D&D 5E Warlock's Pact of the Chain

[ClaytonCross]

Now with quotes!!

As I see it if you use the Attack action, you can replace one of your attacks that turn to attack with your Familiar. Casting a spell as your action would prevent familiar attacks.

Pact of the Chain
"Additionally, when you take the Attack action, you can forgo one of your own attacks to allow your familiar to make one attack of its own."
- Meaning you replace 1 attack not the attack action as long as you used the Attack action in the process.

Grapple (For any SageAdvice references since they seem to read the same to me)
"When you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack, a grapple. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them."
- Meaning you replace 1 attack not the attack action as long as you used the Attack action in the process.

Two-handed fighting
"When you take the Attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand."
- I say yes but ask your GM since they could argue that the bonus action is a separator though nothing says that, it would be a GM call.

War Cleric (When you use the Attack action, you can make one weapon attack as a bonus action.)
- I say yes but ask your GM since they could argue that the bonus action is a separator though nothing says that, it would be a GM call.

Eldritch Knight War magic (when you use your action to cast a cantrip, you can make one weapon attack as a bonus action.)
- So no, I was wrong this doesn't work since you did not use the attack action.

Extra attack
"Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn."
- Literally seems to be written with this in mind, defiant yes.

--Also as a side note, Warlock of the Chain/Sorcerer can Attack action attack with Familiar quicken metamagic cast 1 action spells.

 

[Rossbert]

An alternate reading of the literal words are that when you take the attack action is referring very literally to the time that that action is being taken.
If "when I take a lunch break, while I'm at my desk I can watch YouTube" at work it doesn't mean that I can watch YouTube any time I am at my desk after I have taken lunch.

 

[ClaytonCross]

An alternate reading of the literal words are that when you take the attack action is referring very literally to the time that that action is being taken.
If "when I take a lunch break, while I'm at my desk I can watch YouTube" at work it doesn't mean that I can watch YouTube any time I am at my desk after I have taken lunch.

While your not wrong, it could if you don't ever have to do anything after lunch but phone watch and that does not mean that if you take your lunch in your car you can't watch YouTube on your phone. So, while I get your point, this is not work, its D&D and generally players take turns and within that turn they can manipulate the order of things, I for example, allow players to move 10ft take an attack action using the extra attack feature attack one person, move 10ft again and use a bonus action to cast healing word on an ally around the corner, and move a third time and use the second attack of the extra attack action.

I get you or another GM might not allow that. So I would say as far as I can see rules as written, you use the attack action on your turn you can substitute one attack to your familiar. Getting more picky over that is not clarified in the RAW. If your saying RAI means only using the attacks provided by the attack action they could have written it:

Additionally, when you take the Attack action, you can forgo one of the attacks you received from that action to allow your familiar to make one attack of its own.

...They didn't. So RAW is "Additionally, when you take the Attack action, you can forgo one of your own attacks to allow your familiar to make one attack of its own."

Now they could have clarified as

"Additionally, when you take the Attack action, you can forgo one of your own attacks including those from bonus actions and action surge on the same turn to allow your familiar to make one attack of its own."

The true is it says in RAW: "Additionally, when you take the Attack action, you can forgo one of your own attacks to allow your familiar to make one attack of its own."
--- So take the attack action and you can give one of your attacks to your familiar. Any argument over picking a specific attack on your turn is a house rule since it does not say which attack you have to pick.

I do also think nit picking between attack actions is a waste of GM and player time since all the attack actions have the same weight BUT I do recognize that if a GM comes to the conclusion you did first and then a player interprets the way I do, that player will VERY likely come across as rule layering which will put this on a GMs naughty list and cause a house rule to prevent the perceived violation. So my best advice to players and GMs is just be aware of it, make your choice, try to make sure the other side knows before its used, and try to be tolerant of this as possible to "misinterpret" while not trying to rules lawyer but just learning the rules as the GM uses them. The RAW might be solid but the RAI would have to be clarified and ultimately this rule is not a game/class breaker ether way. If the GM needs to house rule so everyone can get past it, house rule and get past it. The only time I see this as a possible REAL problem is if someone built a character with one understanding (Like a Cleric/Warlock) but then couldn't use the investment to actually play as intended similar to a player building a level 1 Rogue with Expertise in investigation, 16 intellect, and the dungeon delver feat only to find out the GM only ever used passive perception for traps or 1 Rogue with Expertise in Perception, 16 Wisdom, and the Observant feat only to find out the GM only ever used active investigation roles for traps... (seriously I have run across both) ... Point is a player wanting to understand a rule in the game and be good at something does not make them an evil player (by itself anyway) so if they build to this RAW and you think RAI should be:

"Additionally, when you take the Attack action, you can forgo one of your own attacks received from this action to allow your familiar to make one attack of its own."

Then, let them know your house rule to clarify RAI a head of time, or possibly make some "Session 1 Character Corrections" with GM oversight and their new understanding. ... I had a good GM let me change the Observant feat for the Alert feat because he decided one day out of the blue he did not want to use passive perception any more AT ALL because they wanted the games to be more random and I was happy to do it as opposed to being stuck with useless feat that would just irritate me every time I saw it because I didn't take it to read lips but to make a non-rogue non-ranger scout.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Throw me into the camp that says that were you to take the Attack action and attacked with a light melee weapon in your main hand (thereby allowing you to make an attack with a light melee weapon in your off-hand), you could allow the Familiar to substitute its attack for the off-hand one.

The way I'm reading it... all the Pact of the Chain feature states is that so long as you "take the Attack action", you can forgo ANY of your own attacks to allow the familiar to attack. But it says nothing about how you acquire the attack that you substitute in the first place, nor what type of action you use to make it. If you take the Attack action, any attacks you acquire can be substituted so long as you fulfill the obligations for how you acquire them.

As far as two-weapon fighting is concerned... it says that if you take the Attack action *and* you attack with a light melee weapon that you're holding in one hand, you can attack with a light melee weapon in your other hand (using your Bonus action). And via Pact of the Chain, you may forgo one of your attacks to allow the familiar to make an attack of its own (using its Reaction.) Obviously you can't forgo your main hand attack because that causes your off-hand attack to disappear (since you only get your off-hand attack if you both use the Attack action *and* make an attack with a light melee weapon)... but the off-hand attack *is* an attack itself and thus I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be allowed to be forgone.

Now, this is how I personally read it and would personally rule it at my table. There's probably a good chance that were Sage Advice asked, they'd tell us that the intention was that only your main hand attacks coming directly from the Attack action were meant to be substituted. But as far as how it's written (from what I'm reading in the SRD)... I see no reason why any attack could not be forgone so long as the Attack action was taken.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Throw me into the camp that says that were you to take the Attack action and attacked with a light melee weapon in your main hand (thereby allowing you to make an attack with a light melee weapon in your off-hand), you could allow the Familiar to substitute its attack for the off-hand one.

The way I'm reading it... all the Pact of the Chain feature states is that so long as you "take the Attack action", you can forgo ANY of your own attacks to allow the familiar to attack. But it says nothing about how you acquire the attack that you substitute in the first place, nor what type of action you use to make it. If you take the Attack action, any attacks you acquire can be substituted so long as you fulfill the obligations for how you acquire them.

As far as two-weapon fighting is concerned... it says that if you take the Attack action *and* you attack with a light melee weapon that you're holding in one hand, you can attack with a light melee weapon in your other hand (using your Bonus action). And via Pact of the Chain, you may forgo one of your attacks to allow the familiar to make an attack of its own (using its Reaction.) Obviously you can't forgo your main hand attack because that causes your off-hand attack to disappear (since you only get your off-hand attack if you both use the Attack action *and* make an attack with a light melee weapon)... but the off-hand attack *is* an attack itself and thus I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be allowed to be forgone.

Now, this is how I personally read it and would personally rule it at my table. There's probably a good chance that were Sage Advice asked, they'd tell us that the intention was that only your main hand attacks coming directly from the Attack action were meant to be substituted. But as far as how it's written (from what I'm reading in the SRD)... I see no reason why any attack could not be forgone so long as the Attack action was taken.

I disagree because of how bonus actions work. You don't have s bonus action which you can do something from a list of allowable bonus actions, instead you may do specific things as a bonus action.

In other words, dial wielding doesn't give me the option to use my bonus action to make an attack with my off hand weapon, it tells me that i may make an attsck with my off hand as a bonus action. This is an important RAW concept. If i want to.substitute my off hand attack for a familiar attack via Pact of the Chain, that doesn't qualify me for a bonus action. Essentially, you dont have a bonus action to use unless you attack with your offhand weapon, and then only if you use the Attack action and attack with yout primsry hsnd weapon. Since the only declatation that can be done as a bonus action is attack with your off hand, substituting that action for another doesnt entitle you to do it as a bonus action.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

The wording makes me think they may have intended for there to be an invocation that would let the chainlock make two attacks at one point, but then they dropped it (it isn't the first time I have had this thought, the wording of planar ally is pretty suggestive that it was meant to be a warlock spell as well as a cleric one).