Official D&D Sage Advice Compendium Updated

Maxperson · Mar 11, 2019

[MENTION=6789021]Yardiff[/MENTION] You can't refute what I say, so you abuse the laugh button instead? Classy.

Yardiff · Mar 11, 2019

The way I have always read the Shield Master feat from the PHB has been that the feat gives you an attack that must be a shove during your attack action and doing this uses your bonus action.

I believe my interpretation of the PHB makes more since, helps players more, then what the so called 'officials' say.

Yardiff · Mar 11, 2019

Maxperson said:
@Yardiff You can't refute what I say, so you abuse the laugh button instead? Classy.

I laugh because you ignored the first line of my post to continue to talk about RAW, which my post wasn't talking about.

Asgorath · Mar 11, 2019

Yardiff said:
The way I have always read the Shield Master feat from the PHB has been that the feat gives you an attack that must be a shove during your attack action and doing this uses your bonus action.

I believe my interpretation of the PHB makes more since, helps players more, then what the so called 'officials' say.

That might be how you play it at your table, but... that's absolutely not what the words in the PHB say. If it was worded like Extra Attack or Dread Ambusher, then sure, this would be a valid RAW interpretation. Fundamentally, bonus actions are separate and distinct from actions themselves, and you can't just change one to the other as you like (JEC talks about this in the recent Sage Advice video for example).

I think we're all in violent agreement that people will play this feat in many different ways, in fact I think all the folks arguing that the most recent Sage Advice ruling is actually the one that makes the most sense based on the words in the PHB don't actually use that particular strict RAW version. We're discussing the RAW of things like the Attack action and the Shield Master bonus action. At my table, I'd be okay with either attack-attack-shove or attack-shove-attack, even though the latter is not strictly correct. I absolutely do not think shove-attack-attack is a correct interpretation of the RAW, based on all the evidence we've been presenting in the last couple of hundred posts (and yes I thought this even when JEC tweeted about it back in 2015).

You should probably just stop calling this your "interpretation" and call it what it is: your house ruling on this. There's nothing wrong with you playing it this way, but it's also not at all what the PHB says.

Maxperson · Mar 11, 2019

Yardiff said:
I laugh because you ignored the first line of my post to continue to talk about RAW, which my post wasn't talking about.

So two things. First, if a post isn't intended to be humor, laughing at it is an abuse of the laugh button on this site. Second, when you said you were changing how bonus actions are viewed, I thought you were talking about trying to change people perceptions. Your last line "think about it" seemed to go in that direction. My bad for not understanding exactly what you were saying. Had you just posted a response like this one instead of abusing the laugh button, though, I could have let you know this a few posts ago.

So, since you are changing bonus actions to be a part of the action process for your game, does that mean that there are no ways to get bonus actions for use outside of an action in your game?

Yardiff · Mar 11, 2019

Maxperson said:
So two things. First, if a post isn't intended to be humor, laughing at it is an abuse of the laugh button on this site. Second, when you said you were changing how bonus actions are viewed, I thought you were talking about trying to change people perceptions. Your last line "think about it" seemed to go in that direction. My bad for not understanding exactly what you were saying. Had you just posted a response like this one instead of abusing the laugh button, though, I could have let you know this a few posts ago.

So, since you are changing bonus actions to be a part of the action process for your game, does that mean that there are no ways to get bonus actions for use outside of an action in your game?

They CAN be discreet actions on their own but don't HAVE to be.

Maxperson · Mar 11, 2019

Yardiff said:
The way I have always read the Shield Master feat from the PHB has been that the feat gives you an attack that must be a shove during your attack action and doing this uses your bonus action.

I believe my interpretation of the PHB makes more since, helps players more, then what the so called 'officials' say.

So bonus actions by RAW are allowed at any time on your turn, excepting simultaneous action with something else, and when timing is specified. The PHB makes it clear that you get to make a push as a bonus action once you use the Attack action. It doesn't specify during the Attack action, so the timing doesn't require the Attack action.

As far as it making more sense, I agree with you. It does make more sense to happen during the Attack action, and even more sense to have to be used against the target you attacked, but that's not what RAW says.

Asgorath · Mar 11, 2019

Yardiff said:
They CAN be discreet actions on their own but don't HAVE to be.

Please cite the text in the PHB that supports this idea. You can do what you like at your table, but this stuff isn’t really adding anything to the discussions about RAW.

Maxperson · Mar 11, 2019

Asgorath said:
Please cite the text in the PHB that supports this idea. You can do what you like at your table, but this stuff isn’t really adding anything to the discussions about RAW.

To be fair, I did ask him how it would work in his game.

Asgorath · Mar 11, 2019

Maxperson said:
To be fair, I did ask him how it would work in his game.

Sorry, I thought that was a reply to my post. I’ve asked them for the words supporting their “interpretation” so many times now, and haven’t ever gotten a straight answer.