Sage Advice Compendium Update 1/30/2019

[Maxperson]

Do you know what "official rulings" means? It means that whatever is in the Sage Advice Compendium supersedes any advice offered on Twitter. That's it. That's the only significance--the SAC should be taken as the definitive recommendation, as opposed to "public statements of the D&D team." It does NOT mean that the Sage Advice is elevated to the level of rules, or that Jeremy's suggested ruling applies to anyone's game. It is still nothing but a suggestion, and if you follow the Sage Advice in your game, it is YOUR ruling, because the only one who can make a ruling in your game is YOU (assuming you are the DM.) Jeremy cannot rule on your game, that's not how it works.

If a DM makes a different ruling on a published rule than what Jeremy suggests in his advice, that is not a house rule. A house rule only happens when a DM implements a new rule, or strikes a published rule from his game. As an example, the statement that "if x, you can y does not impose a timing requirement and therefore the bonus action y can be executed whenever the player chooses during his character's turn" is a ruling on applying the published rule. By contrast, the statement that "the Shield Master shove doesn't require the Attack action in my game" is a house rule, because it is changing the rules of the game, not interpreting them.

That's not true. The official rulings are now game rules. From the Sage Advice link.

"We gather your D&D rules questions and occasionally provide official answers to them in the Sage Advice Compendium. As we headed into 2019, I went through the compendium and updated it to reflect the current state of the game’s rules. This update resulted in some old answers being cut, others being revised, and a few being added."

There you have it. His Sage Advice rulings reflect the current state of the game's rules. It takes a house rule to change them.

 

[Asgorath]

I just think that the first advice on a given rule is probably the one closest to what was intended when the rule was written. In the case of Shield Master, the War Magic feature has similar language and a clear statement of intent that agrees with that first advice, so it certainly seems that that was, at the time, the way the thing was meant to work.

Okay, fair enough. There is a pretty big difference between the two features though, because I'm not aware of any mechanical advantage from doing a weapon attack before casting a cantrip, while there is absolutely a mechanical advantage (quite literally) to shoving someone prone before all your attacks. The original design intent for War Magic may have been that the order doesn't matter, even if the words in the PHB suggest an ordering to me, and that may have been why JEC specifically called out the intent for that particular feature. It's probably also why the latest SAC answer makes it clear that the ordering for War Magic really just doesn't matter, even if you can end up in a situation where you've taken the bonus action attack and never actually cast the cantrip.

And the end of the day, I believe JEC when he says that he got it wrong, because the new ruling makes a lot more sense to me and is consistent with my understanding of the rest of the combat mechanics. I'm glad he's willing to admit it when he made a mistake, it makes me trust the whole SAC process more (even though I may not apply every official ruling at my table).

 

[epithet]

That's not true. The official rulings are now game rules. From the Sage Advice link.

"We gather your D&D rules questions and occasionally provide official answers to them in the Sage Advice Compendium. As we headed into 2019, I went through the compendium and updated it to reflect the current state of the game’s rules. This update resulted in some old answers being cut, others being revised, and a few being added."

There you have it. His Sage Advice rulings reflect the current state of the game's rules. It takes a house rule to change them.

Come on, Max. He updated the Advice to reflect some things (like disintegrate vs wild shape) that had been changed in errata. Reflecting the current rules doesn't make it the current rules.

Here's another hint that the Advice isn't rules: you (the DM) can change the rules for your game. You can't change Jeremy's Sage Advice. Regardless of what your rulings are, Jeremy's Advice is his, regardless of what any of us think about it. I can house rule any change to the PHB, but the SAC isn't mine to change.

 

[epithet]

...
And the end of the day, I believe JEC when he says that he got it wrong, because the new ruling makes a lot more sense to me and is consistent with my understanding of the rest of the combat mechanics. I'm glad he's willing to admit it when he made a mistake, it makes me trust the whole SAC process more (even though I may not apply every official ruling at my table).

It's certainly courageous. The easy thing to do would have been to double down on his previous statement, but he took a brave step in contradicting himself. Some agree with his new position, meaning they think he was wrong before. Others thing he was right before, and disagree with his new Advice. Everyone thinks he is or was wrong at some point. Admitting your own fallibility is laudable.

 

[DND_Reborn]

No, I really haven't house-ruled this.

You know, I had a nice long post on this, and I am deleting it. This simply isn't worth my time and effort. At some point in the future, with all the stuff people have debated about this feat, I am positive it will be in the errata and then settled. Until then, I can wait and do things more worth my while.

I'm sorry, but I think your interpretation is nonsensical. Anyone who looks at a conditional statement and tries to apply the consequence before the condition clearly has a misguided view of the English language. Not to say that reversing it, like with the other feat, would break anything, but who knows?

I'm sure you all will add another 20 pages in no time. Enjoy.

 

[DND_Reborn]

(deleted)

 

[Maxperson]

Come on, Max. He updated the Advice to reflect some things (like disintegrate vs wild shape) that had been changed in errata. Reflecting the current rules doesn't make it the current rules.

Here's another hint that the Advice isn't rules: you (the DM) can change the rules for your game. You can't change Jeremy's Sage Advice. Regardless of what your rulings are, Jeremy's Advice is his, regardless of what any of us think about it. I can house rule any change to the PHB, but the SAC isn't mine to change.

It's no more or less advice than any other rule in the book. All the books are entirely advice from cover to cover. And here's the thing. He's the lead designer for the company that owns the game. If he says the Sage Advice Compendium consists of rules, then they are rules whether you like or not, or agree with it or not. He's the one that gets to decide that. Not you.

Personally, I'm not going to be giving the Sage Advice Compendium more weight than I would give any other rule in the books, which is to say that they are very easily mutable into what I and my players desire for the game. And yes, I can in fact change his Sage Advice just as easily as I would any other rule. He made them rules, so they are now mine to change.

 

[5ekyu]

Come on, Max. He updated the Advice to reflect some things (like disintegrate vs wild shape) that had been changed in errata. Reflecting the current rules doesn't make it the current rules.

Here's another hint that the Advice isn't rules: you (the DM) can change the rules for your game. You can't change Jeremy's Sage Advice. Regardless of what your rulings are, Jeremy's Advice is his, regardless of what any of us think about it. I can house rule any change to the PHB, but the SAC isn't mine to change.

What?

I can as GM decide to change how a tuleceorks or if I use it for my game. That doesn't ever change them in the book or anyone else game.

I can do the same as that with Sage Advice rulings. It doesn't change that SAC doc or what JEC or anyone else does.

So, in both cases, I cannot change the source but I can change what I use and how it works in my gsme.

But, if somehow you see house rules actually changing sources, nothing more to say.

 

[CapnZapp]

The thread that refuses to die. I'm all for a good old rules discussion, but this subject? Since it has absolutely zero actual game impact and since Crawford is best ignored completely, I am absolutely fascinated THIS is the subject you choose for your WWI-style trench warfare. Cheers

 

[Hriston]

https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/557816721810403329

"As with most bonus actions, you choose the timing, so the Shield Master shove can come before or after the Attack action"

So you're claiming that this is a statement of the original intent, and not a mistaken ruling made without referencing the actual text of the PHB?

I've already talked about this up-thread, and @epithet has beat me to it this time around, but I'll give it another go and see if you can understand my position this time. This tweet makes no mention of intent. My claim with respect to this tweet is that it's an interpretation of the RAW that is in accordance with the RAI for the timing of bonus actions with conditions as expressed in the original ruling on the Eldritch Knight's War Magic feature that was made in July, 2015. As far as Jeremy's story about not referencing the text, what part of the PHB that wasn't already paraphrased in the question to which he was responding do you think would have caused him to make a different ruling?

And that it's impossible for JEC to have forgotten about aspects of the rules and saw someone asking about bonus actions and so answered with the general rule for bonus actions which is "You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn" without really thinking about the finer details?

What aspect of the rules do you think Jeremy Crawford forgot? Both question and answer refer to the Attack action and the timing of the bonus action. Also, the fact that Jeremy's response agrees with what he said was the intent in another tweet six months later indicates that, in this case, he was ruling in accordance with what he believed was the intent at that time, and what he still believed as late as June, 2016 when his statement of intent was expanded and included in a Sage Advice article. So my conclusion is that this isn't something that happened while he was away from his books during one drunken evening in-line at Trader Joe's. It's a period of nearly a year-and-a-half during which he is documented as ruling consistently on the timing of bonus actions with conditions in accordance with his stated intent.

I guess I just don't really follow how this particular tweet does show the design intent, while none of the dozens or hundreds of other tweets he's made about Shield Master do. This doesn't read like a statement of intent, in particular one where there's a clear distinction between RAW and RAI, it just reads like all his other rulings.

That's because that's what it is. It's a ruling on the RAW of the shield master shove's timing. The tweet that shows the design intent behind bonus actions with conditions is this one:

Does the "when" in war magic mean the bonus attack comes after you cast the cantrip, or can get it come before? The intent is that the bonus attack can come before or after the cantrip.​

Here are some other instances from the SAC that specifically talk about intent:





Can you explain why you think the 2015 tweet on Shield Master is the one true source of intent?

No, because I don't think that. What I think is the source for the RAI for the timing of bonus actions with conditions is the July 6, 2015 tweet on the Eldritch Knight's War Magic feature in which he said what the intent of that feature was. When he says what the intent is of some element of the game, as he does in that and the other tweets you linked, it indicates an acknowledgement that the text is ambiguous but that, when it was written, the designers had a particular interpretation in mind.