D&D 5E Shield Mastery Feat

[Yardiff]

I've changed the wording of the feat so it works as I believe it was ment to work.

SHIELD MASTER
You use shields not just for protection but also for offense. You gain the following benefits while you are wielding a shield:

You can use a bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet of you with your shield.

lf you aren't incapacitated, you can add your shield's AC bonus to any Dexterity saving throw you make against a spell or other harmful effect that targets only you.

lf you are subjected to an effect that allows you to make a Dexlerity saving throw to take only half damage, you can use your reaction to take no damage if you succeed on the saving throw, interposing your shield between yourself and the source of the effect.

 

[FrogReaver]

If the "Attack action" must come first in the order then by that logic it would also mean that the bonus action would have to be last no matter how many attacks are allowed as part of attack action. I am curious how this explanation on the ruling goes. It sounds pretty inflexible.

That sounds like my recollection of the ruling.

 

[epithet]

There was a great explanation of the current ruling by the guy who made that ruling that explains the ruling actually is logically reading the rule as written.

You mean the same guy that made a different ruling before, and only recently changed his mind?

Sage advice is just one DMs ruling. Granted, it is the guy that wrote the rules, but it still doesn't invalidate anyone else's ruling.

 

[FrogReaver]

You mean the same guy that made a different ruling before, and only recently changed his mind?

Sage advice is just one DMs ruling. Granted, it is the guy that wrote the rules, but it still doesn't invalidate anyone else's ruling.

Yea he’s a flip flipper, doesn’t change that his current explanation is well reasoned.

 

[Mistwell]

Yea he’s a flip flipper, doesn’t change that his current explanation is well reasoned.

His reasoning is sound. It should have come with some sort of mea culpa, since I don't think he realized just how many people had taken his prior ruling to heart and had based character themes around that ruling. The ramifications of him flipping like that were pretty cumbersome to many games. I am not sure the game gained more from his ruling, despite being logical, than it lost from the sense of unease it left with so many people concerning both the rulings and the impact that rule change hand on their games.

It might have been a better off left alone sort of situation. Sort of like Mike Mearls realizes making an off hand attack with a second weapon into a bonus action was a bad idea, but he's not going to fix it now due to the disruption it would make for too many people's games.

 

[epithet]

Yea he’s a flip flipper, doesn’t change that his current explanation is well reasoned.

It's not, though. He clearly intended the feat to enable a character to knock an enemy down and then have advantage for his attacks, as evidenced by the initial sage advice interpretation that stood for 4 years. The problem is that there is no simple way to say "as part of the Attack Action, you get a bonus attack that you can use to shove with your shield. You can use it at any point in your Attack Action, but it costs your bonus action for your turn" in the standard language of 5e mechanics. Crawford though he had gotten close enough with the language of the feat in the PHB, but finally decided that it was more important for everything to be as consistent as he could possibly make it rather than support the intent of the feat.

This is why no one should consider Crawford's tweets as final or definitive. He has different priorities than a DM running a campaign, because a lot of his focus has to be on maintaining an integrated set of rules with as consistent an internal logic as possible. His current explanation is, indeed, well reasoned from the perspective of keeping the rules consistent, but it fails to explain the intent of the rule or to consider the enjoyment of using it.

What his reversal did for me was cause me to ask "what is the purpose of linking the bonus shove to the Attack Action?" I was not able to come up with a particularly persuasive answer, so I simply removed the Attack Action requirement altogether. In my campaign, the Shield Master is now able to dash and bash, or dodge and shove, in addition to shove and attack, which has not proven to be a problem in any way.

 

[Killingkat]

If you are a fighter or any other class that allows you to have multiple attacks you can split up those attacks however you would like including with movement and bonus actions so you could attack and then use your bonus action to shove them and then attack again. that is if your DM decided to rule that you had to attack first.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you are a fighter or any other class that allows you to have multiple attacks you can split up those attacks however you would like including with movement and bonus actions so you could attack and then use your bonus action to shove them and then attack again. that is if your DM decided to rule that you had to attack first.

Given the ruling I don’t think that works with bonus action shield master attack either.

 

[Bacon Bits]

It's not, though. He clearly intended the feat to enable a character to knock an enemy down and then have advantage for his attacks, as evidenced by the initial sage advice interpretation that stood for 4 years. The problem is that there is no simple way to say "as part of the Attack Action, you get a bonus attack that you can use to shove with your shield. You can use it at any point in your Attack Action, but it costs your bonus action for your turn" in the standard language of 5e mechanics. Crawford though he had gotten close enough with the language of the feat in the PHB, but finally decided that it was more important for everything to be as consistent as he could possibly make it rather than support the intent of the feat.

This is why no one should consider Crawford's tweets as final or definitive. He has different priorities than a DM running a campaign, because a lot of his focus has to be on maintaining an integrated set of rules with as consistent an internal logic as possible. His current explanation is, indeed, well reasoned from the perspective of keeping the rules consistent, but it fails to explain the intent of the rule or to consider the enjoyment of using it.

Yeah, for all the existence of the blurb at the start of the Sage Advice documents that discusses RAF and RAI as well as RAW and that they will provide all of those, Sage Advice has given RAI and RAF interpretations very, very rarely. You can tell they never do this because they almost never answer a question with, "This is what it says, but it's not what we intended at all." Simply put, I do not believe it's possible to write the books remotely that error-free. There's a couple examples where they do this, like the question about Druids speaking while in Elemental form, and one other about wild shaped Druids being disintegrated, and another about how conjure woodland beings is supposed to work. Others, like the ruling that Crossbow Expert was intended to work on spell attacks, and that spells that target creatures really are intended to only target creatures, or that Archery fighting style intentionally doesnt' include thrown weapons, each really strain credibility that this is the intent and not just what they published. Most of the time when they discuss intent, it's really, "Is this the literal reading of the rule?" "Yes, that's the literal reading of the rule."

Mearls would do RAI/RAF answers and would answer with how he would rule like Gygax did, but they don't let him do it anymore because Crawford would contradict him too often. Essentially all Crawford ever does is read the book back to the person who asks the question with the narrowest possible reading regardless of the game's history or logical consistency between different mechanics. That's exactly the kind of readings they used in 3e and 4e that they supposedly intended 5e to avoid. It makes sense that he does that because the Internet has certain kinds of people on it, but I don't really find a book reading service to be a net positive for the game.

It was that realization that made me realize that Sage Advice exists solely to pander to the set of players that are upset that D&D doesn't have strict templating and regular phrasing like M:tG does. I don't think it's wrong to make a TTRPG strictly templated like 4e or M:tG is so I do not mean that disparagingly, but 5e D&D was very, very clearly written to not be strictly templated. D&D 5e wants you to read between the lines and to ask your DM how they interpret it and to have a discussion at the table. In that sense, I think that Sage Advice as it exists today is probably the worst part of the entire product line as it essentially actively undermines the game's core philosophy.

What his reversal did for me was cause me to ask "what is the purpose of linking the bonus shove to the Attack Action?" I was not able to come up with a particularly persuasive answer, so I simply removed the Attack Action requirement altogether. In my campaign, the Shield Master is now able to dash and bash, or dodge and shove, in addition to shove and attack, which has not proven to be a problem in any way.

The only purpose I can come up with is that they didn't want spellcasters to be able to cast a spell and still take the bonus shove action. That's really quite narrow, however, and I think they're somewhat overestimating the power of the feat. I agree that they probably should have written, "When you take the Attack, Dodge, Dash, Disengage, or Use an Object actions...."

I really dislike this idea that while you can mix your move into your action however you want, you may not do the same thing with your bonus action. Or that if you have to do something to allow you to take a bonus action, you can't do that action after the bonus action. Or even the idea that you can't take the attack action if you don't have something to attack. It seems like unnecessary complexity for the the rules to care about. It's essentially never a good idea because it's so expensive action-wise. So why bother banning it? It's needless rules weight.

 

[5ekyu]

Yeah, for all the existence of the blurb at the start of the Sage Advice documents that discusses RAF and RAI as well as RAW and that they will provide all of those, Sage Advice has given RAI and RAF interpretations very, very rarely. You can tell they never do this because they almost never answer a question with, "This is what it says, but it's not what we intended at all." Simply put, I do not believe it's possible to write the books remotely that error-free. There's a couple examples where they do this, like the question about Druids speaking while in Elemental form, and one other about wild shaped Druids being disintegrated, and another about how conjure woodland beings is supposed to work. Others, like the ruling that Crossbow Expert was intended to work on spell attacks, and that spells that target creatures really are intended to only target creatures, or that Archery fighting style intentionally doesnt' include thrown weapons, each really strain credibility that this is the intent and not just what they published. Most of the time when they discuss intent, it's really, "Is this the literal reading of the rule?" "Yes, that's the literal reading of the rule."

Mearls would do RAI/RAF answers and would answer with how he would rule like Gygax did, but they don't let him do it anymore because Crawford would contradict him too often. Essentially all Crawford ever does is read the book back to the person who asks the question with the narrowest possible reading regardless of the game's history or logical consistency between different mechanics. That's exactly the kind of readings they used in 3e and 4e that they supposedly intended 5e to avoid. It makes sense that he does that because the Internet has certain kinds of people on it, but I don't really find a book reading service to be a net positive for the game.

It was that realization that made me realize that Sage Advice exists solely to pander to the set of players that are upset that D&D doesn't have strict templating and regular phrasing like M:tG does. I don't think it's wrong to make a TTRPG strictly templated like 4e or M:tG is so I do not mean that disparagingly, but 5e D&D was very, very clearly written to not be strictly templated. D&D 5e wants you to read between the lines and to ask your DM how they interpret it and to have a discussion at the table. In that sense, I think that Sage Advice as it exists today is probably the worst part of the entire product line as it essentially actively undermines the game's core philosophy.



The only purpose I can come up with is that they didn't want spellcasters to be able to cast a spell and still take the bonus shove action. That's really quite narrow, however, and I think they're somewhat overestimating the power of the feat. I agree that they probably should have written, "When you take the Attack, Dodge, Dash, Disengage, or Use an Object actions...."

I really dislike this idea that while you can mix your move into your action however you want, you may not do the same thing with your bonus action. Or that if you have to do something to allow you to take a bonus action, you can't do that action after the bonus action. Or even the idea that you can't take the attack action if you don't have something to attack. It seems like unnecessary complexity for the the rules to care about. It's essentially never a good idea because it's so expensive action-wise. So why bother banning it? It's needless rules weight.

I think so many things require the attack action to trigger because the want them to be part of an offensive action sequence - not a way to de facto shoe-horn in a "double action" with a bonus section attack and a normal action dodge or dash.

If TWF allowed the bonus section strike even when taking a dodge, that would be a major shift in play for say rogues.