D&D 5E [GUIDE] My Word Is My Sword: The Paladin Guide

[Gladius Legis]

The Sage Advice ruling bumps Shield Master back to blue, at least.

 

[FrogReaver]

The Sage Advice ruling bumps Shield Master back to blue, at least.

So there is now a new sage advice ruling on shield master?

 

[Yunru]

So there is now a new sage advice ruling on shield master?

Now there's an offical ruling on shield master (as opposed to the "can be, but isn't always" that is twitter).

 

[Gladius Legis]

So there is now a new sage advice ruling on shield master?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?656742-Sage-Advice-Compendium-Update-1-30-2019

Specifically:

The Shield Master feat lets you shove someone as a bonus action if you take the Attack action. Can you take that bonus action before the Attack action? No. The bonus action provided by the Shield Master feat has a precondition: that you take the Attack action on your turn. Intending to take that action isn’t sufficient; you must actually take it before you can take the bonus action. During your turn, you do get to decide when to take the bonus action after you’ve taken the Attack action. This sort of if-then setup appears in many of the game’s rules. The "if" must be satisfied before the "then" comes into play.

This ruling suggests pretty strongly that once you've committed to taking the Attack action (i.e. by making the first attack of it), you can shove any time before your remaining attacks.

 

[FrogReaver]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?656742-Sage-Advice-Compendium-Update-1-30-2019

Specifically:

The Shield Master feat lets you shove someone as a bonus action if you take the Attack action. Can you take that bonus action before the Attack action? No. The bonus action provided by the Shield Master feat has a precondition: that you take the Attack action on your turn. Intending to take that action isn’t sufficient; you must actually take it before you can take the bonus action. During your turn, you do get to decide when to take the bonus action after you’ve taken the Attack action. This sort of if-then setup appears in many of the game’s rules. The "if" must be satisfied before the "then" comes into play.

This ruling suggests pretty strongly that once you've committed to taking the Attack action (i.e. by making the first attack of it), you can shove any time before your remaining attacks.

It leaves a little more wiggle room but it’s also consistent with the Twitter ruling of finish the attack action first. As such I’d say the Twitter way still stands as the most official.

If something in this sage advice contradicted the Twitter take I would ignore the Twitter ruling but it doesn’t do imo both the sage advice and Twitter advice should be take As consistent with each other IMO. At least as far as official rulings go.

 

[Nephilm X]

Yeah, it does nothing to change how it currently works: you take the Attack action, which you have to finish before taking a Bonus Action.

 

[Yunru]

Yeah, it does nothing to change how it currently works: you take the Attack action, which you have to finish before taking a Bonus Action.

SMH.

 

[Blue]

Yeah, it does nothing to change how it currently works: you take the Attack action, which you have to finish before taking a Bonus Action.

Not quite. There's nothing in the new ruling that points to having to finish it.

So it seems as long as it's started - e.g. you make take your first attack - you can then use the bonus action. Actions are definitely allowed to be interleaved - you can take your move around and in between attack,s you can take a reaction in the middle of an action, etc.

I'm not saying this is ironclad. Just that it seems as long as the action has been taken - which is different from the action being completed - it satisfies the current ruling.

 

[FrogReaver]

Not quite. There's nothing in the new ruling that points to having to finish it.

So it seems as long as it's started - e.g. you make take your first attack - you can then use the bonus action. Actions are definitely allowed to be interleaved - you can take your move around and in between attack,s you can take a reaction in the middle of an action, etc.

I'm not saying this is ironclad. Just that it seems as long as the action has been taken - which is different from the action being completed - it satisfies the current ruling.

I think the most official ruling would be the one that assumes both statements are true until they say something that shows the attack action actually doesn't have to be completed.

 

[Gladius Legis]

I think the most official ruling would be the one that assumes both statements are true until they say something that shows the attack action actually doesn't have to be completed.

There's also this part:

[NEW] Official Rulings
Official rulings on how to interpret rules are made here in the Sage Advice Compendium by the game’s lead rules designer, Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford on Twitter). The public statements of the D&D team, or anyone else at Wizards of the Coast, are not official rulings; they are advice. Jeremy Crawford’s tweets are often a preview of rulings that will appear here.

The Sage Advice is a little (OK a lot) more vague than I would've liked, but the official ruling, as Blue said, does seem to allow for shield shoving after one attack only, whereas Crawford's old tweet that is now officially not official clearly didn't.