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.

 

[JohnLynch]

Yes, Sorry, I meant gain the Damage and the extra AC by both not having a weapon and having a weapon at the same time.

So let's see what the worst combination is:
* One handed Melee weapon: 1d8+mod (assume +3)
* Duelist Fighting Style: +2 damage
* Dual Wielding feat: +1 AC (assume base AC of 14)

You have AC 15 and deal 1d8+5 damage + 3 points of damage on a second attack (this is a very lax interpretation IMO and you should expect DM variance) for a total of 12.5 damage.

Alternatively:
* One handed Melee weapon in primary hand: 1d8+mod (assume +3)
* Light weapon in off-hand: 1d8
* Two-Weapon Fighting Style: +mod damage for offhand attacks (assume +3)
* Dual Wielding feat: +1 AC (assume base AC of 14)

You have AC 15 and deal 1d8+3 damage +1d8+3 damage on a second attack (expect no DM variance) for a total of 15 damage.

Assuming you go champion fighter you could get a second fighting style for +mod damage. This nets you a +0.5 damage over what the two-weapon fighter will get and your offhand weapon doesn't get a bonus on a critical hit. The TWFer can get +1 AC with that same opportunity cost.

You can dual wield two shortswords, but then you don't have a free hand for casting spells.

Are there any builds that would be able to abuse this to such a degree that we must treat unarmed strikes as not-weapons?

 

[garnuk]

I've gotta run.. feel free to look through here:

http://rpg.stackexchange.com/search?q=unarmed+weapon+[dnd-5e]

 

[Minigiant]

I don't get how using Dex on a non-finesse weapon is more confusing then making melee attacks with a weapon that isn't a weapon.

A monk-rogue is not going to be able to use sneak attack because unarmed strikes aren't finesse weapons. why aren't unarmed strikes weapons? Because we have 3 editions of "screw you unarmed strike" worth of tradition to uphold.

seriously. Unarmed strikes deal 1 point of damage unless you take a feat, then you get to deal d4 damage. This is as bad as a dagger but it costs you a feat to make it that bad.

The only cogent argument seems to be the schroedinger's empty hand issue. Except taking a fighting style that gives you your offhand damage to your bonus attack would almost always be better.

I'm sure an optimiser could find some really weird edge case that makes unarmed strikes as good as a short sword or maybe (with enough investment) a one handed Longsword. But I'm sure they could find a lot of stuff that's equally broken but doesn't require we contort ourselves into a pretzel to try to disallow.

Feats. It's feats and a lesser extent multiclassing. Although optional, many will use them. Once Unarmed strikes are weapon, there's a bunch of rules layering, power gaming junk a DM has to deal with.

Rather that explain and write down every corner case, it's easier and lazier and cheaper to silo it of.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

If you're looking for practical advise to use at the table as a DM you'd arguably be better off asking other DMs on a forum like this one. Official rulings tend to err on the side of either caution or intent (and intent isn't always the greatest way a rule can be implemented at any given table). If you're a player or play organised play then you need to rely on official rulings (or convince your non-OP DM to make a ruling on their own).

I prefer playing the game as intended and not like other DMs think what's best.

That being said, I usually only asks questions to Sage Advice when I'm not completely satisfied with what other DMs are doing and want to prove them that it's not as intended.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Why is the game adding this "complexity"?

Because other people keep asking for clarifications.

Don't blame Jeremy for answering these people's questions... blame those other people who staunchly refused to do what WotC told them to do when it came to 5E... making rulings not rules.

If those people had done that... and NOT tried to get Jeremy to reveal what they meant by the way they wrote their rules... we wouldn't have received any Sage Advice and we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place.

And on top of that... you can also go ahead and blame yourselves for your own aggravation, because you *also* are disregarding 5E's "rulings not rules" mantra by reading these articles and then believing you actually have to USE all this Sage Advice in the first place.

You don't. You never had to. 5E told all of us to make our own rulings if there was any question or concern. So do that! After all... if you just forced yourself to never read these articles (or even just *pretended* that you never read these articles), you'd never have known this so-called "complexity" now existed, and thus you would have made your own ruling in whatever format you chose to do and wouldn't get all upset about it now.

Hell, that's what I do. I personally think the Assassin not being able to use his assassination ability in the surprise round if his initiative roll is later than the person he was assassinating (who didn't even know the attack was coming but yet somehow has a Spider Sense that allows him to act faster and no longer be surprised by it) is a fundamentally flawed idea. So I don't give a rat's ass what Sage Advice says... I made my own ruling on it.

And I do that for everything. Because the entire book is Ruled As Intended. MY intention. What I think the rules should be. What makes sense to ME. And screw everybody else and what they believe.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Why is the game adding this "complexity"?

Because other people keep asking for clarifications.

Don't blame Jeremy for answering these people's questions... blame those other people who staunchly refused to do what WotC told them to do when it came to 5E... making rulings not rules.

If those people had done that... and NOT tried to get Jeremy to reveal what they meant by the way they wrote their rules... we wouldn't have received any Sage Advice and we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place.

And on top of that... you can also go ahead and blame yourselves for your own aggravation, because you *also* are disregarding 5E's "rulings not rules" mantra by reading these articles and then believing you actually have to USE all this Sage Advice in the first place.

You don't. You never had to. 5E told all of us to make our own rulings if there was any question or concern. So do that! After all... if you just forced yourself to never read these articles (or even just *pretended* that you never read these articles), you'd never have known this so-called "complexity" now existed, and thus you would have made your own ruling in whatever format you chose to do and wouldn't get all upset about it now.

Hell, that's what I do. I personally think the Assassin not being able to use his assassination ability in the surprise round if his initiative roll is later than the person he was assassinating (who didn't even know the attack was coming but yet somehow has a Spider Sense that allows him to act faster and no longer be surprised by it) is a fundamentally flawed idea. So I don't give a rat's ass what Sage Advice says... I made my own ruling on it.

And I do that for everything. Because the entire book is Ruled As Intended. MY intention. What I think the rules should be. What makes sense to ME. And screw everybody else and what they believe.

Thanks! I didn't know I was doing it wrong until now.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Thanks! I didn't know I was doing it wrong until now.

See! You're doing it again! You're treating my words as Rules As Written! Stop doing that! You'll be much happier!

 

[ChrisCarlson]

That's the only way for the spell expeditious retreat to make you actually move faster.

AFAIC, that's a problem with the spell, not dash. An arcane trickster gets no benefit from it (something that's bothered me since the PHB was released).

 

[CapnZapp]

AFAIC, that's a problem with the spell, not dash. An arcane trickster gets no benefit from it (something that's bothered me since the PHB was released).

No, I did not mean to single out the spell. Read my post as: "it's how the spell expeditious retreat and related effects work"

That you can't stack two effects that both allow you to take an (extra) dash action as a bonus action is just how the game was intended to work.

You need to blame the decision to execute all these "extra movement" features as using the bonus action, but frankly I don't see a problem. It's just another case of this edition preventing stacking cheese by sticking it on the oh-so-versatile-but-you-ever-only-get-one bonus action.

As I see it, you can't blame any single source of this "bonus dash" for the others not stacking with it. Putting the blame on the spell is to me wonky. In isolation, the spell is perfectly fine.

Had the Arcane Trickster been given a spell list of its own, I would have agreed adding Expeditious Retreat to that list would have been a mistake. But as things stand, I perfectly understand why WotC didn't bother saying "you get the Wizard Spell List, but not this particular spell that you won't be using"

 

[GobiWon]

The problem is we need a word that fills in "Melee [natural or manufactured item that is not a spell or magical effect] Attack"

I propose melee non-spell attack or mundane melee attack