Shield master on twitter

Oofta said:

Gee thanks for clarifying that for me. Not condescending at all.

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If I came across as condescending, I apologize. You literally implied that your character wasn’t useful if they could at least stay close to the damage output of damage focused characters. That is completely false, which I pointed out. Perhaps you didn’t mean to imply that?

Oofta said:

Let me get this straight. You can "destroy" your enemy by running away, but you aren't being a team player because other people are ranged. Knocking someone prone guarantees that everyone else is out of their melee range, and that all opponents are melee based. That provoking opportunity attacks is a great idea.

All opponents have to be melee, never ranged. Opponents will never go after anyone else in the party because your allies are ranged attackers that stay back from every fight. But they can't be ranged because then their attacks will be at disadvantage. So either they must all be spellcasters that have ranged spells that require saving throws, or the opponent has to go immediately after you. In addition, fights always take place in a wide open area where you have room to disengage.

But again, thanks for the condescending attitude. Really helps make your case. I'd never a' thunk of using this - what did you call it - stra-ta-gie?

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None of what you just said matches up to anything that I said. How about you either engage honestly with my arguments, or don’t engage at all?

Or maybe you just failed to understand anything I said, on an even basic level? If so, I’m happy to clarify.

edit: two things to add, here.

If if I come across condescending, it’s partly a response to your tone in this thread. No one is telling you that you play wrong, we’re just disagreeing with you on the idea hat the feat isn’t a good feat with his ruling. I only care about anyone’s specific experience or how they play as an example to help illuminate their POV. If your playstyle or other factors make a feat terrible for you, ok. That doesn’t mean it’s a terrible feat.

The other thing is, I may have figured out the misunderstanding. The examples I provided are several distinct examples of circumstances wherein the feat is useful. You seem to think that I’m making statements about...every fight, somehow, with each statement? I can’t imagine why, but regardless: each example should be taken as an indipendent use case.

The feat has different uses against melee enemies than against ranged enemies, and different usage depending on initiative and how much of the party is ranged vs melee.

I explained these use cases because you seems to be dismissing them out of hand, and in some cases directly ignoring their existence, while saying that this ruling makes the feat bad. So I presented a counter-argument using examples.

doctorbadwolf said:

So, the feat helps shore up a weakness in heavy armored characters, making them not dreadful at dex saves?
Seems pretty good.

You keep bringing up Resilient. Why do you think it’s relevant here? Does it make you better with a shield?

It’s almost like different feats serve differing purposes! Crazy!

if you want to be significantly better as succeeding on dex saves, you build for that, one way or another. If you want a small suite of shield benefits to help you better make use of a shield and better fulfill the image of a shield user in fantasy, you build for that. SM accomplishes the thing it’s built to do.

If what it does isn’t interesting to you, especially if you aren’t subjected to dex saves that often (seriously +2 difference in a very common save comes up *frequently* at my table, I don’t know what to say about it almost never coming up at yours. Statistical probabilities play out IRL in sometimes strange ways), or don’t see the blue in the teamwork aspects of the tactics that take advantage of the feat, that’s fine. Just means it’s not for you, barring houserule.

That doesn't make this a bad “ruling”.

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Your're straw-manning me. I was responding to the argument that the Dex benefits make it worth it. For which I said Resilient would be better for that. You removed that context (unsure if it was intentional) and pretended I had said I was responding to the "shield usage" part of it as opposed to the Dex benefits of it.

And the "bad ruling" part of my argument had nothing to do with any of what you're replying to. The "bad ruling" part was purely that I felt it set a terrible precedent to change the ruling mid-stream in the edition, in a very 4e kind of way where players can no longer rely on the rulings of the Sage Advice as they become subject to change suddenly in very meaningful ways, for very little reason (it was not breaking the game to leave the old ruling as it was).

So I don't know if you just hand-waved my argument, or intentionally changed the context to make it seem I was arguing something I didn't, or forgot what I said, or have me confused with someone else. But, you didn't reply to the positions I stated.

So, [MENTION=6704184]doctorbadwolf[/MENTION], will you at least admit that the feat is less useful?

But to address what you think makes it useful, and why I do not think it as useful as other options.

First, the tactic of knocking prone:

• If my PC is fighting a melee character, I could knock them prone at the end of my turn and move away. They will get a free attack, which even if it is at disadvantage, is still not generally a good thing. However, if I could move away and leave the opponent no viable targets (because they are too far away) this might be worth it.
• If I'm fighting a ranged character this tactic just means on their turn they stand and move further away. Now I can't get to them. Bad move.
• As a team player, knocking opponents prone is only useful for team PC if we have more melee attackers than ranged attackers before the target has their turn. When I could count myself amongst those getting advantage, the math usually worked out to be in our advantage.
• However I don't remember the last time I was in a fight that this would have worked because at least one other PC would have been in range or the space we were fighting in was so constricted that I could not have moved far enough. So free attack against me, and the opponent just attacks someone else. Bad move.

So knocking prone after my attacks is a wash in most cases.

I get a +2 to dexterity save if I'm the only target. OK, a 10% increase in my chance to save vs 1 in 20 spells is not horrible, but Resilient would have given me a minimum 15% increase and it goes up as I get higher levels for all dexterity saves, including those that target multiple people. Which is the majority of times I make a dexterity save in my experience. In addition, Resilience is a half feat so I get a +1 to an ability score.

If I make a dexterity save, I take no damage. This is decent, but not overwhelmingly. Evasion is more useful for dexterity based characters like rogues. I don't need to make dexterity saves all that often and if I'm worried about running out of HP I'd be better off with heavy armor master to reduce damage far more often or increasing my HP with a higher constitution or Durability.

It's not completely worthless as a feat with the rule change but there are better options.

Li Shenron said:

That's a very 4e type "Don't rely on the books or sage advice as either can be errata'ed for minor balance reasons at any time" type ruling. Very bad precedent to set

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ALSO think that, if the Sage Advice officially rules that the Sage Advice was (is) wrong, that sets a WONDERFUL precedent

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The very idea of relying on either book or errata when the game is meant as a starting point is a tad silly - The one thing you can be certain of is that you simply must go /somewhere/ from that point.

It's different with a ruleset that's meant to provide a good play experience or enable an optimization meta-game.

Krachek said:

It is amazing that the same company can produce Magic and DnD.
In magic rules are applied with almost 100% accuracy all around the world
And in DND rules are at least slightly different at each table.

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Huh? One is a card game with a limted number of interactions of set pieces to have rules for. The other is an rpg with no limit on types of interactions and gazillions of playing pieces.

One is a script to deliver, the other songwriting.

doctorbadwolf said:

I guarantee, even in a group that is mostly ranged, in an initiative where the enemy goes right after me, I can use the feat to destroy an enemy while the team is largely unharmed by them (assuming fight where shoving even works at all and we aren’t being swarmed, which just calls for very different tactics). Either I’m knocking them down and then moving away, because they are primarily melee, forcing them to either waste a turn dashing or use their less effective ranged attack while the team safely rains death, or I’m keeping the caster/archer from getting away from me by halving their effective speed per round.

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Being able to knock a guy prone after your attack and then moving away in no way "destroys" your opponent. He can still attack you. He just does so at disadvantage. Further, any other creature you are adjacent to can attack you. Also, doing this is just a really poor version of Cunning Action. If you really wanted to do this, just take two levels of Rogue and you can do this successfully all the time.

If you want to prevent an opponent from moving or running away, take Sentinel. It makes their movement zero. Zero movement is definitely lower than 1/2 movement. The things you described in your paragraph can be better done with some other ability.

I'm with Oofta and Mistwell. I wouldn't take the feat in its current form. I'd rather do something else with my ASI or variant human feat. I mean, I'd rather have Great Weapon Mastery using a sword and shield just for the possible bonus action attack triggering, especially if I had a high chance of a crit or kill on my turn.

While it seems odd, I think this finally sank home the idea that sage advice and other rulings are really a suggestion. It is good for people that do not know how all the game systems interact and adventure league (everybody on the same page as soon as possible). It is not good for groups with DMs who know the interactions and want the game to play a certain, more optimal, way for the group.

Meh, I don't like the new suggested way to play shield master (did not see the earlier change). Makes little sense from a realism perspective and the power level was acceptable where it was with dynamic bonus action usage. Does makes sense from a RAW perspective and would have been something I would have argued for not that long ago.

I like the more dynamic design and I don't really see where a dynamic bonus action will make a huge difference, with the exception of the eldritch knight. (easily solved with further minor rulings if it gets out of hand)

5ekyu said:

You can still take one attack then bash. Nothing has changed there.

But at fifth you gained the new option to take two attacks and bash.

So, it doesnt "take two attacks" just the same old one... But... You can take two before bashing if you want.

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No, JC is saying that the attack action must be completed before you are allowed to take the bonus bash.

He's saying that attack -> bash -> extra attack is not legal, because Extra Attack is part of the Attack action and Actions are (now, suddenly!) indivisible!

guachi said:

I'm with Oofta and Mistwell. I wouldn't take the feat in its current form. I'd rather do something else with my ASI or variant human feat. I mean, I'd rather have Great Weapon Mastery using a sword and shield just for the possible bonus action attack triggering, especially if I had a high chance of a crit or kill on my turn.

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Except... it's not really a DPR feat. It doesn't compare remotely with Great Weapon Mastery as two of the three bulletpoints are about defence while the third is about controlling an enemy (moving them into position or knocking them down). It serves a very different purpose.

smbakeresq said:

Feats are a limited pool, even if they are allowed. Why spend a feat on something like this when ABI or other options are out there?

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I'm guessing this was a rhetorical question, since you've no doubt met many players (in person or in post) who don't make decisions based on concerns for optimization, and you already know one answer is "because it looks like a fun choice."

That's why I took Shield Master for the heavily armored enchanter I created to replace my fallen gnome battlemaster; and it's why that gnome had Martial Adept even though it was clear to me that a Dex boost was definitely a numerically superior choice.

I wound up not playing that enchanter (with a splash of Life cleric for the armor and added paladinyness), though. Instead, I'm playing a halfling moon druid with high physical stats that go wasted because I spend most of my time as a dog.