Rules clarification Re: Opportunity attacks and Pushing

[QuestionC]

This is using the Essentials Knight class.

Let's say that an enemy provokes Battle Guardian by attacking an ally while next to me.

I have the Hammer Hands stance active, and hit the enemy. I push the enemy so that he is no longer in range of my ally for the attack he used.

Does the enemy's attack still go through? Or did my push interrupt his attack, making the target illegal when it finally got to resolve?

EDIT: The relevant text sections
Battle Guardian - Opportunity Action
Trigger: An enemy subject to your defender aura ... makes an attack that targets an ally of yours...
Effect: You make a melee basic attack against the triggering enemy...

Hammer Hands -
Effect: Until the stance ends, whenever you hit an enemy with a melee basic attack... you can use a free action to push that enemy one square...

 

[abyssaldeath]

That's a tricky one because on one hand you have an opportunity attack, which is an interrupt, and a free action push, which is generally a reaction. The opportunity attack definitely happens before the enemy finishes making his attack. So the question really is "When does the free action take place?"

I would say that the push would cause the enemy to lose his attack if his target is no longer in range. The reason I think this is because the free action push is triggered by you hitting. Since a free action is a reaction that means the it would start immediately after the action that triggered it would resolve, which in the example you provided would still be before the enemy's attack resolves.

 

[Aulirophile]

Invalidates the attack. If the creature is still in range the attack still continues (ranged attack, reach, etc.,)

 

[Joshua Randall]

Concur that assuming you push the enemy out of reach of its target (your ally), the enemy's attack fizzles.

Non-Essentials fighters have been doing exactly this for a while with various feat and magic item combinations.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

I hate to say it, but the analysis I've seen over on the WotC boards says it doesn't work that way.

The actual attack (which is NOT an OA, even though you would think it is) interrupts the enemy's attack, but the sequence is:

1. Melee Basic Attack against enemy
2. Enemy attack against your ally
3. Push enemy as free action

The reference I saw (trying to find the link now) said that free actions taken as the result of an Immediate Interrupt can't be taken until after the interrupted action finishes.

I'm not being dogmatic about this -- I'm just referencing what I saw elsewhere. If someone knows different based on actual rules references, I will happily retract the above.

[ Well hell. I can't find the reference now. I don't think I was dreaming it, but take the above with a grain of salt, in case you were not already doing so. ]

 

[abyssaldeath]

The reference I saw (trying to find the link now) said that free actions taken as the result of an Immediate Interrupt can't be taken until after the interrupted action finishes.

I'd like to see this reference as I've never seen any rule that even remotely says that. The trigger for the free action is based on your attack and since free actions are reaction it would happen after your attack resolves. If you allow the enemy's attack to resolve then you wouldn't able use the free action because the trigger has already come and gone. It has very little to do with whether or not your attack was interrupting someone else's attack.

 

[Dausuul]

I hate to say it, but the analysis I've seen over on the WotC boards says it doesn't work that way.

The actual attack (which is NOT an OA, even though you would think it is) interrupts the enemy's attack, but the sequence is:

1. Melee Basic Attack against enemy
2. Enemy attack against your ally
3. Push enemy as free action

The reference I saw (trying to find the link now) said that free actions taken as the result of an Immediate Interrupt can't be taken until after the interrupted action finishes.

I'm not being dogmatic about this -- I'm just referencing what I saw elsewhere. If someone knows different based on actual rules references, I will happily retract the above.

[ Well hell. I can't find the reference now. I don't think I was dreaming it, but take the above with a grain of salt, in case you were not already doing so. ]

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me... the free action is in response to you hitting, not in response to the triggering attack, so it seems like it ought to happen immediately after you hit.

The way I see it, you have a "queue" of events waiting to happen, rather like the "stack" in Magic: the Gathering. New events entering the queue do so with reference to an existing event (the "trigger"). If they are opportunity actions or interrupts, they go immediately before the trigger event; if they are reactions, they go immediately after.

Free actions are typically treated as reactions unless otherwise stated, so would go after the trigger. But the trigger remains "You hit the enemy," not "The enemy attacks your buddy." The proposed ruling would create a whole new category of events, that propagate all the way down the queue to land at the end no matter where they started. That looks like a big ol' can of worms that I'd rather not open.

This does make knights pretty damn effective defenders, though. Not only can they punish you for attacking other targets, they can prevent your attack from ever hitting!

 

[the Jester]

I hate to say it, but the analysis I've seen over on the WotC boards says it doesn't work that way.

The actual attack (which is NOT an OA, even though you would think it is) interrupts the enemy's attack, but the sequence is:

1. Melee Basic Attack against enemy
2. Enemy attack against your ally
3. Push enemy as free action

The reference I saw (trying to find the link now) said that free actions taken as the result of an Immediate Interrupt can't be taken until after the interrupted action finishes.

Yeah, without a rules citation I'm going to go ahead and call this dead wrong.

If you DID see this on the WotC boards, the poster was dead wrong unless there was a rules cite. I'm pretty darn confident here, though- you finish resolving your attack BEFORE anything else (other than another interrupt or free action) happens.

That said, there's always the chance I'm wrong, and I will happily eat my words given actual rules cites pointing that out.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Yeah, I'm probably dead wrong, or the post I was referencing is. I can't find any evidence of it now. I will leave up my original post to retain context for later commentors, and as a reminder to myself that I can't just stop taking my meds and expect people not to notice.

[ But I'm not doing any kind of weird Justin Bieber thing as penance. ]

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, without a rules citation I'm going to go ahead and call this dead wrong.

If you DID see this on the WotC boards, the poster was dead wrong unless there was a rules cite. I'm pretty darn confident here, though- you finish resolving your attack BEFORE anything else (other than another interrupt or free action) happens.

That said, there's always the chance I'm wrong, and I will happily eat my words given actual rules cites pointing that out.

I concur, the Free Action will resolve at the end of the OA, after which the triggering attack will proceed (if possible). This has always been the standard interpretation as long as I've been doing the Q&A thread. You'll always get people now and then who disagree and the rules have never 100% clarified every possible permutation of effects and how they order but the consensus has certainly long held that this kind of thing works fine.

Yes, Knights can do a nice job of thwarting attacks, but then again there are plenty of other ways to do the same thing. It certainly isn't unprecedented. A lot of ways exist to do basically the same thing, usually involving an item or other, but some rely on feats.