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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It is come to my attention people think you can't command your beast companion to attack with your BA and then also give up an attack to have it take another Beast Strike.
I'm curious what the consensus is and why people think what they think.
Relevant ability:
"The Beast in Combat. In combat, the beast acts during your turn. It can move and use its Reaction on its own, but the only action it takes is the Dodge action unless you take a Bonus Action to command it to take an action in its stat block or some other action. You can also sacrifice one of your attacks when you take the Attack action to command the beast to take the Beast’s Strike action. If you have the Incapacitated condition, the beast acts on its own and isn’t limited to the Dodge action."
Note it says "you can also sacrifice" meaning to do both.
Discuss.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
It appears that commanding the beast does not grant it an action, it merely instructs it about how to use its action. "Also" in this context means that this is an alternative. Thus, the beast's action might be as follows:
Mhm. So what happens when you command it to dodge with your BA and to use Beast Strike with an attack substitution. It says it follows your commands.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
It does whichever you told it to do last. It will obey commands if able to do so (it also can't obey your commands if incapacitated).
Yea I'd have to agree, the idea that commanding the beast twice somehow creates an additional action for the beast to use on its turn seems fanciful at best.
Monsters get one action on their turn, just like PCs, so no matter how many different things you tell it to do with its action, it can only do one of them.
I remember a discussion about this in Ranger, Beast Master's Primal Companion Actions Below is my personal opinion and ruling, but you can read similar or different ones there.
@Ravnodaus also, if it's of interest to you or other readers, from DnD 5.5 Beast Master Ranger Subclass Guide:
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Can the Beast Companion Take the Bestial Strike Action Twice?
Some people may ask how the companion gets two attacks. It’s not perfectly clear, so let’s take a look at the rules, and you and your table can come to an informed agreement about how to handle things.
From the 2024 Player’s Handbook:
Because the beast shares your turn, it performs the command you give it immediately. The confusion comes from the word “also” in the second sentence.
You can interpret the text to mean that using a Bonus Action is the primary way to command your beast, but you also have the option to command your beast by replacing an attack, but you can only command it to take the Beast’s Strike action rather than commanding to do something else, such as Disengage. This means that you can use your Bonus Action for things like spellcasting, which is helpful if you plan to cast Hunter’s Mark to benefit from the second half of the Bestial Fury feature.
But, if that was the intent, the word “instead” should have been used in place of “also”. “Also” means that you can do both, and there’s no further text preventing you from doing so. This creates a specific-beats-general situation where, RAW, you can command it as a Bonus Action and also command it to use Beast’s Strike as part of your Attack Action. This creates one of two outcomes when the player spends their Bonus Action and then also replaces an attack to command their beast:
We want to say that the DnD design team would not leave a rules trap in the text which caused players to needlessly waste a resource for no benefit, but we’ve been running RPGBOT for well over a decade. Yes, they would do exactly that. Not intentionally, but they’re human beings.
We’re mostly certain that the RAI is for this to provide flexibility so that you can make your beast attack once per turn with either your own Attack or your Bonus Action, but the RPGBOT optimization panel has voted and we agree that, RAW, this language makes the most sense interpreted to mean that your beast can attack twice. If they were aiming for flexibility instead, they shouldn’t have used “also” and had the second command option be a separate sentence. But, just like with any unclear rules text, we encourage you to discuss this with your own group and arrive at a decision that works for your table.
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What the two different ways to activate the beast actually mean is that replacing an attack only lets it attack, whereas using your BA lets it use any action.
I would note that from a game balance perspective, I don't see any real issues with letting the beast attack twice by spending both a BA and an attack, but this is a rules thread, not a game balance thread.
@Ravnodaus just for completeness, or at least trying to give you other sources, here are a couple of threads where I remember the Beast Master being discussed:
- Sage Advice Returns! [Official Thread]
- Having a issue with Nick
I believe in this same thread I took the argument that commanding the beast allows it to take the action to its logical conclusion. If that's the case a beast would be able to dodge, disengage, and make 4 attacks on a turn by level 11. Before you command it the beast dodges, then you command it to attack and disengage with your bonus action for 2 attacks, and sacrifice one of your attacks for it to make 2 more attacks. The beast is still a creature and only gets one action unless a feature gives you another action. The beast master feature only tells you the ways you can command the creature but doesn't tell you the beast gets more actions.
My instant knee-jerk reaction was to agree with the consensus -- that essentially the Beast gets only one action.
However, upon further examination, it appears that the general rules give the Beast zero actions. In other words, there is this general rule:
But notice, the Beast doesn't get a turn.
Instead, "In combat, the beast acts during your turn."
Sort of like the rules for a controlled mount, the above general rule does not apply. In this case, the creature's action economy is determined entirely from the specific rules that are given within the feature itself. For the Beast, this means:
"The beast is Friendly to you and your allies and obeys your commands."
and
"the only action it takes is the Dodge action unless you take a Bonus Action to command it to take an action in its stat block or some other action."
and
"You can also sacrifice one of your attacks when you take the Attack action to command the beast to take the Beast’s Strike action."
and
"If you have the Incapacitated condition, the beast acts on its own and isn’t limited to the Dodge action"
It does not appear that any of this text limits how many actions the Beast can take overall since it essentially never actually uses any general action economy resource. It just does the things that this text says that it does. For example, the text says that it obeys your commands, which means that it just does the things that it is commanded to do. In this context, probably the best interpretation of the line "the beast acts on its own" (when you are incapacitated) is that it is limited to one action when doing so.
When you are not incapacitated, there is potentially a reasonable interpretation that this Beast takes the Dodge action AND ALSO any actions that it is commanded to take.
Lastly, there is potentially a weird consequence when it comes to the general rules for Reactions. We might assume that the beast is summoned with a Reaction available. However, once that Reaction is taken, we have this general rule:
But the Beast never gets another turn. It always acts on your turn. Which means that it might not have any way of recovering the ability to use Reactions after the first one is used.
The only coherent reading is that the beast takes its turn on your turn, because otherwise a lot of things don't work (for example, it can't actually move, as movement only occurs on your turn).
The text for the feature supersedes this by explicitly saying that it can move during your turn:
"In combat, the beast acts during your turn. It can move and use its Reaction on its own, but the only action it takes is the Dodge action unless . . ."
Alternatively, another interpretation is that it rolls initiative as normal and gets a turn. It can move and use Reactions (but cannot act) on its own turn but acts and can use Reactions (and doesn't move) on your turn.
Yet another interpretation is that it gets a full turn on its own initiative and also can do the things on your turn that is described.
But I would disagree with the concept that a creature can "take its turn on your turn". I don't think that the rules ever allow for that and the text for the feature doesn't actually say that.
It can move, but it cannot use its speed.