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Message: <blockquote data-quote="epithet" data-source="post: 7773158" data-attributes="member: 6796566">I think for me there are a few assertions that are just very difficult to leave unchallenged. For example, you continue to insist that Crawford's new interpretation of the feat is "as it was designed," when nothing of the sort has been established. Yes, Crawford is very clear indeed about his current intent for the feat, but he's never said that it was originally written to be a so-called "finishing move," just that he interprets it to be so now. I think the fact that the "official ruling" was originally and for a couple of years that you could take the shove bonus action whenever you want is a strong indicator that the original concept was to have the shove be a set-up for your attacks. The idea that the feat would be written to require the shove to happen at the time when it would be least useful to the person who took the feat is patently ridiculous, in my opinion, and Crawford's reference to it as a "finishing move" has caused me to lose a measure of respect for his published opinions generally.Another assertion that is galling is the insistence that since Crawford has published an interpretation of the "If you ... you can" language to impose a timing requirement, that it must therefore be the case that this language unambiguously has a timing requirement and that, in fact, there is no other reasonable way to read the sentence. I think interpreting the sentence to mean that you can take the shove if you take the attack action, meaning the shove would be simultaneous with the attack action, is a far more reasonable, natural, and intuitive reading of that sentence. (As in, "If you go to the mailbox, you can take the dog for a walk.") All this "indivisible action" malarky has been concocted to try to justify this "if means after" construction, to (what I regard as) the detriment of any game run by a DM who tries to adhere to "official rulings."No, I don't need to justify anything. I do, however, feel an urge to respond to your apparent belief that the only way to hold an opinion different from yours on this issue is to willfully fail a reading comprehension check, because the way you and Jeremy read the sentence in question is obviously, inarguably, unassailably correct. Never mind that pages and pages of forum posts, in addition to earlier tweets from Jeremy Crawford himself, reasonably interpret the language of the sentence to mean something other than "if equals after."Mind you, I'm not saying--nor do I recall seeing anyone else suggest--that it is not possible to reasonably parse the language of the sentence in question the way that you and Jeremy Crawford are so enthusiastically championing. I do feel that it leads to an unreasonable conclusion regarding the Shield Master feat's bonus action shove, but I will certainly agree that the very obviously ambiguous language of the feat can be interpreted that way (which is why I removed any ambiguity in my home game with a house rule.) It's really only you and Max who seem to regard the sentence as being entirely unambiguous, and insisting that yours is the clearly and unequivocally right way to read the bloody thing.Edit: One final point: the only distinction I draw among Crawford's statements regarding the rules is between errata and everything else. Errata changes the rules, while nothing else does. An "official ruling" is no different that a drunken grocery store tweet, really, other than the implication that he probably thought about it a bit more. I think the drunken tweets are probably more indicative of how he would rule at the table as a Dungeon Master, while the "official ruling" has been overthought in an attempt to preserve some kind of internal consistency among his Sage Advice suggestions.</blockquote>

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