Sage Advice Compendium Update 1/30/2019

[Ovinomancer]

Taking the attack action means doing what it says under Attack action. No more, no less. There is no "action comes first."

If you take the attack action with one attack, it is:

[Begin Attack action]
--[Conduct attack]
[End attack action]

For more than one (say 3)it's:

[Begin Attack action]
--[Conduct attack]
----[Use movement]
--[Conduct attack]
----[Use movement]
--[Conduct attack]
[End attack action]

This is what the attack action is. It requires no inference of anything else; it ehat it says on the tin. If you go, "but what about duration," you've asked about something not on the tin that isn't part of the actions on combat rules. If you ask "Does the Attack action come before the attack," you've not grasped that the attack is part of the Attack action; the attack comes during the Attack action.

Just do what it says on the tin.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Sanctuary doesn't cause a miss. It causes the attack to be lost. There is a difference. Losing an attack doesn't fall under step 3 Resolving an Attack under the rules. In fact it doesn't even make it past step 1.

For my understanding/interpretation it does. You actually get to Step 2 when the DM notifies you that you are required to make a Wisdom saving throw to resist the effects of the spell. You are, at this point, past Step 1 because you have chosen a target. So, it does make it past Step 1.

Due to the effects of the Sanctuary spell, if you fail the saving throw you must return to Step 1 if possible (i.e. you have another target to choose) or proceed to Step 3 and resolve the attack, in which case it is lost because of the spell and no attack roll is made.

I understand your point. You are claiming that since no attack roll is made, the attack is never resolved since that is what generally is involved in Step 3. However, this is the case of Specific beats General. Due to the Sanctuary spell resulting in the attack being lost, it was resolved and is finished. There are no further steps to take. There is nothing further for you to do and the next action (or attack if you have Extra Attack) is taken. Once all your attacks are resolved, your Attack action is complete.

Of course you can interpret it otherwise, but then perhaps you are more comfortable ending the process at Step 2. "... In addition, spells... can apply penalties or bonuses to your attack roll." Because of the failed Wisdom saving throw, the penalty enforced by the DM is that your attack is lost and you will not be making an attack roll for Step 3. Regardless, your attack is ended and you either move on to the next attack if you have one or the next Action (or movement if you have speed left on your turn). You have taken the Attack action because to try to return to the beginning and argue otherwise would negate the fact that you choose a target and had to resist the effects of Sanctuary. At that point, you would have to undo what has already been done. Personally, I might involve time-travel within my game, but not in the playing of my game.

Sanctuary could have been worded differently to avoid the confusion as well. Instead of the attack being lost, if no other target is available it could have simply stated the attack results in an automatic miss on the attack roll. Then Step 3 would have been satisfied, I believe, to your logic. Also, Step 3 could have been worded to include the concept the Specific situations will arise that beat the General process of making an attack.

The intent of the rules is pretty clear IMO and you can debate the semantics if you like but the PHB is not a legal, written contract where every possibility has so be spelled out in black-and-white. If you want to get caught in the logic-loop be my guest, but you are ignoring Specific beats General at that point as far as I am concerned. I am fairly certain you are intelligent enough to understand that to go beyond this point is simply to be argumentative, and that is a waste of my time. Play in your logic-loopy world if you must.

 

[Asgorath]

If I can will you confess your ignorance?

I was genuinely curious how you reached that conclusion, there is no need to be rude about it. I'll just defer to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] again, as they have once again made an excellent post on this subject.

Do you let your players take a different action after their spells get Counterspelled? If not, how is that different to what you're proposing with Sanctuary and the Attack action?

 

[Hriston]

Exactly, so if you haven't gained it yet, how can you use it?

If you haven't not gained it yet, how can you be denied the ability to use it? In practice though, you just shove the creature and worry about the action economy later. You don’t know if you can use a bonus action yet, so you’ll just have to wait and see.

You have to satisfy the condition (take the Attack action) before you gain the benefit.

The condition is that you take the Attack action on your turn, so later, on your turn, when you do, you’ll be able to use a bonus action, which you can choose to take at any time during your turn because its timing isn’t specified by the feat. Therefore, you can apply it to the shove attempt you made.

Think of it like this:

If you take money out of the ATM ("the Attack action") today ("on your turn"), you can use a bonus action to go to the bookstore to buy the book you wanted ("to try to shove a creature within 5 feet of you with your shield").

Without getting the money out of the ATM, you can't buy the book you wanted. (Please, no jokes about using your credit card or ordering it on-line.)

I understand how your interpretation works. But even this sentence you've written can be interpreted to mean you can buy the book first as long as you end up getting the money later. Maybe there's a certain amount of cash that needs to be kept on hand for some other purpose, so the cost of the book will need to be replaced.

Without taking the Attack action, you have no bonus action to shove with.

I'm not suggesting you use a bonus action to shove a creature without also taking the Attack action on your turn.

As for the time-travel part, that is unnecessary. If you have reached the end of your turn without taking the Attack action, you never satisfied the conditions needed to gain the bonus action so you could not have used it, either.

I'm not sure what you mean by "time-travel". I'm certainly not advocating for either players or characters to travel through time. If all you did on your turn was to shove a creature, then you took the Attack action when you did so. In the case of Shield Master, "taking the Attack action" doesn't correspond to anything in the fiction different from "taking a bonus action" as long as at least one of your attacks is a shove.

On a personal note, I think JC's official ruling on this is silly.

Personally, I don't like it, but I'd still play with a DM who made such a ruling even though I think it's a bit misguided. It's a valid interpretation of the rules-text.

With TWF you can shove first with your attack and then if you have the Extra Attack feature, potentially make two attacks with advantage. You don't even need a feat to do this.

I think you're saying if you have Extra Attack, you can shove a creature with your first attack then get two more attacks (possibly with advantage) using TWF. Without Extra Attack, I don't think shoving a creature counts as making an attack with a light weapon, but I suppose that's up for debate.

There are many ways they could have worded Shield Master to avoid this issue and personally should have simple by removing the condition of attacking at all. The FEAT is what should give you the bonus shove action using your shield. Just make the first benefit of the feat this:

"You can use a bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet of you with your shield."

Nice. Simple. Use it anytime during your turn you want so it can be offensive, defensive, or whatever. For instance, an Eldritch Knight could use the shove to push someone away and then cast a spell as their action.

This feature never needed to be tied into the Attack action to begin with...

It isn't just Shield Master. It's the way many bonus actions were designed. I actually think it was quite ingenious that they attached the Shield Master shove to the Attack action because a shove is a melee attack, so it's potentially very flexible, given the right interpretation. Where they ran into trouble, however, is with the eldritch knight's War Magic feature because a weapon attack isn't part of the Cast a Spell action, which is from where Jeremy Crawford's revised ruling comes.

 

[Hriston]

The rules don't allow this.

"On your turn, you can move a distance up to your speed and take one action. You decide whether to move first or take your action first."

 

[Hriston]

"Various class features, spells, and other abilities let you take an additional action on your turn called a bonus action. The Cunning Action feature, for example, allows a rogue to take a bonus action. You can take a bonus action only when a special ability, spell, or other feature of the game states that you can do something as a bonus action. You otherwise don't have a bonus action to take."

Many in this thread have referred to this passage as if it says, "You can take a bonus action only when you've met any conditions for doing something as a bonus action laid out by a special ability, spell, or other feature of the game." They've used this to support the claim that taking the Attack action is what allows you to take the Shield Master shove as a bonus action. I just want to clearly state that the Attack action is not a class feature, spell, special ability, or other feature or ability of the game, and that the game-feature that allows you to shove a creature as a bonus action is the Shield Master feat itself.

Edit to add: My paraphrase of the above cited rules-text in terms of the Shield Master feat would be, "You can take the Shield Master shove only when you have the Shield Master feat."

 

[Asgorath]

"Various class features, spells, and other abilities let you take an additional action on your turn called a bonus action. The Cunning Action feature, for example, allows a rogue to take a bonus action. You can take a bonus action only when a special ability, spell, or other feature of the game states that you can do something as a bonus action. You otherwise don't have a bonus action to take."

Many in this thread have referred to this passage as if it says, "You can take a bonus action only when you've met any conditions for doing something as a bonus action laid out by a special ability, spell, or other feature of the game." They've used this to support the claim that taking the Attack action is what allows you to take the Shield Master shove as a bonus action. I just want to clearly state that the Attack action is not a class feature, spell, special ability, or other feature or ability of the game, and that the game-feature that allows you to shove a creature as a bonus action is the Shield Master feat itself.

Edit to add: My paraphrase of the above cited rules-text in terms of the Shield Master feat would be, "You can take the Shield Master shove only when you have the Shield Master feat."

It says it right there: other feature of the game. Actions in combat are a feature of the game. The Attack action is a specific example of that. The language of the Shield Master bonus action clearly indicates that it's tied to the Attack action, and it follows the standard "if you X, you can Y" logic that is found throughout the rules to indicate a relationship between X and Y (specifically that X is required before you get the feature Y).

 

[Hriston]

It says it right there: other feature of the game. Actions in combat are a feature of the game. The Attack action is a specific example of that. The language of the Shield Master bonus action clearly indicates that it's tied to the Attack action, and it follows the standard "if you X, you can Y" logic that is found throughout the rules to indicate a relationship between X and Y (specifically that X is required before you get the feature Y).

Please cite the rules-text that directly refers to an action in combat as a game-feature. To me, it's fairly clear that the word feature is used for class features, racial traits, feats, special monster abilities, and things of that nature. Combat actions are a mechanic having to do with the action economy, not a game-feature.

 

[Asgorath]

Please cite the rules-text that directly refers to an action in combat as a game-feature. To me, it's fairly clear that the word feature is used for class features, racial traits, feats, special monster abilities, and things of that nature. Combat actions are a mechanic having to do with the action economy, not a game-feature.

Sure.

Your Turn
On your turn, you can move a distance up to your speed and take one action. You decide whether to move first or take your action first. Your speed — sometimes called your walking speed — is noted on your character sheet.

The most common actions you can take are described in the "Actions in Combat" section later in this chapter. Many class features and other abilities provide additional options for your action.

Actions in Combat
When you take your action on your turn, you can take one of the actions presented here, an action you gained from your class or a special feature, or an action that you improvise. Many monsters have action options of their own in their stat blocks.

When you describe an action not detailed elsewhere in the rules, the DM tells you whether that action is possible and what kind of roll you need to make, if any, to determine success or failure.

This is the foundation of the combat system in 5E. Claiming that this isn't a feature of the game to justify your position that Shield Master's bonus action has no relation to the Attack action feels like a huge stretch. The text you quoted specifically said "other feature". It did not say "class feature" or "other class feature", it simply says that some part of the game must grant you a bonus action or else you don't have one.

Edit again: Sorry, misread part of your post on my second time through it, removing irrelevant portion.

 

[Hriston]

@Asgorath, neither of your quoted passages refer to actions in combat as game-features. However, I find this semantics debate to be somewhat ridiculous. If you want to think that the game-feature that grants you the ability to use a bonus action to shove a creature is the Attack action, when nothing in the Attack action says anything about that, then feel free to do so.

Edit to add: Also, I just noticed the "rules-text" you quoted at the end of your post was of my invention, meant to characterize your position. It is not, itself, evidence of anything, since I made it up. I thought that was obvious from the context, and it wasn't my intent to cause any confusion about what the actual text states.