Sage Advice Compendium Update 1/30/2019

[FrogReaver]

The rules may appear incomplete or inconsistent to you, but that's simply a result of you stretching the meaning of the words beyond their breaking point and adding things that aren't there or ignoring the words that are there. The rules have always seemed very consistent and coherent to me in general, because I always try and just do the simplest thing based on the words in the book. In the past, there have been some official rulings that made no sense to me, but those have now been addressed. If I ever have questions about how a particular rule is supposed to work, there's inevitably a section on it in the Sage Advice Compendium already.

In any case, as I said, I'm done debating this with you either way. Follow your bliss and play the feat however you think is best for your table.

I've pointed out the inconsistencies in your interpretation. If you don't see them by now you never will.

 

[Maxperson]

But we have always known that an attack is something different than the Attack Action. You can make an attack as part of casting a spell (including melee or ranged weapon attacks) and as a reaction or bonus action. All kinds of things give you attacks. Every combat related section of the PGB reinforces the fact that a lowercase attack and the uppercase Attack (Action) are not the same thing. I find the argument that the Attack Action is entirely inseparable from the attack it grants you to be unpersuasive.

Attacks are not tied to the Attack action, but the Attack action is tied to attacks. Showing examples of attacks that are not tied to the attack action doesn't alter that the rules say that, "With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack." Not after you take the Attack action. Not before you take the Attack action. WITH the Attack action. They are simultaneous, and therefore inseparable. The Attack action does not begin until you are in step 1 of the attack.

Before any of this Advice or clarification, I read the Shield Master bonus action as expanding your Attack Action, much the same as Extra Attack does. It was the simplest interpretation and implementation, and it seemed to fit the purpose the bonus action was meant to serve.

That's basically how I'm going to run it. After your first attack the bonus action becomes available to you.

 

[Arial Black]

When an interpretation requires Schrodinger's actions and/or time travel in order to work correctly, it's the wrong interpretation.

Really? On page 98 of this thread you gave a rules example that works this way:-

This is essentially the same as when I look at the rule in the PHB that says that after you reduce a creature to 0, you can retroactively decide that you were knocking it out. I think it's wrong and a bunch of malarky, so I created a house rule and changed it.

Whether you (or I) like it or not doesn't alter the fact that many D&D rules do work that way!

Other examples include:-

* various abilities (orcs, barbarians, zombies, etc.) where if you get reduced to 0 hp, you have 1 hp instead

* druids being disintegrated, then reintegrated

* the shield spell triggering on actually being hit, and then changing that to not being hit

All these things seem like 'Schrodinger's Actions' or like time travel. But, crucially, only at the table, not in the game world!

Sure, at the table it seems like:-

* you attack a creature with deadly force, killing it, then decide you want to keep it alive, then go back in time to deliver a knockout blow instead

* an orc/barbarian/zombie gets killed, then heals(!)

* a wildshaped druid gets turned to dust and then the dust turns into a druid

* a javelin goes through a wizards head with enough force to kill him. He then casts a spell and time rewinds, and this time the javelin misses

But there is no time travel ret-con in the game world at all:-

* you knock out a foe, just like you meant to all along

* a blow that should kill an orc/barbarian/zombie fails to, because it is so darn tough!

* a wildshaped druids animal form takes enough damage to that form that he is forced back into human form, as is normal, but he was never actually disintegrated

* a wizard gets a javelin thrown at his head, but casts shield just in time!

So, with Shield Master and the "If you take the Attack action on your turn" condition, and take the bonus action shield shove first, at the table it might seem that you 'take the Action' and then go back in time to take the bonus action (although that is a flawed interpretation of that condition, which I'll analyse in my next post), but in the game world you do as you have been trained, which is to deliver a combination of weapon attacks and a shield shove, by using the shield to knock a foe off balance (depending on the result of an opposed roll) to give you advantage on the follow up attacks.

Nothing has gone wrong. There is no time travel malarky in the game world, only the game mechanics at the table which work this way, a way that is common in the 5e rules.

 

[Asgorath]

I've pointed out the inconsistencies in your interpretation. If you don't see them by now you never will.

I could say the same about you, which is why I’m not going to bother discussing this with you any more.

 

[Arial Black]

"If you X, you can Y" means you have to actually do X before you can do Y.

No, it doesn't mean that!

Last night I was on Wikipedia researching Causality to answer the Kalam Cosmological Argument (yes, I know the correct term should be 'cosmogonical') whose major premise is, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause".

It notes that 'cause' and 'effect' are time-dependant, and that 'effect' cannot come before 'cause'.

But what about conditions, in the form of, "If...then"?

The article says this:-

Conditional statements are not statements of causality. An important distinction is that statements of causality require the antecedent to precede or coincide with the consequent in time, whereas conditional statements do not require this temporal order. Confusion commonly arises since many different statements in English may be presented using "If ..., then ..." form (and, arguably, because this form is far more commonly used to make a statement of causality). The two types of statements are distinct, however.

So JC is 'confused' when he assets, incorrectly, that "If...then" means that you must do X before you can do Y.

All that is required, RAW, is that you 'take the Attack action' on the same turn as you take the bonus action shield shove. The condition does not require a particular order.

 

[Arial Black]

Attacks are not tied to the Attack action, but the Attack action is tied to attacks. Showing examples of attacks that are not tied to the attack action doesn't alter that the rules say that, "With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack." Not after you take the Attack action. Not before you take the Attack action. WITH the Attack action. They are simultaneous, and therefore inseparable. The Attack action does not begin until you are in step 1 of the attack.

When you only have one attack, it is perfectly possible (though not mandatory) that your attack and your 'Attack action' to be literally one and the same thing.

But with Extra Attack, it is literally impossible to attack once, move into another room, then execute your second attack, and that both attacks are simultaneous!

Since these attacks cannot be simultaneous, they must be separated in time!

This means that there certainly is a 'duration' for the Attack action when you move between attacks (even if we don't know how many seconds), and that provides easy access to using a bonus action shield shove between those attacks.

So, is 'taking the Attack action' simultaneous with the first attack or the second? It cannot be both, as those attacks are not simultaneous!

The condition is, "If you take the Attack action on your turn". If you 'take the Attack action' and execute your first attack, you have met that condition!

 

[Satyrn]

I'm persuaded to change my opinion one more time. The rules are incomplete and/or inconsistent. So play it however is most fun because any interpretation you try to choose leads to a great big helping of inconsistency, misleading rules and contradiction.

Have fun everyone, I now realize the futility of 5e rules discussions!

Welcome to the Dark Fun Side. We all float down here.

 

[Asgorath]

No, it doesn't mean that!

Last night I was on Wikipedia researching Causality to answer the Kalam Cosmological Argument (yes, I know the correct term should be 'cosmogonical') whose major premise is, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause".

It notes that 'cause' and 'effect' are time-dependant, and that 'effect' cannot come before 'cause'.

But what about conditions, in the form of, "If...then"?

The article says this:-



So JC is 'confused' when he assets, incorrectly, that "If...then" means that you must do X before you can do Y.

All that is required, RAW, is that you 'take the Attack action' on the same turn as you take the bonus action shield shove. The condition does not require a particular order.

We’ve discussed this already, but sure. You take you bonus action shove first. An enemy then uses their reaction to incapacitate you, ending your turn. You never took the Attack action, and so how were you allowed to use the Shield Master bonus action?
[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] made an excellent post about “if and only if” or IFF, which I’d recommend reading again.

 

[Asgorath]

When you only have one attack, it is perfectly possible (though not mandatory) that your attack and your 'Attack action' to be literally one and the same thing.

But with Extra Attack, it is literally impossible to attack once, move into another room, then execute your second attack, and that both attacks are simultaneous!

Since these attacks cannot be simultaneous, they must be separated in time!

This means that there certainly is a 'duration' for the Attack action when you move between attacks (even if we don't know how many seconds), and that provides easy access to using a bonus action shield shove between those attacks.

So, is 'taking the Attack action' simultaneous with the first attack or the second? It cannot be both, as those attacks are not simultaneous!

The condition is, "If you take the Attack action on your turn". If you 'take the Attack action' and execute your first attack, you have met that condition!

They didn't say the attacks themselves are simultaneous. They said the attacks happen as part of the Attack action, and that they are inseparable from that action. That is, the attacks occur at the same period of time that you are taking the Attack action, or, that they are simultaneous with that action. Does it matter if your Attack action takes 1.6 or 3.2 or 5.1 seconds? No, that has no bearing on the rules, and does not change the outcome of the action itself. The rules explicitly say that you're allowed to move between attacks in the Attack action. This specific post was arguing against the notion that the Attack action happens before and independently of the attacks themselves, which has no basis in the words in the PHB.

If you want to interpret "take the Attack action" as "starting the Attack action" as the trigger for Shield Master's shove, that's certainly a reasonable reading of the words. I would disagree with that interpretation, as would the Sage Advice Compendium, but by making the first Attack you have certainly committed yourself to the Attack action for your turn and thus avoid any problems of taking the bonus action and then not actually taking the Attack action later on your turn like you originally intended.

 

[Yardiff]

If something interrupts your turn that should matter what actions you were taking.