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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5e 2014
My group had a polite disagreement over whether an incorporeal creature can, in the process of leaving my reach, achieve enough cover behind a nearby wall to negate an Opportunity Attack. This interpretation of "...right before the creature leaves your reach" can be shown deeply incorrect by Reductio ad absurdum. But I think WOTC doesn't do themselves any favor on the clarity side when they could have said "The attack occurs just as the creature begins a movement that would result in it leaving your reach"
PHB2014: "You can make an opportunity attack when a hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach. To make the opportunity attack, you use your reaction to make one melee attack against the provoking creature. The attack occurs right before the creature leaves your reach."
Thoughts?
This isn't limited to incorporeal, it can occur in any situation where an enemy can achieve total cover before moving beyond your reach. It really comes down to whether or not "your reach" is considered to extend through total cover, or if moving behind total cover (regardless of distance) is considered to be leaving your reach, and I'm not aware of an official ruling one way or the other.
For example, an Earth Elemental burrowing?
I would say that by definition, the creature cannot benefit from cover, because the attack is made before it leaves your reach. It takes a teleport or teleport-like action to leave without triggering an AoO.
Or just walking around a corner, depending on how the map is arranged.
Well that is precisely the position Crawford takes when discussing the Earth Elemental burrow in Sage Advice (the unofficial one). But I don’t think it is a full or clear enough answer to persuade folks from the opposite (wrong) position. So what is the key? I think it is over-reading or outright misreading of ”just before it leaves”
1. it says just before the target leaves reach, not just before it leaves the square. Our characters are not 5x5 blobs and neither are our enemies. If my enemy was in reach before he started his move, and I was standing at the back of my 5x5 square (as far from the wall as possible) then by the time he leaves my reach he could still be well within the adjacent square and not well within the wall. But why make it this complicated and invent more mechanics? My interlocutor will have to invent such mechanics in order to deprive me of an OA.
2. Does “just before” mean one atom is remaining available for OA, and that this renders the OA useless? if that’s how it worked, no OA would ever be allowed or useful, regardless whether cover was involved or not. And if there must be more than one atom…how much is there? You start to see that to cling to this “no OA” position…you have to invent more and more mechanics that just don’t exist.
Reductio ad absurdum. The position that there is no OA leads to absurd or untrue consequences. It just ain’t that complicated , and doesn’t need to be. No ruling is required because the RAW handle it just fine. Even Copilot gets it right.
Note that in many cases, immediately before something has total cover, it has 3/4 cover, so there is an argument for 3/4 cover when something leaves reach by phasing, walking around the corner, and so on.
If you are using a Reach weapon, it is entirely possible to gain Total Cover before you trigger an Opportunity Attack. Consider this situation:
------------ M -----
C
If Monster M is standing in a doorway next to Character C who is holding a Pike, M can move North one space and then West one space without leaving C's reach. It could then proceed either North or West for the rest of it's movement and C would be unable to make an Opportunity Attack due to M having Total Cover.
In most games, D&D is a discrete game based around a minimum length of 5'. So if you're going to attack someone, you're doing so at 5' or 10' - there is no in-between.
If you're making an Opportunity Attack, that attack is limited by your Reach and must occur while the enemy is in a square within that reach. If you've got a 5' reach, that makes it impossible for an enemy to 'duck behind cover' before you get your Opportunity Attack. It is possible (as noted earlier) to do with a 10' Reach, but requires a specific layout.
Note that D&D does have an option for playing on a Warhammer-style board where distances are measured on a continuous terrain. This makes the question more interesting and the normal interpretation would be that the amount of cover is determined at the point where the model passes out of range.
Opportunity attacks happen before the creature leaves its current space, so I'm not sure how it can gain cover it didn't already have. Otherwise, feats like Sentinel don't work
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
PIPA - Planar Interception/Protection Aeormaton, warforged bodyguard and ex-wizard hunter (Warrior of the Elements monk/Cartographer artificer)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
OA triggers the moment they move out of your reach. It doesn't matter how close they are to total cover, a doorway, flying. If they aren't using some kind of teleport or were moved by a 3rd source, then the attack roll happens. I don't see anything that says burrowing isn't a movement type.
If you can't see a creature leaving a Total Cover space it won't provoke an Opportunity Attack and eben if you could see it, it can’t be targeted directly.
The simplest case of cover possibly preventing an OA is when you have a thin wall. Let's say the setup looks like this
where there is a wall between B and D, and the character is standing at D.
An enemy can move from C to A without drawing an OA. Depending on the exact length of the wall, they may have half cover while in A.
An enemy can move from A to B without actually moving out of reach (they're still within 5').
An enemy at D has total cover.
So the question is: does moving from A to B trigger an OA?
Well wheter there's a wall or not, if a creature moves within your reach and thus never leaves it, no Opportunity Attack is provoked.
though taking a diagonal at the corner of a wall or tree etc is forbidden on a grid, perhaps also for the reason of preventing cheese avoidance of OA
agree
has anyone proposed otherwise?
but doesn't that seem unintendedly complicated and arbitrary, and thus more likely to be based on incorrect assumptions?
A cool and important example. Since I am much more about the *timing* of the OA, and I've doubled down on "the target is still in its originating square when OA fires, and there is no cover to speak of yet", I would be willing to agree in this case that when the OA fires, there is no doubt cover is in the way. I don't think that concession damages anything I've said before.
I was musing today that there is no such text in caps "You can make an opportunity attack when a hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach. UNLESS IT ACHIEVES FULL COVER BY COMPLETING SUCH A MOVE".
but not all rules are able to anticipate interactions with all the other rules. You would just think that after 10 years....
agree 100%
agree 100%