Shield Master POLL: Rules as Fun!

BookBarbarian · Mar 15, 2019

I was watching the Interview with Crawford about how the feat wasn't designed to give you advantage for a round or else they would have written that.

It bothered me as that's what shoving prone does.

If the target is size large or smaller you can try to get advantage for you and melee allies, but at the cost of disadvantage for you ranged allies. To me it has trade off's regardless of when it's used in the players turn.

So I don't limit it to immediately after the attack action.

Edit: Also a bonus action shove after wouldn't make me feel like a Shield Master as much as a Shield... hmm I struggle to think of a word. Something equivalent to "Ok at shields" guy.

Satyrn · Mar 15, 2019

Jester David said:
.

It's never caused problems at my game.
Translation: If you have problems you’re a terrible GM.

Is that how you interpret my previous post?

Jester David · Mar 15, 2019

Satyrn said:
Is that how you interpret my previous post?

I actually had not seen your post before I started writing my list.

“It’s fine at my table” just doesn’t tend to be useful. There’s too many variables.

I could give one of my players a +5 to every roll and that wouldn’t be broken: because of how that player rolls and built their character.
In some tables I have seen, broken options are actually balancing, allowing a non-optimizer to keep pace with the rest of the table and their godkiller characters.

Mistwell · Mar 15, 2019

We played it under the original ruling, which is the bonus action to shove can come at any point during your turn.

And I STILL found it relatively underpowered and uninteresting. So much so, the feat was eventually swapped out for another with DM permission.

Krachek · Mar 15, 2019

Seem that at least people have fun debating on rules.

DND_Reborn · Mar 16, 2019

Krachek said:
Seem that at least people have fun debating on rules.

Yeah, I've given up on that one. Even when I tried asking really, really nicely... people still do it.

Whatever. So far the poll seems to indicate people are mostly either sticking with the older version (take it when you want) or following the idea behind the revised version (take it after you make at least one attack, which is our table's version). Even if I got into 5E sooner, I still would have read it the way it has been revised, but since we do use action declarations, I don't see it being a problem if you declare an attack and then shove first.

At this point, other than seeing how the poll continues, for me the subject is *meh* :\

Lord Twig · Mar 16, 2019

Honestly when I have seen it used at the table people naturally just use it as the last thing they do on their turn. In other words, they see it as just a bonus thing they can do after they attack. The only exception comes when the bad guy they knock down goes immediately after them in the initiative order and stands right back up for half their movement. Unless the person was trying to run away, this makes the knock down essentially pointless. That's when they start asking if they can do the shove first so at least they can get advantage on their attacks, even if nobody else can.

Now admittedly I'm not playing with a bunch of optimizers, otherwise they would have realized the benefit of shoving first earlier. But that also means that with just a casual reading, people just assume it comes after all of their other attacks. [disclaimer] This is anecdotal evidence and is not indicative of a general trend among the greater role-playing populous [/disclaimer]

Bacon Bits · Mar 16, 2019

BookBarbarian said:
I was watching the Interview with Crawford about how the feat wasn't designed to give you advantage for a round or else they would have written that.

It bothered me as that's what shoving prone does.

If the target is size large or smaller you can try to get advantage for you and melee allies, but at the cost of disadvantage for you ranged allies. To me it has trade off's regardless of when it's used in the players turn.

So I don't limit it to immediately after the attack action.

Edit: Also a bonus action shove after wouldn't make me feel like a Shield Master as much as a Shield... hmm I struggle to think of a word. Something equivalent to "Ok at shields" guy.

What confused me is that if you force it to come last, you make a dedicated option worse than alternatives.

Let's say that a character chooses to specialize in two weapon fighting instead of shields. They take two weapon fighting style, and Dual Wielder for a feat instead of Shield Master. Now our PC can use their first melee attack to shove a creature prone, and then use their subsequent attacks including their bonus off hand attack to attack the target with advantage. They'll have the same number of attacks that our Shield Master does.

So, a character that uses two weapon fighting style is better at shoving targets prone, even though that same character can choose to substitute a regular attack for the shove. The shield master is required to always shove prone with their bonus action.

So it's a dedicated option, but it's less flexible, and significantly more limited? What?

DND_Reborn · Mar 16, 2019

Bacon Bits said:
What confused me is that if you force it to come last, you make a dedicated option worse than alternatives.

Let's say that a character chooses to specialize in two weapon fighting instead of shields. They take two weapon fighting style, and Dual Wielder for a feat instead of Shield Master. Now our PC can use their first melee attack to shove a creature prone, and then use their subsequent attacks including their bonus off hand attack to attack the target with advantage. They'll have the same number of attacks that our Shield Master does.

So, a character that uses two weapon fighting style is better at shoving targets prone, even though that same character can choose to substitute a regular attack for the shove. The shield master is required to always shove prone with their bonus action.

So it's a dedicated option, but it's less flexible, and significantly more limited? What?

You are thinking along the right lines but incorrect on some of your points.

1. The shove from shield master need not knock the opponent prone, you can push them away, too.
2. With TWF, if you use your attack to shove, you don't get the bonus action to attack because it requires an attack with a light melee weapon. A shove is not an attack with a weapon of any sort.
2b. If you have extra attack, you can shove (attack), attack (extra attack), attack (TWF bonus) though.

Also, with Shield Master you had two added, although not stellar but certainly useful when the time comes, features.

Krachek · Mar 16, 2019

dnd4vr said:
Yeah, I've given up on that one. Even when I tried asking really, really nicely... people still do it.

Whatever. So far the poll seems to indicate people are mostly either sticking with the older version (take it when you want) or following the idea behind the revised version (take it after you make at least one attack, which is our table's version). Even if I got into 5E sooner, I still would have read it the way it has been revised, but since we do use action declarations, I don't see it being a problem if you declare an attack and then shove first.

At this point, other than seeing how the poll continues, for me the subject is *meh* :\

Rules have been written in a casual and friendly way.
It is on purpose that they avoid a more formal and accurate way.
They decide to let dm decide their best interpretation of ambiguous parts.
It seem that some people get crazy about that! Funny!