Sage Advice Compendium Update 1/30/2019

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
As the examples of 'time-travel'-like rules show, seeming to time travel at the gaming table is not an issue at all! What matters is that no time travel occurs in the game world.

Actions, bonus actions, reactions, the Attack action, the Dash action, 6-second turns....all these are things the player does; the game mechanics at the gaming table.

But in the game world? There are no such things as 'bonus actions', or any other perception of the 5e game mechanics in play. The creatures in the game can have no idea that they are merely our avatars in a game.

In the game world, there are no such things as 'the Attack action' or 'bonus action shove'. No, in the game world there are just attacks, shoves, ripostes, shield bashes...

There are no 6-second turns in the game world. No 'indivisible Extra Attack actions', just a series of attacks and shield bashes. The world doesn't care in what order those two sword slashes and shield shove occurs in terms of where the shield shove is 'allowed' to be.

Mechanically, when you hit with an attack, you hit also your opponent in the game world and deal your damage. When the target THEN casts Shield in the game world, that hit has to be rewound and turned retroactively into a miss. That's time travel. This hit has already occurred in the game world and is being unwound through time so that it never happens.

And, really, neither do the game mechanics. All the game mechanics require is that those attacks and that shield shove occur on the same turn.

Except the mechanics do care. Since there is no mechanical ability to declare an Attack action, the only way to mechanically know if an Attack action is taken during your turn, is to actually take it. That means that there is no mechanical way to trigger the bonus shove prior to taking the Attack action. The mechanics as written don't care if the shove comes after the first attack or later attacks, though. It can't come before, though, as the Attack action doesn't begin until you are taking your first attack.
 

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Asgorath

Explorer
IF the Attack action does not begin until you hit step 1 of your first attack, then it would perforce also be true that the bonus action shield shove does not begin until you hit step 1 of the shield bash.

But since they can be simultaneous (because "statements of causality require the antecedent to precede or coincide with the consequent in time") then neither begins until you hit step 1.

Fortunately, the rules provide for this possibility: if two things occur simultaneously, the acting creature chooses the order in which those things are resolved.

I’m not familiar with that rule, can you list the PHB text or provide a reference to it?
 

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
IF the Attack action does not begin until you hit step 1 of your first attack, then it would perforce also be true that the bonus action shield shove does not begin until you hit step 1 of the shield bash.

What do you mean?

What I am saying is that since the Attack action doesn't start until step 1 of the first attack(whether it's a swing, shove or other action that an attack can be), you have already begun the attack by targeting your opponent, which moves you on to step 2, and then step 3. That portion is not divisible. You cannot target your attack, then stop and do something else, then pick the attack back up.

But since they can be simultaneous (because "statements of causality require the antecedent to precede or coincide with the consequent in time") then neither begins until you hit step 1.

Fortunately, the rules provide for this possibility: if two things occur simultaneously, the acting creature chooses the order in which those things are resolved.

There is nothing happening simultaneously. You are resolving the attack that started in step one, triggering the bonus action after that attack concludes, and then using the bonus action at some point during your turn after it triggers.
 

Arial Black

Adventurer
Ah, I see where you've gone off the rails. Okay, let's get a bit technical.

Technically, a material conditional is an if, then statement that does not imply causality. They're related truth statements of the form "if X is true, then Y is also true." The examples in the wiki article you reference (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality) is:



As you can see, these examples show that conditionals are just related truth statements. In the first, the X being true means that Y is also true, despite the fact that X has nothing to do with Y. This statement just associates truth values. The problem with this is shown in the second example, where X is not true, so it diesn't matter what Y is. Y can be anything, a true statement or false one, because there is only a trivial relationship between X and Y.

Applying the above to Shield Master and taking the if X, Y statement as a material conditional, I know that if it is true that I take the Attack action on my turn, it is also true that I may shove as a bonus action. There's a few problems with this. Firstly, if I don't take the Attack action on my turn, then I don't know if I can shove as a bonus action. X being true means Y is also true, but X being NOT true means I have no statement about the truth of Y. Secondly, all that conditional says is that If X is true at any time, then Y is also true. I can take the Attack action once, on a once or future turn, and the conditional is true -- I can shove as a bonus action any turn I want. Neither of these make any sense for game rules, so it's pretty clear it's not a material conditional but a causal statement.

We don't just have to rely on the above analysis to determine the Shield Master if X, Y is causal -- the rules tell us it is. We have the rule that bonus actions do not exist unless given by a game element. That's a causal relationship, not a related truth statement. And, since it is causal, X must precede or coincide with Y (refer to above Wiki article).

I've so far avoided the argument that, in normative English, "if, then" statements are almost always causal statements. It's only when you're in certain branches of formal logic that they aren't. I saved this for last because it's a weaker argument. Nevertheless, since the game rules are written in normative English, it's another point against reading "if, then" as a material conditional.

This is a really long way to say that you believe that this situation is, in fact, a straight statement of causality! ;)

Fair enough. In that case, because "statements of causality require the antecedent to precede or coincide with the consequent in time", and because you generate the bonus action shield shove at the same time as you "take the Attack action on your turn", and because you can take a bonus action you have anytime you like on your turn, you can take the bonus action at the same time as you take the action which grants it.

Then, doing two simultaneous things on your turn, they must be resolved one-at-a-time, and since the acting creature chooses the order in which they are resolved, it can choose to resolve the shield shove first.
 

Hriston

Dungeon Master of Middle-earth
Can you show me where it says you can just shove a creature on the list of valid actions in the "Actions in Combat" section of the Combat chapter of the PHB? That section provides the rules for what you can do on your turn, I've read it a bunch of times and I haven't seen anything that says you can just shove someone. The rules do quite clearly say that you start your turn with movement and an action, and that a valid choice for an action would be the Attack action, and you can make a special melee attack to shove someone. Can you show me where it says you get to defer the decision about how you did something until the end of your turn?

Just shoving a creature and nothing else? That would be the Attack action. The intended benefit of the Shield Master feat is that you can shove a creature AND take the Attack action. Depriving a shield master player of that benefit based on an overly literalistic interpretation of the rules would seem to go against that intent. Maybe you can show me what rule dictates that a player must state as part of his/her action-declaration what part of the action economy s/he is using.
 

Arial Black

Adventurer
This isn't what's claimed. What's claimed is tgat actions do what they say they do. Some has an effect with a soecified duration, some have a thing or things you do. It's you that is insisting that an action that has an effect with a duration also has that duration. This isn't true. Cast a Spell is an action that always results in an effect with a duration, but we aren't talking about how Cast a Spell lasts until it's effects are over. Why do you do this for Disengage?

I take the Disengage action, I get the effect listed for the duration listed. That action is now done, even if the effect persists. You surely don't argue that an attack that causes and ongoing condition also continues as long as the condition does, do you?

Yeah, Maxperson is right on this one; this is silly.

It is silly to imagine that you dodge/dash/disengage for an instant but you are not dodging/dashing/disengaging at the moments when your PC is actually doing those things!

Meanwhile, you do not apply that same 'logic' to the Action which allows you to execute multiple attacks!

Yeah, I know the term 'special pleading'. Just because I know it doesn't automatically invalidate the case. You are treating the Attack action differently than the others with no justification.
 

Arial Black

Adventurer
Nope, the Disengage Action does not last until you finish moving, the effect created by the Disengage Action does.

Not by the logic of "the Attack action IS the attack(s)"! By that logic, the Disengage action IS disengaging, the Dodge action IS dodging, the Dash action IS dashing.

And if Dash/Dodge/Disengage are NOT dashing/dodging/disengaging, there is no justification in claiming otherwise for the Attack action.
 

Asgorath

Explorer
Not by the logic of "the Attack action IS the attack(s)"! By that logic, the Disengage action IS disengaging, the Dodge action IS dodging, the Dash action IS dashing.

And if Dash/Dodge/Disengage are NOT dashing/dodging/disengaging, there is no justification in claiming otherwise for the Attack action.

Please read my long post from earlier today, these are not general rules that apply to all actions. Each action is a self-contained rule, everything you need for each action is in the text of the action itself. Disengage has no bearing on how the Attack action works.
 

Ovinomancer

No flips for you!
This is a really long way to say that you believe that this situation is, in fact, a straight statement of causality! ;)
I tried really hard to make it a bit less than half as long as your post it was answering, but, okay.

Fair enough. In that case, because "statements of causality require the antecedent to precede or coincide with the consequent in time", and because you generate the bonus action shield shove at the same time as you "take the Attack action on your turn", and because you can take a bonus action you have anytime you like on your turn, you can take the bonus action at the same time as you take the action which grants it.

Then, doing two simultaneous things on your turn, they must be resolved one-at-a-time, and since the acting creature chooses the order in which they are resolved, it can choose to resolve the shield shove first.

Nope, sorry, you can't go "simultaneous!" and then not, you know, do it simultaneously. You're admitting the flaw in your argument, here, that simultaneity doesn't exist in the 5e ruleset -- we have no way to resolve simultaneous actions. Your proposal that it's simultaneous is unsupported by the rules and your presented method of resolving these unsupported events is similarly unsupported. It's a nice theory, though, just lacking in any evidence in the rules.

On the other hand, if I say that you have to take the Attack actions before you get the bonus action shove, I can point to the rules that support this reading, start to finish. I just read what it says on the tin for each and do that. No simultaneity introduced, no baggage, just the text. Try it, it's quite liberating, because then you fully understand how the rules work and can change them in just the right ways to avoid potholes and achieve your design goals. Like I did, when I removed the If part of Shield Master.
 

Hriston

Dungeon Master of Middle-earth
You do need a rule to change it. Why? Because there is no ability to declare actions in any way that has any mechanical meaning whatsoever. It simply does not exist by RAW. If the player tells you, "I am going to take an attack action n my turn," that statement is 100% informal and cannot trigger anything mechanical at all.

This is a little hard to follow because in my parlance declaring actions is the entirety of what a player does in this game. How else is a player supposed to interact with the game-world than by declaring what it is their character does (his/her actions)? I can accept that you have an idiosyncratic definition of what it is to declare an action, but the example you give doesn’t seem like much of an action-declaration at all. It seems more like what one player might say to another when planning out his/her turn. Stated as an action-declaration, this would go something like, “I strike the kobold with my mace.” I think you’d agree that this type of statement has all kinds of mechanical implications.

The only way to know for the purposes of triggering the shove whether or not an Attack action is going to be taken, is to take it. Until then, because you cannot mechanically declare that you will be taking one, the trigger cannot happen.

Right, that’s why I wait until the Attack action has been taken before I say the shove-attempt was done using a bonus action.
 

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