Official D&D Sage Advice Compendium Updated

Arial Black · Feb 7, 2019

Yunru said:
Relevance to being official ended at [Insert date of latest compendium]

I watched the whole thing. At no point did he discuss the relationship between 'taking a bonus action whenever you like, once you have one!' and Extra Attack.

Discussing Shield Master, he said that you don't have the bonus action shield shove until you've actually attacked using the Attack action, because 'taking the Attack action' IS making an attack using that action.

He said it's the same thing. There is no 'declare actions, then execute actions' in 5e like there used to be in 1e and 2e. 'Taking the Action' IS 'doing the thing that the Action allows', so the game itself treats 'executing the things allowed by the Action you took' to be one and the same thing as 'taking an Action'.

Except....Dash (you take the Action and nothing happens; you can just move further. You don't have to have used up your normal move before you are allowed to take the Dash action), Disengage (you don't have to immediately move out of a foes reach as soon as you take this Action. You can take the Disengage action and then attack, draw another weapon, attack again, then move out of a foe's reach), Dodge (you take the Dodge action and...nothing happens...for the rest of your turn...and maybe not at all. The only thing that might happen is that if you are attacked-probably not on your own turn-then the attack roll is made with disadvantage. The Dodge does not happen at the same time you 'take the Dodge action! To design it to work that way, it would be a Reaction, not an Action).

And, with Extra Attack, you can attack once as the very first thing you do, move your move divided up as you wish, and attack a second time six seconds later. Are we seriously saying that you literally cannot do anything between those attacks except move? Can't you use your free object interaction to draw another weapon? Can't you drop something? Can't you take a bonus action, even though the rules actually do say that you can take bonus actions whenever you like on your turn, and do not say that 'actions are indivisible'?

How come JC didn't mention this in the video? How come he didn't mention either the indivisibility of actions or anything about having to complete ALL of your attacks before the shield shove?

Perhaps he was in line at Trader Joe's when he suggested the 'indivisible action' thing...!

Oofta · Feb 7, 2019

Arial Black said:
That's the point though: there is no 'general rule' that actions are indivisible!

If there is, let us know which page of which book states this rule so we can see it for ourselves.

I have Extra Attack and the Shield Master feat. It's my turn. I announce that I am 'taking the Attack action' and execute an attack against an adjacent orc, killing it.

Have I 'taken the Attack action' or not?

If I have, then I have generated a bonus action shield shove, and can now take it at any time from now until the end of my turn, either before or after my extra attack.

If I have not, then I'll take the Cast a Spell action to cast ensnaring strike, because I have not used my action yet (you just said so!) and that orc died for free.

Which is it?

My answer? If you've declared that you are attacking, you've qualified for anything triggered by the attack action.

Saying that you may not be able to complete the attack action (as in the stream linked to) is silly IMHO. You get multiple attacks with the attack action, but what happens if you can only do the first attack and can't take any more for some reason? Is the action complete? Does that mean your first attack is null and void and didn't really happen? Just goofy logic I don't want to deal with.

As far as how JC would rule you'd have to ask him.

5ekyu · Feb 8, 2019

Arial Black said:
That's the point though: there is no 'general rule' that actions are indivisible!

If there is, let us know which page of which book states this rule so we can see it for ourselves.

I have Extra Attack and the Shield Master feat. It's my turn. I announce that I am 'taking the Attack action' and execute an attack against an adjacent orc, killing it.

Have I 'taken the Attack action' or not?

If I have, then I have generated a bonus action shield shove, and can now take it at any time from now until the end of my turn, either before or after my extra attack.

If I have not, then I'll take the Cast a Spell action to cast ensnaring strike, because I have not used my action yet (you just said so!) and that orc died for free.

Which is it?

If you made an attack, you have to have done do by taking some form of act - action, bonus sction, reaction - because in 5e there are no non-action attacks (off the top of my head, may be monster thing but iirc not PC.)

Setting aside bonus actions and reaction, the attack action says "With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack. " It then goes on about multiple attacks etc.

So, if you make an attack that isnt a bonus action or reaction you are taking the attack action, but that one attack does not necessarily finish your attack action.

At my table, especially since there is no "I intend to..." as soon as you make that first attack of your "allowed extra attacks" your shield master bonus shove is ready for business.

But, until you took that attack, the shield master bonus shove was not an option.

Arial Black · Feb 8, 2019

5ekyu said:
If you made an attack, you have to have done do by taking some form of act - action, bonus sction, reaction - because in 5e there are no non-action attacks (off the top of my head, may be monster thing but iirc not PC.)

Setting aside bonus actions and reaction, the attack action says "With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack. " It then goes on about multiple attacks etc.

So, if you make an attack that isnt a bonus action or reaction you are taking the attack action, but that one attack does not necessarily finish your attack action.

At my table, especially since there is no "I intend to..." as soon as you make that first attack of your "allowed extra attacks" your shield master bonus shove is ready for business.

But, until you took that attack, the shield master bonus shove was not an option.

So you agree that as soon as you execute the first of your two attacks of your Attack action that you have generated the bonus action shield shove and can take it any time you want, even before you execute your second attack?

Yunru · Feb 8, 2019

The first step of making an attack is chosing a target. Therefore you can Shield Bash as soon as you say "I attack X", if you want to rule declaring you take the action as insufficient.

S'mon · Feb 8, 2019

If the damage from disintegrate reduces a half-orc to 0 hit points, can Relentless Endurance prevent the orc from turning to ash? Yes. The disintegrate spell turns you into dust only if the spell’s damage leaves you with 0 hit points. If you’re a half-orc, Relentless Endurance can turn the 0 into a 1 before the spell can disintegrate you.

What happens if a druid using Wild Shape is reduced to 0 hit points by disintegrate? Does the druid simply leave beast form? The druid leaves beast form. As usual, any leftover damage then applies to the druid’s normal hit points. If the leftover damage leaves the druid with 0 hit points, the druid is disintegrated.

This seems to be ignoring the plain wording of the Disintegrate spell in order to be nice to the PCs. Which is ok as a house rule, but I'm not going to use it. Magic should be scary IMO at least occasionally, and Disintegrate as written is one of very few 5e spells that can still scare PCs.

S'mon · Feb 8, 2019

Ristamar said:
"...anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action."

PHB, page 189

You can't expect the writer of Sage Advice to actually read the PHB! However Stinking Cloud doesn't actually prevent Actions, it says "You spend your Action Retching & Reeling", so bonus could still apply I think.

S'mon · Feb 8, 2019

Charlaquin said:
I’m just saying, this isn’t unique to disintegrate. Literally no one can one-shot half-orcs, unless they’ve already used their relentless endurance for the day.

It says "and does not kill you outright" - the writing & intent is very clear that it stops the half orc dropping to Dying, it is not an immunity to outight death. So the Sage is talking out his hat on this.

5ekyu · Feb 8, 2019

Arial Black said:
So you agree that as soon as you execute the first of your two attacks of your Attack action that you have generated the bonus action shield shove and can take it any time you want, even before you execute your second attack?

At my table, yes. I have said so multiple times already in this thread.

If they wanted indivisible actions to be a thing, they had both an errata and a compendium to add it and chose not to.

Imo that says something.

"With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack. "

Seems clear right. You "make" an attack. Not "promise" an attsck. Not "hope" to attack. Not "wish to at some point" attack. Not "order and attack from Amazon Prime with free two-day shipping."

Abilities like the monk have state "immediately" after, but extra attsck does not.

So, only with the indivisible action ruling that precedes errata, compendium and even the 2-1-19 podcast could i conjure the notion of has to finish all attacks first for SM.

I was never on board with the bonus bring pre-attzck however for SM.

Li Shenron · Feb 8, 2019

Arial Black said:
Discussing Shield Master, he said that you don't have the bonus action shield shove until you've actually attacked using the Attack action, because 'taking the Attack action' IS making an attack using that action.

I think he was pretty clear, and he also explained that part of the reason is related to not gaining the benefits of the shove already on those attacks of yours.

Arial Black said:
Except....Dash (you take the Action and nothing happens; you can just move further. You don't have to have used up your normal move before you are allowed to take the Dash action), Disengage (you don't have to immediately move out of a foes reach as soon as you take this Action. You can take the Disengage action and then attack, draw another weapon, attack again, then move out of a foe's reach), Dodge (you take the Dodge action and...nothing happens...for the rest of your turn...and maybe not at all. The only thing that might happen is that if you are attacked-probably not on your own turn-then the attack roll is made with disadvantage.

I have always been aware of the fact that those 3 are defined as "Actions" for the sake of making it clear what is their cost. In a most basic turn (i.e. without considering bonus actions or Action Surge or similar) you simply have to give up your main activity (attacking or casting) if you want to move double distance, avoid OA, or get a defensive bonus.

Had they designed Dash to immediately grant an extra move, you'd have to use it immediately, or maybe it would have required a bunch more boring wordy explanations, because "move" isn't an action per se in 5e. Instead with the current design, everything that is already explained about moving is still valid (including splitting up the movement distance), you just increase the maximum distance for this turn.

What is good about this design, is that players can choose to Dash/Disengage/Dodge at any time during their turn, if they still have an Action to use. So the PC might have already done something else, and then realize they need some extra movement/defense or they may incur in an OA.

A different design option would have been to have some "fight defensively" or "move carefully" condition that applies to the whole turn. Or they could have more strongely defined a move as a "move action". These were kind of things used in 3ed, and they worked fine in the context of that edition's philosophy, but Crawford makes it clear that 5e has a different philosophy and such extra rules artifacts would have gotten in the way of it.

Arial Black said:
And, with Extra Attack, you can attack once as the very first thing you do, move your move divided up as you wish, and attack a second time six seconds later. Are we seriously saying that you literally cannot do anything between those attacks except move? Can't you use your free object interaction to draw another weapon? Can't you drop something? Can't you take a bonus action, even though the rules actually do say that you can take bonus actions whenever you like on your turn, and do not say that 'actions are indivisible'?

Well you can use your free object interaction since that is done during your action or movement. OTOH I tend towards saying you can't take a bonus action between those attacks (but I don't think it would be a big deal to allow that) at least if the bonus action is itself one of those with "timing".

But more generally, I think we have to keep in mind that this is a game and not a 'model' or 'simulation' of reality, and that (like it or not) means that there is more at stakes than just realism and balance (usually the 2 paramount targets in all rules discussions). Crawford mentions several times during the interview how important it was for WotC designers to design certain things to work in such a way that doesn't bog the game down, even if that means to sacrifice a bit of realism or balance. It just means that the game WILL sometimes fail a reality-check or a balance-check, because they decided it's less important than having other flaws.

Official D&D Sage Advice Compendium Updated

Arial Black

Adventurer

Oofta

Legend

5ekyu

Hero

Arial Black

Adventurer

Yunru

Banned

S'mon

Legend

S'mon

Legend

S'mon

Legend

5ekyu

Hero

Li Shenron

Legend

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