Shield master on twitter

[5ekyu]

The useage of shield master you liked was cheese, though, and SS isn’t.

Cheese doesn’t mean “it’s powerful”, it means that something is being used in a way that bends RAI to go beyond what it was meant to do.

Shield Master is still a good feat. 5ft of forced movement as a bonus is good. It can often put enemies into positions that they can’t escape from without getting rekt, or just give you allies better room to maneuver, make the target unable to OA an ally, break a grapple, etc
Knocking them down is still useful to your allies, and getting back up still costs half their movement, which makes it useful for locking down an enemy that wants past you. And the only way initiative can make it useless is if the enemy goes after you but before any of your allies go. That isn’t exactly going to happen all the time.

As for the defensive stuff, they should be relevant quite often. You’ve basically got evasion as part of a feat. If it isn’t coming up often for you...sorry your DM isn’t using dex save spells?

Regardless, this doesn’t ruin the feat, it literally just clarified what the rules mean, and discourages cheese.

Hmm sttike strike bash prone then back off (they can OA at disad if they want) moving your move back and they have to spend half their move to get up and so cannot retaliate is intriguing - or as some would say worthless even if your other allies can daisy chain in for advantaged strikes.

Yup.

 

[Mistwell]

I can totally see why losing the shove-attack option on the same round would be a bummer. But essentially getting the 'no damage' part of the Rogue's Evasion ability is pretty big. It has saved the fighter in our group multiple times. And getting a shield bonus to Dex Saves is also pretty sweet.

AD

You're a sword and board user who does not benefit from Dex for attack and damage most of the time. But, you're one of the fighting classes, so you almost certainly have a high strength. IE, you almost certainly have a lower Dex in exchange for the higher Str.

The rogue ability depends on making your Dex save to begin with.

Yes, you have the shield bonus to Dex saves now, which helps. But, odds are you still don't have a high enough Dex bonus to depend on the Rogue-like ability to begin with. Only in the unusual cases of a PC who happens to have both a high Str and a high Dex would it be a genuinely rogue-like ability in practice for that PC.

It's not something you'd take as a feat itself. You'd probably prefer the Resilient Feat instead, if that were the purpose of the feat. That way it continues to go up as your proficiency bonus increases over time, and the other benefits of a higher Dex will come as well (such as initiative, and some skill checks).

It's just...not why people were taking this feat. People were taking it to do something with their bonus actions with a fighter-type, when they had decided to go with the (otherwise sub-optimal) sword and board instead of the big two handed weapon and/or polearm and/or duel wield or Dex fighter. There are ways to use your bonus action with each of those types of builds, and now the bonus action option for the sword and board guy is frequently useless (or even harmful, in a party of ranged attackers beside you).

 

[jaelis]

No, it made the feat not worth taking. It’s not nearly as good as evasion, and evasion wouldn’t be worth a feat either.

Obviously that is a matter of opinion, but taking your position for granted, it just means that the feat, as written, was never worth taking in the first place. JC's comment just clarified that the his original strained reading that make it worthwhile was, in fact, strained.

If your table likes that reading better though, then by all means use it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No, it made the feat not worth taking. It’s not nearly as good as evasion, and evasion wouldn’t be worth a feat either.

And yes SS is cheese, the fact they built in doesn’t make it less so.

If JC really really wanted RAI he would have wrote it that way or changed it years ago as it’s been used that way openly since the PHB came out. He saw something he didn’t like and changed it, that’s cheese in and of itself.

Good thing the pseudo-evasion benefit isn’t the only benefit.

Shoving as a bonus action after an attack is useful. Few feats are always super useful, most are situational. That doesn’t make them worthless. This one is far from.

A thing can’t be cheese if it’s working as intended. There is nothing cheesy about SS. Cheese doesn’t mean powerful. You may think it’s too powerful, but (beside the fact you’re wrong IMO) that doesn’t make it cheese.

The only problem here is people who put too much stock in powergaming. I also enjoy powergaming, but I don’t count things as worthless if I wouldn’t take them when I’m powergaming.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Hmm sttike strike bash prone then back off (they can OA at disad if they want) moving your move back and they have to spend half their move to get up and so cannot retaliate is intriguing - or as some would say worthless even if your other allies can daisy chain in for advantaged strikes.

Yup.

Lol thst is a thing you could sometimes do, tho there are many other uses that will be relevant more often. Also, against very dangerous enemies, it can save your life, and allow 1-2 rounds where the enemy is subject to attacks but can’t optimally Attack the party. (Either they aren’t good at range or they dash to close with you/your team, burnig their turn on ineffectual actions)

it can also just help keep an enemy in a “kill box”, without losing out on any of your own attacks. Especially when combined with someone else creating difficult terrain.

Attack, prone, less tough ally moves away, enemy can’t chase them. Maybe my dm is more tactical than yours, but this sort of thing comes up A LOT when I’m a player, and fairly often when I DM.

Attack, push, ally is set up to do something awful to them on their turn.
Related: Attack, push into an AoE, or into a place where an ally can safely use an AoE


Seriously I don’t understand why people talk about this feat as if the character is working alone. It’s a teamwork feat. Using a shield in 5e is a teamwork fighting style. It’s a good thing.

Yes, you have the shield bonus to Dex saves now, which helps. But, odds are you still don't have a high enough Dex bonus to depend on the Rogue-like ability to begin with. Only in the unusual cases of a PC who happens to have both a high Str and a high Dex would it be a genuinely rogue-like ability in practice for that PC.

It's not something you'd take as a feat itself. You'd probably prefer the Resilient Feat instead, if that were the purpose of the feat. That way it continues to go up as your proficiency bonus increases over time, and the other benefits of a higher Dex will come as well (such as initiative, and some skill checks).

The purpose of the feat isn’t just one of the benefits of the feat. Obviously. If all you want is more resilience in one save, you take the hyperspecialised feat for that, but that isn’t why you take SM. That isn’t even a vaguely good comparison.

The idea that a character with low or average dex doesn’t really benefit from a +2 to some dex saves and no damage on a successful save is...strained.

 

[Xetheral]

A thing can’t be cheese if it’s working as intended. There is nothing cheesy about SS. Cheese doesn’t mean powerful. You may think it’s too powerful, but (beside the fact you’re wrong IMO) that doesn’t make it cheese.

I don't think your definition of "cheese" is universally shared. In my experience, whether or not an individual considers a game element to be "cheese" is based on their own subjective sense of notions of "fair play". For some people, using options that they consider overly powerful exceeds what they would consider "fair play" and are thus viewed as "cheese" even if the high power level was intentional on the part of the designers. Your definition of "cheese" would preclude this apparently-common usage of the term.

Further, I don't see any utility to your more-restrictive definition. The emotional response to a game element viewed by an individual as "cheesy" appears to be fairly consistent, even if individuals wildly disagree as to which elements provoke that response. Accordingly, the term appears to have descriptive utility under a broader definition than yours. Restriciting the term, as your definition would, to apply only to non-intended usage of a game element would sacrifice this descriptive utility.

 

[Oofta]

The useage of shield master you liked was cheese, though, and SS isn’t.

Cheese doesn’t mean “it’s powerful”, it means that something is being used in a way that bends RAI to go beyond what it was meant to do.

Shield Master is still a good feat. 5ft of forced movement as a bonus is good. It can often put enemies into positions that they can’t escape from without getting rekt, or just give you allies better room to maneuver, make the target unable to OA an ally, break a grapple, etc
Knocking them down is still useful to your allies, and getting back up still costs half their movement, which makes it useful for locking down an enemy that wants past you. And the only way initiative can make it useless is if the enemy goes after you but before any of your allies go. That isn’t exactly going to happen all the time.

As for the defensive stuff, they should be relevant quite often. You’ve basically got evasion as part of a feat. If it isn’t coming up often for you...sorry your DM isn’t using dex save spells?

Regardless, this doesn’t ruin the feat, it literally just clarified what the rules mean, and discourages cheese.

I've been playing D&D for a few decades now. Shoving someone after an attack is useful once in a hundred combats. Does it happen? I guess. Does it happen often enough to matter? No. If it's really that useful to push someone around I can always use an attack to to a shove.

Knocking enemies down for my allies is only useful if they go before the enemy, and penalizes them if they are ranged. So once again, not useful.

For defense, the evasion requires a dex save (which my PC is not great at) and uses my reaction. Because I use a shield I'm protection style which already uses my reaction 90% of the time.

The bonus to reflex is only if I'm the only target. Resilience is far superior.

So a bonus action to do something I almost never use and could use an attack for anyway, a damage reduction I can't use often, a dexterity bonus that only rarely applies.

All of that is fine if it had been clear before. Sword-and-board don't get anything iconic like the other fighting styles, but oh well. I just wouldn't have taken the feat. Changing the ruling after it had been state to work the other way is the problem.

 

[jaelis]

All of that is fine if it had been clear before. Sword-and-board don't get anything iconic like the other fighting styles, but oh well. I just wouldn't have taken the feat. Changing the ruling after it had been state to work the other way is the problem.

OK, but at your table you play by your DM's ruling. If it is working for you, why change it? If you think the more lenient reading is more natural, why read it any other way?

If you agree that the lenient reading is strained but just like it better, then what is the problem with JC's comment? All he is doing is trying to clarify what the language of the feat means. He is not trying to tell anyone how to play.

 

[Patrick McGill]

"From a role playing angle though the whole thing makes no sense at all. Why is there a condition on bashing with your shield?"

There isnt.

With a shield you can make an improvised attack as normal under the rules for attack.
With a shield, you can shove, using your attack action as one of the attacks.

Be clear, shield master does not allow these, they are already there.

Shield master simply **adds** a new set of conditions under which you can use your attack action, get all of its attacks and **also** use your shield for the bonus attack option as described. Your attack action strikes setup the enemy for your bonus bash.

So, not limiting at all - adding more.

Good point, I stand corrected.

 

[Volund]

My main issue with the ruling is it eliminates the one resource-free way S&B fighters had to set up their own power attacks, making GWM and SS builds comparatively better. If the bonus action has to follow the Attack action, I would change the feat:

Shield Master

If you take the Attack action on your turn and use one of your attacks to successfully shove a creature or knock it prone, you may use your bonus action to make one additional attack against that creature.