Sage Advice Compendium Update 1/30/2019

[Asgorath]

And the Attack action can equally be read as the DM giving you a token that says "you may execute all your allowed weapon attacks between now and the end of your turn"!

The fallacy you're making is Special Pleading. Actions either are ALL 'instantaneous, with ongoing effects', OR they ALL 'have a duration'. Saying that some work one way and some work another, without written rules, is Special Pleading!



NONE of them have language that tell you whether the Action itself lasts for its duration or is instantaneous with ongoing effects!

The rules are silent on this issue. This is indicative that 'when an Action ends', as opposed to 'when the effects of an Action ends', was not considered to matter as far as the rules are concerned. This leads to the conclusion that 'Actions are indivisible' was NEVER part of the design when written, and has only become a thing post hoc in order for JC to justify his change of heart.

Because, if it did matter, they would have made it an actual rule!

The Attack action says: "With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack."

The Dodge action says: "Until the start of your next turn, any attack roll made against you has disadvantage if you can see the attacker, and you make Dexterity saving throws with advantage."

One of these actions is an instantaneous event, the other action has a lasting effect. The Attack action is the act of making a weapon attack. The Dodge action provides a temporary effect that lasts until the start of your next turn. The building blocks you assemble your turn out of have the action as a discrete event in both cases, but one explicitly grants a lasting effect and one does not.

I'll just stop at this point, as there doesn't seem to be much point in continuing to try and explain how the combat system works in a way that is consistent with official rulings on the matter.

 

[epithet]

... there doesn't seem to be much point in continuing to try and explain how the combat system works in a way that is consistent with official rulings on the matter.

It may be helpful for you to keep in mind that the "official rulings" are only "official" in the sense that they supersede the now "unofficial" advice given on twitter. Nothing about the Sage Advice Compendium is intended to be, or could ever be, binding upon DMs. It remains Advice, not binding precedent.

Also, anyone with whom you do not completely agree in this thread has already evaluated Jeremy Crawford's stated opinion on this matter (what you're calling the "official ruling") and found it unpersuasive. It is unlikely that any argumentum ad verecundiam will accrue to your advantage.

 

[Arial Black]

The Attack action says: "With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack."

The Dodge action says: "Until the start of your next turn, any attack roll made against you has disadvantage if you can see the attacker, and you make Dexterity saving throws with advantage."

One of these actions is an instantaneous event, the other action has a lasting effect.

For a single weapon attack, I agree. But what about when you have Extra Attack which the rules say can be interspersed with movement? After all, no-one doubts that the rules allow us to attack orc A in the kitchen, then move 30 feet into the dining room and attack orc B.

Are you really saying that those two separate attacks are one single instantaneous event?

The Attack action is the act of making a weapon attack. The Dodge action provides a temporary effect that lasts until the start of your next turn. The building blocks you assemble your turn out of have the action as a discrete event in both cases, but one explicitly grants a lasting effect and one does not.

In the fiction, you dodge incoming attacks at the moments those attacks come in, and you make those attacks at the moments you make them. How can you view one as 'ongoing' and the other as 'instantaneous' in the case of Extra Attack?

 

[Asgorath]

For a single weapon attack, I agree. But what about when you have Extra Attack which the rules say can be interspersed with movement? After all, no-one doubts that the rules allow us to attack orc A in the kitchen, then move 30 feet into the dining room and attack orc B.

Are you really saying that those two separate attacks are one single instantaneous event?



In the fiction, you dodge incoming attacks at the moments those attacks come in, and you make those attacks at the moments you make them. How can you view one as 'ongoing' and the other as 'instantaneous' in the case of Extra Attack?

Per my previous post, my interpretation of all of this is that you assemble your turn with basic building blocks. These are arranged sequentially. There is text in the PHB that says you can split your movement with an action. There is text in the PHB that says you can insert movement between attacks granted from Extra Attack and the like. With this interpretation, there is no concept of "action duration". There is no concept of "concurrent actions", or deferring the decision about whether a shove was an action or a bonus action, depending on what else happens on your turn.

There is a rule that says you can split your Attack action into effectively N blocks with movement blocks in between. Resolving triggers is easy: you can insert the triggered block any time after the triggering block. If the trigger is a single attack (TWF), then the bonus action block must come after that first attack but can come before other attacks granted by Extra Attack. If the trigger is the Attack action, then the bonus action must come after all the attacks. If you don't move, then your Attack action is still a single block in the timeline.

You might think of these blocks as Scrabble tiles or cards or tokens or whatever, and your turn is you basically laying these down one by one in order. The DM or other players can also play their tiles/cards/tokens via reactions, which may alter what can happen on the rest of your turn. Thus, if you intend to take the Attack action but get incapacitated, the Attack tile/card/token/block never gets played and your turn ends. This trivially solves the question of whether you could play a tile/card/token/block that is triggered by the Attack action, specifically you cannot until that tile/card/token/block has actually been played.

This is the most logical interpretation of the rules for me, given the fact that 5E is a turn-based game. I'm clearly not going to convince any of you otherwise, so I'll just stop now.

 

[5ekyu]

It may be helpful for you to keep in mind that the "official rulings" are only "official" in the sense that they supersede the now "unofficial" advice given on twitter. Nothing about the Sage Advice Compendium is intended to be, or could ever be, binding upon DMs. It remains Advice, not binding precedent.

Also, anyone with whom you do not completely agree in this thread has already evaluated Jeremy Crawford's stated opinion on this matter (what you're calling the "official ruling") and found it unpersuasive. It is unlikely that any argumentum ad verecundiam will accrue to your advantage.

It may be helpful for you to keep in mind that the Rules in the PHB, DMG etc are only "official" in the sense that they are in the rulebooks, to be used or not as you wish within your group. Nothing about the PHB, DMG etc is intended to be, or could ever be, binding upon DMs.

 

[epithet]

It may be helpful for you to keep in mind that the Rules in the PHB, DMG etc are only "official" in the sense that they are in the rulebooks, to be used or not as you wish within your group. Nothing about the PHB, DMG etc is intended to be, or could ever be, binding upon DMs.

While that's certainly true, they are "the rules" of D&D. No tweet nor "official" Advice from Crawford or anyone else constitutes a rule, and the only way the rules are modified is by published errata. There are those who make a reasonable effort to play "by the rules" or to follow the "rules as written," and for them the published rules are, in fact, binding: they have elected to be bound by them. There is therefore an important distinction to be made between the rules and the Advice, "official" or otherwise.

 

[FrogReaver]

Per my previous post, my interpretation of all of this is that you assemble your turn with basic building blocks. These are arranged sequentially. There is text in the PHB that says you can split your movement with an action. There is text in the PHB that says you can insert movement between attacks granted from Extra Attack and the like. With this interpretation, there is no concept of "action duration". There is no concept of "concurrent actions", or deferring the decision about whether a shove was an action or a bonus action, depending on what else happens on your turn.

There is a rule that says you can split your Attack action into effectively N blocks with movement blocks in between. Resolving triggers is easy: you can insert the triggered block any time after the triggering block. If the trigger is a single attack (TWF), then the bonus action block must come after that first attack but can come before other attacks granted by Extra Attack. If the trigger is the Attack action, then the bonus action must come after all the attacks. If you don't move, then your Attack action is still a single block in the timeline.

You might think of these blocks as Scrabble tiles or cards or tokens or whatever, and your turn is you basically laying these down one by one in order. The DM or other players can also play their tiles/cards/tokens via reactions, which may alter what can happen on the rest of your turn. Thus, if you intend to take the Attack action but get incapacitated, the Attack tile/card/token/block never gets played and your turn ends. This trivially solves the question of whether you could play a tile/card/token/block that is triggered by the Attack action, specifically you cannot until that tile/card/token/block has actually been played.

This is the most logical interpretation of the rules for me, given the fact that 5E is a turn-based game. I'm clearly not going to convince any of you otherwise, so I'll just stop now.

I'm curious about what makes you think the attack action is instantaneous while disengage is not. As [MENTION=6799649]Arial Black[/MENTION] mentioned, you can attack, move around a bunch and then attack again. How the heck do you construe that as instantaneous?

 

[Asgorath]

I'm curious about what makes you think the attack action is instantaneous while disengage is not. As @Arial Black mentioned, you can attack, move around a bunch and then attack again. How the heck do you construe that as instantaneous?

Per my post above, my interpretation says that actions don't have a duration. I think my building block analogy is the best way to describe the point I've been trying to make this whole time. If you assemble your turn as a sequence of basic building blocks, then there is never a question about "what's the duration of action X" -- a given action is just a discrete event in the sequence, and the sequence gets resolved in order from start to finish.

Edit: To be clear, I was trying to argue against the idea that actions last as long as their effects, because this doesn't make sense to me based on the Disengage and Dodge actions. There are more than two options though, and so I've given up advocating that since actions cannot last as long as their effects the only explanation must be that actions are instantaneous -- it makes more sense to me that actions simply have no duration at all, and your turn is built up of discrete strictly-ordered events.

 

[FrogReaver]

First, I said it was a "nearly pointless feature" [of the feat], not that the feat itself was pointless without this. That is an important distinction. (bold added for emphasis)

I find all those benefits I listed far more than "nearly useless". There are feats I would describe as nearly useless but shield master isn't one no matter how one rules it works.

As I said, unless you have allies who can take advantage of the knock down you caused, the opponent can stand up on their turn before you benefit from the knock down.

Even if you have no allies that can take advantage of the knock down it's still useful because it greatly reduces the amount of space the prone target can move and attack. That's useful in keeping enemies off your squishier party members.

Now, if you want to keep allowing OA at disadvantage against you, I suppose that would be a way to deny them any real attack. There is nothing wrong with that and I hadn't thought of it, so it is more useful when used defensively.

You made the claim it offered you no benefit in a 1v1 fight. The scenario I laid out actually shows it provides a great 1v1 benefit. It is a defensive benefit but you didn't actually stipulate offensive or defensive in your post on the matter.

However, it offers you no benefit offensively otherwise and if you look at the rest of my post, it demonstrates a perfectly acceptable way to use it where it at least can be used offensively by you without the need for having an ally there to hit the target.

#1 you never said anything about the benefit needing to be offensive.

So, thanks for the idea on how to use it defensively at least, that does give it some more merit even as currently ruled.

Your welcome

 

[FrogReaver]

Except Dave doesn't move to engage. He gets up and readies his attack for when Stan moves into his reach. Now, when Stan moves to engage Dave again, Dave gets his attacks before Stan. Also, you can at best assume a 50-50 chance for the knock down. As well, you're ignoring any feat Dave might have that would assist him, perhaps Sentinel, so if he does his with the OA, Stan isn't moving any more. At any rate, as I expressed above, this is a useful "maneuvering" way to employ Shield Master, which I thanked FrogReaver for.

I want to talk about the above scenarios. I'm not analyzing PVP. It's a very pointless thing to do IMO. Chances are any enemy you encounter doesn't have the sentinel feat or any other feat so bringing that up is pointless IMO.

The more interesting discussion is how the fighter with shield master can actively counter your ready action. He simply moves just out of your reach and readies his own attack in response. Now it's essentially a stalemate because whoever moves into the readied attack first is at a significant disadvantage.

Now consider if you are a shield master fighter fighting against another equal opponent and due to the nature of dice rolls after 2 turns you are at a significant disadvantage. As a shield master you have a way to easily force a stalemate and so to prevent that from happening your opponent has to sacrifice some of his advantage which helps make the fight more winnable for you. If the dice favor you after the first few turns the you just continue fighting it out as you have the advantage at that point. That's the more nuanced version of what's going to happen and the actual advantages the feat brings against smart enemies. Of course against dumber enemies you may easily rope them into a nearly endless cycle of almost never getting to actually attack you.