November's SAGE ADVICE Is Here!

November's Sage Advice column by WotC's Jeremy Crawford is up. This month deals with lightfoot halfing and wood elf hiding racial traits, some class features, backgrounds (you can have only one!), muticlassing, surprise rounds in combat, and more. Check out this month's Sage Advice here. The advice here has been added to the Sage Advice Compendium.

 

[Flamestrike]

The unarmed damage of a monk scales so it's obvious why they would not want it to stack with sneak attack. The ruling seems to make sense to me.

The monk/ rogue just picks up a shortsword and gets both his MA dice and sneak attack.

The ruling that I find irritating is about the Dash action. Rogue's dashing as a bonus action is to replicate the fantasy trope of throwing objects in your pursuer's path (creating difficult terrain to slow them down) or ducking into an alley to hide. As soon as you can dash twice all that becomes irrelevant since you can outrun anybody. It sucks the fun and imagination out of the cunning action. The problem gets even worse when you stack on racial, feat, and class additional movement, which you can now triple every round whether darting in or out of combat. It gets as cheesy as hell.

Rogues runnning away faster than anyone else barring the monk is cheesy?

We play different games man.

When you dash you move your speed (again). Rogues have always been able to move + (use action to dash and move again) + cunning action (bonus action to dash and move speed again).

Rogues can move 90' per round if they do nothing else (using all their movement, thier action to move another 30' and their bonus action to move another 30'). Running 90' in six seconds is far from cheesy. Thats a 20 second 100 yard dash which is hardly even a fast jog. Fighters can move this fast for a single round with action surge. Monks also (uses Ki, but they can eventually move much faster via increases to base speed).

All a wizard has to do is cast expeditious retreat.

How is it cheesy?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Read the MM. Claws, slams, tentacles, bites, rakes etc are also melee attacks and melee weapon attacks, but not weapons.
<snip>
See the difference?

I am not arguing that there is a failure of an actual distinction to be made; nor that there is a failure of the mechanics--though there are still flaws with your argument (see below).

I'm arguing that the terminology is confusing as hell due to basic logic. People expect properties to be transitive unless there's a good reason for them not to be. (A+B) + C = A + (B+C). If something is a "melee attack," and also a "melee weapon attack," then applying Natural Language and intuitive logic, it should be a weapon. But it is not: it has property 1 (melee attack), which is described "A," and property 2 (melee weapon attack), which is described as "A+B," but does not have property 3 (weapon), which is described "B." This unexpected failure of transitivity is confusing until carefully explained. Thus, either the term "melee weapon attack," or the decision to make unarmed strikes (and similar "natural offensive" things) not weapons, is a mistake for terms of comprehension.

Unless you can somehow demonstrate that people shouldn't intuitively expect such transitivity to hold, I don't see how you can get around this issue of "it's a melee attack, and a melee weapon attack, but not a weapon."

Personally, I would argue that the term should be melee physical attack, as opposed to a melee magical attack: physical attacks being those which are not the result of manifested magical forces, but rather through a part of a creature's body or an item (such as a weapon) held, thrown, or loosed by part of a creature's body. If a spell causes a physical object to come into existence, then any such spell will specify whether the attack is magical or physical in nature. So flame blade, which summons magical energy in a space essentially "as though" it were a weapon but is not actually a physical object, would use a melee magical attack.

---

You argue that these things are not weapons, but alter self allows for the addition of natural weapons...which specifically affect your "unarmed strike." So now we have a clear-cut example of something that is even called a "weapon," yet it is still improving unarmed strike damage--and the description of the spell specifically refers to "claws, fangs, spines, horns, or a different natural weapon of your choice," which includes things you yourself referred to as not being "weapons."

Unless we're now taking the even more nonsensical tack that "natural weapons" are not "weapons."

 

[Flamestrike]

You argue that these things are not weapons, but alter self allows for the addition of natural weapons...which specifically affect your "unarmed strike." So now we have a clear-cut example of something that is even called a "weapon," yet it is still improving unarmed strike damage--and the description of the spell specifically refers to "claws, fangs, spines, horns, or a different natural weapon of your choice," which includes things you yourself referred to as not being "weapons."

Unless we're now taking the even more nonsensical tack that "natural weapons" are not "weapons."

It doesnt say alter self creates a 'weapon' - it creates a 'natural weapon' which is not the same thing as a weapon (and it wasnt the same thing in 3.5 either, with attacks with natural weapons following different rules to attacks with manufactured weapons):

Natural Weapons: You grow claws, fangs, spines, horns, or a different natural weapon of your choice. Your unarmed strikes deal 1d6 bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, as appropriate to the natural weapon you chose, and you are proficient with your unarmed strikes. Finally, the natural weapon is magic and you have a +1 bonus to the attack and damage rolls you make using it.

The effect of the spell is clear. You get a +1 to hit and damage with your unarmed strike, it deals bludgeoning, slashing or piercing damage, is treated as magical and is a 'melee weapon atack'. Your unarmed strike is still not a 'weapon' as defined in DnD terms (so you cant TWF with it for example, and the +2 for dueling doesnt apply).

A 'weapon' in DnD is defined as an [object] designed to be used as a weapon (or an object used as one in an improvised manner).

Fists, teeth, claws, headbuts, kicks, slams, slaps, fangs, tails, eyegouges, knees, elbows, tentacles, hooves etc are not 'weapons'. They're parts of creatures.

Also, an 'unarmed strike' is not an object, a tool, or a weapon - its an action. Its not a noun, its a verb. 'Unarmed strike' is as much a 'weapon' as is 'slashing flurry', 'stabbing thrust' or 'dazing slap'.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Also, an 'unarmed strike' is not an object, a tool, or a weapon - its an action. Its not a noun, its a verb. 'Unarmed strike' is as much a 'weapon' as is 'slashing flurry', 'stabbing thrust' or 'dazing slap'.

Having no further interest in debating this--because you have, exactly as I said, bit the bullet about "natural weapons are not weapons"--I have only this one last bit to comment on: Every single one of the things you've just cited is a noun. Each is modified by an adjective ("-ing" in English can only create adjectives or nouns aka gerunds), rather than an adverb (which typically ends in "-ly.") "Flurry" is almost exclusively used as a noun ("a flurry of x," be it snow, papers, blows, etc.) Both of the other two are nouns which refer to an event, because they can't be conjugated, except in the extremely loose and informal way that allows nouns or even entire noun-phrases to be conjugated as if they were verbs ("I fireballed the owlbear," "She Second Winds at the first sign of trouble." "I TL;DR'd that grammar rant.")

Or, to think of it another way: I have never seen anyone use the phrase "I unarmed(ly) struck it!", "I strike unarmed!" or even "When unarmed striking..." It's always, "I used unarmed strike," "I make an unarmed strike," possibly "I take an unarmed strike," or something similar (though I'll grant that my direct-in-play experience is rare, discussions in forums are quite common). If, in the usage, it is never conjugated, but always made the object of some helper verb (like "use" or "make"), then it is best understood as a noun. An unarmed strike is a noun in exactly the same way that "a walk," "a dip," or "a nap" are nouns, even though the only possible sense they can have is as activities, events, which are "things" in a temporal sense. So instead of being structured as, "I will nap," "I'm walking," "I dipped," we use a helper verb to indicate that a particular event is, was, or will be happening: "I'm taking a nap," "She's gone out for a walk," "He took a dip in the cold lake."

So, no. It is, almost without exception, referred to with an article (an unarmed strike), it does not conjugate, and it is modified by an adjective (unarmed) rather than an adverb (unarmedly(?)). It is a noun.

 

[Herobizkit]

An Unarmed strike, when employed by a Monk, is a melee attack action that functions exactly as a finesse (by allowing the Monk to use Str or Dex) weapon (a crafted tool used to inflict damage upon a target) but is itself not a finesse weapon (and thus cannot be enchanted or subjected to effects that apply to weapons).

At a certain level, her Unarmed strike can harm creatures who can only be hit by magic weapons, but her Unarmed strike is classified as neither magic (in terms of being enchanted) nor as a weapon (in terms of being tools used to smash heads).

So a monk is actually punching you with neither a weapon nor magic... so, it must be with... Ki? ^_^

 

[Leugren]

Kind of. But let's try this again. I say "I shoot my bow". The DM calls for initiative. I roll badly. I still need to shoot my bow? I don't realize I don't have a good shot?

I assume I can otherwise act with an understanding of the initiative order (for example I might use a power to move an ally because I know the bad guy is going to act before the ally does). Why not here?

I'd argue that anything which leads to discussions like this is sub-optimal. I think the best way to go is to handle the attack as what triggers the initiative roll. Nothing else really makes sense. And no, I don't play an assassin--I play a fighter in one game and DM another (with an assassin PC).

What you say makes perfect sense. A DM who doesn't like it could easily shut it down by making all initiative rolls (including yours) behind the screen in cases like this without telling anyone the results. In this way, you'd have no way of knowing whether your assassination attempt succeeded until after you start to roll for damage.

 

[Minigiant]

Natural weapons are natural body parts designed as weapons.
Unarmed strike are natural body parts not designed as weapons uses as weapons. They aren't weapons.

Based on the UA minotaur rules for its horns, I believe natural weapons count as weapons if designed as a weapon. This seems like a case by case basis. A Minotaur's horns are weapons. The aar... bird people's claws are not weapons but are Unarmed strikes.

 

[Inglorin]

Kind of. But let's try this again. I say "I shoot my bow". The DM calls for initiative. I roll badly. I still need to shoot my bow? I don't realize I don't have a good shot?

No, of course not. It is your decision to shoot or not to shoot.

Just know, that the victim is now aware that there is something foul going on. He heared your bowstring, he saw a glint .... whatever. He is no longer suprised but "in combat" now. You may very well retreat (being stealthy as you are) and try again later, tomorrow or next week, but not in this fight.

In combat everything happens at once. It is just the needed abstraction of the combat round, that lets us think that the things happen in a particular order. Sometimes this seems to be important. As with the slow assassine. Nonetheless, it is your decision to not shoot if you are behind in initiative order. No one can take that away from you (at my table).

 

[JohnLynch]

Having no further interest in debating this--because you have, exactly as I said, bit the bullet about "natural weapons are not weapons"--I have only this one last bit to comment on: Every single one of the things you've just cited is a noun. Each is modified by an adjective ("-ing" in English can only create adjectives or nouns aka gerunds), rather than an adverb (which typically ends in "-ly.") "Flurry" is almost exclusively used as a noun ("a flurry of x," be it snow, papers, blows, etc.) Both of the other two are nouns which refer to an event, because they can't be conjugated, except in the extremely loose and informal way that allows nouns or even entire noun-phrases to be conjugated as if they were verbs ("I fireballed the owlbear," "She Second Winds at the first sign of trouble." "I TL;DR'd that grammar rant.")

Or, to think of it another way: I have never seen anyone use the phrase "I unarmed(ly) struck it!", "I strike unarmed!" or even "When unarmed striking..." It's always, "I used unarmed strike," "I make an unarmed strike," possibly "I take an unarmed strike," or something similar (though I'll grant that my direct-in-play experience is rare, discussions in forums are quite common). If, in the usage, it is never conjugated, but always made the object of some helper verb (like "use" or "make"), then it is best understood as a noun. An unarmed strike is a noun in exactly the same way that "a walk," "a dip," or "a nap" are nouns, even though the only possible sense they can have is as activities, events, which are "things" in a temporal sense. So instead of being structured as, "I will nap," "I'm walking," "I dipped," we use a helper verb to indicate that a particular event is, was, or will be happening: "I'm taking a nap," "She's gone out for a walk," "He took a dip in the cold lake."

So, no. It is, almost without exception, referred to with an article (an unarmed strike), it does not conjugate, and it is modified by an adjective (unarmed) rather than an adverb (unarmedly(?)). It is a noun.

If you need to analyse the English language to this degree to ensure no-one is confused by unarmed strikes not being a weapon, chances are there's something wonky going on. Barring a compelling reason, I don't see the benefit in forcing people to have to go to such an in-depth analysis and would instead say melee weapon attacks are in fact weapons. See how much easier that is?

The whole surprise attack rules also seem equally perplexing, but there is a (supposed, I haven't seen anyone math it out) balance reason there so I would say that is a compelling reason. Unarmed strikes seem to be lacking that compelling reason.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

What, then, were you talking about?

As you can see from the complete "sub-thread" you'll forgive me for thinking "double dashes" was news to you and that you then realized this makes the spell useless to rogues since they already have the exact same ability.

Or, in other words, stacking issues.

What "problem with the spell" are you having if it isn't related to how it is implemented or its interaction with Cunning Action?

It's not a stacking issue to use a single ability to dash as a bonus action since you need no feature/ability to use your standard action to dash a second time. I don't know where you are getting "stacking" from at all.

And I didn't bring up expeditious retreat, as you clearly show with your multi-quote recap. You did.

All I originally said was that I found it interesting that the intent was for dash to be usable repeatedly in a turn. Regardless of source. That it leads to crazy high speeds in some cases. That's all.