I was right about Shield Master

pemerton said:

That's good advice. (My 4e table had worked out that Weapon Focus didn't help a sorcerer using a dagger as a spell-casting focus to do extra damage long before the words of the rules were changed to make this explicit.)

But - hopefully without completely reopening what I gather is a long/contentious debate - 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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I don't think it's ever come up at our table, but I simply view it as it puts a restriction on your action declaration. The PC doesn't have to attack, they simply can't take any other action option besides attack.

I mean, assume that something occurs where you take your bonus action, shove the target, and then the PC is paralyzed by some reaction ability, forfeiting the remainder of their turn. In the fiction, there's no difference between shoving with your action and shoving with your bonus action, so it becomes irrelevant that you spent your bonus action instead of an action.

If the paralyzing ability allowed you to spend an action to roll a save or something, though, that would be not allowed on that turn (since your action declaration is still restricted).

TwoSix said:

In the fiction, there's no difference between shoving with your action and shoving with your bonus action, so it becomes irrelevant that you spent your bonus action instead of an action.

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That's clever - sophistical even!

It leaves me feeling strangely unsatisfied, but does (i) resolve my problem and (ii) seem to give the feat a purpose at lower levels (ie where there's no extra attack), so I'm not sure I can try and fault it on any rational ground!

Ristamar said:

There has already been established precedence differentiating between an "Attack" and the "Attack Action" which is why he elaborated in his string of tweets that the "clarification" has nothing to do with the balance of Shield Master and everything to do with not nesting a Bonus action within its own trigger.

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Obviously the Attack action isn't the same as taking an attack (eg OAs permit taking an attack but aren't the Attack action). But given that the Attack action can - for those with Extra attacks - be quite compendious in its nature, and is amenable to being interrupted by other stuff - like moving - that is not part of the attack action, insisting that you haven't taken
the attack action until you have completed all the attacks you intend to make seems needlessly pedantic to me.

As I said, the reason seems to be a quest for "tidiness" which I think is unwarranted.

(I mean, Cunning Action is a bonus action which is enlivened by taking a turn and which occurs in the turn that is taken - that looks like a case of "being nested in its own trigger" which nevertheless has to be tolerated or else the ability would completely evaporate.)

pemerton said:

Obviously the Attack action isn't the same as taking an attack (eg OAs permit taking an attack but aren't the Attack action). But given that the Attack action can - for those with Extra attacks - be quite compendious in its nature, and is amenable to being interrupted by other stuff - like moving - that is not part of the attack action, insisting that you haven't taken
the attack action until you have completed all the attacks you intend to make seems needlessly pedantic to me.

As I said, the reason seems to be a quest for "tidiness" which I think is unwarranted.

(I mean, Cunning Action is a bonus action which is enlivened by taking a turn and which occurs in the turn that is taken - that looks like a case of "being nested in its own trigger" which nevertheless has to be tolerated or else the ability would completely evaporate.)

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I don't really follow your Cunning Action argument. The Bonus action granted from the Cunning Action class feature has no trigger, thus it can't be nested. The "on your turn" bit isn't a trigger, it's just a reminder of the scope. By design, all Bonus actions have to be taken on your turn. Only Reactions allow you to act outside your turn.

Establishing consistency and special exceptions has always been a part of D&D and most rules heavy RPGs. Yes, it can often be pedantic and largely unwarranted, but you've obviously been privy to some of the heated rules discussions here and on other forums. You can't simply assume people will reach a conclusion that fits your definition of reasonable or rational.

pemerton said:

That's clever - sophistical even!

It leaves me feeling strangely unsatisfied, but does (i) resolve my problem and (ii) seem to give the feat a purpose at lower levels (ie where there's no extra attack), so I'm not sure I can try and fault it on any rational ground!

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I'll be honest, I don't love it myself. A house rule I've been contemplating for when my turn in the DM chair comes up is removing any triggered bonus actions. If an ability grants you a bonus action, you can take it.

Ristamar said:

I don't really follow your Cunning Action argument. The Bonus action granted from the Cunning Action class feature has no trigger, thus it can't be nested. The "on your turn" bit isn't a trigger, it's just a reminder of the scope.

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I guess I don't find the contrast between "scope" and "trigger" very helpful for understanding or parsing these rules. I mean, I feel that I could deploy that distinction to say that the "scope" of the Shield Master bonus action is a turn in which the Attack action is taken - and that action is taken (although not necessarily fully resolved, if I have an Extra attack) as soon as I attack on my turn.

And now there's no "nesting".

Conversely, I feel like I can insist that Cunning Action does have a trigger - to wit, when you take a turn in combat. (Ie I can't take the bonus action, effectively doubling my speed, in ordinary movement situations.) And now there is nesting.

Ristamar said:

You can't simply assume people will reach a conclusion that fits your definition of reasonable or rational.

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Of course not. But I can put forward what I think are good or bad reasons for various interpretations. Until [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] provided me with the reasoning not far upthread, it seemed pretty clear to me that the attack action has to be taken to trigger the bonus action; but the inherent oddity of extra attack within the game together with the movement example makes it pretty clear to me that one takes the attack action by making an attack on one's turn, and then the exra attacks play out in a rather flexible way, which if it can include 15' of movement can probably include a bonus action as well.

So if this gets characterised as "nesting" well I just don't see what the problem is. Nesting doesn't seem to be a concept that occurs in the rules, or that one needs to explain or apply the rules. It seems to be an external concept introduced for the sake of tidiness.

Can a rogue who is Dashing as part of a cunning action drop something as s/he moves (but not at the beginning or end of the move)? I assume so - the rules don't contain a notion of "nesting" that makes me doubt it.

I should add - the oddness of Extra Attack is simply the latest example in a legacy of terminological and conceptual difficulties over what constitutes an "attack" that go back through 4e, and 3E's "full attack" that contains multiple attacks back to the rules in Gygax's AD&D which distinguish a monsters attack sequence of claw/claw/bite (ie three attacks) from a 12th level fighter's ability to take two attack sequences each of a single attack.

And these "nesting" worries seem very similar to debates back in 2008 about the proper interpretation of the OA-triggering rules for movement in 4e (where an example in the PHB of how taking the first square of movement triggers an OA even though the whole movement action hasn't yet been resolved). I'm not sure where exactly the concern comes from - for someone who's not a programmer (ie me) it looks like maybe it's a worry about the clarity of the logic in an algorthithmic resolution process, and the possible risks of some sort of uncontrolled looping/recursion? - but I personally just don't find it a useful analytical tool in these contexts. Whereas the text and the gameplay context I find very helpful. (I'm not a programmer but I am an academic philosopher and lawyer, and when interpreting statutes text and context are the two most important things, whereas this "nesting" idea isn't part of the toolkit.)

As a game designer and technical writer myself, timing is incredibly critical when writing rules. In general, 5E is really good at using fairly simple language while still communicating the rules clearly. 5E also has a tendency to imply or reinforce rules in other places instead of over-explaining a rule in one place.

That said, the Shield Master bonus action timing is a case where I believe they were too loose. I interpreted the only timing requirement of the Shield Master bonus action as the declaration of the Attack action. The only word that details timing in the feat description is "If". That means that as long as you take the Attack action, you can use the bonus action to shove.

Now this is different than wording such as "When you make an attack roll against a creature" or "when you hit a creature with a weapon attack", both of which are used fairly frequently throughout the book. Because of this, it implies that the designers intended for the timing to be different because of the "If you take the Attack action" phrase. They could have easily made the wording the same or something like "After you make an attack roll against a creature..."

It's also interesting because even the Battlemaster Commander's Strike ability uses slightly different language: "When you take the Attack action..." (as opposed to "If").

You can also use Two-Weapon Fighting to reinforce this interpretation of Shield Master. TWF says "When you take the Attack action...you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you're holding in the other hand."

If the bonus action to use Shield Master has to come after the entire Attack action is completed, then it also has to for TWF, meaning you couldn't attack with your off-hand weapon first.

Finally, given that 5E lets you break up your actions in general (split up move, split up multiple attacks, use bonus actions whenever, etc.), the reader begins to understand this as a core tenet of the rules. So if a timing exception like this is going to be introduced, it is going to be jarring.

GlassJaw said:

I interpreted the only timing requirement of the Shield Master bonus action as the declaration of the Attack action. The only word that details timing in the feat description is "If". That means that as long as you take the Attack action, you can use the bonus action to shove.

Now this is different than wording such as "When you make an attack roll against a creature" or "when you hit a creature with a weapon attack", both of which are used fairly frequently throughout the book. Because of this, it implies that the designers intended for the timing to be different because of the "If you take the Attack action" phrase. They could have easily made the wording the same or something like "After you make an attack roll against a creature..."

It's also interesting because even the Battlemaster Commander's Strike ability uses slightly different language: "When you take the Attack action..." (as opposed to "If").

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It's very common to see "if" and "when" used interchangeably in these sorts of contexts, so - without more to suggest that it matters - I wouldn't treat this as significant. (Eg 4e is full of these sorts of stylistic but - from the rules point of view - meaningless variations which are simply the produce of different writers at different times.)

The obvious concern with "if you make an attack" is that it allows multiple uses - which get coralled by the general limit on bonus actions, but nevertheless is an unsettling implication especially in a "specific beats general" ruleset. So I think it's easy to see why they didn't go with that.

My own view remains that taking the attack action can't occur independently of making an attack roll, any more than brushing your teeth can take place independently of moving your tooth brush - in both cases the latter is not the totality of the former, but is an essential constituent of the former occurring.

To me, that therefore implies that the bonus action must come after that first attack. But [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION]'s clever (if in some sense unsatisfying) argument about the practical irrelevance of policing the bonus vs non-bonus action in the event that the non-bonus action doesn't come to pass offers a pratical gameplay reason to expand the reading the natural language would otherwise suggest. My final interpretation would be driven by balance concerns - ie is it too strong to get to do your shove for all your attacks rather than some - but I'm not going to try and work that out (certainly not in the context of this thread!, and I don't think I'm competent to attempt it at all).

The main issue that I have with JC's tweet is that it seems to go against the general philosophy of 5E in a way that I don't like.

I shouldn't have to parse out wording with scientific precision in order to play the game. I shouldn't have to have a degree in game design to "correctly" interpret "If you take an attack action on your turn" as being sequential.

This has little to do with relative power or nerfing the feat into minimal utility, it's just counter to a casual reading of the rules.

Oofta said:

The main issue that I have with JC's tweet is that it seems to go against the general philosophy of 5E in a way that I don't like.

I shouldn't have to parse out wording with scientific precision in order to play the game. I shouldn't have to have a degree in game design to "correctly" interpret "If you take an attack action on your turn" as being sequential.

This has little to do with relative power or nerfing the feat into minimal utility, it's just counter to a casual reading of the rules.

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As I’m sure you have heard before, if you do Y you can do X implies Y must be done first. That is X cannot be done until Y is done. It’s simple logic and that anyone has ever read that differently confounds me.

I’m with you that 5e in general is supposed to be more loose and free flowing in relation to combat actions and it’s regrettable that they didn’t open up the system more in that regard.