While I do think the arguments are strong, I would also add that these are interpretations of RAW and not actual RAW. The perspectives of Jeremy Crawford, while tremendously valuable and insightful, are not the rules themselves.
Sigred was using one of Jeremy's rulings for his argument, so I quoted Jeremy too to show that tweet wasn't applicable to what we're talking about. My argument up to that point had only quoted the rules.
If you take a cab ride to work in the morning, you can read a book on the ride there.
These examples I continue to provide should be all you need to see that you're incorrect about the verb tense usage and how they can be interpreted. There is nothing preventing the Y to happen while the X is happening. Y must simply happen after X has at least begun to happen.
The structure of the Shield Master rule is "If you do X, you can do Y." Your example is "If you do X, you can do Y while you do X." Those are not the same thing.
A perfectly reasonable way to interpret "If you do your homework, you can go to the movies" is that you have to finish your homework first. The alternative is an implicit form of bargaining, e.g. "If you promise to do your homework later, you can go to the movies now", but the rules are statements of fact. You can't bargain with a book.
Taking an attack action does not require an attack roll to have been resolved.
Yes, it does. If you haven't performed any attacks then you haven't started the action, and if you don't have Extra Attack then as soon as you make your attack the action is over. The only way to be "in progress" with the Attack action is to have Extra Attack and to have made 1 attack, but not the rest.
The structure of the Shield Master rule is "If you do X, you can do Y." Your example is "If you do X, you can do Y while you do X." Those are not the same thing.
They are indeed not the same thing. Logically, the first case does not preclude the second case unless it says "If you do X, then you can do Y," which the wording does not. However this is purely academic because it has been established that in the case of Shield Master, in order for Y to occur, X must first occur to completion. I am agreeing with your larger point.
In idiomatic English, "If you do X, you can do Y" implies ordering. That's easy to see just by substituting different values of X and Y that might come up in a normal conversation.
I might be a programmer by trade, but if I were making a role-playing/storytelling game for ages 12 and up, I wouldn't write the rules in a formal mathematical language either. That wouldn't accomplish much other than making the rules hopelessly inaccessible to most people.
If you take a cab ride to work in the morning, you can read a book on the ride there.
These examples I continue to provide should be all you need to see that you're incorrect about the verb tense usage and how they can be interpreted. There is nothing preventing the Y to happen while the X is happening. Y must simply happen after X has at least begun to happen.
The structure of the Shield Master rule is "If you do X, you can do Y." Your example is "If you do X, you can do Y while you do X." Those are not the same thing.
They are a bit the same. As supporting evidence here is another sentence from the rulebooks with the same structure: "If you take an action that includes more than one weapon attack, you can break up your movement even further by moving between those attacks". If you take X action, you can do Y. In this case that Y obviously takes place during X, not after the competion of X. Removing the specific "between those attacks" which makes Y certainly during X, however, does not necessarily make the sentence mean "only after". There is an inherent ambiguity of the English 'if' statement.
I'm not sure where I stand on the actual question in this post "can a Shield bash come before, during or only after the attack(s) of the Attack action?", but I am certain that anyone who is claiming that the rule books are clear-cut on the issue is dead wrong.
Personally I think I'm fine for players to perform all things order-agnostically; make the Two-Weapon Fighting bonus attack or shield bash first if you want, but know that in doing so you have locked yourself into the Attack action and any other requirements to gain that bonus action (and if all possible targets unexpectedly disappear then your Attack action is wasted).
If I take public transport to work tomorrow, I can continue to comment on this thread - both before, during and after I step on the train which makes the "take public transport to work" statement an actuality...
They are a bit the same. As supporting evidence here is another sentence from the rulebooks with the same structure: "If you take an action that includes more than one weapon attack, you can break up your movement even further by moving between those attacks". If you take X action, you can do Y. In this case that Y obviously takes place during X, not after the competion of X. Removing the specific "between those attacks" which makes Y certainly during X, however, does not necessarily make the sentence mean "only after". There is an inherent ambiguity of the English 'if' statement.
This is why I put so much emphasis on natural/conversational/idiomatic English. That sentence superficially looks like "If you do X, you can do Y" but what it's actually saying is "If you do X, you can do Y during X." Saying you can move between the attacks of an action that includes multiple weapon attacks is just a more specific way of saying you can move during that action.
When I say "If you do X, you can do Y" is not the same as "If you do X, you can do Y during X" I'm talking about the semantics of the sentence, not whether you can do a literal text substitution. Even if you were to drop the "between those attacks" from that sentence, the text still implies it's talking about moving during the action. It mentions breaking up your movement even further in the same sentence it talks about an action that includes more than one weapon attack, after having established that you can move both before and after you take an action. A machine might be fooled by the way the sentence is structured, but a human will understand what it means.
Yes, there's an inherent ambiguity in the English "if" in a vacuum, but when you look at specific instances of it the context will usually disambiguate which meaning you're using.
Yes, there's an inherent ambiguity in the English "if" in a vacuum, but when you look at specific instances of it the context will usually disambiguate which meaning you're using.
Sometimes the context will. The context of the Shield Master feat and surrounding rules does not disambiguate the two meanings. Jeremy did disambiguate the meanings with an interpretation, then later he disambiguated them in the opposite direction. The sentence remains ambiguous in its current RAW form.
"If you X, you can Y" does not exclusively mean "after you X, you can then Y", it can and often does mean "while you X, you can Y" (even in these rulebooks). And no one in this thread has provided context from the rulebooks which conclusively proves either interpretation for this situation.
InquisitiveCoder: My apologies! I definitely didn't mean to imply that you had also equated Crawford's tweets as rules--I could've done a better job clarifying what I meant. Was rather adding my comment to follow yours in a supportive manner in response to Sigred's, and my phrasing was poorly chosen.
Perhaps a better way for my own post would have replaced, "I would also add that these are interpretations..." with "I would also add that the tweets referenced by Sigred are interpretations...".
It is a general rule of bonus actions with triggers, and the second is specifically about the Attack action, which is what I thought was the scope of the conversation.
If Extra Attack were designed better (and I 100% agree it should be redesigned), that would remove the need for every bonus action ability/feature/spell to have its own individually detailed description of trigger & timing, so that's the best feasible place to start for sure.
All of those bonus actions have timing restrictions by design. Redesigning Extra Attack wouldn't change that, because that's precisely how the developers want them to work. Fixing Extra Attack just makes it a lot simpler for bonus actions to interact with the Attack action. Two-Weapon Fighting, Shield Master and the likes are actually super simple to resolve before Extra Attack.
We are saying the same thing. "Redesigning" is a poor choice of words on my part.
Two-weapon fighting explicitly requires that you have actually made the attack. Shield master does not. Shield Master requires that you take the action.
They both explicitly require that you have actually made an attack. You must still take the actual Attack action (things like Booming Blade or Reaction attacks do not qualify), and that requires an attack roll be resolved.
Taking an attack action does not require an attack roll to have been resolved. That is categorically false. It has been well established already numerous times in this very thread.
It is categorically true. It has been well established already numerous times in this very thread. It is directly in the basic rules of the game:
Making an Attack
Whether you're striking with a melee weapon, firing a weapon at range, or making an attack roll as part of a spell, an attack has a simple structure.
1. Choose a target. Pick a target within your attack's range: a creature, an object, or a location.
2. Determine modifiers. The DM determines whether the target has cover and whether you have advantage or disadvantage against the target. In addition, spells, special abilities, and other effects can apply penalties or bonuses to your attack roll.
3. Resolve the attack. You make the attack roll. On a hit, you roll damage, unless the particular attack has rules that specify otherwise. Some attacks cause special effects in addition to or instead of damage.
If there's ever any question whether something you're doing counts as an attack, the rule is simple: if you're making an attack roll, you're making an attack.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Sometimes the context will. The context of the Shield Master feat and surrounding rules does not disambiguate the two meanings. Jeremy did disambiguate the meanings with an interpretation, then later he disambiguated them in the opposite direction.
No, he didn't. He said that "If you do X, you can do Y" means you have to do X first, and then he said RAI, making 1 attack is supposed to be enough because that's how the Attack action is defined before any add-ons like Extra Attack. He's not equivocating on what "If you can do X, you can do Y" means, he's saying the RAW and RAI differ on what it means to take the Attack action when Extra Attack gets involved. Which brings us right back to my point; it's not the conditional that's the problem, it's that Extra Attack is nominally 1 action in the rules but in every other way it's like you're taking multiple actions.
"If you X, you can Y" does not exclusively mean "after you X, you can then Y", it can and often does mean "while you X, you can Y" (even in these rulebooks).
Do you have any examples where "If you do X, you can do Y" can mean "While you do X, you can do Y" that isn't unambiguously referring only to the latter? All of the examples so far have been specific about Y happening during X, so they're not examples of "If you do X, you can do Y" being subject to two interpretations.
And no one in this thread has provided context from the rulebooks which conclusively proves either interpretation for this situation.
That's fine. I'm not trying to prove there's absolutely no way to interpret the rules any other way but mine.
I'm taking issue with Ravnodaus' claim that "If you do X, you can do Y" absolutely, definitely implies Y can happen during X. There are clearly examples where it doesn't, and in my opinion it more commonly refers to strict ordering unless the speaker goes out of their way to be more specific.
Two-weapon fighting explicitly requires that you have actually made the attack. Shield master does not. Shield Master requires that you take the action.
They both explicitly require that you have actually made an attack. You must still take the actual Attack action (things like Booming Blade or Reaction attacks do not qualify), and that requires an attack roll be resolved.
Taking an attack action does not require an attack roll to have been resolved. That is categorically false. It has been well established already numerous times in this very thread.
It is categorically true. It has been well established already numerous times in this very thread. It is directly in the basic rules of the game:
Making an Attack
Whether you're striking with a melee weapon, firing a weapon at range, or making an attack roll as part of a spell, an attack has a simple structure.
1. Choose a target. Pick a target within your attack's range: a creature, an object, or a location.
2. Determine modifiers. The DM determines whether the target has cover and whether you have advantage or disadvantage against the target. In addition, spells, special abilities, and other effects can apply penalties or bonuses to your attack roll.
3. Resolve the attack. You make the attack roll. On a hit, you roll damage, unless the particular attack has rules that specify otherwise. Some attacks cause special effects in addition to or instead of damage.
If there's ever any question whether something you're doing counts as an attack, the rule is simple: if you're making an attack roll, you're making an attack.
You make good points to support your interpretation; two quick observations:
The RAW for the section on "Making an attack" does not explicitly preclude any bonus action from being inserted prior to its execution within the Attack action. I'd even go a step further and suggest that there is no language in the RAW which prohibits the bonus action shove being introduced among its steps!
Additionally, in the above referenced tweet by Crawford, he does not quote RAW, but rather supplies yet another example of labeling his own interpretation as "RAW". He has a habit of doing that. :(
Additionally, in the above referenced tweet by Crawford, he does not quote RAW, but rather supplies yet another example of labeling his own interpretation as "RAW". He has a habit of doing that. :(
His first statement is a tautology: an action is complete when you've finished it. This is obviously true by definition unless there exists some rule that says otherwise, but there is none. Therefore, what he's saying is correct if you're sticking to the book.
Then he contrasts that with the RAI, which is that you can call your Attack action complete after 1 attack, but that rule doesn't exist anywhere, hence why it's RAI and not RAW.
If you take a cab ride to work in the morning, you can read a book on the ride there.
These examples I continue to provide should be all you need to see that you're incorrect about the verb tense usage and how they can be interpreted. There is nothing preventing the Y to happen while the X is happening. Y must simply happen after X has at least begun to happen.
The structure of the Shield Master rule is "If you do X, you can do Y." Your example is "If you do X, you can do Y while you do X." Those are not the same thing.
Purely for demonstration. It is to get you to actually see what the rule is saying without any ambiguity. My example holds if you remove the "while you do X" from the statement.
If you take a cab ride to work in the morning, you can read a book.
This is precisely the format of the feat, as, as I demonstrated, doesn't preclude doing the reading while doing the riding. Sure, sure, you could read after the ride. But... based on that verbiage, you could read while riding.
Adding the "on the ride there" was purely instructional and education for your benefit. Again, so that you could recognize the difference between a present tense verb conditional trigger, and a past tense verb conditional trigger.
A perfectly reasonable way to interpret "If you do your homework, you can go to the movies" is that you have to finish your homework first. The alternative is an implicit form of bargaining, e.g. "If you promise to do your homework later, you can go to the movies now", but the rules are typically statements of fact. You can't bargain with a book.
If you go to the movies, you can eat popcorn.
Yes, I totally agree that you can eat popcorn after you finish the movie. We both agree that you can take the bonus action after the action finished.
But... well, you could eat that popcorn while you watch the movie... too.
Because the trigger X being in the present tense is what is allowing us permission to do Y, and we have established that once we have permission to do Y we have complete free choice on the timing of Y... we simply do Y while still doing X.
Additionally, in the above referenced tweet by Crawford, he does not quote RAW, but rather supplies yet another example of labeling his own interpretation as "RAW". He has a habit of doing that. :(
His first statement is a tautology: an action is complete when you've finished it. This is obviously true by definition unless there exists some rule that says otherwise, but there is none. Therefore, what he's saying is correct if you're sticking to the book.
Then he contrasts that with the RAI, which is that you can call your Attack action complete after 1 attack, but that rule doesn't exist anywhere, hence why it's RAI and not RAW.
That's fair!
I suppose that means he's being... redundant? It's still odd to me to see him say a whole bunch of stuff in his original words and then label it by an acronym that means "rules as written" as though he can provide a page number where we can confirm his words in the books.
If you take a cab ride to work in the morning, you can read a book.
This is precisely the format of the feat, as, as I demonstrated, doesn't preclude doing the reading while doing the riding. Sure, sure, you could read after the ride. But... based on that verbiage, you could read while riding.
Here's the thing: even though it's got the same grammatical structure as the feat, it's not the same kind of sentence.
"If you do your homework, you can go to the movies" is giving you permission to do something you implicitly weren't allowed to do, same as "If you take the Attack action during your turn, you can take a bonus action to..."
"If you take a cab ride to work in the morning, you can read a book" isn't giving you permission. The speaker is making an observation or suggestion to a listener, most likely in response to a statement about cab rides. It's really not a sentence that would come up on its own. The listener is probably lamenting the fact that they have to catch a cab the next morning.
You can't equate those two sentences based on having the same format. Language isn't that simple. If you tried to weasel your way out of having to finish your homework using that as your defense, you'd get shut down.
Adding the "on the ride there" was purely instructional and education for your benefit.
It's not purely instructional. Without it, the sentence sounds awkward. Remember, the rules are written in everyday English.
I suppose that means he's being... redundant? It's still odd to me to see him say a whole bunch of stuff in his original words and then label it by an acronym that means "rules as written" as though he can provide a page number where we can confirm his words in the books.
He's not trying to insinuate his words are RAW, he's basically saying that's his ruling based purely on the RAW.
But at the same time his statement still feels dubious to me, like it was published only half-cooked. Does it not strike you at least a little odd? The least he could have done was provide the book and page which he references, rather than just casually tossing in one of the most powerful relevant acronyms.
His claim is basically that RAW there are no rules that would cause an action to be considered complete any sooner than when you've done the whole thing. What would he cite to prove no rule exists? The only way to confirm that for yourself is to read all 3 core books in their entirety.
Crawford's rulings mean nothing at my table as he is not my DM. I would not allow a bonus action to be inserted between two attacks made on the same attack action but I would allow a bonus action to be made before or after the attack action.
If you are fighting with sword and board and intend to use a shove with the shield 100% you are going to shove before you strike with a weapon. If a DM ruled otherwise I would either not take the feat, or more likely leave the group and play elsewhere.
For all the people who want to quote game designers and rule interpretations and clarifications, etc; here is another quote to consider.
”The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.” Attributed to Gary Gygax by Allan Varney
Your game is supposed to be fun. Rule lawyering has its place but not at the expense of people having fun with their friends. As a rule of thumb: if it’s not going to break your game and it’s something reasonable, then it’s fine to do it. If it is going to break your particular game then don’t allow it, but explain why it’s going to break the game to the player. Most people are pretty understanding and if you calmly explain “if I let you do Xthen it will make the game less fun as a whole for Y reasons” then they are okay with it.
If the player Wanted to be able to bonus action shove before the attack and took the feat with that intent, then I don’t think it’s game breaking to let them do it. It’s a cool heroic thing to do, tactically makes sense and lets the player feel like a badass with a shield, then why not. We can work out the details. However your table may be different. If letting this happen wrecks your game then just explain that and why and move on. Everybody is here just to have fun. Remember: RAF > RAI or RAW
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Check out my Disabled & Dragons Youtube Channel for 5e Monster and Player Tactics. Helping the Disabled Community and Players and DM’s (both new and experienced) get into D&D. Plus there is a talking Dragon named Quill.
Sigred was using one of Jeremy's rulings for his argument, so I quoted Jeremy too to show that tweet wasn't applicable to what we're talking about. My argument up to that point had only quoted the rules.
The structure of the Shield Master rule is "If you do X, you can do Y." Your example is "If you do X, you can do Y while you do X." Those are not the same thing.
A perfectly reasonable way to interpret "If you do your homework, you can go to the movies" is that you have to finish your homework first. The alternative is an implicit form of bargaining, e.g. "If you promise to do your homework later, you can go to the movies now", but the rules are statements of fact. You can't bargain with a book.
Yes, it does. If you haven't performed any attacks then you haven't started the action, and if you don't have Extra Attack then as soon as you make your attack the action is over. The only way to be "in progress" with the Attack action is to have Extra Attack and to have made 1 attack, but not the rest.
They are indeed not the same thing. Logically, the first case does not preclude the second case unless it says "If you do X, then you can do Y," which the wording does not. However this is purely academic because it has been established that in the case of Shield Master, in order for Y to occur, X must first occur to completion. I am agreeing with your larger point.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I mean, your name is InquisitiveCoder after all...
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I might be a programmer by trade, but if I were making a role-playing/storytelling game for ages 12 and up, I wouldn't write the rules in a formal mathematical language either. That wouldn't accomplish much other than making the rules hopelessly inaccessible to most people.
They are a bit the same. As supporting evidence here is another sentence from the rulebooks with the same structure: "If you take an action that includes more than one weapon attack, you can break up your movement even further by moving between those attacks". If you take X action, you can do Y. In this case that Y obviously takes place during X, not after the competion of X. Removing the specific "between those attacks" which makes Y certainly during X, however, does not necessarily make the sentence mean "only after". There is an inherent ambiguity of the English 'if' statement.
I'm not sure where I stand on the actual question in this post "can a Shield bash come before, during or only after the attack(s) of the Attack action?", but I am certain that anyone who is claiming that the rule books are clear-cut on the issue is dead wrong.
Personally I think I'm fine for players to perform all things order-agnostically; make the Two-Weapon Fighting bonus attack or shield bash first if you want, but know that in doing so you have locked yourself into the Attack action and any other requirements to gain that bonus action (and if all possible targets unexpectedly disappear then your Attack action is wasted).
If I take public transport to work tomorrow, I can continue to comment on this thread - both before, during and after I step on the train which makes the "take public transport to work" statement an actuality...
This is why I put so much emphasis on natural/conversational/idiomatic English. That sentence superficially looks like "If you do X, you can do Y" but what it's actually saying is "If you do X, you can do Y during X." Saying you can move between the attacks of an action that includes multiple weapon attacks is just a more specific way of saying you can move during that action.
When I say "If you do X, you can do Y" is not the same as "If you do X, you can do Y during X" I'm talking about the semantics of the sentence, not whether you can do a literal text substitution. Even if you were to drop the "between those attacks" from that sentence, the text still implies it's talking about moving during the action. It mentions breaking up your movement even further in the same sentence it talks about an action that includes more than one weapon attack, after having established that you can move both before and after you take an action. A machine might be fooled by the way the sentence is structured, but a human will understand what it means.
Yes, there's an inherent ambiguity in the English "if" in a vacuum, but when you look at specific instances of it the context will usually disambiguate which meaning you're using.
Sometimes the context will. The context of the Shield Master feat and surrounding rules does not disambiguate the two meanings. Jeremy did disambiguate the meanings with an interpretation, then later he disambiguated them in the opposite direction. The sentence remains ambiguous in its current RAW form.
"If you X, you can Y" does not exclusively mean "after you X, you can then Y", it can and often does mean "while you X, you can Y" (even in these rulebooks). And no one in this thread has provided context from the rulebooks which conclusively proves either interpretation for this situation.
InquisitiveCoder: My apologies! I definitely didn't mean to imply that you had also equated Crawford's tweets as rules--I could've done a better job clarifying what I meant. Was rather adding my comment to follow yours in a supportive manner in response to Sigred's, and my phrasing was poorly chosen.
Perhaps a better way for my own post would have replaced, "I would also add that these are interpretations..." with "I would also add that the tweets referenced by Sigred are interpretations...".
It is a general rule of bonus actions with triggers, and the second is specifically about the Attack action, which is what I thought was the scope of the conversation.
We are saying the same thing. "Redesigning" is a poor choice of words on my part.
It is categorically true. It has been well established already numerous times in this very thread. It is directly in the basic rules of the game:
And there's Jeremy confirming both what the RAW actually is, and what the RAI was supposed to be. Both confirm that you have to actually make an attack roll.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
No, he didn't. He said that "If you do X, you can do Y" means you have to do X first, and then he said RAI, making 1 attack is supposed to be enough because that's how the Attack action is defined before any add-ons like Extra Attack. He's not equivocating on what "If you can do X, you can do Y" means, he's saying the RAW and RAI differ on what it means to take the Attack action when Extra Attack gets involved. Which brings us right back to my point; it's not the conditional that's the problem, it's that Extra Attack is nominally 1 action in the rules but in every other way it's like you're taking multiple actions.
Do you have any examples where "If you do X, you can do Y" can mean "While you do X, you can do Y" that isn't unambiguously referring only to the latter? All of the examples so far have been specific about Y happening during X, so they're not examples of "If you do X, you can do Y" being subject to two interpretations.
That's fine. I'm not trying to prove there's absolutely no way to interpret the rules any other way but mine.
I'm taking issue with Ravnodaus' claim that "If you do X, you can do Y" absolutely, definitely implies Y can happen during X. There are clearly examples where it doesn't, and in my opinion it more commonly refers to strict ordering unless the speaker goes out of their way to be more specific.
You make good points to support your interpretation; two quick observations:
The RAW for the section on "Making an attack" does not explicitly preclude any bonus action from being inserted prior to its execution within the Attack action. I'd even go a step further and suggest that there is no language in the RAW which prohibits the bonus action shove being introduced among its steps!
Additionally, in the above referenced tweet by Crawford, he does not quote RAW, but rather supplies yet another example of labeling his own interpretation as "RAW". He has a habit of doing that. :(
His first statement is a tautology: an action is complete when you've finished it. This is obviously true by definition unless there exists some rule that says otherwise, but there is none. Therefore, what he's saying is correct if you're sticking to the book.
Then he contrasts that with the RAI, which is that you can call your Attack action complete after 1 attack, but that rule doesn't exist anywhere, hence why it's RAI and not RAW.
Purely for demonstration. It is to get you to actually see what the rule is saying without any ambiguity. My example holds if you remove the "while you do X" from the statement.
If you take a cab ride to work in the morning, you can read a book.
This is precisely the format of the feat, as, as I demonstrated, doesn't preclude doing the reading while doing the riding. Sure, sure, you could read after the ride. But... based on that verbiage, you could read while riding.
Adding the "on the ride there" was purely instructional and education for your benefit. Again, so that you could recognize the difference between a present tense verb conditional trigger, and a past tense verb conditional trigger.
If you go to the movies, you can eat popcorn.
Yes, I totally agree that you can eat popcorn after you finish the movie. We both agree that you can take the bonus action after the action finished.
But... well, you could eat that popcorn while you watch the movie... too.
Because the trigger X being in the present tense is what is allowing us permission to do Y, and we have established that once we have permission to do Y we have complete free choice on the timing of Y... we simply do Y while still doing X.
I got quotes!
That's fair!
I suppose that means he's being... redundant? It's still odd to me to see him say a whole bunch of stuff in his original words and then label it by an acronym that means "rules as written" as though he can provide a page number where we can confirm his words in the books.
Perhaps I am being too picky!
Here's the thing: even though it's got the same grammatical structure as the feat, it's not the same kind of sentence.
"If you do your homework, you can go to the movies" is giving you permission to do something you implicitly weren't allowed to do, same as "If you take the Attack action during your turn, you can take a bonus action to..."
"If you take a cab ride to work in the morning, you can read a book" isn't giving you permission. The speaker is making an observation or suggestion to a listener, most likely in response to a statement about cab rides. It's really not a sentence that would come up on its own. The listener is probably lamenting the fact that they have to catch a cab the next morning.
You can't equate those two sentences based on having the same format. Language isn't that simple. If you tried to weasel your way out of having to finish your homework using that as your defense, you'd get shut down.
It's not purely instructional. Without it, the sentence sounds awkward. Remember, the rules are written in everyday English.
He's not trying to insinuate his words are RAW, he's basically saying that's his ruling based purely on the RAW.
That makes a lot more sense!
But at the same time his statement still feels dubious to me, like it was published only half-cooked. Does it not strike you at least a little odd? The least he could have done was provide the book and page which he references, rather than just casually tossing in one of the most powerful relevant acronyms.
His claim is basically that RAW there are no rules that would cause an action to be considered complete any sooner than when you've done the whole thing. What would he cite to prove no rule exists? The only way to confirm that for yourself is to read all 3 core books in their entirety.
Crawford's rulings mean nothing at my table as he is not my DM. I would not allow a bonus action to be inserted between two attacks made on the same attack action but I would allow a bonus action to be made before or after the attack action.
If you are fighting with sword and board and intend to use a shove with the shield 100% you are going to shove before you strike with a weapon. If a DM ruled otherwise I would either not take the feat, or more likely leave the group and play elsewhere.
For all the people who want to quote game designers and rule interpretations and clarifications, etc; here is another quote to consider.
”The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.” Attributed to Gary Gygax by Allan Varney
Your game is supposed to be fun. Rule lawyering has its place but not at the expense of people having fun with their friends. As a rule of thumb: if it’s not going to break your game and it’s something reasonable, then it’s fine to do it. If it is going to break your particular game then don’t allow it, but explain why it’s going to break the game to the player. Most people are pretty understanding and if you calmly explain “if I let you do X then it will make the game less fun as a whole for Y reasons” then they are okay with it.
If the player Wanted to be able to bonus action shove before the attack and took the feat with that intent, then I don’t think it’s game breaking to let them do it. It’s a cool heroic thing to do, tactically makes sense and lets the player feel like a badass with a shield, then why not. We can work out the details. However your table may be different. If letting this happen wrecks your game then just explain that and why and move on. Everybody is here just to have fun. Remember: RAF > RAI or RAW
Check out my Disabled & Dragons Youtube Channel for 5e Monster and Player Tactics. Helping the Disabled Community and Players and DM’s (both new and experienced) get into D&D. Plus there is a talking Dragon named Quill.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPPmyTI0tZ6nM-bzY0IG3ww