D&D 5E Sage Advice September 2016

[MechaTarrasque]

The D&D website has a new Sage Advice column: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/rules-answers-september-2016

Highlights:

Bards can retrain magic secrets, but only with bard spells.

Rogues don't get any special benefits from hanging out with people with polearm mastery--it's not the size of your polearm, it is the 5 feet in the sneak attack rule. Familiars do count as allies for purposes of rogue abilities.

Dealing damage doesn't stop the target's movement, unless the way you did damage does (or you took the sentinel feat)

Conjured animals don't automatically count as magical for purposes of overcoming resistance/immunity. Demons laugh at your conjured pack of wolves.

 

[Gladius Legis]

You forgot one big one: Familiars CAN use the Help action to grant advantage on an attack.

Which is the way I'd wager most have played it all along, but it's nice to see some official confirmation.

 

[Blue]

I found the "Do you know if you are under the effects of a spells" interesting, just in that there is now some advice.

 

[Kobold Stew]

All of these are sensible interpretations, imo.

 

[Horwath]

All nice, except charger feat rulling. That is some puzzling stuff. It would be like a default thing to do with a mount.

 

[Sacrosanct]

All of these are sensible interpretations, imo.

except the 10ft pole arm/sneak attack one. When in combat, most the "distractions" are going to be from your weapon, because that's what you're using against the opponent. After all, you're not giving up your attack. The mere presence of you being next to them is what grants the sneak attack. So if someone has a weapon that can reach 10ft, they most certainly can still distract that opponent with it (I'm now imagining someone poking an enemy's ear with the tip of their polearm like a wet willy or something, saying "Gotcha!").

 

[Kobold Stew]

except the 10ft pole arm/sneak attack one. When in combat, most the "distractions" are going to be from your weapon, because that's what you're using against the opponent. After all, you're not giving up your attack. The mere presence of you being next to them is what grants the sneak attack. So if someone has a weapon that can reach 10ft, they most certainly can still distract that opponent with it (I'm now imagining someone poking an enemy's ear with the tip of their polearm like a wet willy or something, saying "Gotcha!").

I should have been clearer: in this case, what you say might offer real-world plausibility (I've not been in enough pole-arm fights to know), but the wording of Sneak Attack in the PHB is not ambiguous, and the Sage Advice ruling is adhering to that.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I should have been clearer: in this case, what you say might offer real-world plausibility (I've not been in enough pole-arm fights to know), but the wording of Sneak Attack in the PHB is not ambiguous, and the Sage Advice ruling is adhering to that.

Ah. OK. Yes, the wording is quite clear.

 

[Jester David]

except the 10ft pole arm/sneak attack one. When in combat, most the "distractions" are going to be from your weapon, because that's what you're using against the opponent. After all, you're not giving up your attack. The mere presence of you being next to them is what grants the sneak attack. So if someone has a weapon that can reach 10ft, they most certainly can still distract that opponent with it (I'm now imagining someone poking an enemy's ear with the tip of their polearm like a wet willy or something, saying "Gotcha!").

True. But if you rule that's distracting, what about a readied arrow attack? Or the rogue readying for after the fireball hits.

 

[CapnZapp]

Allowing a familiar to take the help action is okay. Sure it's overpowered - on the offensive. But since the counter is quite trivial - hit the familiar and it will die easily - it is, as I said, okay.

What the Sage needs to Advice on is invisibile familiars. Getting disadvantage on attacks against you normally require the Dodge action, which can't be combined with the Help action.

I would like a ruling that says, for your distraction to be significant enough to count as the Help action (with its sizeable benefit), you need to actually provide a distraction.

You (the familiar in this example) need to choose between either:
a) making enough noise or turning off your invisibility to not protect you, in order to be sufficiently distracting to provide the Help benefit
b) hanging around invisible and silently, granting you the full benefits of invisibility, but then not providing any tangible Help benefit either.

It should not be possible to use a Warlock familiar in a way that grants people advantage on attacks while at the same time having attacks on the familiar be at disadvantage (or worse, assuming the familiar can fly around freely).

To gain the Help benefit you must expose yourself to risk. No risk, no benefit. (Unless you've got more things going, such as additional spells, of course)