Level Up (A5E) Need a clarification on devoted assault

[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.