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Message: <blockquote data-quote="epithet" data-source="post: 7569722" data-attributes="member: 6796566">The rule is ambiguous in its wording.Crawford offers an "official" statement regarding his interpretation of the wording.Crawford's interpretation is now clear, but the wording of the rule is still ambiguous.The only thing that can change a rule or make it less ambiguous is published errata. That's literally the only thing. Jeremy can clarify his meaning, change his mind and re-clarify, and publish an "official" clarification, all without changing the rule itself. Once the rule is published in a book, Jeremy's intent become a topic of interest only--the rule is the rule, regardless of what he wants it to be. The argument here in this thread has to do with the fact that once the Player's Handbook was published, "what the words ... actually mean" is not a question WotC can answer. That question can only be answered by each reader of the book, and that reader might or might not be persuaded by the WotC interpretation. As I pointed out before, the "official" designation for the Sage Advice pdf means only that WotC intend for it to have priority over anything one of the D&D team says on Twitter, that's all. It certainly doesn't elevate the Sage Advice Compendium to the status of "rules."When Crawford says "I intend for this thing to come after the other thing," it is perfectly legitimate for a reader of the text in question to say "I understand your intent, but that's not what the rule says, so I don't care." If WotC really wants to erase all ambiguity, it can change the rule itself via errata, to say "After you take the attack action on your turn and resolve your attack and any extra attacks that are part of the Attack Action, you can use a bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet of you with your shield as a finishing move." Until that errata is issued, however, that is not what the rule says, and I am not persuaded to adopt Jeremy Crawford's new interpretation and parsing of the text of the actual rule to include a timing requirement.The truth is, if WotC were to issue an errata for Shield Master, it is not at all clear that it would be a nerf as written above. It is entirely possible that it would be reworded to remove the possibility of a timing requirement altogether, which seems to me to be what the original intent of the feat was. I'm also not sure Jeremy is the one who wrote the feat--my impression was that while he certainly wrote the sections on combat and spellcasting, most of the classes, races, etc. were written by Mike and edited by Jeremy and others to try to make it all consistent. It strikes me as entirely possible that Mike wrote the feat with an opener in mind, and Jeremy edited it with a finishing move in mind.My point is that after the final version of a rule is published, Jeremy can't tell you what the words mean. He can make a suggestion, and you can take it or leave it, but the rule is the rule.</blockquote>

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