Sage Advice Compendium Update 1/30/2019

[Yardiff]

You take you bonus action shove first. An enemy then uses their reaction to incapacitate you, ending your turn. You never took the Attack action, and so how were you allowed to use the Shield Master bonus action?

This example is wrong. The person had already taken that attack action he just hadn't finished.

 

[Asgorath]

This example is wrong. The person had already taken that attack action he just hadn't finished.

Please show me the text in the PHB that says the Attack action is separate from the attack(s) it grants. All I see is this:

"With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack."

and:

"Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn."

So, if you haven't made an attack, you haven't taken the Attack action. If you don't take the Attack action on your turn, how do you have the Shield Master bonus action? That's the part I don't follow. I could understand this interpretation if the Attack action said something like "you can make one melee or ranged attack until the end of your turn", as that explicitly lists a duration of the effect (much like the Disengage action). It doesn't say that, it says you make one or more attacks, which brings us back to the point [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] was making about the Attack action being inseparable from the attacks it grants.

If this is not correct, please show me the words in the PHB that explains how this really works. Otherwise, it seems like you're just adding things that aren't in the rules.

 

[Arial Black]

If you don't take the Attack action on your turn, how do you have the Shield Master bonus action? That's the part I don't follow.

I can help you out here.

If you take the bonus action shield shove before you take the Attack action, then because you only have the shield shove because you get it when you take the Attack action, then at the very same moment you took that shield shove then you also took the Attack action; it's just that you are resolving the shove first.

This means that if you are somehow prevented from executing your attacks, tough! You already 'took the Attack action' because you took the bonus action shield shove granted by it. This is no harder to grasp than the fact that if the spell sanctuary forces you to lose your attack, you have still taken that Attack action! If you can grasp that about sanctuary, there can be no excuse for failing to grasp the same thing here!

As mentioned, I don't believe that 'taking the Attack action' and 'executing the attacks granted to me by the Attack action' are the same thing, because of reasons I laid out earlier. However, IF you believe that 'taking the Attack action' IS 'executing those attacks' (because of a Tweet JC pulled out of his backside saying so), THEN you must also believe that 'taking the bonus action shield shove' IS 'executing that shield shove!

And even IF you choose to ignore the fact that , "if...then..." statements are not statements of causality (making the same Error as James '@$$-pull' Crawford), and choose to interpret "if...then..." statements as if they are statements of causality, then remember this fact about causality:-

Conditional statements are not statements of causality. An important distinction is that statements of causality require the antecedent to precede or coincide with the consequent in time, whereas conditional statements do not require this temporal order. Confusion commonly arises since many different statements in English may be presented using "If ..., then ..." form (and, arguably, because this form is far more commonly used to make a statement of causality). The two types of statements are distinct, however.

Read that bit again: "statements of causality require the antecedent to precede or coincide with the consequent in time". This means that the 'effect' cannot come before the 'cause'. But it CAN come either after the cause, or it can coincide with the cause!

This means that at the same time as I 'take the Attack action' I also can 'take the bonus action shield shove' if I want!

And since you are choosing to interpret 'take the Attack action' as the same thing as 'execute those attacks', and are forced to therefore interpret 'take the bonus action shield shove' as 'executing that shield shove', if you 'take the Attack action' at the same time as you 'take the bonus action shield shove', you must, according to that (your) definition, be actually 'executing those attacks' at the very same time as you actually 'execute that shield shove'!

So the attacks and the shield shove can certainly be simultaneous under that interpretation. And if they are simultaneous, who gets to decide in which order they are resolved?

That's right! The acting character's player gets to choose the order in which to resolve their simultaneous actions. And you can bet that we are choosing to resolve that shield shove first, thank-you-very-much!

So, however you interpret the relationship between 'taking the Attack action' and 'executing those attacks', BOTH ways lead to the conclusion that you CAN resolve the shield shove before you resolve your first attack.

Q. E. And indeed, D.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I can help you out here.

If you take the bonus action shield shove before you take the Attack action, then because you only have the shield shove because you get it when you take the Attack action, then at the very same moment you took that shield shove then you also took the Attack action; it's just that you are resolving the shove first.

This means that if you are somehow prevented from executing your attacks, tough! You already 'took the Attack action' because you took the bonus action shield shove granted by it. This is no harder to grasp than the fact that if the spell sanctuary forces you to lose your attack, you have still taken that Attack action! If you can grasp that about sanctuary, there can be no excuse for failing to grasp the same thing here!

As mentioned, I don't believe that 'taking the Attack action' and 'executing the attacks granted to me by the Attack action' are the same thing, because of reasons I laid out earlier. However, IF you believe that 'taking the Attack action' IS 'executing those attacks' (because of a Tweet JC pulled out of his backside saying so), THEN you must also believe that 'taking the bonus action shield shove' IS 'executing that shield shove!

And even IF you choose to ignore the fact that , "if...then..." statements are not statements of causality (making the same Error as James '@$$-pull' Crawford), and choose to interpret "if...then..." statements as if they are statements of causality, then remember this fact about causality:-



Read that bit again: "statements of causality require the antecedent to precede or coincide with the consequent in time". This means that the 'effect' cannot come before the 'cause'. But it CAN come either after the cause, or it can coincide with the cause!

This means that at the same time as I 'take the Attack action' I also can 'take the bonus action shield shove' if I want!

And since you are choosing to interpret 'take the Attack action' as the same thing as 'execute those attacks', and are forced to therefore interpret 'take the bonus action shield shove' as 'executing that shield shove', if you 'take the Attack action' at the same time as you 'take the bonus action shield shove', you must, according to that (your) definition, be actually 'executing those attacks' at the very same time as you actually 'execute that shield shove'!

So the attacks and the shield shove can certainly be simultaneous under that interpretation. And if they are simultaneous, who gets to decide in which order they are resolved?

That's right! The acting character's player gets to choose the order in which to resolve their simultaneous actions. And you can bet that we are choosing to resolve that shield shove first, thank-you-very-much!

So, however you interpret the relationship between 'taking the Attack action' and 'executing those attacks', BOTH ways lead to the conclusion that you CAN resolve the shield shove before you resolve your first attack.

Q. E. And indeed, D.

This is an interesting argument. You say there's no causality in "If X, Y" but then say that if Y occurs, it causes X to occur simultaneously, if X has not already occurred on its own. Interesting, but not consistent with itself.

You are correct that "If X, Y" does not strictly imply causality, but you've gone further than that to claim it cannot be a casaul relatioshop, and this is wrong. Especially in this case. For "If X, Y" to be non-causal, X and Y must be independent of each other, or, at worst, both caused by some other Z. This is observed in that "If X, Y" does not imply Y cannot exist without X, ie, you can have a Y without an X, but if you have X, you will also have Y.

But, that's not the case with Shield Master because you cannot ever have the bonus action shove without the condition being true. This extra requirement is part of the general bonus action rule -- you don't have one unless something gives it to you -- which is a causal statement. This must be considered with Shield Master.

Further, while duration of actions is meaningless within the 5e action structure (actions have no assigned duration), the turn structure does have a clear order. Therefore, since there is an order, and since actions a discrete elements (you pick from a menu of actions with unique results and can't mix and match results), and since the Shield Master bonus action's very existence is predicated on taking the Attack action, you must take the Attack action before you can use the bonus action shove.

Now, you maybe can get a bit smeary about timing and take your shove between Extra Attacks, but you cannot say that the conditional existence of the bonus action means that its existence can cause its conditional to be true. It's the other way around because the "If X, Y" in Shield Master is a casual statement due to the nature if bonus actions being explicitly caused by other game elements.

This also addresses the timing question. Since the bonus action shove is caused by taking the Attack action and since combat turns are ordered sequences, the Shield Master conditional is therefore a statement of timing.


[Edited to fix some spelling errors, but probably not all soellibg errors.]

 

[Asgorath]

As mentioned, I don't believe that 'taking the Attack action' and 'executing the attacks granted to me by the Attack action' are the same thing, because of reasons I laid out earlier. However, IF you believe that 'taking the Attack action' IS 'executing those attacks' (because of a Tweet JC pulled out of his backside saying so), THEN you must also believe that 'taking the bonus action shield shove' IS 'executing that shield shove!

Once again, [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] has addressed the timing aspect, but I'd like to focus on this part in particular. What part of the wording of the Attack action makes you believe that the action is separate from the attacks it grants? Here's the entire action:

Attack
The most common action to take in combat is the Attack action, whether you are swinging a sword, firing an arrow from a bow, or brawling with your fists.

With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack. See the "Making an Attack" section for the rules that govern attacks.

Certain features, such as the Extra Attack feature of the fighter, allow you to make more than one attack with this action.

That says quite clearly that with the action, you make an attack. Extra Attack turns that one attack into multiple attacks, but at no point is there any mention of you being able to take the action first and the attacks later on in your turn. Surely if the attacks were separate, this action would include language like the Disengage action where it provides an effect for a duration, in both of these cases until the end of your turn? As it says above, the Attack action is the most common action taken in combat, so if it was supposed to work in the way you are describing, then I don't understand why the rules don't explicitly say that's how it works.

 

[DND_Reborn]

You don't like what he said, so create a house rule that ignores it and move on.

Right on!

Over 1000 posts. And people are still basically where they were with post #1 on this topic. Same arguments are being made.

Yep, pretty much.

You use an action and then after you have used the action you get some benefit.

Wasn't your position that you gain the benefit of the bonus action after taking the action, but before actually had to use it the action to attack?

Here you wrote "after you have used the action you get some benefit." That's all past tense and seems to imply you are supporting the Attack action must be used, not simply taken, in order to gain the bonus action from Shield Master.

I thought that was contradictory to your stance. I could be wrong, however, there was a lot to digest after playing D&D for two days.

That's basically how I'm going to run it. After your first attack the bonus action becomes available to you.

That's the way we played it for the last two days. It worked ok. One of the new characters was a Paladin/Rogue. He would move, attack, shove, attack with advantage gaining sneak attack. We discussed that the bonus action shouldn't come between, but after the extra attack. In the end, we decided to try allowing it in between. After both days, the DM asked us about it and every one agreed it was fine. It was a way he could get his sneak attack in without having to have an ally fighting along side. The only down side was how easy it was for him to shove. Granted he had +8, but most of the creatures didn't have Athletics or Acrobatics, so only got their Str mods. He probably succeeded on the shove 80% of the time...

But, in comparison, his potential damage output was no worse than the TWF-Horde Breaker Ranger with four attacks nearly every round. The Paladin/Rogue would do about 27 points (avg 8 first attack, 19 second w/ sneak attack) while the Ranger would average 36 (9 per attack) if all four attacks hit. Our raging/frenzying also averaged 36 if all three of his attacks hit.

So, it really isn't a big deal to play it this way and still satisfies the idea of the feat IMO. The Paladin/Rogue simply took three attacks, his average damage would be 24, so the benefit of the shove/sneak attack, for now at least, is only a slight improvement. Of course, it does jump up quite a bit when the other battlers gained the benefit of the prone opponent as they definitely hit more often.

Finally, I don't recall who it was who wanted a rewording of the feat, but here you go (I think this is what you wanted...):

"After you have taken an attack on your turn using the Attack action, you can use your bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet of you with your shield. If you have additional attacks granted by Extra attack or any other feature, you can continue to finish your Attack action and any remaining attacks after resolving your shove."

A bit wordy, but I think it works.

 

[epithet]

Once again, @Ovinomancer has addressed the timing aspect, but I'd like to focus on this part in particular. What part of the wording of the Attack action makes you believe that the action is separate from the attacks it grants? Here's the entire action:



That says quite clearly that with the action, you make an attack. Extra Attack turns that one attack into multiple attacks, but at no point is there any mention of you being able to take the action first and the attacks later on in your turn. Surely if the attacks were separate, this action would include language like the Disengage action where it provides an effect for a duration, in both of these cases until the end of your turn? As it says above, the Attack action is the most common action taken in combat, so if it was supposed to work in the way you are describing, then I don't understand why the rules don't explicitly say that's how it works.

I don't think arguments about what language the rules would include support your side of the argument. We have, in the example of the War Magic feat and the history of Crawford's statements thereupon, clear and unequivocal proof that the same language and construction used in the Shield Master bonus action was intended to enable the use of a bonus action before or after the action upon which its use was conditioned. The fact that Crawford later changed his mind does not change the original intention that his published Sage Advice article revealed. At the time that these rules were written and the Player's Handbook was published, the language in question was not intended to impose a timing requirement.

I am puzzled and somewhat amused by the rigid mindset some folks seem to have about D&D. This whole issue of timing has never been a problem for me, even after getting into the semantic minutia on this topic. If the Attack Action happens "on your turn" you get to choose when to take the bonus shove "during your turn." The first thing just has to happen on your turn, while the second happens at a point of your choosing within that turn. It's as simple as it can be. Your turn is 6 seconds long, with a very limited range and number of individual activities you can do, so this cannot be very complicated.

You know that you can start with a shove, whether that attack comes from the Attack action or from a bonus action. The shove is exactly the same in resolution and effect regardless of how the attack is granted. Is it really so terribly mind-bending to determine which of the two formal game constructions, neither of which have an impact on the objective "reality" of the game's fictional world, granted that attack until after the dice are rolled? Is concurrent resolution of an action and a bonus action really such a heavy lift? Reading posts from Max, it sounds like every turn of every combat in his game is handled like an aircraft pre-flight safety checklist. I don't think that's the best way to play D&D, but hey... that's just, like, my opinion, man.

Also, I'll repeat what I said earlier about the Attack action. "With this action" doesn't support anyone's position in this argument. If you get lettuce and tomato "with this burger," it comes on the burger as part of it. If you get fries and a drink "with this burger," they are separate items. I think it is a safe bet that when the 5e PHB was written, the Wizards were not really prepared for the kind of hyper-literal, super-gamist analysis those rules recieve. It probably never occurred to them at the time that guys like Max would insist, apparently in earnest, that a healthy druid would be turned to dust by nit-picking the rule syntax, or that people would get confused by simply taking an action with an associated bonus action which together give your character a certain total number of attacks, and taking those attacks in whatever order the player wants.

I think the most puzzling and amusing element of this whole long discussion is the assertion that burdening the simple execution of this action-bonus action combo with extra verisimilitude-smashing timing requirements based on a particular interpretation of the syntax of the trigger for that bonus action, in the context of another particular interpretation of the syntax of the action that forms that trigger, all of which contravene the confessed original intent of the writers of the language in question, somehow adds simplicity and ease of use to the game. That's like adding another page to your tax forms in order to make it faster to prepare your return.

I suppose there are some DMs who value the comfort of having a rigid system, no matter how gamist, for procedurally adjudicating each turn in an inflexible step-by-step manner. Hey, if that's what makes you happy, dude, follow your bliss.

 

[Maxperson]

Really? On page 98 of this thread you gave a rules example that works this way:-



Whether you (or I) like it or not doesn't alter the fact that many D&D rules do work that way!

Other examples include:-

* various abilities (orcs, barbarians, zombies, etc.) where if you get reduced to 0 hp, you have 1 hp instead

* druids being disintegrated, then reintegrated

* the shield spell triggering on actually being hit, and then changing that to not being hit

All these things seem like 'Schrodinger's Actions' or like time travel. But, crucially, only at the table, not in the game world!

Sure, at the table it seems like:-

* you attack a creature with deadly force, killing it, then decide you want to keep it alive, then go back in time to deliver a knockout blow instead

* an orc/barbarian/zombie gets killed, then heals(!)

* a wildshaped druid gets turned to dust and then the dust turns into a druid

* a javelin goes through a wizards head with enough force to kill him. He then casts a spell and time rewinds, and this time the javelin misses

But there is no time travel ret-con in the game world at all:-

* you knock out a foe, just like you meant to all along

* a blow that should kill an orc/barbarian/zombie fails to, because it is so darn tough!
* a wildshaped druids animal form takes enough damage to that form that he is forced back into human form, as is normal, but he was never actually disintegrated

* a wizard gets a javelin thrown at his head, but casts shield just in time!

So, with Shield Master and the "If you take the Attack action on your turn" condition, and take the bonus action shield shove first, at the table it might seem that you 'take the Action' and then go back in time to take the bonus action (although that is a flawed interpretation of that condition, which I'll analyse in my next post), but in the game world you do as you have been trained, which is to deliver a combination of weapon attacks and a shield shove, by using the shield to knock a foe off balance (depending on the result of an opposed roll) to give you advantage on the follow up attacks.

Nothing has gone wrong. There is no time travel malarky in the game world, only the game mechanics at the table which work this way, a way that is common in the 5e rules.

I'm not sure what you are trying to show here. This is a game where specific beats general, so yes, specific abilities and spells can override the general rules. There is no such time travel built into actions.

 

[Maxperson]

When you only have one attack, it is perfectly possible (though not mandatory) that your attack and your 'Attack action' to be literally one and the same thing.

But with Extra Attack, it is literally impossible to attack once, move into another room, then execute your second attack, and that both attacks are simultaneous!

So again, specific beats general. The Attack action and your first attack are simultaneous per RAW. That's what "with" means. When you get a specific ability that attaches itself to the general rule via extra attack, it gets tacked on AFTER that first attack and then you get duration and divisibility, but only divisibility after the first attack.

 

[Maxperson]

This example is wrong. The person had already taken that attack action he just hadn't finished.

This is objectively and provably false. The shove is by RAW a BONUS ACTION, not an ATTACK ACTION. You cannot take the bonus action and declare that it is the attack action. If you take the bonus action first as a shove and then cannot take the Attack action, you have cheated. You took a bonus action that you never got, because the trigger never happened.