Gladius Legis
Legend
The Sage Advice ruling bumps Shield Master back to blue, at least.
The Sage Advice ruling bumps Shield Master back to blue, at least.
Now there's an offical ruling on shield master (as opposed to the "can be, but isn't always" that is twitter).So there is now a new sage advice ruling on shield master?
So there is now a new sage advice ruling on shield master?
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?656742-Sage-Advice-Compendium-Update-1-30-2019
Specifically:
The Shield Master feat lets you shove someone as a bonus action if you take the Attack action. Can you take that bonus action before the Attack action? No. The bonus action provided by the Shield Master feat has a precondition: that you take the Attack action on your turn. Intending to take that action isn’t sufficient; you must actually take it before you can take the bonus action. During your turn, you do get to decide when to take the bonus action after you’ve taken the Attack action. This sort of if-then setup appears in many of the game’s rules. The "if" must be satisfied before the "then" comes into play.
This ruling suggests pretty strongly that once you've committed to taking the Attack action (i.e. by making the first attack of it), you can shove any time before your remaining attacks.
Yeah, it does nothing to change how it currently works: you take the Attack action, which you have to finish before taking a Bonus Action.
Yeah, it does nothing to change how it currently works: you take the Attack action, which you have to finish before taking a Bonus Action.
Not quite. There's nothing in the new ruling that points to having to finish it.
So it seems as long as it's started - e.g. you make take your first attack - you can then use the bonus action. Actions are definitely allowed to be interleaved - you can take your move around and in between attack,s you can take a reaction in the middle of an action, etc.
I'm not saying this is ironclad. Just that it seems as long as the action has been taken - which is different from the action being completed - it satisfies the current ruling.
I think the most official ruling would be the one that assumes both statements are true until they say something that shows the attack action actually doesn't have to be completed.