Anyway, "attacking" an object, for instance, with the blunt side of a sword might be deemed allowable by a DM. Or not. Some DMs would say this is an object interaction since hitting with the blunt side of a sword is far less likely to destroy the object touched by the sword.
Exactly. "Object interaction" is not a feature of the Echo Knight.
You can make an attack using an attack action and you can make an opportunity attack using a reaction. No other actions are possible through an Echo. You could conceivably attack the floor, the lever, or the chest, and this could trigger the trap, but fit would require that you already know it is a trap, know where to hit, know how to hit it (a sword is unlikely to trigger a floor trap, but a hammer probably could), etc.
The Echo Knight is an archetype that lets the fighter fight like melee from a distance. It might have some roguelike features, and at 7th level can even serve as a hearing-seeing scout, but it will make for a very poor trapsmith.
Anyway, "attacking" an object, for instance, with the blunt side of a sword might be deemed allowable by a DM. Or not. Some DMs would say this is an object interaction since hitting with the blunt side of a sword is far less likely to destroy the object touched by the sword.
Exactly. "Object interaction" is not a feature of the Echo Knight.
You can make an attack using an attack action and you can make an opportunity attack using a reaction. No other actions are possible through an Echo. You could conceivably attack the floor, the lever, or the chest, and this could trigger the trap, but fit would require that you already know it is a trap, know where to hit, know how to hit it (a sword is unlikely to trigger a floor trap, but a hammer probably could), etc.
The Echo Knight is an archetype that lets the fighter fight like melee from a distance. It might have some roguelike features, and at 7th level can even serve as a hearing-seeing scout, but it will make for a very poor trapsmith.
There is absolutely no rule stating that you need to know that an object or feature of a room is trapped before interacting with it. Are you trying to make up a rule here?
A round is 6 seconds. Tapping the floor once with your hammer or the blunt of your sword surely doesn't take 6 seconds. Unlike combat, wherein you are trying to hit a moving target, a floor or chest (unless it is in fact a monster) is entirely inanimate. And even if, somehow, it takes six second to tap door or chest, or move a lever from one position to another, most non-combat time is irrelevant anyway unless you're spellcasting, resting, or doing engineering (assuming the DM even lets you do that last one). Face it, the unclear rules for how this subclass works IS confusing to many DMs because it's not written with clear enough language for the DM to adjudicate consistently without note-taking and thinking through some stuff that a lot of beginner DMs are just not used to thinking about. This fine for experienced DMs. But experienced DMs are not the ones that have their rulings "stick" in the first place.
You're making some leaps in logic that aren't supported by their text. This isn't a "you don't like waffles, so you must also dislike hot cakes, too" kind of situation. The echo is a poor trapsmith because it cannot interact with objects and disarm traps. It can't even open or close a door. If you would take even just one more minute, you'd understand what others are saying.
The rules aren't as unclear as you think they are. The feature tells you what it can do. It tells you how you can use it to interact with the game world
You can’t do anything with the echo while using Echo Avatar, but after you finish the Echo stays there till the end of your turn, right? Can you swap places with it then?
There is absolutely no rule stating that you need to know that an object or feature of a room is trapped before interacting with it. Are you trying to make up a rule here?
It has nothing to do with how long it takes to search for a trap or that you have to know that a feature is trapped. It is that THE ONLY THING YOU CAN DO THROUGH YOUR ECHO IS ATTACK. Until seventh level, at which point the only other things you can do through your Echo is see and hear. Nothing more than that. Attack. See. Hear.
IF attacking a trap triggers it, great. But attacking a trap also causes damage, which is fine for some traps and not for others.
“Q: When you fire a ranged attack from an echo, does it still consumer ammo? A: Yes, it consumes ammo. Even if the attacks originates from the echo’s space, it is still the Knight making the attack.”
That ruling sounds like a veritable can of worms to me—aside from it not making much sense. When the knight makes an attack using the echo he isn’t literally pulling an arrow and firing with a bow anymore than he’s slashing with a sword because that would result in two simultaneous attacks and that is clearly not the RAW or the RAI. In that case the ammo disappearing without being shot would be magical in nature. So then what about thrown weapons? They don’t usually disappear once used, but they don’t remain on your person either. If you rule that a thrown weapon (used in an attack originating from an echo) disappears then you make it so an echo knight can instantly destroy anything he can throw. That would reasonably include living creatures because while there are living weapons in D&D I imagine even a hurled porcupine would be dangerous, and one person falling on top of another can definitely cause damage. This ruling requires you to also ban echos from all improvised weapons on top of destroying all thrown weapons “used” by echos—otherwise echo knights can essentially insta-kill anything they can carry. If a thrown weapon ends wherever the echo would have “thrown” it then you give them the ability to teleport anything they can throw. That would make Echo knights better thieves than Rogues if they only need to “intend” to use it as attack and be able to carry it to make it teleport to an echo’s location.
Personally, I don’t think it’s that bad to give echo’s infinite ammo, but I do have a suggestion that gives some balance without breaking the game. Whatever you had on your person when you manifested your echo is what your echo has to use. If you had 12 poison arrows so does your echo. If you have a throwing axe so does your echo.This can include creatures such as porcupines or even companions in an echo-ish form that disappears when “used”. Once the echo uses those arrows and the throwing axe it can no longer use them again. You can “replenish” the echo’s ammo by manifesting a new one, but it will still only have as much ammo as your knight at the moment you manifested it. It does not retain the amount it had when you dismissed it. Additionally, if you gain a weapon after having manifested an echo the echo does not have access to it.
Of course this isn’t in the RAW or the RAI because the most reasonable interpretation that doesn’t create world bending problems is letting echo knights have infinite ammo when using their echos. But if that isn’t acceptable, at least this is a reasonable limiter with a kind of logic to it.
“Q: When you fire a ranged attack from an echo, does it still consumer ammo? A: Yes, it consumes ammo. Even if the attacks originates from the echo’s space, it is still the Knight making the attack.”
That ruling sounds like a veritable can of worms to me—aside from it not making much sense. When the knight makes an attack using the echo he isn’t literally pulling an arrow and firing with a bow anymore than he’s slashing with a sword because that would result in two simultaneous attacks and that is clearly not the RAW or the RAI. In that case the ammo disappearing without being shot would be magical in nature. So then what about thrown weapons? They don’t usually disappear once used, but they don’t remain on your person either. If you rule that a thrown weapon (used in an attack originating from an echo) disappears then you make it so an echo knight can instantly destroy anything he can throw. That would reasonably include living creatures because while there are living weapons in D&D I imagine even a hurled porcupine would be dangerous, and one person falling on top of another can definitely cause damage. This ruling requires you to also ban echos from all improvised weapons on top of destroying all thrown weapons “used” by echos—otherwise echo knights can essentially insta-kill anything they can carry. If a thrown weapon ends wherever the echo would have “thrown” it then you give them the ability to teleport anything they can throw. That would make Echo knights better thieves than Rogues if they only need to “intend” to use it as attack and be able to carry it to make it teleport to an echo’s location.
Personally, I don’t think it’s that bad to give echo’s infinite ammo, but I do have a suggestion that gives some balance without breaking the game. Whatever you had on your person when you manifested your echo is what your echo has to use. If you had 12 poison arrows so does your echo. If you have a throwing axe so does your echo.This can include creatures such as porcupines or even companions in an echo-ish form that disappears when “used”. Once the echo uses those arrows and the throwing axe it can no longer use them again. You can “replenish” the echo’s ammo by manifesting a new one, but it will still only have as much ammo as your knight at the moment you manifested it. It does not retain the amount it had when you dismissed it. Additionally, if you gain a weapon after having manifested an echo the echo does not have access to it.
Of course this isn’t in the RAW or the RAI because the most reasonable interpretation that doesn’t create world bending problems is letting echo knights have infinite ammo when using their echos. But if that isn’t acceptable, at least this is a reasonable limiter with a kind of logic to it.
Any thoughts?
the RAW is clear. The echo is not making any attacks or actions. You, the character, the fighter, are. So any resources the echo appears to expend, is ACTUALLY being expended by the Fighter, who is the one making the attack.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
There is absolutely no rule stating that you need to know that an object or feature of a room is trapped before interacting with it. Are you trying to make up a rule here?
It has nothing to do with how long it takes to search for a trap or that you have to know that a feature is trapped. It is that THE ONLY THING YOU CAN DO THROUGH YOUR ECHO IS ATTACK. Until seventh level, at which point the only other things you can do through your Echo is see and hear. Nothing more than that. Attack. See. Hear.
IF attacking a trap triggers it, great. But attacking a trap also causes damage, which is fine for some traps and not for others.
Let me spell it out for you then. Can you use your weapon to attack an object? Yes. There is no rule against that whatsoever. If you can attack an object, you can attack a door, a chest, or even the floor, since the floor is made of objects like stone, tiles, sheets of metal, etc. Unless you are saying that attacking objects is somehow illegal in D&D rules, you absolutely can interact with objects using your weapon through the Echo.
Let me spell it out for you then. Can you use your weapon to attack an object? Yes. There is no rule against that whatsoever. If you can attack an object, you can attack a door, a chest, or even the floor, since the floor is made of objects like stone, tiles, sheets of metal, etc. Unless you are saying that attacking objects is somehow illegal in D&D rules, you absolutely can interact with objects using your weapon through the Echo.
As a bonus action, you can teleport, magically swapping places with your echo at a cost of 15 feet of your movement, regardless of the distance between the two of you.
When you take the Attack action on your turn, any attack you make with that action can originate from your space or the echo’s space. You make this choice for each attack.
When a creature that you can see within 5 feet of your echo moves at least 5 feet away from it, you can use your reaction to make an opportunity attack against that creature as if you were in the echo’s space.
You cannot "interact with objects" through your Echo. That is a very specific action that is not presented in the actions that can be taken through the Echo. You CAN "attack an object" through your Echo. And as I wrote above (spelling things out for you, as you seem to prefer):
You can attack a trap (causing damage). If that triggers it, great. But it is attacking through your Echo, not "interacting with an object". And it is a horribly inefficient means of "detecting traps".
The Attack action is an attack on anything, not just creatures. Attacking objects are totally legitimate per RAW.
Since you really want me to spell it out for you, here are some examples:
Turmok the Barbarian uses "Interact with Object" to pick up Macguffin, then proceeds to Attack a wooden door that the BBG just fled behind and locked behind him. Here the "Attack" action is clearly being used to destroy an object, not to "interact" with it.
Anselmut the Rogue uses "Interact with Object" to pick up the chair in a bar, which is inside a wooden building going up in flames. Then Anselmut uses the "Attack" action in an attempt to break a glass window. She rolls low, the chair hits the window at an odd angle, and the glass does not break. Here, the "Attack" action is clearly being used to try and destroy an object (unsuccessfully).
Cries can be heard from the floorboards of a haunted house as a raging storm is going on outside. Afraid that the whoever is down there might soon drown and unable to locate a door in the floor, Fluvendahl the Rune Knight activates their Giant Might ability and proceeds to smash their way through the area of the floor where the cries are loudest. Here, the "Attack" action is clearly being used to try and destroy objects, the floorboards.
As all of these are all Attack actions involving objects, there is no reason to deny the Echo Knight use their Echo to attack a window, attack a floor, or attack a door. Unless somehow you're arguing that all three examples here are "object interactions", you no longer can claim ignorance of the precariousness of your straw-thin argument.
At my table I’d probably let the echo attack the pit trap for example. I don’t think there is any rule against it. This assumes they are able to find the trap in the first place. But I also probably wouldn’t let it happen more than a couple times and would either change up the traps or have consequences if the trap is attacked.
If the party goes around attacking any that might be a trap, it would probably get pretty silly, and there would be alternate consequences, such as alerting enemies, etc.
But that is just what I would do at my table. I’m sure every table is different.
At my table I’d probably let the echo attack the pit trap for example. I don’t think there is any rule against it. This assumes they are able to find the trap in the first place. But I also probably wouldn’t let it happen more than a couple times and would either change up the traps or have consequences if the trap is attacked.
If the party goes around attacking any that might be a trap, it would probably get pretty silly, and there would be alternate consequences, such as alerting enemies, etc.
But that is just what I would do at my table. I’m sure every table is different.
Using Attack action on the floor causes more pressure than merely walking on it for a lot of Medium sized creatures.
Also, let me be clear: I am arguing what, RAW, the Echo Knight can do via the Attack action, which by the rules includes using Attack action on a variety of objects. I'm not saying Echo Knight should always be able to do this. But by RAW, they can. My point, ultimately, is that the rules for Echo Knight just aren't written clearly enough, and therefore requires a lot of unnecessary adjudication by the DM, which puts a greater burden on the person who is already doing the hardest job at the table.
The Attack action is an attack on anything, not just creatures. Attacking objects are totally legitimate per RAW.
[H]ere are some examples:
Here the "Attack" action is clearly being used to destroy an object, not to "interact" with it.
Here, the "Attack" action is clearly being used to try and destroy an object (unsuccessfully).
Here, the "Attack" action is clearly being used to try and destroy objects, the floorboards.
As all of these are all Attack actions involving objects, there is no reason to deny the Echo Knight use their Echo to attack a window, attack a floor, or attack a door. Unless somehow you're arguing that all three examples here are "object interactions", you no longer can claim ignorance of the precariousness of your straw-thin argument.
I never claimed you cannot attack an object. I explicitly stated that you can attack an object through the Echo. But you kept saying that you could interact with object to trigger a trap. You explicitly claimed you could "interact with object to trigger a trap" through the Echo. You kept using the phrase "interact with object".
"Six seconds is definitely long enough to see whether an Echo interacting with an object would trigger any traps." (Post 765)
"Thus, the Echo is arguably usable to "interact" with a variety of traps." (Post 770)
"There is absolutely no rule stating that you need to know that an object or feature of a room is trapped before interacting with it." (Post 773)
"you absolutely can interact with objects using your weapon through the Echo" (Post 781)
And now you say that you can Attack the floor/window/door. And now you're right. Because Attack is not Interact with Object.
The Attack action is an attack on anything, not just creatures. Attacking objects are totally legitimate per RAW.
[H]ere are some examples:
Here the "Attack" action is clearly being used to destroy an object, not to "interact" with it.
Here, the "Attack" action is clearly being used to try and destroy an object (unsuccessfully).
Here, the "Attack" action is clearly being used to try and destroy objects, the floorboards.
As all of these are all Attack actions involving objects, there is no reason to deny the Echo Knight use their Echo to attack a window, attack a floor, or attack a door. Unless somehow you're arguing that all three examples here are "object interactions", you no longer can claim ignorance of the precariousness of your straw-thin argument.
I never claimed you cannot attack an object. I explicitly stated that you can attack an object through the Echo. But you kept saying that you could interact with object to trigger a trap. You explicitly claimed you could "interact with object to trigger a trap" through the Echo. You kept using the phrase "interact with object".
"Six seconds is definitely long enough to see whether an Echo interacting with an object would trigger any traps." (Post 765)
"Thus, the Echo is arguably usable to "interact" with a variety of traps." (Post 770)
"There is absolutely no rule stating that you need to know that an object or feature of a room is trapped before interacting with it." (Post 773)
"you absolutely can interact with objects using your weapon through the Echo" (Post 781)
And now you say that you can Attack the floor/window/door. And now you're right. Because Attack is not Interact with Object.
Okay, so we are in agreement that an Echo can be used as a conduit for the Echo Knight to attack an object from a distance. Great. So if a trap is triggered by pressure or by the breaking of something, wouldn't it be obvious that the Echo can be used to trigger said trap using the Attack action? Note that I never said an Echo can pick up an object or turn a door knob or carefully open anything, as these very clearly require the "Interact with object" action. I'm only talking about the Attack action, and by RAW, the Attack action can therefore be used to trigger a variety of traps, though certainly not all of them. In standard English, triggering something is a form of interaction. The fact that D&D uses very standard English words for some very specific aspects of allowable actions in-game can lead to confusion. If I have been imprecise in my usage of English, then perhaps that is part of the reason we keep going back and forth about something that, to me, seems quite clear: The Attack action used via the Echo may effect certain changes in the environment next to the Echo to effectively trigger and therefore discover traps.
The attack action can only be used to trigger an attack if the trap says it can; or the DM allows it regardless. It's not a fail-safe. And if you insist on constantly having the echo attack every conceivable object and surface, you're going to slow down the game. That quickly becomes tedious.
In any case, traps first need to be detected. And then you have to wonder if triggering them is actually preferable.
Clearly this is an issue with the wording on the feature, as if you can't stealth; interact with an object; or teleport with it, then the feature becomes pretty weak, IMHO.
I suspect you should be able to do more than just look and hear, by RAI.
Clearly this is an issue with the wording on the feature, as if you can't stealth; interact with an object; or teleport with it, then the feature becomes pretty weak, IMHO.
I suspect you should be able to do more than just look and hear, by RAI.
It really doesn't. It's plenty strong without being able to do any of those things already. If you were supposed to be able to do more then they would've said it can do anything you can do instead of just saying that you can attack from its location.
It's a feature meant for combat and pretty much combat alone, outside of Echo Avatar being able to scout.
The words RAW are being thrown out a lot. But my question would be...by RAW, does the Attack action exist outside of combat? That is, if you are striking a doorknob with your weapon or some such, but outside of combat, that's not the Attack action. You are probably just interacting with an object by striking it. Attack action is a feature of Combat and listed as such.
Now a DM will adjudicate it as he/she wishes, but I don't think it's intended that the player, through the Echo, can interact with something outside of combat. That's adding a level and a power that isn't indicated in the description.
Following that train of thought, they can't even use Manifest Echo outside of combat because there's no bonus action outside of combat. Something has to give. The action economy works to limit what they can do during a combat round out of necessity. There's only so much which can be accomplished in six seconds. Divorced from combat, there's no longer an issue.
I think the big problem with thinking the echo can scout, via Echo Avatar, is not fully grasping what it means to scout. A rogue sticking to the shadows is not going to scout the same way a wizard's familiar can hide in plain sight. In other words, relying on cover and illumination to take full advantage of Dexterity ([skill]Stealth[/skill) checks isn't the only way to do things. In that same vein, Echo Avatar allows the fighter to appear, see, and hear as if they're somewhere they're not.
The types of actions which can be performed through the echo are still severely limited. It isn't much good for anything but attacking, being a target, and being used to spy. We should be working within those expressed limitations to come up with new role-playing opportunities.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Exactly. "Object interaction" is not a feature of the Echo Knight.
You can make an attack using an attack action and you can make an opportunity attack using a reaction. No other actions are possible through an Echo. You could conceivably attack the floor, the lever, or the chest, and this could trigger the trap, but fit would require that you already know it is a trap, know where to hit, know how to hit it (a sword is unlikely to trigger a floor trap, but a hammer probably could), etc.
The Echo Knight is an archetype that lets the fighter fight like melee from a distance. It might have some roguelike features, and at 7th level can even serve as a hearing-seeing scout, but it will make for a very poor trapsmith.
There is absolutely no rule stating that you need to know that an object or feature of a room is trapped before interacting with it. Are you trying to make up a rule here?
A round is 6 seconds. Tapping the floor once with your hammer or the blunt of your sword surely doesn't take 6 seconds. Unlike combat, wherein you are trying to hit a moving target, a floor or chest (unless it is in fact a monster) is entirely inanimate. And even if, somehow, it takes six second to tap door or chest, or move a lever from one position to another, most non-combat time is irrelevant anyway unless you're spellcasting, resting, or doing engineering (assuming the DM even lets you do that last one). Face it, the unclear rules for how this subclass works IS confusing to many DMs because it's not written with clear enough language for the DM to adjudicate consistently without note-taking and thinking through some stuff that a lot of beginner DMs are just not used to thinking about. This fine for experienced DMs. But experienced DMs are not the ones that have their rulings "stick" in the first place.
You're making some leaps in logic that aren't supported by their text. This isn't a "you don't like waffles, so you must also dislike hot cakes, too" kind of situation. The echo is a poor trapsmith because it cannot interact with objects and disarm traps. It can't even open or close a door. If you would take even just one more minute, you'd understand what others are saying.
The rules aren't as unclear as you think they are. The feature tells you what it can do. It tells you how you can use it to interact with the game world
RAW? I believe so.
RAI? No: https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/1242199682534608896?lang=en
It has nothing to do with how long it takes to search for a trap or that you have to know that a feature is trapped. It is that THE ONLY THING YOU CAN DO THROUGH YOUR ECHO IS ATTACK. Until seventh level, at which point the only other things you can do through your Echo is see and hear. Nothing more than that. Attack. See. Hear.
IF attacking a trap triggers it, great. But attacking a trap also causes damage, which is fine for some traps and not for others.
“Q: When you fire a ranged attack from an echo, does it still consumer ammo?
A: Yes, it consumes ammo. Even if the attacks originates from the echo’s space, it is still the Knight making the attack.”
That ruling sounds like a veritable can of worms to me—aside from it not making much sense. When the knight makes an attack using the echo he isn’t literally pulling an arrow and firing with a bow anymore than he’s slashing with a sword because that would result in two simultaneous attacks and that is clearly not the RAW or the RAI.
In that case the ammo disappearing without being shot would be magical in nature. So then what about thrown weapons? They don’t usually disappear once used, but they don’t remain on your person either. If you rule that a thrown weapon (used in an attack originating from an echo) disappears then you make it so an echo knight can instantly destroy anything he can throw. That would reasonably include living creatures because while there are living weapons in D&D I imagine even a hurled porcupine would be dangerous, and one person falling on top of another can definitely cause damage. This ruling requires you to also ban echos from all improvised weapons on top of destroying all thrown weapons “used” by echos—otherwise echo knights can essentially insta-kill anything they can carry. If a thrown weapon ends wherever the echo would have “thrown” it then you give them the ability to teleport anything they can throw. That would make Echo knights better thieves than Rogues if they only need to “intend” to use it as attack and be able to carry it to make it teleport to an echo’s location.
Personally, I don’t think it’s that bad to give echo’s infinite ammo, but I do have a suggestion that gives some balance without breaking the game. Whatever you had on your person when you manifested your echo is what your echo has to use. If you had 12 poison arrows so does your echo. If you have a throwing axe so does your echo.This can include creatures such as porcupines or even companions in an echo-ish form that disappears when “used”. Once the echo uses those arrows and the throwing axe it can no longer use them again. You can “replenish” the echo’s ammo by manifesting a new one, but it will still only have as much ammo as your knight at the moment you manifested it. It does not retain the amount it had when you dismissed it. Additionally, if you gain a weapon after having manifested an echo the echo does not have access to it.
Of course this isn’t in the RAW or the RAI because the most reasonable interpretation that doesn’t create world bending problems is letting echo knights have infinite ammo when using their echos. But if that isn’t acceptable, at least this is a reasonable limiter with a kind of logic to it.
Any thoughts?
the RAW is clear. The echo is not making any attacks or actions. You, the character, the fighter, are. So any resources the echo appears to expend, is ACTUALLY being expended by the Fighter, who is the one making the attack.
Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
Let me spell it out for you then. Can you use your weapon to attack an object? Yes. There is no rule against that whatsoever. If you can attack an object, you can attack a door, a chest, or even the floor, since the floor is made of objects like stone, tiles, sheets of metal, etc. Unless you are saying that attacking objects is somehow illegal in D&D rules, you absolutely can interact with objects using your weapon through the Echo.
Per the Echo Knight feature:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/fighter#EchoKnight
You can use the echo in the following ways:
Interact With Object
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#InteractingwithObjectsAroundYou
None of these things are "attack".
You cannot "interact with objects" through your Echo. That is a very specific action that is not presented in the actions that can be taken through the Echo. You CAN "attack an object" through your Echo. And as I wrote above (spelling things out for you, as you seem to prefer):
You can attack a trap (causing damage). If that triggers it, great. But it is attacking through your Echo, not "interacting with an object". And it is a horribly inefficient means of "detecting traps".
The Attack action is an attack on anything, not just creatures. Attacking objects are totally legitimate per RAW.
Since you really want me to spell it out for you, here are some examples:
Turmok the Barbarian uses "Interact with Object" to pick up Macguffin, then proceeds to Attack a wooden door that the BBG just fled behind and locked behind him. Here the "Attack" action is clearly being used to destroy an object, not to "interact" with it.
Anselmut the Rogue uses "Interact with Object" to pick up the chair in a bar, which is inside a wooden building going up in flames. Then Anselmut uses the "Attack" action in an attempt to break a glass window. She rolls low, the chair hits the window at an odd angle, and the glass does not break. Here, the "Attack" action is clearly being used to try and destroy an object (unsuccessfully).
Cries can be heard from the floorboards of a haunted house as a raging storm is going on outside. Afraid that the whoever is down there might soon drown and unable to locate a door in the floor, Fluvendahl the Rune Knight activates their Giant Might ability and proceeds to smash their way through the area of the floor where the cries are loudest. Here, the "Attack" action is clearly being used to try and destroy objects, the floorboards.
As all of these are all Attack actions involving objects, there is no reason to deny the Echo Knight use their Echo to attack a window, attack a floor, or attack a door. Unless somehow you're arguing that all three examples here are "object interactions", you no longer can claim ignorance of the precariousness of your straw-thin argument.
At my table I’d probably let the echo attack the pit trap for example. I don’t think there is any rule against it. This assumes they are able to find the trap in the first place. But I also probably wouldn’t let it happen more than a couple times and would either change up the traps or have consequences if the trap is attacked.
If the party goes around attacking any that might be a trap, it would probably get pretty silly, and there would be alternate consequences, such as alerting enemies, etc.
But that is just what I would do at my table. I’m sure every table is different.
Using Attack action on the floor causes more pressure than merely walking on it for a lot of Medium sized creatures.
Also, let me be clear: I am arguing what, RAW, the Echo Knight can do via the Attack action, which by the rules includes using Attack action on a variety of objects. I'm not saying Echo Knight should always be able to do this. But by RAW, they can. My point, ultimately, is that the rules for Echo Knight just aren't written clearly enough, and therefore requires a lot of unnecessary adjudication by the DM, which puts a greater burden on the person who is already doing the hardest job at the table.
I never claimed you cannot attack an object. I explicitly stated that you can attack an object through the Echo. But you kept saying that you could interact with object to trigger a trap. You explicitly claimed you could "interact with object to trigger a trap" through the Echo. You kept using the phrase "interact with object".
And now you say that you can Attack the floor/window/door. And now you're right. Because Attack is not Interact with Object.
Okay, so we are in agreement that an Echo can be used as a conduit for the Echo Knight to attack an object from a distance. Great. So if a trap is triggered by pressure or by the breaking of something, wouldn't it be obvious that the Echo can be used to trigger said trap using the Attack action? Note that I never said an Echo can pick up an object or turn a door knob or carefully open anything, as these very clearly require the "Interact with object" action. I'm only talking about the Attack action, and by RAW, the Attack action can therefore be used to trigger a variety of traps, though certainly not all of them. In standard English, triggering something is a form of interaction. The fact that D&D uses very standard English words for some very specific aspects of allowable actions in-game can lead to confusion. If I have been imprecise in my usage of English, then perhaps that is part of the reason we keep going back and forth about something that, to me, seems quite clear: The Attack action used via the Echo may effect certain changes in the environment next to the Echo to effectively trigger and therefore discover traps.
The attack action can only be used to trigger an attack if the trap says it can; or the DM allows it regardless. It's not a fail-safe. And if you insist on constantly having the echo attack every conceivable object and surface, you're going to slow down the game. That quickly becomes tedious.
In any case, traps first need to be detected. And then you have to wonder if triggering them is actually preferable.
Clearly this is an issue with the wording on the feature, as if you can't stealth; interact with an object; or teleport with it, then the feature becomes pretty weak, IMHO.
I suspect you should be able to do more than just look and hear, by RAI.
It's a feature meant for combat and pretty much combat alone, outside of Echo Avatar being able to scout.
The words RAW are being thrown out a lot. But my question would be...by RAW, does the Attack action exist outside of combat? That is, if you are striking a doorknob with your weapon or some such, but outside of combat, that's not the Attack action. You are probably just interacting with an object by striking it. Attack action is a feature of Combat and listed as such.
Now a DM will adjudicate it as he/she wishes, but I don't think it's intended that the player, through the Echo, can interact with something outside of combat. That's adding a level and a power that isn't indicated in the description.
Following that train of thought, they can't even use Manifest Echo outside of combat because there's no bonus action outside of combat. Something has to give. The action economy works to limit what they can do during a combat round out of necessity. There's only so much which can be accomplished in six seconds. Divorced from combat, there's no longer an issue.
I think the big problem with thinking the echo can scout, via Echo Avatar, is not fully grasping what it means to scout. A rogue sticking to the shadows is not going to scout the same way a wizard's familiar can hide in plain sight. In other words, relying on cover and illumination to take full advantage of Dexterity ([skill]Stealth[/skill) checks isn't the only way to do things. In that same vein, Echo Avatar allows the fighter to appear, see, and hear as if they're somewhere they're not.
The types of actions which can be performed through the echo are still severely limited. It isn't much good for anything but attacking, being a target, and being used to spy. We should be working within those expressed limitations to come up with new role-playing opportunities.