I was right about Shield Master

[5ekyu]

Your point is excellent. There is no utility that I can see to tying the shove to the Attack action in any way. Shield Master shove (knockdown) + booming blade should be possible, and Shield Master shove (knock back) + ranged spell attack without penalty should also be possible. The more I think about it, the more linking the shove to the Attack action seems to be just a needless complication.

Absolutely **if** you allow it to be done before the attack action.

But my bet is if the original feat had had the flavor text below it would have bedn see as perfectly fine.

"You use your melee weapon attacks to setup your opponent, positioning them for a shield bash. When you take the attack action you may follow it with a bonus action shove using your shield."

 

[FrogReaver]

Your point is excellent. There is no utility that I can see to tying the shove to the Attack action in any way. Shield Master shove (knockdown) + booming blade should be possible, and Shield Master shove (knock back) + ranged spell attack without penalty should also be possible. The more I think about it, the more linking the shove to the Attack action seems to be just a needless complication.

In general bonus action need tied to specific actions “triggers” or the games has more imbalance.

Dodge is the worst culprit imo. But maybe the solution would have been to specify no offense abilities when taking the dodge action.

 

[Mistwell]

The problem with repeating these old tweets is that the tweet we are discussing here is from May of 2018 (including the year for people reading this next year) where Jeremy says he ruled against the RAW in those other tweets

Nope. He never says he ruled against RAW. He never once mentions that phrase Rules As Written. The fact he, and Mike Mearls for that matter, both had conflicting and contradictory interpretations tells us, without any debate needed further, that the Rules As Written were not clear. That they needed intepretation, and that it wasn't that easy to intepret it because the guys who wrote it were not even sure and it took them YEARS to even come up with an answer they seem happy with.

So can we please dispense with the phrase Rules As Written for this issue at least? It helps nothing. We all know what was written, and we all know it was vague enough to be clearly open to differing intpretations even by the very people who wrote them. WHATEVER resolution you use in your game, it's not because of the "Rules As Writtten" it's because you chose an intepretation of those rules which were not, themselves, particularly clear.

And if you still disagree, please do try to explain to me why you think that continuing to claim this is just an issue of Rules As Written is helping in any way in this debate? Is anyone who disagrees with you the least bit persuaded by that rhetoric? Is anyone even vaguely on the fence suddenly seeing your reasoning better because you keep using the phrase Rules As Written? I think the clear answer is no. It's not helping anyone come to any conclusions about anything concerning this topic. This just isn't one of those debates that can be won by claiming Rules As Written. We're having this debate BECAUSE we have vague Rules As Written, and the very people who wrote these rules admit they need intepreting.

And another thing in general on this, I do not understand why this does not make sense to people, since you cannot do two different actions simultaneously.

There are other bonus actions which can come between two or more attacks in your attack sequence. Jeremy Crawford even mentions this in his first reply on this topic. It's one issue that made this so complicated. So, you are incorrect...and incorrect in a way which says you're not really appreciating the arguments people are making here, including Crawford himself, about the complexities of this issue.

Once you start one action, you need to complete it before you can start another action. Whatever the trigger is for a bonus action, you need to compete that before you get to do the bonus. The only time this would not be true is if there is a specific exception that overrides the general rule, and Shield Master does not do that.

Nope. That's the OPPOSITE of the rules. The general rule is you can choose when to place your bonus action, even between attacks. Exceptions to this rule must be called out in a specific rule. Here is the general rule from the book, "You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action's timing is specified". Get it now? Once you start an action, the general rule says you can in fact add a bonus action in there where ever you choose, UNLESS some specific rule forbids that. So for instance if you have three attacks, and you want to use a bonus action as well, the general rule says you place the bonus action wherever you want in that sequence unless something specific forbids it. You could use the bonus action after the first attack but prior to the second and third attacks, or after the second attack but prior to the third attack, etc..

 

[epithet]

In general bonus action need tied to specific actions “triggers” or the games has more imbalance.

Dodge is the worst culprit imo. But maybe the solution would have been to specify no offense abilities when taking the dodge action.

I don't see shove + dodge as being overpowered. Dash + shove makes a nice combo that makes perfect sense, and shove + withdraw does as well. I've seen enough dodge + spirit weapon to know that while it is effective, it isn't overpowered. I think this combo would be on par with that.

 

[billd91]

Absolutely **if** you allow it to be done before the attack action.

But my bet is if the original feat had had the flavor text below it would have bedn see as perfectly fine.

"You use your melee weapon attacks to setup your opponent, positioning them for a shield bash. When you take the attack action you may follow it with a bonus action shove using your shield."

The problem with that is - why would a shield bash be so good a move that you'd want to use an attack action to position the opponent for it? The opposite, of course, is manifest.

I think it's tied to the attack action to make it a parallel to two-weapon fighting which is also a bonus action attack linked to an attack action.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't see shove + dodge as being overpowered. Dash + shove makes a nice combo that makes perfect sense, and shove + withdraw does as well. I've seen enough dodge + spirit weapon to know that while it is effective, it isn't overpowered. I think this combo would be on par with that.

I didn’t say OP. Said imbalanced. Anyways, I think the game would have been designed a bit differently if bonus actions didn’t have actions tied with them

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

There are other bonus actions which can come between two or more attacks in your attack sequence. Jeremy Crawford even mentions this in his first reply on this topic. It's one issue that made this so complicated. So, you are incorrect...and incorrect in a way which says you're not really appreciating the arguments people are making here, including Crawford himself, about the complexities of this issue.

This here is a part of the problem in how you, and others, are trying to answer this. The original Sage Advice, and his recent correction, deal with Shield Master being used by a character who only has one attack per round, not characters with multiple attacks or Extra Attack, etc. People asked him about these as separate questions and the replies to those further muddied the situation when everything was lumped together.

A character with Shield Master and only one attack action per round, by my reading of the RAW and Crawford's answer, is that the attack action has to be taken, meaning completed, before the shield bash can happen. If they want to clarify from "when you take the attack action" to "when you declare the attack action" is enough to shield bash first and then complete the attack, that is fine with me. If sometime in the future I decide to houserule that it works this way, I can. But if I am in a situation where running as close to RAW and RAI is important, like if I ever get back into AL play, then I will be using the current official rulings until, or if, they change them again.

 

[5ekyu]

The problem with that is - why would a shield bash be so good a move that you'd want to use an attack action to position the opponent for it? The opposite, of course, is manifest.

I think it's tied to the attack action to make it a parallel to two-weapon fighting which is also a bonus action attack linked to an attack action.

The rule did not state you lost your attacks, but obviously it could be worded better.

Why would you find it useful to bonus action bash someone to thoe ground after attacking them?

Setting up others in your combat, perhaps those with the -5 +10 feats - making shield mastery a more support fest than a give me more hits fest- which seems more in keeping.
Allowing you to move away, now that any AO of theirs will be st a disad.
Costing them movement so they may not be able to get to you if you move away or as far of they have another target.

Are these as good as getting all that plus advantage on your main attacks - of course not. But then we are into assessing the balance of that feat element and my bet is the opinions are divided on that subject.

 

[FrogReaver]

This here is a part of the problem in how you, and others, are trying to answer this. The original Sage Advice, and his recent correction, deal with Shield Master being used by a character who only has one attack per round, not characters with multiple attacks or Extra Attack, etc. People asked him about these as separate questions and the replies to those further muddied the situation when everything was lumped together.

A character with Shield Master and only one attack action per round, by my reading of the RAW and Crawford's answer, is that the attack action has to be taken, meaning completed, before the shield bash can happen. If they want to clarify from "when you take the attack action" to "when you declare the attack action" is enough to shield bash first and then complete the attack, that is fine with me. If sometime in the future I decide to houserule that it works this way, I can. But if I am in a situation where running as close to RAW and RAI is important, like if I ever get back into AL play, then I will be using the current official rulings until, or if, they change them again.

He answers the question clearly about using it with extra attack. Did you read his comments in the link I posted?

 

[Mistwell]

This here is a part of the problem in how you, and others, are trying to answer this. The original Sage Advice, and his recent correction, deal with Shield Master being used by a character who only has one attack per round, not characters with multiple attacks or Extra Attack, etc.

Say what now? Nope. Read again:

But if I am in a situation where running as close to RAW and RAI is important, like if I ever get back into AL play, then I will be using the current official rulings until, or if, they change them again.

STOP saying RAW and RAI. We don't know what RAW meant (that's how we got literally five different answers on this one topic - we know for sure RAW is unclear) and we also don't know what RAI was (that's how we got contradictory answers from the very people who wrote this rule). I mean if you reaaallllly want RAI, then explain to me this: why wouldn't the answer given by the author closer in time to when he created the rule be more likely to reflect his authorial intent than an answer he gave three years after that point? Lacking additional information (and we have none) wouldn't his memory of his intent be fresher three years ago than it would be now?

You want to use his latest answer for AL? Cool, I have no issue with that. My issue is those calling any of this Rules as Written or Rules As Intended or who are acting like there is no judgement call involved here. There is a judgement call here. However people make that judgement call should be OK. It's a pretty odd situation where an author changes his mind in an opposite way about what a rule he wrote is supposed to do. Cut people some slack for agreeing with an earlier judgement of that same authort about this rule. After all...they're thinking about this matter exactly how the author of this rule was thinking about this matter at one point.