Sage Advice Compendium Update 1/30/2019

[epithet]

In the concurrent bonus action and attack action concept what prevents a player from ignoring all timing requirements on a bonus action. For example if you have an ability that said when you take the attack action on your turn and attack you can make a bonus action to do X. If everything is concurrent then would you also be able to take that kind of bonus action before the attack action?

If X is an attack that you could make as part of the attack action, it's pretty simple. If X is something completely different, like moving an extra 10 feet, I regard it as essentially becoming part of your attack action, meaning if you move the extra 10 feet you've taken the attack action even if you don't make any attacks. I know that doesn't synch with Jeremy's current advice, but it is the way that makes sense to me without getting all metagamy. It's a simple "that ability gives you an extra 10 feet of movement if you use it, but then all you can do is attack. That's all you'll have time for on your turn, unless you want to dig deep with an action surge."

 

[Maxperson]

meh - i dont get into time travel mechanics and nonsense - thats too easy letting someone else define the field.

Portent - declare before the roll
Bardic inspires - declare after roll but before result
Shield - declare after result

To me those just represent differing levels of "reactiveness" and "accuracy".

See, after the result of being hit, it's too late to stop it. You already got hit. You have to literally rewind things to change a hit to a miss, so it's not a matter of reactiveness.

 

[epithet]

Way to misconstrue my position. Have fun role playing Don Quixote...

Fun fact, I role played Don Quixote and it was a blast.

I can't see how I misconstrued your position at all. Do you believe that you can move during the Dash Action? If you believe that you can take the Dash Action instantly and then dash the whole turn, and you can take the Disengage Action instantly and disengage the whole turn, why can't you take the Attack Action instantly and then make your attacks throughout the rest of your turn? Do you think the Actions in Combat should not be treated the same way?

 

[epithet]

That's not how the game works, though. You very specifically use actions and bonus actions when you do something. If you use shove as a bonus action before the action, then it was used as a bonus action and not an action, and vice versa. The type you use it for doesn't change. If you have a situation like I describe causing problems that you have to solve via time travel or Schrodinger's actions, either how you play it is wrong, or the game is broken, and I don't think the game is broken. Especially given the Sage Advice.

Or I could rule it as it reads and how it was intended, which is that you have to take the Attack action in order to trigger the bonus action. I will be allowing it after the first swing, since only at that point are you taking the Attack action.

I'm not seeing how that breaks the game. It works just fine. There are plenty of things that are undetermined in D&D until something else happens, case in point most reactions. It's one 6 second turn, it's not that hard to work out man.

 

[FrogReaver]

To offer a point by point knock down of your faulty logic.

So, you're a regular human, and your movement is 30 feet for a 6 second turn, right? That means you jog along at 5 feet per second.

No it doesn't. You could move 25 ft/s for 1 second. Pause 4 seconds. Move more slowly at 5 ft/s the remainder of the turn. The only rule is that you can only move 30 ft in a turn and not that your maximum speed is 5ft/s. In a turn we don't define the minutia of exactly how we are moving or precisely the second we attacked, just that we moved and attacked.

If you take the dash action, your movement doubles. Now you're running at 10 feet per second.

No. The Dash action doubles your movement. All taking the dash action does is double your movement.

For the sake of your verisimilitude what that precisely means in game terms is left undefined. It potentially could be as you said, but there's a good number of people whose versimulitude is broken by retroactive actions and so I'm not sure that's actually strong argument for your case. Instead I would tend to interpret what's happening as, you started moving more slowly and then drastically picked up the pace.

The dash action effect all of your movement for the entire round, regardless of when on the round you decide to take the dash action.

That's a belief and not a rule. It's just as easy to believe it only affects the movement after you've taken the action. That taking the dash action means you are moving much faster than you previously were before taking it.

The dash action doubles your speed "on your turn." It doesn't just add another 30 feet, it doubles your existing speed, so "If your speed of 30 feet is reduced to 15 feet, for instance, you can move up to 30 feet this turn if you dash." What that means is that if you decide to take the dash action after you've already moved on your turn, well... you've been running all along.

As noted above, that's really not what it shows.

 

[FrogReaver]

The argument you're making, though, is that you can't move during the dash action.

Correct. The rules only give you the ability to move before or after an action. I've cited the rule and you still haven't shown me a rule that says otherwise.

Just a thought experiment for you. If the dash action is instantaneous and you move immediately before and immediately after it then did you ever really stop moving?

You argue that you stop, dash, then move again, and the dash action just lets you move some more at the same pace you've been moving.

You used some very faulty reasoning to derive the belief that my position means the dash action simply gives you more movement at the same speed. I explained why in my previous post.

That's nonsensical, and means in essence that the dash action adds another 6 seconds of magical time to your turn in which you can stroll about the place.

Of course that's nonsensical. I don't believe that. My position doesn't by necessity take me there. You invented some flimsy argument to try to force me into that box but your argument for that is what was truly nonsensical.

There is no way that can have more verisimilitude than to simply say "you were running instead of jogging this turn."

Versimilitude is broken for a lot of people when an action at a later part of their turn defines a previous part of their turn.

Similarly, you can't say on the one hand that you can take the Disengage Action in a single moment then duck and weave for the rest of the turn, while insisting that you cannot possibly take the Attack Action in a single moment then make your melee or range weapon attack across the rest of the turn.

Have you stopped to ask my belief about whether the attack action is instantaneous?

Either the activity associated with an Action in Combat is part of that Action and the Action continues until that activity is concluded, or it bloody isn't

That would be the best case scenario but that isn't necessarily the case. What if no matter which of those interpretations we use we can go find something that's nonsensical about it? Would that mean the rules are broken or that some actions are instantaneous and others are not?

If you can take the Disengage Action in an instant, you can take the Attack Action in an instant, too.

Ideally that's the case. Is there some reason you see that the attack action can't be instantaneous?

That, of course, would trigger your shove bonus action before you took your first attack.

Yes.

 

[epithet]

...You could move 25 ft/s for 1 second. Pause 4 seconds. ...

I really can't, and if somehow I did I'd need a lot more than 4 seconds to recover.

But fine, if supernatural wind sprints are easier for you to believe, have at it. Still, if you think you can take the Dash Action in a moment and then take your freakishly fast speed whenever you want it later on your turn, why can't you take your Attack Action in a moment and take your attack whenever you want it on your turn? Why are you treating those actions so very differently?

Edit: Never mind. I have gone back in time, as it were, to read your other replies.

 

[FrogReaver]

Jeremy has said that according to his interpretation and advice, you can't separate the Attack Action from the attacks (because there is no 'declaration phase.') To be consistent, you can't therefore separate the Dash Action from dashing movement, nor the Disengage Action from disengaging from each opponent you're selfishly refusing to grant an attack of opportunity to. It's one way, or the other.

1. If you can't separate the disengage action from the disengage movement and
2. If you can only move before or after an action (as the rule I citied indicates) then
CONCLUSION: if you take the disengage action you can't move after taking the disengage action

See, I have reasoning for why I think JC is wrong about not being able to separate action from their effects. In the case of the disengage action it's absolutely necessary for the action to be separated from it's effects because if you don't then given the above logical argument you literally can't move after taking it which is nonsensical as the whole purpose of taking it is to be able to move without taking OA's.

 

[FrogReaver]

I really can't, and if somehow I did I'd need a lot more than 4 seconds to recover.

But fine, if supernatural wind sprints are easier for you to believe, have at it. Still, if you think you can take the Dash Action in a moment and then take your freakishly fast speed whenever you want it later on your turn, why can't you take your Attack Action in a moment and take your attack whenever you want it on your turn? Why are you treating those actions so very differently?

Why do you think I am treating those differently? See up until now I've thought you had some grand point that would prove attack actions can't be taken instantaneously. Now I think you don't and that you somehow think I believe that the disengage action is instantaneous but the attack action isn't. That would be a strange thing to believe without a good reason to do so.

 

[FrogReaver]

I really can't, and if somehow I did I'd need a lot more than 4 seconds to recover.

Fastest 40 m dash time is 4.42 seconds. That's nearly 30 ft/s

I'm not saying I could do it either, but it's at least humanely possible and not supernaturally so.