should issue errata for the way bonus actions are written, although I don’t think either is necessary. For an example of a bonus action that does specify timing, look at Flurry of Blows. It says you can use your bonus action “Immediately after you take the Attack action on your turn”. If the intent was for Shield Master and TWF to specify timing, they could have been written like Flurry of Blows, but they weren’t, and Jeremy Crawford isn’t claiming they were. Notice, he acknowledges the feat’s lack of timing specificity in his recent ruling when he says, “During your turn, you do get to decide when to take the bonus action after you’ve taken the Attack action.” But the feat doesn’t say, “after”. It doesn’t specify the shove’s timing, so you should be able to do it at any point during your turn you want.

It doesn't just require that you take the attack action on the same turn as you use it. It says IF you take the attack action, THEN you can shove. It specifies the order of events. Attack action first, then shove. Specific beats general, so RAW/RAI for bonus actions doesn't apply to this feat.

2. It confuses causality at the table with causality in the fiction. A fictional character has no awareness that s/he is taking the “Attack action” or a “bonus action”. Those aren’t things in the fiction. They’re things at the table with which only the player is concerned. The fictional character, on the other hand, is concerned with attacking and shoving one or more creatures, perhaps landing blows with a weapon and shoving a creature with a shield. In the fiction, the character doesn’t derive the ability to shove a creature with a shield above his/her normal ability to attack from having satisfied the precondition of a “feat”, but rather because s/he is a Shield Master! What’s special about this character (among other things) is that when fighting, s/he’s good at getting extra shoves in. At the table, the player can activate these extra shoves by taking the Attack action and using them in combination with the character’s other fictional actions, but there’s no compelling reason that the chronological order of events in the fiction needs to follow the order in which rules preconditions are satisfied at the table. Which brings me to...

I partially agree and partially disagree with this. The fictional character understands that he has to put his opponent off balance with his attack before the opponent is vulnerable to be shoved back or knocked down, so I disagree with that portion of what you say. That said, where it does go against the causality in the fiction is in requiring a multi-attack to complete before being able to use it. Before the PC gets extra attack he can unbalance the opponent to the point where he can use his shield to shove the enemy, but suddenly when he gets better in combat he requires two attacks. That makes no sense, which is why I'm going to make a house rule that it's usable after one attack.

3. The idea that the character needs to be “locked in” to the Attack action before making the bonus action shove doesn’t require the in-fiction chronology to follow the logical order of the feat. The fact that shoving a creature without the feat requires the use of the Attack action takes care of that. You can shove, then if you take the Attack action, the shove is your bonus action. If you don’t, then the shove is your Attack action. You’re taking the Attack action either way, so why force the fictional character to be concerned with satisfying the non-fictional precondition of the feat. It’s just unnecessary.

It's clearly intended that you put the enemy off balance with an attack before you shove as a bonus action using the feat. The ruling itself is for game balance reasons. Common sense and in-fiction reasoning are pushed to the wayside and sacrificed to the altar of game balance. Being able to knock the enemy over before you attack is much, much stronger than having to wait until after all of your attacks.

 

[Maxperson]

Hey, maybe stormtroopers are marginally better in melee than they are at ranged combat.

It's possible, but they have such a hard time moving in that bulky armor that I'm skeptical.

 

[Oofta]

I hate bad memes. Everyone knows that storm troopers couldn't hit a dead horse.

Only if the Storm Troopers were told to not hit the dead horse because there was a tracking device on the Millenium Falcon that will lead back to the rebel base because they're idiots and didn't think to check for something so obvious. Seriously? I know Luke is an idiot, but Han is a smuggler and he didn't think to scan for the most obvious ploy? Thought the empire would just leave his ship sitting there?

Umm ... wait ... what were we talking about?

 

[5ekyu]

Only if the Storm Troopers were told to not hit the dead horse because there was a tracking device on the Millenium Falcon that will lead back to the rebel base because they're idiots and didn't think to check for something so obvious. Seriously? I know Luke is an idiot, but Han is a smuggler and he didn't think to scan for the most obvious ploy? Thought the empire would just leave his ship sitting there?

Umm ... wait ... what were we talking about?

"Only imperial storm troopers are so precise."

 

[Hriston]

It doesn't just require that you take the attack action on the same turn as you use it. It says IF you take the attack action, THEN you can shove. It specifies the order of events. Attack action first, then shove. Specific beats general, so RAW/RAI for bonus actions doesn't apply to this feat.

Well, Crawford’s ruling isn’t that the feat specifies a timing for the bonus action, per se. It’s that it sets up a precondition that needs to be satisfied before the bonus action can be used. Where I disagree with Crawford is that a rules precondition necessarily operates as a precondition in the fiction. The wording of the feat suggests to me that as long as you take the Attack action at some point during your turn that you can also take the bonus action shove on the same turn, so taking the Attack action is a precondition at the table but doesn't need to come before the bonus action in the fiction. The fact that Crawford originally ruled this and other bonus actions as working this way also strongly suggests that this was the intended interpretation when it was written.

I partially agree and partially disagree with this. The fictional character understands that he has to put his opponent off balance with his attack before the opponent is vulnerable to be shoved back or knocked down, so I disagree with that portion of what you say. That said, where it does go against the causality in the fiction is in requiring a multi-attack to complete before being able to use it. Before the PC gets extra attack he can unbalance the opponent to the point where he can use his shield to shove the enemy, but suddenly when he gets better in combat he requires two attacks. That makes no sense, which is why I'm going to make a house rule that it's usable after one attack.

The feat doesn't require you to shove a creature you've already attacked. You can use your Attack action on one or more creatures and use your bonus action shove on an entirely different creature. I don't believe there's any reason to think there's an intended narrative of setting up an opponent to be shoved.

It's clearly intended that you put the enemy off balance with an attack before you shove as a bonus action using the feat.

If that was true, you'd be required to shove a creature you've already attacked, and that isn't the case.

The ruling itself is for game balance reasons. Common sense and in-fiction reasoning are pushed to the wayside and sacrificed to the altar of game balance. Being able to knock the enemy over before you attack is much, much stronger than having to wait until after all of your attacks.

If that's true, then why didn't Jeremy Crawford come out and say so? His stated reason for changing his mind on bonus actions is that it's a more literal interpretation of the RAW. I don't see any reason to question his honesty in this regard.