Level Up (A5E) Need a clarification on devoted assault

[Odin11b]

So my dm and I are interpreting the rules differently regarding the Devoted Assault maneuver when you score a critical hit. When you crit you’re able to spend exertion to activate a Tempered Iron maneuver thats either an action or bonus action. Striding swings, stunning assault, and dispelling assault are the only maneuvers that use an action, all saying “When you activate this technique, you take the Attack action and make a weapon attack, as well as any additional attacks granted by Extra Attack.” plus their other effects

my interpretation- is that when you activate the maneuver after scoring the crit, you gain bonus attacks on top of the other effects the maneuver provides

my dm’s interpretation- is that you only gain the effects of the maneuver on the remaining attacks you have left.

so basically what Im asking is can Devoted assault generate extra attacks on a crit

 

[W'rkncacnter]

i would agree with your DM, since your interpretation is pretty broken, and perfect assault from unending wheel exists to give more attacks (which, i should note, is 5th degree instead of 4th, only lets you replace attacks with maneuvers that only let you make up to one attack, completely wipes your exertion pool, and gives you a level of fatigue).

 

[Stalker0]

i would agree with your DM, since your interpretation is pretty broken, and perfect assault from unending wheel exists to give more attacks (which, i should note, is 5th degree instead of 4th, only lets you replace attacks with maneuvers that only let you make up to one attack, completely wipes your exertion pool, and gives you a level of fatigue).

I will disagree myself. Looking at Devoted Assault, if you follow the maneuever step by step, there is no reason that each time you got a crit that you couldn't activate a maneuver that immediate gave you your attack actions worth of actions, as that is literally how those maneuvers work.

Now comparing it to Perfect Assault, a few things to consider:

• Perfect Assault just works, meanwhile Devoted Assault requires crits to get all the extra benefit. That is not to be underestimated, anytime a character can do a thing with no restrictions, its always very good.
• Perfect Assault drains your exertion, while using it all of that manuever exertion is "free". This means you can be down to 3 points of exertion, but use like 12 exertion of maneuvers if you go crazy.
• Perfect Assault can attack multiple creatures, Devoted Assault cannot. So if you go nuts and rip through someone on a high crit, well sorry bud you can't switch targets.

So in comparison, I do think Perfect Assault and Devoted Assault are reasonably balanced against each other for the rank difference. Having players with rank 3 maneuvers in my game, I can say the stuff you start to be able to do is pretty nuts, so I would expect Rank 4 to get each crazier.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Perfect Assault just works, meanwhile Devoted Assault requires crits to get all the extra benefit. That is not to be underestimated, anytime a character can do a thing with no restrictions, its always very good.

ok, but consider that devoted assault also gives you advantage on attack rolls, and that it's absolutely possible to get a crit range of 17-20 by the time you could get perfect assault (or sooner probably, but i haven't checked) - 2 attacks, advantage, and a crit range of 17-20 gives a 59% chance of critting at least once. a third attack bumps that up to 74%. and if devoted assault also gave you the additional attacks of whatever maneuver you used, we then have to ask if those attacks also allow you to use a tempered iron maneuver on a crit, and so on and so forth.

i will, however, give you the rest. this just, uh...seems kind of insane to me. maybe it'd work better in practice.

 

[Odin11b]

ok, but consider that devoted assault also gives you advantage on attack rolls, and that it's absolutely possible to get a crit range of 17-20 by the time you could get perfect assault (or sooner probably, but i haven't checked) - 2 attacks, advantage, and a crit range of 17-20 gives a 59% chance of critting at least once. a third attack bumps that up to 74%. and if devoted assault also gave you the additional attacks of whatever maneuver you used, we then have to ask if those attacks also allow you to use a tempered iron maneuver on a crit, and so on and so forth.

i will, however, give you the rest. this just, uh...seems kind of insane to me. maybe it'd work better in practice.

Idk it doesn’t seem to insane to me if you think about it. Let’s compare a level 12 fighter to a level 12 wizard which would be the soonest a fighter could get devoted assault. Fighters have to use maneuvers and weapons to increase their crit range, if they blow all their resources and crit every single time they could get anywhere from 9-21attacks depending on which maneuvers they chose to use (exertion 1- striding swings 2- dispelling assault 3- stunning assault) let’s say only half of those hits were to actually crit and using average damage that could be that’s anywhere from 80-200 damage while blowing all the fighters resources in one turn against one target. Now for the wizard we’ll say failed saving through would be equal to all the crits the fighter would have to get could with one spell using average damage deal 80 damage against on target in that same turn, also with just one spell being able to deal an average of 300 damage over the course of the spell to multiple targets (sun beam, and Ik fights don’t usually last a min)

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Idk it doesn’t seem to insane to me if you think about it. Let’s compare a level 12 fighter to a level 12 wizard which would be the soonest a fighter could get devoted assault. Fighters have to use maneuvers and weapons to increase their crit range, if they blow all their resources and crit every single time they could get anywhere from 9-21attacks depending on which maneuvers they chose to use (exertion 1- striding swings 2- dispelling assault 3- stunning assault) let’s say only half of those hits were to actually crit and using average damage that could be that’s anywhere from 80-200 damage while blowing all the fighters resources in one turn against one target. Now for the wizard we’ll say failed saving through would be equal to all the crits the fighter would have to get could with one spell using average damage deal 80 damage against on target in that same turn, also with just one spell being able to deal an average of 300 damage over the course of the spell to multiple targets (sun beam, and Ik fights don’t usually last a min)

80-200 damage in a single turn is not comparable to 300 damage over a minute (which is 30 damage a turn). also, 21 attacks is almost 300 damage anyway, and that's before we assume at least...wait a second, how did you get an upper limit of 21 attacks? i got an upper limit of 12 (which comes out to an average of 167 damage assuming a greatsword, +8 to hit, crit range of 17-20, and 22 strength [haha, stronghold go brr]). fair point about the multiple targets, though.

again, i wouldn't be surprised if this maneuver plays better then it sounds like it would.

 

[Odin11b]

So here’s the math a 12th fighter has 11 exertion and natural crit at 20, he uses devoted assault (3exertion) then uses dispelling assault (2exertion) leaving 6 exertion left and a crit range of 19-20 if you solely use striding swing (1 exertion) can crit every single time you’ll get 3 attacks from dispelling assault and 18 from the 6 uses of striding swings that comes to 21. for The sake of doing easy math to account misses and getting regular attacks I just cut that number in half and round down, so that leaves 10 critical hits to calculate damage, str of 20 for +5 damage and using a warhammer with the average of 5 for a total of 10 and since its a crit the damage is doubled for 20 making that total 200. You could do dispelling assault till you have a crit range of 17-20 but youd have to drop the number of attacks down and the max damage down.

 

[Stalker0]

So here’s the math a 12th fighter has 11 exertion and natural crit at 20, he uses devoted assault (3exertion) then uses dispelling assault (2exertion) leaving 6 exertion left and a crit range of 19-20 if you solely use striding swing (1 exertion) can crit every single time you’ll get 3 attacks from dispelling assault and 18 from the 6 uses of striding swings that comes to 21. for The sake of doing easy math to account misses and getting regular attacks I just cut that number in half and round down, so that leaves 10 critical hits to calculate damage, str of 20 for +5 damage and using a warhammer with the average of 5 for a total of 10 and since its a crit the damage is doubled for 20 making that total 200. You could do dispelling assault till you have a crit range of 17-20 but youd have to drop the number of attacks down and the max damage down.

I'm not following the "soley use striding swing can crit every single time".

There's nothing about striding swing that gives you some auto crit ability.

 

[Stalker0]

Now if you wanted to go with a middle ground interpretation, you could say that only the crits from the manuever itself can trigger the effect.

So if I have 3 attacks to start, only those 3 attacks criting can give me more maneuvers. The X other attacks I get from maneuvers, critical hit or not, won't trigger it.

I don't think this is technically correct based on the wording, but I do think its a reasonable interpretation if you think the ability is too powerful.

 

[Odin11b]

I'm not following the "soley use striding swing can crit every single time".

There's nothing about striding swing that gives you some auto crit ability.

Sorrry I wasn’t trying to say it had an auto crit. I was doing a what if situation where if you had crit with all the attacks

 

[Tessarael]

Extra Attack grants additional attacks when you take the attack action. You can only make the attack action once on your turn. Hence, you can only gain the benefit of Extra Attack once on your turn.

On a critical hit, Devoted Assault allows you to spend exertion to use a Tempered Iron maneuver against the creature, providing that it can be activated with an action or bonus action. I'd interpret this as allowing you to activate either: (1) Striding Swings to move 15', including "through the space of hostile creatures that are up to one size category larger than you, and the spaces of other creatures do not count as difficult terrain"; (2) Stunning Assault to force the creature to make a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of next turn, on the melee weapon attack that scored the critical hit and any remaining melee weapon attacks that you have left; or (3) Dispelling Assault to end a spell of 3rd level or lower on the creature on the critical hit, and on any remaining attacks that score a critical hit and the critical hit range for any remaining attacks is expanded to 19-20 as detailed in Dispelling Assault, or 17-20 if you have another feature that increases the range of your critical hits.

I.e., no additional attacks granted, but the benefits apply on the critical hit that you just scored, and on any remaining attacks per the wording in the Stunning Assault or Dispelling Assault maneuver.

 

[Deadmanshand]

Extra Attack grants additional attacks when you take the attack action. You can only make the attack action once on your turn. Hence, you can only gain the benefit of Extra Attack once on your turn.

On a critical hit, Devoted Assault allows you to spend exertion to use a Tempered Iron maneuver against the creature, providing that it can be activated with an action or bonus action. I'd interpret this as allowing you to activate either: (1) Striding Swings to move 15', including "through the space of hostile creatures that are up to one size category larger than you, and the spaces of other creatures do not count as difficult terrain"; (2) Stunning Assault to force the creature to make a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of next turn, on the melee weapon attack that scored the critical hit and any remaining melee weapon attacks that you have left; or (3) Dispelling Assault to end a spell of 3rd level or lower on the creature on the critical hit, and on any remaining attacks that score a critical hit and the critical hit range for any remaining attacks is expanded to 19-20 as detailed in Dispelling Assault, or 17-20 if you have another feature that increases the range of your critical hits.

I.e., no additional attacks granted, but the benefits apply on the critical hit that you just scored, and on any remaining attacks per the wording in the Stunning Assault or Dispelling Assault maneuver.

I have the same interpretation as Tessarael. I am sure a player might wish for more attacks, but I cannot see that reasoning here.

 

[SirKuroikage]

Extra Attack grants additional attacks when you take the attack action. You can only make the attack action once on your turn. Hence, you can only gain the benefit of Extra Attack once on your turn.

In the spirit of playing Devil's Advocate I have a few things to bring up.

Where does it mention that you can only take the attack action once a turn? In the actions in combat section I just found where it says "On your turn, you typically have an action, a bonus action, and your movement." I might of missed it or it might be in the book and I was using just the tools site.

The reason I bring that up though is because you might technically not be able to activate any of the attack options using Devoted Assault. In the combat maneuvers section it mentions "Using a combat maneuver requires spending one or more exertion points and either a bonus action, reaction, or action. Certain combat maneuvers require two or more attacks (from Extra Attacks or the use of other class features), and if you are unable to use the Attack action to make as many attacks on your turn as the combat maneuver requires, you cannot use that combat maneuver."

Striding Swings is probably fine to activate since it seems to mainly be talking about maneuvers with the prerequisite Extra Attack, but Stunning Assault and Dispelling Assault both have the extra attack prereq, so would those not be allowed to be used with Devoted Assault?

 

[Stalker0]

Extra Attack grants additional attacks when you take the attack action. You can only make the attack action once on your turn. Hence, you can only gain the benefit of Extra Attack once on your turn.

On a critical hit, Devoted Assault allows you to spend exertion to use a Tempered Iron maneuver against the creature, providing that it can be activated with an action or bonus action. I'd interpret this as allowing you to activate either: (1) Striding Swings to move 15', including "through the space of hostile creatures that are up to one size category larger than you, and the spaces of other creatures do not count as difficult terrain"; (2) Stunning Assault to force the creature to make a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of next turn, on the melee weapon attack that scored the critical hit and any remaining melee weapon attacks that you have left; or (3) Dispelling Assault to end a spell of 3rd level or lower on the creature on the critical hit, and on any remaining attacks that score a critical hit and the critical hit range for any remaining attacks is expanded to 19-20 as detailed in Dispelling Assault, or 17-20 if you have another feature that increases the range of your critical hits.

I.e., no additional attacks granted, but the benefits apply on the critical hit that you just scored, and on any remaining attacks per the wording in the Stunning Assault or Dispelling Assault maneuver.

Based on this interpretation, the standard 5e fighters “action surge” ability could not be used to double your attacks.

That ability works very similar to devoted assault, granting you an extra action, the fighter can in fact use that action as an “attack action” to get another full suite of attacks, even if they have already exhausted their normal suite.

This interpretation is widely accepted for the fighter.

So to me the mechanic here is clear. A maneuver that grants you another attack action gives you FULL access to that attack action, which is an attack+extra attack.

 

[Tessarael]

[..] In the combat maneuvers section it mentions "Using a combat maneuver requires spending one or more exertion points and either a bonus action, reaction, or action. Certain combat maneuvers require two or more attacks (from Extra Attacks or the use of other class features), and if you are unable to use the Attack action to make as many attacks on your turn as the combat maneuver requires, you cannot use that combat maneuver."

Striding Swings is probably fine to activate since it seems to mainly be talking about maneuvers with the prerequisite Extra Attack, but Stunning Assault and Dispelling Assault both have the extra attack prereq, so would those not be allowed to be used with Devoted Assault?

Extra Attack is a prerequisite to learn the Stunning Assault and Dispelling Assault maneuvers, but it doesn't define how those maneuvers work.

 

[Tessarael]

Based on this interpretation, the standard 5e fighters “action surge” ability could not be used to double your attacks.

Action Surge at 2nd level Fighter from 5E D&D grants one additional action on top of your regular action action and a possible bonus action. Action Surge doesn't exist as an ability in A5E. There are combat maneuvers in A5E that grant additional attacks, but you need to look at those A5E rules, not 5E D&D.

So to me the mechanic here is clear. A maneuver that grants you another attack action gives you FULL access to that attack action, which is an attack+extra attack.

I understand your interpretation. The problem in that interpretation with for example Devoted Assault is that it can grant a cascading set of additional attacks, which is clearly unbalanced:

• Max out the critical range to 17-20. Devoted Assault grants advantage on attacks (3 exertion points), so your chance of a critical is 36%.
• At 11th level Fighter with Extra Attack allowing 3 hits with the attack action, and two-weapon fighting for an extra two attacks, you have five attacks so there's only an 11% chance you do not get a critical hit; you have a 30% chance of one critical; 34% chance of two criticals; 19% chance of three criticals; 5% chance of four criticals, and 1% chance of five criticals. On average 1.8 criticals, from this first series of attacks.
• So let's assume you get two critical hits, particularly as you can get more criticals on the attacks that you're granting by further maneuvers that you activate by your ruling.
• I now activate say Dispelling Assault twice (4 exertion points), which by your ruling grants me 6 additional attacks.
• For 7 exertion points, I have attacked 11 times in total on a turn. This is completely broken compared to 5E D&D, even with action surge, where I would have gotten only 7 attacks (3 attacks + 3 attacks (action surge) + 1 attack from two-weapon fighting).
  • And it's worth noting that these attacks are with advantage, and with the benefit of dispelling or stunning once you get the first critical to activate Dispelling Assault or Stunning Assault.

There's no way this should be allowed from a game-balance point-of-view.

 

[lichmaster]

Certain combat maneuvers require two or more attacks (from Extra Attacks or the use of other class features), and if you are unable to use the Attack action to make as many attacks on your turn as the combat maneuver requires, you cannot use that combat maneuver."

That part is a leftover from a playtest version of the game, and no longer an official rule, since no combat maneuver requires a certain number of attacks to activate anymore. Instead, in their description it is specified if you can only perform one attack or more

 

[lichmaster]

I think additional attacks should not be allowed.
Otherwise, if an Adept with the Warrior Monk archetype were to benefit from additional attacks, due to the fact that each crit would both allow him to spend exertion to activate new maneuvers (and get the additonal attacks) and to the fact that with each crit he regains 1/2 of his proficiency in exertion, he could potentially have an unlimited number of attacks fueled by an unlimited recovery in exertion.

Also: part of the re-design philosophy of A5E was to remove some cheesing with Action Surge. This reading of the Devoted Assault maneuver seems to go way beyond the Action Surge cheesing.

 

[SirKuroikage]

That part is a leftover from a playtest version of the game, and no longer an official rule, since no combat maneuver requires a certain number of attacks to activate anymore. Instead, in their description it is specified if you can only perform one attack or more

Thank you for clarifying, that was the main point I wanted to bring up since it specified that without being able to make the attacks you couldn't use the maneuver, and Devoted Assault says you can use a maneuver when you use it. Without that line I think the only other rules on using maneuvers that I saw was that it requires expending exertion points.

Personally it seems that RAW you would include the extra attacks, because Devoted Assault says use and the base rules (unless it is also leftover from playtest) mentions use for the entirety of the maneuver, not just the non-attack portions of them. However I do think RAI it is probably not supposed to allow for as much cheese as has been discovered.

 

[Stalker0]

Action Surge at 2nd level Fighter from 5E D&D grants one additional action on top of your regular action action and a possible bonus action. Action Surge doesn't exist as an ability in A5E. There are combat maneuvers in A5E that grant additional attacks, but you need to look at those A5E rules, not 5E D&D.

I understand your interpretation. The problem in that interpretation with for example Devoted Assault is that it can grant a cascading set of additional attacks, which is clearly unbalanced:

• Max out the critical range to 17-20. Devoted Assault grants advantage on attacks (3 exertion points), so your chance of a critical is 36%.
• At 11th level Fighter with Extra Attack allowing 3 hits with the attack action, and two-weapon fighting for an extra two attacks, you have five attacks so there's only an 11% chance you do not get a critical hit; you have a 30% chance of one critical; 34% chance of two criticals; 19% chance of three criticals; 5% chance of four criticals, and 1% chance of five criticals. On average 1.8 criticals, from this first series of attacks.
• So let's assume you get two critical hits, particularly as you can get more criticals on the attacks that you're granting by further maneuvers that you activate by your ruling.
• I now activate say Dispelling Assault twice (4 exertion points), which by your ruling grants me 6 additional attacks.
• For 7 exertion points, I have attacked 11 times in total on a turn. This is completely broken compared to 5E D&D, even with action surge, where I would have gotten only 7 attacks (3 attacks + 3 attacks (action surge) + 1 attack from two-weapon fighting).
  • And it's worth noting that these attacks are with advantage, and with the benefit of dispelling or stunning once you get the first critical to activate Dispelling Assault or Stunning Assault.

There's no way this should be allowed from a game-balance point-of-view.

And I can respect that concern. I do think though that our first note should be to answer the OPs question, by the book how does the maneuver work?

Literal reading of the rules, it would seem to give that full suite of attacks, and I can’t find any rules passages that you could use to interpret differently. When you get to use a maneuver that acts as an attack action…then you get that full suite of attacks. There is no “half attack” where you only get a portion of your full allotment of attacks.

Now we can shift the argument to “is this a balanced maneuver as written?” Compared to action surge, i would generally agree this is more powerful. It is limited in that you have to crit (so it can fail), and you can only attack 1 target…but I think the raw power is clearly greater.

Now it could be argued this is working as intended, the maneuvers are partly designed to let martials compete better with higher level spells. Is mowing down a single enemy superior to a banishment let’s say, probably debatable.

Is the maneuver clearly better than other rank 4s? I’d have to think about that, my group has rank 3 experience but not rank 4 yet.