Sage Advice Compendium Update 1/30/2019

[Asgorath]

So spells with an 'instantaneous' duration but with multiple beams/attacks, it cannot be that you could resolve the first beam, have your character wait to see if this kills the target, and then use the information to either attack the same creature with the second beam if it is still alive, or switch targets to attack a different creature with the second beam if the first is dead.

This is because the observation of the results of the first beam must occur after the beam's instantaneous existence, and by that point in time the whole spell and ALL its beams has come and gone.

From these forums it appears that many 5e players play it as if the spell had a duration of '1 round' during which you have several beams to use. This astonishes me.

This is addressed in the Sage Advice Compendium:

When casting a spell that affects multiple targets, such as scorching ray or eldritch blast, do I fire one ray or beam, determine the result, and fire again? Or do I have to choose all the targets before making any attack rolls?

Even though the duration of each of these spells is instantaneous, you choose the targets and resolve the attacks consecutively, not all at once. If you want, you can declare all your targets before making any attacks, but you would still roll separately for each attack (and damage, if appropriate).

Spells like Magic Missile that explicitly say they strike their target simultaneously mean you're supposed to do a single damage roll and thus apply of effects like the Wizard's Empowered Evocation and so on.

 

[Asgorath]

One small observation. He wasn't talking about the shield master feat....

Sorry, I assumed that's why he was talking about when the Attack action ended, as that's clearly important for the Shield Master shove (and not much else AFAIK).

 

[Arial Black]

Let's apply the Occam's razor test to each of these actions. What's the simplest explanation of each of these rules? In my opinion: In all cases, you take the action, and something instantly happens or changes. For everything but the Attack action, some effect applies for the duration (end of your turn, start of your next turn, whatever it might be). The simplest explanation at that point is that you've now taken that action. This avoids any possibility of nested actions or all the other leaps people have been taking in this thread lately, with unwritten rules about action indivisibility and so on. If all these actions are instantaneous, then you simply never have to worry about whether an action is divisible or not.

The fallacy of special pleading. All of these actions, including the Attack action, are in the same form: 'take the (whatever) action -> you can do the things that the action allows for the specified time'. And yet you assert, without evidence, that it works differently for the Attack action.

Let's take Dodge: in game rules, you 'take the Dodge action'. Then, when attacked, the attacker rolls with disadvantage. The actual 'dodging' happens either only when you are being attacked or you are dodging for then entire duration. You don't take all your dodges now, then stop dodging, then subsequent attacks have disadvantage anyway! So you are actually dodging at various points within the time span between taking the action and the start of your next turn, or you are actively dodging for that entire duration without stopping.

Similarly, with the Attack action, you might 'take the Attack' action now, but actually attack later in the round. We know for a fact that this is permissible for your second and subsequent attacks, even though it is unclear if it also applies to your first attack.

There is no difference in RAW re: 'instantaneous action->game effect for a duration' and 'the action's effect has a duration', between how the rules apply to the Attack action and the Dodge, Disengage and Hide actions. So, either they ALL work as 'instantaneous->effect' OR as 'action has a duration'. Saying that the Attack action is treated differently, without rules back-up, is special pleading and leads to an unsafe conclusion.

So, at this point, you basically have 2 options:

1) Ignore what JEC has said and do something that wasn't intended.
2) Listen to what JEC has said and play the feat as intended.

This is the 'argument from ignorance' fallacy. Here you are asserting, without support, that there are ONLY two options, just because you don't know of other options. There is at least one more option, and there may be more:-

3) Play the Rules As Written. What JEC says or means is irrelevant to RAW.

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=6799649]Arial Black[/MENTION] - I agree, that the rules delineate what you can do.

However, nothing in the rules says that you can divide up an Attack Action with anything other than movement, and then only if you have multiple attacks. If you have a single attack, obviously you cannot divide up the Attack Action at all.

The only exception seems to be when you gain multiple attacks and you want to move.

If you were correct and you could drop a bonus action into the middle of an Attack Action, why wouldn't they have called this out, the way they called out movement? I mean, the movement rules are pretty clear - it's called out in a completely separate paragraph that if you have multiple attacks, you can move between attacks.

If the intent was to allow bonus actions the same latitude, wouldn't it be called out the same way?

Since it isn't called out and in fact the only thing about timing that is called out is that you can do it during your turn or at the time specified by the bonus action, why would you presume that you could bonus action during an attack action?

 

[Arial Black]

This is addressed in the Sage Advice Compendium:



Spells like Magic Missile that explicitly say they strike their target simultaneously mean you're supposed to do a single damage roll and thus apply of effects like the Wizard's Empowered Evocation and so on.

All this shows is that JC doesn't understand the consequences of 'instantaneous' either!

 

[Hussar]

Similarly, with the Attack action, you might 'take the Attack' action now, but actually attack later in the round. We know for a fact that this is permissible for your second and subsequent attacks, even though it is unclear if it also applies to your first attack.

Just a point of clarity, you take your attacks later in your turn, not later in the round.

 

[epithet]

I understand what you are saying to. I disagree with you. However, unlike you I'm trying to tell you WHY I disagree with you. So since you really understand why I disagree with you then surely you can do more than simply reassert your position. Surely you can tell me why my position that you understand doesn't sway you.

In every role playing game, whether on the tabletop or a video game, there is a conflict between the rule system and the fiction it is modeling. To create a rule system that was a realistic simulation wouldn't just be difficult, it would be a waste of time--no one wants that kind of granularity--but a complete abstraction is very unsatisfying. The happy medium is somewhere in the realm of having the player free to state what his character will do in a scenario, and for the most part how the character will do it, and then use the rule system to abstract that into something that can be resolved with a die roll.

Obviously, your game rules must have a lot of constraints built into them. Constraints are necessary for a number of reasons, including making sure everyone gets a turn and that the game flows along, and also so that your character has limitations that can be overcome as it gains power. In broad terms, then, when your character can't do something the limit should be either in service to the gameplay or to the fiction. Arbitrary limitations and restrictions on what your character can do in the game are a disservice to both causes, mucking up the gameplay while you figure it out and bringing your awareness back to the books and character sheets instead of the monsters and magic your character is dealing with. There's not much you can do about it when your RPG is a video game, you just deal with the arbitrary limitations and watch your cooldown timer. It is what it is. When you're playing on a tabletop (physical or virtual) with a live Dungeon Master, though, everything changes. The player is liberated to come up with the zaniest free-form swing-from-the-chandelier Jackie Chan sequence he can imagine, and the Dungeon Master will parse it into one or more rolls of the dice and tell him how it turned out.

So, when you maintain that an action in combat must be resolved in accordance with strict timing requirements which are implied rather than expressly enumerated, and that a character's turn should be resolved according to rigid procedure such that an action must be completed in its entirety before you can consider a bonus action it enables, I disagree. There is no difference between the shove you get as a bonus action and a shove you can make as part of the Attack Action, and making a timing distinction serves neither the gameplay nor the fantasy. Only if you adhere to an inflexible, procedural, meta-gamist approach to a character's turn in combat will you gain any benefit from using Jeremy's new restrictive approach to timing, and I do not.

To put it another way, the Dungeon Master can interpret the Shield Master feat in a couple of different ways. The first, which I'll call the Hriston approach, emphasises role-play by giving the DM the flexibility to adjudicate the entire sequence of a character's turn as a whole. The second, which I'll call the Crawford approach, emphasizes most emphatically roll-playing by demanding an iterative procedural resolution of the turn without regard for fantasy verisimilitude. Your position doesn't sway me because you favor the roll-play of the Crawford approach, while I strongly prefer the role-play of the Hriston approach. I will, almost every time, choose role-play over roll-play.

 

[Hussar]

All this shows is that JC doesn't understand the consequences of 'instantaneous' either!

I look at it slightly differently. While the resolution is handled sequentially, the effect isn't. From a design perspective, you have a choice- either tell the player to declare everything first and then resolve, or allow the player to resolve the action sequentially.

5e has gone with the player empowerment route of allowing the player to resolve sequentially. It makes for less "wasted" action as in, "I magic missile target A twice and B once. Oh, the first one killed Target A? Guess that second missile was pointless."

 

[Hussar]

Note, [MENTION=6796566]epithet[/MENTION], the question isn't really how we would resolve it at our tables, but, a discussion over what the rules say. I'd likely resolve things the way you do and wouldn't really care.

But, when discussing what the rules actually say, we have to be more precise than, "Well, this makes my game better, so that's what I'm doing".

 

[Arial Black]

[MENTION=6799649]Arial Black[/MENTION] - I agree, that the rules delineate what you can do.

However, nothing in the rules says that you can divide up an Attack Action with anything other than movement, and then only if you have multiple attacks. If you have a single attack, obviously you cannot divide up the Attack Action at all.

Er, the rule regarding the timing of bonus actions is exactly where you'd expect it to be: in the rules describing bonus actions. Here, it says in black and white that you can take your bonus action whenever you want during your turn. There should be no expectation that this rule would be repeated in the rules for every other action in the game which has a non-instantaneous duration.

If you were correct and you could drop a bonus action into the middle of an Attack Action, why wouldn't they have called this out, the way they called out movement? I mean, the movement rules are pretty clear - it's called out in a completely separate paragraph that if you have multiple attacks, you can move between attacks.

They did call it out! It's part of the rules for bonus actions!

If the intent was to allow bonus actions the same latitude, wouldn't it be called out the same way?

Yes! It IS called out! Exactly where it SHOULD be called out, in the section describing the rules for bonus actions!

Since it isn't called out and in fact the only thing about timing that is called out is that you can do it during your turn or at the time specified by the bonus action, why would you presume that you could bonus action during an attack action?

Since it IS called out, your objection falls away.