Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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If a warrior of elements monk is carrying a quarterstaff and also has activated elemental attunement, then the quarter staff threatens 5 ft and the unarmed strikes threatened 15 ft. My questions are: if an opponent steps out of quarterstaff range, thus leaving that threatened area:
1. Does the monk get an of opportunity?
2. If so, can the monk attack with unarmed strikes when the attack of opportunity was triggered against the quarterstaff?
Short answer:
Long answer:
Opportunity Attacks are provoked when an enemy leaves your Reach. If you have more than one Reach, it's possible for an enemy to move in such a way that they leave one Reach but not the other(s). If that happens, you can make an Opportunity Attack with any weapon (or Unarmed Strike) whose Reach the enemy is actually leaving. You can't make Opportunity Attacks with a weapon if the enemy is still in that weapon's Reach.
This may not make a great deal of sense thematically in some cases. The Elements Monk presents kind of a weird edge case, since in the vast majority of cases when a character has two Reach values, it's a longer one for their weapon and a shorter one for their Unarmed Strikes, while the Elements Monk has it the other way around. But since there's no explicit exception for this situation, the general Opportunity Attack rules still apply.
As a house rule, a reasonable compromise might be to let you make that unarmed Opportunity Attack, but make it as a standard one without any of the special effects that Elemental Attunement provides (like non-standard damage types).
pronouns: he/she/they
It's probably not intended, but because of a quirk of how things are written, this Monk actually cannot make Opportunity Attacks against creatures that are 15 feet away. They can only do so against creatures that are 5 feet away.
The general rule is that a creature has a Reach of 5 feet. There's also a general rule that says that "You can make an Opportunity Attack when a creature that you can see leaves your reach." Again, "your reach" is 5 feet.
For equipment, we have this more specific rule for the Reach Property of a weapon: "A Reach weapon adds 5 feet to your reach when you attack with it, as well as when determining your reach for Opportunity Attacks with it."
Compare this with the rule for a Warrior of the Elements Monk:
"When you make an Unarmed Strike, your reach is 10 feet greater than normal."
So, in this case, unlike for Reach weapons, this modification occurs when making an attack, but not when determining your reach for Opportunity Attacks.
If you read it this way, then you also have to read it this way on the player's turn when they make Unarmed Strikes, and in that case as well, they wouldn't be able to target a creature farther than 5ft away, for the same reason you've just invoked, because they haven't made their attack yet, and so their reach is still 5ft. This would just break the rule altogether. This reading is overly pedantic.
Just echoing this. Per the Elements Monk feature, your reach isn't 15 ft. until you make an unarmed attack. At the time upon which the Opportunity Attack is provoked, you are not making an unarmed attack, and so your reach is 5 ft.
Also worth noting that this probably benefits the player more, as 15 ft. reach would create a 30 ft. cube around you wherein enemies can just move freely.
This is how you resolve an attack in the general rules:
This sequence applies whether you are making an Attack of Opportunity or simply take the Attack Action on your turn.
Note that in both cases, the first thing you have to do is pick a target within range, and resolving the attack comes last.
So if you rule that the reach doesn't apply for AoO, it doesn't apply for the Attack Action on the player's turn either. They both work the same way.
Elemental Attunement specifies that, "When you make an Unarmed Strike, your reach is 10 feet greater than normal..." So the specific trigger for your increased reach is making an Unarmed Strike.
The rules for an Opportunity Attack specify that, "You can make an Opportunity Attack when a creature that you can see leaves your reach... To make the Opportunity Attack, take a Reaction to make one melee attack with a weapon or an Unarmed Strike against the provoking creature." So you cannot make an Unarmed Strike via an Opportunity Attack until a creature leaves your reach.
If your reach doesn't become 15 ft. until you commence making an Unarmed Strike, then until the moment you make that Unarmed Strike, your reach is 5 ft. Therefore, your reach for the purposes of provoking Opportunity Attacks is 5 ft. Similarly, it's worth noting that an Opportunity Attack occurs, "...right before the creature leaves your reach." If your reach automatically extends to 15 ft., you no longer qualify to make an Opportunity Attack.
This differs from an Unarmed Strike made on your turn. When you choose to take the Attack action to make an Unarmed Strike, you immediately meet the conditions for the increased reach afforded by Elemental Attunement. That means that, during the first step of attack resolution that you've quoted, the range within which you can choose a target is increased.
And you cannot target a creature to make an Unarmed Strike if it's not already within your reach when you take the Attack Action.
If you make that argument for Attacks of Opportunity, it applies to the Attack Action too. You can't just choose to see it this way only for the case you want, and forget the very argument you've just made when it comes to a different one.
You've just made a whole paragraph arguing that the order of resolving reach and target choice somehow differs between the Attack Action and Attacks of Opportunity, but there's nothing in the rules that says so. This order is the same in both cases.
I'm not 'choosing' to see it any way; I've outlined two different triggers within the game mechanics.
The Attack action is defined as "[making] one attack roll with a weapon or an Unarmed Strike." For mechanical purposes, "taking the Attack action" and "making an Unarmed Strike" are one and the same. Per my previous post, Elemental Attunement specifies that, "When you make an Unarmed Strike, your reach is 10 feet greater than normal..." Again, the specific trigger for your increased reach is making an Unarmed Strike. With that in mind, the moment you begin taking the Attack action, your reach increases by 10 ft. Until that moment, your reach is unmodified.
As you outlined previously, resolving an Attack has three steps: Choose a Target, Determine Modifiers, then Resolve the Attack. Mechanically, your reach increases the moment you begin the Attack action, before resolving the 'Choose a Target' step. Therefore, you can choose a target within 15 ft.
Opportunity Attacks differ in that they allow you to use a Reaction to make an attack. The specific trigger for that Reaction is an enemy leaving your reach. As outlined above, Elemental Attunement does not modify your reach until you begin making an Unarmed Strike; however, the rules for Opportunity Attacks clearly specify that you cannot make an attack until an enemy leaves your reach. With that in mind, it does not matter what your reach is when modified with Elemental Attunement - at the point upon which the Opportunity Attack triggers, you are not making an attack, and so your reach is not modified.
If we ignore the pedantry arguments for now, it really comes down to how you interpret Elemental Attunement working. Do you have a permanent aura or extra limbs made of elemental magic or are you replacing your physical unarmed strikes with mini-elemental blast "spells" whenever you choose on your turn to make an unarmed strike? If the former then it makes sense that you can make Opportunity Attacks and Grapple at range which makes Elemental Attunement one of the top 3rd level class features and easily capable of breaking the game at lower levels. If the latter than Opportunity Attacks and maintaining a grapple at range don't make sense and Elemental Attunement is suddenly not all that exciting.
It is because of the OP-ness of being able to Grapple at range at 3rd level that most people here favour the "temporary elemental blast" interpretation of Elemental Attunement. Hence would rule that your reach for determining Attacks of Opportunity is not 15 feet.
I actually think there's more of an argument for this, since the rules for Grapple say that the grapple ends "if the distance between the Grappled target and the grappler exceeds the grapple’s range." This is a specific change from the old Grappling rules, which used the term, "from the reach of the grappler."
The chrome of the ability has no relevance to the mechanics. Neither conceptual approach would stop it, anyway.
Also, I'm kind of curious as to how making opportunity attacks at range breaks the game.
I've been playing an elemental monk for a while, and, even without those (I don't grapple much, and opportunity attacks just don't really happen often), it's a staple.
The argument against OA is based on some kind of extremely picky reading of the text that I've never fully even understood. The argument against ranged grapple is based on the idea that holding a grapple is somehow inherently separated from making it. (This is also the first time I've heard it claimed that it's somehow overpowered, and the consensus I've seen is much more toward it working.)
The argument for is based on the idea that extending the reach of your unarmed strikes applies to all uses of them.
Both are based on the same concept: Is your reach with unarmed strikes continuously increased by 10 ft - i.e. when you use Unarmed Strikes on your turn, but also outside of your turn when you are defending yourself & your space and when you use your turn for something else. Or is it only during the instant of making the unarmed strike and the reach ends as soon as the unarmed strike is resolved. I.e. does the reach persist during the action & time when you are not currently making the Unarmed Strike.
Whether or not reach-grapple is allowed (via Elements monk or the couple other possible ways) or not varies by table. Casual tables often allow it because the players don't try to abuse it, tables with optimizers generally don't (at least in my experience). Most DMs on these forums have interacted with optimizers - since a large portion of the players on these forums are optimizers - so when it was discussed when the class was release most were against it.
It should be noted that by rule you don't really have multiple Reaches per se. Your Reach is a stat for your character. By default, that stat is 5 feet. That stat can be changed by some other rule and that rule will specify when it applies. For example, just because you are carrying around a Reach weapon does not mean that your Reach becomes 10 feet. Your Reach is still 5 feet until such time that you attack with that weapon or when you are about to use it for an Opportunity Attack. So, for example, while carrying around such a weapon if you decide to cast Chill Touch or Vampiric Touch, your Reach for those spells is 5 feet.
How Elemental Strikes work has been debated in the past (here and here at least), including discussions around Grappling and Opportunity Attacks.
I'm ruling your Reach is increased for Opportunity Attacks too based on what I think is the intent: