Sage Advice Compendium Update 1/30/2019

[Asgorath]

Yes. My interpretation holds to that belief just as strongly as yours.

What you are attempting to do is say, they could have left off the attack action requirement and then you could have done it anytime. But in my interpretation they can't do the shove anytime. They can't do it if they cast magic missile for example. So them removing any mention of the attack action wouldn't keep things the same as my interpretation. Thus they have to mention the attack action.

Try this: word the feat in such a way that it would allow the shove attack to come before the attacks but only if you took or were going to take the attack action on your turn. After you figure that out then post it and let's see what ya got.

The game has reactions, which can interrupt your turn. Thus, your intention or plan for what you'd like to do later on your turn has no meaning in the rules. Again, JEC explains all of this in detail in the Dragon Talk video on YouTube. As a result, there are no rules like this in the game.

 

[FrogReaver]

The game has reactions, which can interrupt your turn. Thus, your intention or plan for what you'd like to do later on your turn has no meaning in the rules. Again, JEC explains all of this in detail in the Dragon Talk video on YouTube. As a result, there are no rules like this in the game.

So under your interpretation it's not possible for them to word a feat that would require the attack action be taken on your turn but allow the shove to come before or after it?

That's a major limitation of your interpretation if true.

 

[epithet]

The game has reactions, which can interrupt your turn. Thus, your intention or plan for what you'd like to do later on your turn has no meaning in the rules. Again, JEC explains all of this in detail in the Dragon Talk video on YouTube. As a result, there are no rules like this in the game.

I think you have no further to look than the War Magic feature of the eldrich Knight. Jeremy stated that the intention of that feature (which has similar language to the shield master feat) was to allow the bonus action attack to come before or after the spellcast. It seems that if the intent were to enable the default timing of bonus actions, that is the language that would be used.

 

[FrogReaver]

[MENTION=6921966]Asgorath[/MENTION] I can easily write a rule that follows my interpretations but ends up with the same current shield master functionality you believe is in the rules.

If you take the attack action and attack you can bonus action shove. You may not make any extra attacks as part of your attack action after taking this bonus action.

 

[Asgorath]

So under your interpretation it's not possible for them to word a feat that would require the attack action be taken on your turn but allow the shove to come before or after it?

That's a major limitation of your interpretation if true.

There's a really simple way to achieve the goal you want, which has nothing to do with planning on taking the Attack action later on your turn. You simply grant an extra attack as part of the Attack action, just like Dread Ambusher:

Dread Ambusher
At 3rd level, you master the art of the ambush. You can give yourself a bonus to your initiative rolls equal to your Wisdom modifier.

At the start of your first turn of each combat, your walking speed increases by 10 feet, which lasts until the end of that turn. If you take the Attack action on that turn, you can make one additional weapon attack as part of that action. If that attack hits, the target takes an extra 1d8 damage of the weapon’s damage type.

You could simply word this as requiring the extra attack granted by this feature be used on a shove with your shield. Hey presto, you can now order the shove and all attacks from Extra Attack in any way you please.

Shield Master is not worded like this, and thus that's not now it works.

 

[FrogReaver]

There's a really simple way to achieve the goal you want, which has nothing to do with planning on taking the Attack action later on your turn. You simply grant an extra attack as part of the Attack action, just like Dread Ambusher:



You could simply word this as requiring the extra attack granted by this feature be used on a shove with your shield. Hey presto, you can now order the shove and all attacks from Extra Attack in any way you please.

Shield Master is not worded like this, and thus that's not now it works.

Or someone at WOTC got smart about how to word things after the shield master debacle and started writing the rules like Dread Ambusher. There's multiple ways to view the origin of the different wording in books that are years apart.

By the way, there is still a major difference in the Dread Ambusher version and shield master. One requires a bonus action and one does not. Can you make a version that requires a bonus action?

 

[Asgorath]

I think you have no further to look than the War Magic feature of the eldrich Knight. Jeremy stated that the intention of that feature (which has similar language to the shield master feat) was to allow the bonus action attack to come before or after the spellcast. It seems that if the intent were to enable the default timing of bonus actions, that is the language that would be used.

That's not what the Sage Advice Compendium says, though.

Does the “when” in the Eldritch Knight’s War Magic feature mean the bonus attack comes after you cast the cantrip, or can it come before?

The bonus action comes after the cantrip, since using your action to cast a cantrip is what gives you the ability to make the weapon attack as a bonus action. That said, a DM would break nothing in the system by allowing an Eldritch Knight to reverse the order of the cantrip and the weapon attack.

The weapon attack isn't granting you advantage on the attack roll of the cantrip, which is why this answer says that nothing would be broken if the DM let the attack come first. However, it's still confirming that the "if you X, you can Y" wording means X has to come before Y in strict RAW, just like the Shield Master answer says.

 

[Asgorath]

Or someone at WOTC got smart about how to word things after the shield master debacle and started writing the rules like Dread Ambusher. There's multiple ways to view the origin of the different wording in books that are years apart.

By the way, there is still a major difference in the Dread Ambusher version and shield master. One requires a bonus action and one does not. Can you make a version that requires a bonus action?

So if I can't come up with a wording, my position is wrong. When I do come up with a wording, I'm still wrong. Why am I still debating this with you exactly?

You asked for a version of the rule that lets you get an extra shove on your turn. Why does this have to be a bonus action exactly? There's a precedent in the rules for giving you extra attacks as part of your Attack action, for example the Extra Attack feature. Dread Ambusher also works in this way. If the intent was that you've become so good with your shield that you just get a free extra shove on your turn with no timing restrictions, why not word it that you get an additional attack as part of the Attack action that must be used on a shove? That way we wouldn't have to spend another thousand posts arguing about the duration of actions or how to correctly declare your action ahead of time so the reaction rules don't put you in an inconsistent state and all that.

 

[epithet]

That's not what the Sage Advice Compendium says, though.

The weapon attack isn't granting you advantage on the attack roll of the cantrip, which is why this answer says that nothing would be broken if the DM let the attack come first. However, it's still confirming that the "if you X, you can Y" wording means X has to come before Y in strict RAW, just like the Shield Master answer says.

Oh, I know. This is another example of how Jeremy chose semantics over gameplay and reversed an earlier answer regarding the 5e rules. As [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] pointed out upthread, Crawford's initial take on the matter was quite different.

The intent is that the bonus attack can come before or after the cantrip. You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action specifies when it must take place (PH, 189).

The question wasn't about how Jeremy wants to interpret the rules in 2019, but rather how the rule would have been written when the Player's Handbook was published if the intent were to allow a bonus action to come before or after the triggering event, enabling the default timing of bonus actions. Since we have here a statement of that exact intent for a bonus action written into the Player's Handbook, it appears we have our answer, no?

 

[Asgorath]

[MENTION=6921966]Asgorath[/MENTION] I can easily write a rule that follows my interpretations but ends up with the same current shield master functionality you believe is in the rules.

If you take the attack action and attack you can bonus action shove. You may not make any extra attacks as part of your attack action after taking this bonus action.

Cool. Then the editor comes to you and says "we have to cut the text by 25% in order to fit all the art in, can you please trim this down? The second sentence is redundant, why don't you just stick with the standard wording of 'If you X, you can Y' that we use everywhere else in the books, per the style guide?". As I said, they could write a paragraph on every single rule in the game if they wanted to, but then the book would be unusable and they would've missed their goal of making it accessible to new players.