Sage Advice Compendium Update 1/30/2019

[Maxperson]

So where is the permission that lets you divide this action?

Remember, the assertion is that the ONLY reason that you CAN move DURING the Attack action is because Moving Between Attacks gives you permission, and without that written permission you could NOT move between attacks! Neither that section nor Dash itself gives permission to move during the Dash action, so where is this permission?

As I said, there is no rule that says either what you think about actions, or what I think about actions. Mine is just the most reasonable interpretation, given the word action and how it is commonly used.

 

[epithet]

No it isn't up to me. I don't have the right to force him to use his one bonus action for the turn. That's his decision to make.

The player decides what her character does. The dungeon master decides what game mechanics apply, and how. Of course almost every dungeon master will respect his player's application of game mechanics, because that's doing your work for you. Many players will specify game mechanics when they describe a character's actions. Ultimately, though, the player decides what the character does and the DM decides how the rules and game mechanics apply to that.

So no, I'm not forcing a PC to use the bonus action, but if the player describes a course of action that involves movement, action, and bonus action I can easily parse that into those game terms. If the rogue says she's going to run in, stab the hobgoblin, and disengage, I don't need her to tell me it is a cunning action she's using to disengage. I put effort into keeping my players in the moment, playing their characters. The last thing I'm going to do is to instruct them to repeat their action sequence, this time in game mechanics terms. Well... actually that's the second-last thing. The last thing I'd do is to wreck verisimilitude by telling them their attacks have to come in a certain order because Jeremy changed his mind.

 

[epithet]

I'm not talking about Twitter, I'm talking about the Sage Advice Compendium:

https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/downloads/SA-Compendium.pdf

Up until the most recent version, the Compendium has never said anything about Shield Master. The most recent version added a new section on the Shield Master feat, to specifically clearly up the confusion about the timing of the bonus action it grants. According to the Compendium, Jeremy's tweets no longer count as official rulings, though they may be a preview for future official rulings in the Compendium.

As I've explained, once I saw the 2015 tweet I played the feat as allowing the bonus action at any time (i.e. before the Attack action). In 2018, when he corrected that ruling, I stopped doing that, because his explanation made more sense than his 2015 tweet. Once it was added to the Sage Advice Compendium as an official ruling of how it's supposed to be played, there's no more room for questioning how the words are supposed to be interpreted -- the Compendium contains an official ruling that the bonus action shove must come after the Attack action. At that point, I can decide I don't like the rule and change it for my table, but continuing to argue what the rule actually means seems kind of silly at this point. After all, isn't that the whole point of an official ruling about a particular rules question?

So, yes, I do take the tweets with a grain of salt, but I'm not talking about tweets here. I'm specifically asking about the Sage Advice Compendium (you know, the thing that started this thread). There might be cases where I decide to play a particular rule differently at my table, but that's a conscious choice on my part and not me trying to extract a different meaning from the words in a given rule while ignoring what the Compendium says on the matter. Tweaking the rules for my table is part of the job of being a DM, but that's very different to taking the position that because the Shield Master feat doesn't contain the word "then" after the comma that there is no trigger and thus you can take the bonus action whenever you like, despite the Sage Advice Compendium very clearly saying that this is not what the feat allows.

The "Official Rulings" designation serves only to deprecate all of his previous rulings on Twitter, and to designate any future tweets as a "preview," but that's really and truly meaningless. The same section goes on to emphasize that "A Dungeon Master adjudicates the game and determines whether to use an official ruling in play. The DM always has the final say on rules questions." That means that the "Official Ruling" in Sage Advice is in the same category as, for example, however Matt Mercer ruled on the way a certain spell worked in an episode of Critical Role that you saw. Sage Advice is carefully worded, internally consistent, thoughtful advice. Matt screws up the rules pretty often. Still, whatever the DM finds persuasive can influence his adjudication of the game.

There are all kinds of rulings, none of which are the rules. The only rules are the ones in the books, and the only rulings that matter are the ones made by the DM at the game you're playing. Everything else (including Sage Advice) is, to quote The Dude, "just like, your opinion, man."

The Dude Abides.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The "Official Rulings" designation serves only to deprecate all of his previous rulings on Twitter, and to designate any future tweets as a "preview," but that's really and truly meaningless. The same section goes on to emphasize that "A Dungeon Master adjudicates the game and determines whether to use an official ruling in play. The DM always has the final say on rules questions." That means that the "Official Ruling" in Sage Advice is in the same category as, for example, however Matt Mercer ruled on the way a certain spell worked in an episode of Critical Role that you saw. Sage Advice is carefully worded, internally consistent, thoughtful advice. Matt screws up the rules pretty often. Still, whatever the DM finds persuasive can influence his adjudication of the game.

There are all kinds of rulings, none of which are the rules. The only rules are the ones in the books, and the only rulings that matter are the ones made by the DM at the game you're playing. Everything else (including Sage Advice) is, to quote The Dude, "just like, your opinion, man."

The Dude Abides.

The statement that the DM is the final arbitrator of the rules also applies to the entirety of the printed books. It really says nothing special about the official rulings.

 

[Asgorath]

The "Official Rulings" designation serves only to deprecate all of his previous rulings on Twitter, and to designate any future tweets as a "preview," but that's really and truly meaningless. The same section goes on to emphasize that "A Dungeon Master adjudicates the game and determines whether to use an official ruling in play. The DM always has the final say on rules questions." That means that the "Official Ruling" in Sage Advice is in the same category as, for example, however Matt Mercer ruled on the way a certain spell worked in an episode of Critical Role that you saw. Sage Advice is carefully worded, internally consistent, thoughtful advice. Matt screws up the rules pretty often. Still, whatever the DM finds persuasive can influence his adjudication of the game.

There are all kinds of rulings, none of which are the rules. The only rules are the ones in the books, and the only rulings that matter are the ones made by the DM at the game you're playing. Everything else (including Sage Advice) is, to quote The Dude, "just like, your opinion, man."

The Dude Abides.

Of course the DM has final say on a rules question at their table. That doesn't mean their ruling is a correct interpretation of the words in a rule, it's hopefully just what works best for their table. The Sage Advice Compendium contains curated official responses to common rules questions, and so in my mind, settles any debate about the meaning or intent of a particular rule. DMs are of course free to follow the advice or interpretation in the Compendium or not, but again, once a question has been answered in the Compendium then the debate about what the rule means is basically over. While I'm free to ignore the contents as needed, I would absolutely put the Compendium at a higher level than Matt Mercer or any other DM, because they cannot make official rulings about the game while WOTC and Jeremy Crawford can.

As I keep saying, you're all free to run Shield Master however you like. I'm just astounded that you're arguing your interpretations are actually correct and the Sage Advice Compendium (and by extension Crawford himself) are not. The question about Shield Master is quite clear about how the rule works (modulo the interaction with Extra Attack), which you are free to ignore in your games of course, but it's amazing to me that there's still an argument about what the words in the feat actually mean when WOTC has already answered that question.

 

[Hriston]

The game does not say, "If you are going to take the Attack action..."

I'm not sure what you think this signifies. Do you mean that the condition "If you take the Attack action on your turn" isn't referring to an event in the future? Surely, you haven't taken your turn yet, or there would be no "if" about whether you had taken the Attack action or not.

The bolded part is against the rules. You can't take a bonus action until after the trigger has happened. You can stretch "interpretation" mean simultaneous, which would trigger after the first attack, since you can't have taken or be taking the Attack action before the first attack. Prior to the first attack it's only a declaration which is insufficient.

I'm not surprised that you're saying it's against the rules for a shield master to shove a creature as a bonus action before taking the Attack action. That's the main difference between our interpretations of the feat. My argument for why it's within the rules is that the condition the feat places on shoving a creature as a bonus action is that you take the Attack action on your turn. In my example, the player takes the Attack action on his/her turn, so s/he is able to shove a creature as a bonus action. Since the condition doesn't specify that you must shove as a bonus action after you take the Attack action, there's no rule against this.

There is also no rule that allows you to take the bonus action they used and turn it into the Attack action should you be knocked out before the PC can take the Attack action. If you think there is, please quote it in your response.

I don't need a rule for that because, in that situation, I'm not checking for the condition being met until the PC is knocked out and his/her turn is over. At that point there will be no further attacks, and a bonus action won't be used, so there's really no need to check for the condition being met at all.

 

[epithet]

Of course the DM has final say on a rules question at their table. That doesn't mean their ruling is a correct interpretation of the words in a rule, it's hopefully just what works best for their table. The Sage Advice Compendium contains curated official responses to common rules questions, and so in my mind, settles any debate about the meaning or intent of a particular rule. DMs are of course free to follow the advice or interpretation in the Compendium or not, but again, once a question has been answered in the Compendium then the debate about what the rule means is basically over. While I'm free to ignore the contents as needed, I would absolutely put the Compendium at a higher level than Matt Mercer or any other DM, because they cannot make official rulings about the game while WOTC and Jeremy Crawford can.

As I keep saying, you're all free to run Shield Master however you like. I'm just astounded that you're arguing your interpretations are actually correct and the Sage Advice Compendium (and by extension Crawford himself) are not. The question about Shield Master is quite clear about how the rule works (modulo the interaction with Extra Attack), which you are free to ignore in your games of course, but it's amazing to me that there's still an argument about what the words in the feat actually mean when WOTC has already answered that question.

The rule is ambiguous in its wording.

Crawford offers an "official" statement regarding his interpretation of the wording.

Crawford's interpretation is now clear, but the wording of the rule is still ambiguous.

The only thing that can change a rule or make it less ambiguous is published errata. That's literally the only thing. Jeremy can clarify his meaning, change his mind and re-clarify, and publish an "official" clarification, all without changing the rule itself. Once the rule is published in a book, Jeremy's intent become a topic of interest only--the rule is the rule, regardless of what he wants it to be. The argument here in this thread has to do with the fact that once the Player's Handbook was published, "what the words ... actually mean" is not a question WotC can answer. That question can only be answered by each reader of the book, and that reader might or might not be persuaded by the WotC interpretation. As I pointed out before, the "official" designation for the Sage Advice pdf means only that WotC intend for it to have priority over anything one of the D&D team says on Twitter, that's all. It certainly doesn't elevate the Sage Advice Compendium to the status of "rules."

When Crawford says "I intend for this thing to come after the other thing," it is perfectly legitimate for a reader of the text in question to say "I understand your intent, but that's not what the rule says, so I don't care." If WotC really wants to erase all ambiguity, it can change the rule itself via errata, to say "After you take the attack action on your turn and resolve your attack and any extra attacks that are part of the Attack Action, you can use a bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet of you with your shield as a finishing move." Until that errata is issued, however, that is not what the rule says, and I am not persuaded to adopt Jeremy Crawford's new interpretation and parsing of the text of the actual rule to include a timing requirement.

The truth is, if WotC were to issue an errata for Shield Master, it is not at all clear that it would be a nerf as written above. It is entirely possible that it would be reworded to remove the possibility of a timing requirement altogether, which seems to me to be what the original intent of the feat was. I'm also not sure Jeremy is the one who wrote the feat--my impression was that while he certainly wrote the sections on combat and spellcasting, most of the classes, races, etc. were written by Mike and edited by Jeremy and others to try to make it all consistent. It strikes me as entirely possible that Mike wrote the feat with an opener in mind, and Jeremy edited it with a finishing move in mind.

My point is that after the final version of a rule is published, Jeremy can't tell you what the words mean. He can make a suggestion, and you can take it or leave it, but the rule is the rule.

 

[Hriston]

Hriston, this is how I would adjudicate it. The "If...on your turn" tells me to check at the end of the turn to see if the trigger has been met. That statement says to me that timing does not matter, only that the Attack action occurred at some point. If it said "After" instead of "If" then timing would matter.

Right! A conditional statement doesn't necessarily indicate a sequential order of events!

 

[Asgorath]

When Crawford says "I intend for this thing to come after the other thing," it is perfectly legitimate for a reader of the text in question to say "I understand your intent, but that's not what the rule says, so I don't care." If WotC really wants to erase all ambiguity, it can change the rule itself via errata, to say "After you take the attack action on your turn and resolve your attack and any extra attacks that are part of the Attack Action, you can use a bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet of you with your shield as a finishing move." Until that errata is issued, however, that is not what the rule says, and I am not persuaded to adopt Jeremy Crawford's new interpretation and parsing of the text of the actual rule to include a timing requirement.

So, what are some examples of bonus actions that do have timing requirements by your definition of a bonus action timing requirement? And, what makes them different to Shield Master?

Let's consider the wording of the feat:

"If you take the Attack action on your turn, you can use a bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet of you with your shield."

Some questions:

1) If the word "then" was inserted after the comma, would you consider that a timing requirement?

2) If the word "if" was replaced with "after", would you consider that a timing requirement?

3) How does this sentence differ from the 3rd bullet in the feat? It follows the same "If X, Y" format. Does that mean I get to "use your reaction to take no damage if you succeed on the saving throw, interposing your shield between yourself and the source of the effect" as long as at some point on my turn I end up being "subjected to an effect that allows you to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage"?

I searched through the Classes and Combat chapters of the PHB on D&D Beyond, and found exactly zero instances where the word "then" came after the comma in a sentence with the form "If X, Y". If we apply the logic that sentences that take this form have no timing restrictions between X and Y, specifically that Y can happen as long as X eventually happens, the rules start saying some very strange things.

Martial Arts: "if you take the Attack action and attack with a quarterstaff, you can also make an unarmed strike as a bonus action, assuming you haven’t already taken a bonus action this turn". Why can't I do an unarmed strike when I Dash or take some other non-Attack action, because I declare that I'll take the Attack action on some future turn?

Natural Explorer: "If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace." Why can't I move stealthily at normal pace when I'm traveling with my party, because I declare that I'll travel alone tomorrow?

Ranger's Companion: "If you are incapacitated or absent, the beast acts on its own, focusing on protecting you and itself." Why can't the beast act on its own when I'm conscious, because I declare that I'll knock myself unconscious later tonight?

Stroke of Luck: "if you fail an ability check, you can treat the d20 roll as a 20." Why can't I treat any roll I like as a d20, because I declare that I'll fail an ability check in the future?

I could go on, but you get the idea. The PHB is filled with sentences that take the form "If X, Y" with a clear (to me) implication that there is a timing requirement between X and Y and that X must happen before Y can happen. Isn't it a natural conclusion that this "If X, Y" phrasing is the way the rules describe a trigger and its effect? Yes, they could've used the word "after" in all cases instead of "if", or added the word "then" after the comma, but both of those simply take up more space on the page which might've meant the rules didn't fit in the book any more (assuming a strict page budget and the desire for as much art as they can get into the book). As an editor, given the goal of fitting all the art into the book, then I think it's a reasonable choice to settle on the "If X, Y" phrasing as being the standard way of communicating a trigger throughout the rules because it's the most efficient use of letters.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not surprised that you're saying it's against the rules for a shield master to shove a creature as a bonus action before taking the Attack action. That's the main difference between our interpretations of the feat. My argument for why it's within the rules is that the condition the feat places on shoving a creature as a bonus action is that you take the Attack action on your turn. In my example, the player takes the Attack action on his/her turn, so s/he is able to shove a creature as a bonus action. Since the condition doesn't specify that you must shove as a bonus action after you take the Attack action, there's no rule against this.

I don't need a rule for that because, in that situation, I'm not checking for the condition being met until the PC is knocked out and his/her turn is over. At that point there will be no further attacks, and a bonus action won't be used, so there's really no need to check for the condition being met at all.

It's not an interpretation. It's out and out changing the rules. The rules require the player to take the actions and bonus actions when they are used. When a player shoves, he has to indicate whether he is using the bonus action(if it has already been triggered) or an action. It doesn't get to change later on. It's ridiculous that you are claiming not only that it can be done, but that it's an "interpretation" of the rules.

Anyway, I'm done. You will disagree, but when you engage the rules in that manner you are house ruling them. Have a good day.