I was right about Shield Master

pemerton said:

...
The resolution of this would play out no differently were the trigger for the reaction was make an attack. So it doesn't show that taking the attack action does not consist in (among other things) making an attack.

Click to expand...

The resolution plays out very differently. "Hostile action" covers any display of hostility, including drawing your sword and preparing to strike (behavior that may be inferred in the "Attack" action when taken in combat.) The readied spell is one which can interrupt the attacker, so casting it before the ranged or melee attack is made is important. If the spell succeeds, the planned ranged or melee attack will not be made. If the trigger is "make an attack," however, the attacker gets to make the attack before the spell is released. If the attacker doesn't have the extra attack feature, then no attacks will be interrupted by the spell this turn, and if the caster loses concentration before the attacker's next turn no attacks will be interrupted by the spell at all.

"Hostile action" is a convenient shorthand my group has come to use instead of "any indication that the target is preparing to make a weapon attack or cast a spell."

pemerton said:

Taking the attack action and making an attack are also real-world events. The latter also correlates with some event in the fiction.

I already gave this example somewhere upthread. It shows that not all instances of making an attack are constituents of taking the attack action. It doesn't show that taking the attack action doesn't include, as a constituent, making an attack.
...

Click to expand...

"Taking the attack action" is Attacking. It absolutely correlates with "some event in the fiction." In the case of a dog, Attacking is coming at you with teeth bared, snarling. Making an attack is trying to bite you with a d20 roll.

I referred to the opportunity attack as a part of illustrating that Attacking (taking the attack action on your turn) and making an attack were distinct things in the 5e combat rules, and that the presence or absence of either was neither necessary nor prohibitive for the other. You can Attack without making an attack, and you can make an attack without Attacking. Yes, that sounds somewhat nonsensical. Yes, they probably should have used a different term for one or the other. Regardless, that's the situation. If your Attack action is interrupted before you make an attack, you have still Attacked.

In the example of the readied hold person spell, if you have an ally with a readied "dispel magic" spell and a trigger of "a spell is cast on my ally," then you may find your character once again in the fight. You still have one or more melee or ranged attacks you can make, but you can't, at that point, say "Changed my mind, I want to Withdraw and go around the corner." You've Attacked. Even if you don't make your melee or ranged attacks, you've still Attacked. It's what triggered the held hold person spell.

I can't compare this to brushing your teeth, sorry. These are not analogous. Like most activities in the real world, when you brush your teeth you just do it. If we were dealing with a mash-up of grooming simulation and gameplay that involved complex rule systems, and "brushing your teeth" and "moving your toothbrush" both had definitions describing them as separate yet related things, and that relationship were one which pages of forum posts could be devoted to analyzing, and the designer of the simulation/game rule system had gone back to contradict his previous statement regarding a different yet related rule (involving the Flosser Master feat and its bonus action) then sure... I suppose we could talk about it in this context.

Edit: If you're a rogue, and haven't used your bonus action yet, then you can Withdraw (as a cunning action) and go around the corner (if you haven't used all your movement.) I think I'm going to give myself a headache with all this.

epithet said:

The resolution plays out very differently. "Hostile action" covers any display of hostility, including drawing your sword and preparing to strike (behavior that may be inferred in the "Attack" action when taken in combat.) The readied spell is one which can interrupt the attacker, so casting it before the ranged or melee attack is made is important. If the spell succeeds, the planned ranged or melee attack will not be made. If the trigger is "make an attack," however, the attacker gets to make the attack before the spell is released. If the attacker doesn't have the extra attack feature, then no attacks will be interrupted by the spell this turn, and if the caster loses concentration before the attacker's next turn no attacks will be interrupted by the spell at all.

"Hostile action" is a convenient shorthand my group has come to use instead of "any indication that the target is preparing to make a weapon attack or cast a spell."

Click to expand...

I wasn't focusing especially on the "hostile action" bit as that did not seem relevant to the work your example was doing.

My point is that the example plays out no differently whether the trigger is "hostile action", "make an attack", "take the attack action", etc. Whichever wording is used, the in-fiction trigger is the drawing of a sword, the nocking of an arrow, or whatever it might be. I make an attack connotes that sort of thing just as does I take the attack action; and if a character can ready an action that will be triggered by taking the attack action then it will likewise be triggered by making an attack.

5e has the standard difficulty of RPGs in expressing its rules for interrupts while trying to use language that straddles the fiction and the mechanics in a relaxed fashion. (CCGs have less of this issue because they have no fiction in the relevant sense.) You can see an example of this in the wording of the Shield spell. Consider the fiction of that spell: does it allow the magic to travel back in time? No - rather, the fiction is that the caster sees the sword coming, or the arrow flying, or whatever it might be, and conjures a magical barrier into existence. To ensure that, mechanically, the shield spell is resolved before the making of the attack (the d20 roll compared to AC) is resolved, the spell includes express wording that the AC bonus applies to the triggering attack even though, at the table, the d20 may well have been rolled before the casting of the spell is declared.

The rules for readied actions (Basic PDF, p 72) state that "When the trigger occurs, you can . . . take your reaction right after the trigger finishes". Which in a CCG would be bad for interruption. But those rules also state that "you decide what perceivable circumstance will trigger your reaction" - in other words, triggers are defined in terms of the fiction, not the mechanics (I take it as obvious that perceivable here means by the character, not by the player), and hence if you want to interrupt someone who takes the attack action or makes an attack or takes a hostile action your perceptible trigger is drawing the sword or nocking an arrow or whatever - a fictional state of affairs - and not resolving a declared action - which is a mechanical state of affairs.

But in any event, in thinking about these peculiarities of how RPGs handle interrupts, it's clear that making an attack and taking an attack action are not interestingly different. (It also reinforces the fact that 5e is not a "rules light" or "fiction first" game, at least where combat is concerned, as it has all these mechanical features of turn-based resolution that are closer to a CCG or boardgame even than to a traditional wargame, let alone a fiction-first RPG.)

D&D 5e is only "rules light" in comparison to Pathfinder, and perhaps 4e.

Yunru said:

Note that you make an attack with the action, which means before you even make an attack, you've taken the attack action.

Click to expand...

It's simultaneous, not after. Unless you are arguing that if you make an attack with a sword, you've made the attack and the sword comes into it sometime later.

"Ah, but you have to make the first attack immediately" you go to say?
Clearly not, since you can take the attack action, then move, then make the first attack.

Click to expand...

This is not true per RAW. Per raw you can use your movement before or after the attack action. "You can break up your movement on your turn, using some of your speed before and after your action." Once you engage the action, you can further break it up if you have multiple attacks by moving IN-BETWEEN the attacks. "If you take an action that includes more than one weapon attack, you can break up your movement even further by moving between those attacks." All movement before or after the action is not a part of the action. All movement during the attack action must come in-between the first attack and the last attack or else you are after the action and moving normally again. At no point does RAW allow you to declare your attack action and then move before you attack.

pemerton said:

...You can see an example of this in the wording of the Shield spell. Consider the fiction of that spell: does it allow the magic to travel back in time? No - rather, the fiction is that the caster sees the sword coming, or the arrow flying, or whatever it might be, and conjures a magical barrier into existence. To ensure that, mechanically, the shield spell is resolved before the making of the attack (the d20 roll compared to AC) is resolved, the spell includes express wording that the AC bonus applies to the triggering attack even though, at the table, the d20 may well have been rolled before the casting of the spell is declared.
...

Click to expand...

Shield is a little different by design, since it consumes a resource (spell slot) for the casting and it is a reaction natively, without being readied. The spell was very carefully designed to not waste the spell slot in a situation where an attack would miss the caster anyway.

Mistwell said:

For those saying this is purely a Rules As Written or Rules As Intended issue:

(old tweets)

Are you guys arguing the Rules As Written changed since these tweets despite no errata to this rule?
Are you guys arguing the Rules As intended changed such that the tweets made closer in time to the point where these guys wrote these rules are less reliable concerning their then-recent intent than tweets made years later about that now-distant intent?

Click to expand...

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, that he was wrong, and that the triggered action having to come after the triggering action matches RAW and does not change anything about the wording in the books.

Also, people need to stop using "when" to start their comparison examples because the feat wording starts with "if", not "when", and in natural American English this makes a difference. "When" sounds like you can do them at the same time, but "If" means you need to actually do the first before you get to do the second.

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. 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.

FrogReaver said:

No, you are in the process of taking the attack action if you haven’t completed it. If you are in the process of taking something the. You haven’t taken it yet

Click to expand...

Enevhar Aldarion said:

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, that he was wrong, and that the triggered action having to come after the triggering action matches RAW and does not change anything about the wording in the books.

Also, people need to stop using "when" to start their comparison examples because the feat wording starts with "if", not "when", and in natural American English this makes a difference. "When" sounds like you can do them at the same time, but "If" means you need to actually do the first before you get to do the second.

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. 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.

Click to expand...

According to JC when and if statements are interchangeable in 5e rules.

Enevhar Aldarion said:

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. 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.

Click to expand...

Some people read it differently because it's possible to disagree on what the general rules are.

For example, the combat mechanics are abstract, and in an abstract system I don't see any reason to assume that the statements "you cannot do two different actions simultaneously" and "once you start one action you need to complete it before you can start another action" are true. Instead, I interpret the applicable general rule as the one in the book that says that the timing of bonus actions is up to the player unless otherwise specified. I don't consider implied timing (such as via the use of an if/then statement) to qualify as "specified". Therefore I read Shield Master as leaving the timing of the bonus action up to the player.

(Note that I would consider implicit timing to qualify as "specified" if failure to do broke the system, because that would create a much stronger inference. As [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] explained above, however, leaving the bonus action timing of Shield Master up to the player can't break anything.)

Your reading is certainly valid. I'm just trying to answer your question as to how it's possible to read it differently.

Enevhar Aldarion said:

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. 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.

Click to expand...

Hey now, I can pat my head and rub my stomach in a circular motion at the same time! Just watch ... umm ... well I can walk and chew gum at the same time!