Official D&D Sage Advice Compendium Updated

Maxperson · Mar 10, 2019

Arial Black said:
If you take the bonus action shield shove before you take the Attack action, then because you only have the shield shove because you get it when you take the Attack action, then at the very same moment you took that shield shove then you also took the Attack action; it's just that you are resolving the shove first.

This is a house rule. There is nothing in RAW that even hints at the ability to declare a bonus action an attack action, or that a bonus action somehow triggers the attack action. They are two completely separate types of actions. It's also bass ackwards. You get the bonus action FROM the attack action. You do not get the attack action FROM the bonus action as you are describing above.

Ovinomancer · Mar 10, 2019

epithet said:
I don't think arguments about what language the rules would include support your side of the argument. We have, in the example of the War Magic feat and the history of Crawford's statements thereupon, clear and unequivocal proof that the same language and construction used in the Shield Master bonus action was intended to enable the use of a bonus action before or after the action upon which its use was conditioned. The fact that Crawford later changed his mind does not change the original intention that his published Sage Advice article revealed. At the time that these rules were written and the Player's Handbook was published, the language in question was not intended to impose a timing requirement.

I am puzzled and somewhat amused by the rigid mindset some folks seem to have about D&D. This whole issue of timing has never been a problem for me, even after getting into the semantic minutia on this topic. If the Attack Action happens "on your turn" you get to choose when to take the bonus shove "during your turn." The first thing just has to happen on your turn, while the second happens at a point of your choosing within that turn. It's as simple as it can be. Your turn is 6 seconds long, with a very limited range and number of individual activities you can do, so this cannot be very complicated.

You know that you can start with a shove, whether that attack comes from the Attack action or from a bonus action. The shove is exactly the same in resolution and effect regardless of how the attack is granted. Is it really so terribly mind-bending to determine which of the two formal game constructions, neither of which have an impact on the objective "reality" of the game's fictional world, granted that attack until after the dice are rolled? Is concurrent resolution of an action and a bonus action really such a heavy lift? Reading posts from Max, it sounds like every turn of every combat in his game is handled like an aircraft pre-flight safety checklist. I don't think that's the best way to play D&D, but hey... that's just, like, my opinion, man.

Also, I'll repeat what I said earlier about the Attack action. "With this action" doesn't support anyone's position in this argument. If you get lettuce and tomato "with this burger," it comes on the burger as part of it. If you get fries and a drink "with this burger," they are separate items. I think it is a safe bet that when the 5e PHB was written, the Wizards were not really prepared for the kind of hyper-literal, super-gamist analysis those rules recieve. It probably never occurred to them at the time that guys like Max would insist, apparently in earnest, that a healthy druid would be turned to dust by nit-picking the rule syntax, or that people would get confused by simply taking an action with an associated bonus action which together give your character a certain total number of attacks, and taking those attacks in whatever order the player wants.

I think the most puzzling and amusing element of this whole long discussion is the assertion that burdening the simple execution of this action-bonus action combo with extra verisimilitude-smashing timing requirements based on a particular interpretation of the syntax of the trigger for that bonus action, in the context of another particular interpretation of the syntax of the action that forms that trigger, all of which contravene the confessed original intent of the writers of the language in question, somehow adds simplicity and ease of use to the game. That's like adding another page to your tax forms in order to make it faster to prepare your return.

I suppose there are some DMs who value the comfort of having a rigid system, no matter how gamist, for procedurally adjudicating each turn in an inflexible step-by-step manner. Hey, if that's what makes you happy, dude, follow your bliss.

We actually have conflicting statements about both RAW and RAI, you've just selected one and assigned import to it. It's a weird mix of appealing to authority while also doing a bit of special pleading because you're claiming what JC says is authoritative, but only selectively. It's not persuasive unless you already agree.

It's also why I haven't referred to Sage Advice for any of my arguments.

epithet · Mar 10, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
We actually have conflicting statements about both RAW and RAI, you've just selected one and assigned import to it. It's a weird mix of appealing to authority while also doing a bit of special pleading because you're claiming what JC says is authoritative, but only selectively. It's not persuasive unless you already agree.

It's also why I haven't referred to Sage Advice for any of my arguments.

With regard to the War Magic feature, the intention was stated in Sage Advice first, then the Advice was changed to reflect the new policy on timing. I’m sorry that it seemed like an appeal to authority, because I expressly and emphatically reject the notion that there is any authority over the rules other than the DM. I raised the issue of the stated intent only to refute the assertion that if the rules were meant to accommodate a triggered bonus action that did not have a timing requirement, they would have been written differently.

Ovinomancer · Mar 10, 2019

epithet said:
With regard to the War Magic feature, the intention was stated in Sage Advice first, then the Advice was changed to reflect the new policy on timing. I’m sorry that it seemed like an appeal to authority, because I expressly and emphatically reject the notion that there is any authority over the rules other than the DM. I raised the issue of the stated intent only to refute the assertion that if the rules were meant to accommodate a triggered bonus action that did not have a timing requirement, they would have been written differently.

If you reject any authority, why have your last few posts been so emphatic on knowing what RAI was from the earlier SA tweet? That seems incongruous, at best. Even making RAI claims are an appeal to authority because you're pointing out what was intended by the designers.

Now, I'm not a fallacy nazi, expecting to win because I know the name of an informal fallacy. But it does seem very odd that you keep pointing out the earlier tweet as definitive, despite the later tweet being accompanied by a clear thought process and an omission of error. You can claim SA as a useful authority for RAI (and it most certainly is), but you can't then disavow later corrections as not-authorative.

It's even odder now that you say you don't think SA is authoritative at all. I mean, you're murdering your own arguments, here.

Whatever, it's really no big. Nothing really breaks if you do SM either way. Go for it. It doesn't really matter. I've houseruled it, so I'm clearly not hung up on my way of playing being validated by RAW. Why are you?

epithet · Mar 10, 2019

Maxperson said:
This is objectively and provably false. The shove is by RAW a BONUS ACTION, not an ATTACK ACTION. You cannot take the bonus action and declare that it is the attack action. If you take the bonus action first as a shove and then cannot take the Attack action, you have cheated. You took a bonus action that you never got, because the trigger never happened.

You do know that you can shove as an attack granted by the Attack action, right?

Just checking.

Yardiff · Mar 10, 2019

I'm changing how Bonus Action is looked at.

A bonus action is a BONUS to your actions taken on your turn.

Think about it.

epithet · Mar 10, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
If you reject any authority, why have your last few posts been so emphatic on knowing what RAI was from the earlier SA tweet? That seems incongruous, at best. Even making RAI claims are an appeal to authority because you're pointing out what was intended by the designers.

Now, I'm not a fallacy nazi, expecting to win because I know the name of an informal fallacy. But it does seem very odd that you keep pointing out the earlier tweet as definitive, despite the later tweet being accompanied by a clear thought process and an omission of error. You can claim SA as a useful authority for RAI (and it most certainly is), but you can't then disavow later corrections as not-authorative.

It's even odder now that you say you don't think SA is authoritative at all. I mean, you're murdering your own arguments, here.

Whatever, it's really no big. Nothing really breaks if you do SM either way. Go for it. It doesn't really matter. I've houseruled it, so I'm clearly not hung up on my way of playing being validated by RAW. Why are you?

Again, I am not urging SA in support of any ruling on Shield Master. Nor am I making any reference to the “drunk at Trader Joe’s” tweet on Shield Master. I am referring specifically to the published Sage Advice on the War Magic feature of the eldrich knight, which uses a similar conditional. At no point did Crawford withdraw, retract, or change his statement of the intent of the feature, although he did change his Advice to reflect his new position on the existence of a timing requirement for triggered bonus actions.

That said, I do think earlier expressions of intent are more credible than years-later “corrections.”

Like you, I used a house rule to render the point moot in my game. I suspect I’m debating the issue here for the same reason that you are: I enjoy it.

Maxperson · Mar 10, 2019

epithet said:
You do know that you can shove as an attack granted by the Attack action, right?

Just checking.

What do apples have to do with oranges? We're discussing the bonus action granted by the Attack action via Shield Master. If you were not talking about using Shield Master at all, and are just using one of your attacks to shove, why are you even here in this discussion?

Maxperson · Mar 10, 2019

Yardiff said:
I'm changing how Bonus Action is looked at.

A bonus action is a BONUS to your actions taken on your turn.

Think about it.

Bonus actions are not a bonus to your action, though. It's an additional action on your turns as a bonus. That's why they can be used separately and are not generally tied to being used as a part of your action. Even Shield Master's bonus shove can be used after your Attack action is complete and you have moved again.

Asgorath · Mar 10, 2019

epithet said:
Again, I am not urging SA in support of any ruling on Shield Master. Nor am I making any reference to the “drunk at Trader Joe’s” tweet on Shield Master. I am referring specifically to the published Sage Advice on the War Magic feature of the eldrich knight, which uses a similar conditional. At no point did Crawford withdraw, retract, or change his statement of the intent of the feature, although he did change his Advice to reflect his new position on the existence of a timing requirement for triggered bonus actions.

That said, I do think earlier expressions of intent are more credible than years-later “corrections.”

Like you, I used a house rule to render the point moot in my game. I suspect I’m debating the issue here for the same reason that you are: I enjoy it.

So the problem is that the latest SAC doesn’t use the word “intent” in either the War Magic or Shield Master answers?

Official D&D Sage Advice Compendium Updated

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus

Ovinomancer

No flips for you!

epithet

Explorer

Ovinomancer

No flips for you!

epithet

Explorer

Yardiff

Adventurer

epithet

Explorer

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus

Asgorath

Explorer

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