Yes, though some have argued that NPCs can't make Unarmed Strikes, so check with your DM. I'd say these people are wrong, but I've seen the argument out there. Anyway, you maintain your class features when wild shaped, meaning you maintain the Monk Martial Arts' Bonus Unarmed Strike feature.
Yes, though some have argued that NPCs can't make Unarmed Strikes, so check with your DM. I'd say these people are wrong, but I've seen the argument out there. Anyway, you maintain your class features when wild shaped, meaning you maintain the Monk Martial Arts' Bonus Unarmed Strike feature.
Would there be an issue with using my Martial Arts die (1d6) for the Unarmed Strike damage since "Natural Weapons" are not Monk weapons? Are "Natural Weapons" even a thing anymore? What even is the Rend attack?
As for Opportunity Attacks, the 2024 PHB says " To make the Opportunity Attack, take a Reaction to make one melee attack with a weapon or an Unarmed Strikeagainst the provoking creature." So how would I use the Rend attack since it is nether a weapon attack or Unarmed Strike? If it IS an Unarmed Strike why wouldn't the Unarmed Strike from Martial Arts use the Rend damage? (2d6 + 4)
An Unarmed Strike in 2024 is "A melee attack that involves you using your body to damage, grapple, or shove a target within 5 feet of you."
I agree with what you said, but I'm just seeing a few small details in the rules that could make it all wrong given a different much more strict RAW reading, so I want to make sure.
Natural weapons are not a thing anymore, no. Rend is simply an attack that the Saber-Toothed TIger can make when it takes the Attack action. I think some of your confusion might stem from you conflating Player functions with NPC functions; while some functions of PCs and NPCs are the same or similar, many are not, and should be treated as such. For example, while Natural Weapons aren't a thing anymore, monster attacks like Rend aren't weapon attacks either; they're their own thing. They are specifically called out in the "Melee Attack" section: "A melee attack allows you to attack a target within your reach. A melee attack typically uses a handheld weapon or an Unarmed Strike. Many monsters make melee attacks with claws, teeth, or other body parts. A few spells also involve melee attacks." This right here clearly explains that monster attacks are neither weapon attacks nor an Unarmed Strike.
Your particular build can use your Martial Arts die for your Unarmed Strike while wild shaped, because you maintain your class features while wild shaped, and using your Martial Arts die for an Unarmed Strike is a class feature.
As for Opportunity Attacks, the Player's Handbook is (mostly) written in a way for Players to describe what they can do. The section of the glossary you quoted specifically starts with "You can make an Opportunity Attack..." because it's talking about Player Characters. You'll also find in the Combat section of the PHB these lines:
Opportunity Attacks
Combatants watch for enemies to drop their guard. If you move heedlessly past your foes, you put yourself in danger by provoking an Opportunity Attack.
Avoiding Opportunity Attacks. You can avoid provoking an Opportunity Attack by taking the Disengage action. You also don’t provoke an Opportunity Attack when you teleport or when you are moved without using your movement, action, Bonus Action, or Reaction. For example, you don’t provoke an Opportunity Attack if an explosion hurls you out of a foe’s reach or if you fall past an enemy.
This is there because NPCs and monsters can also make Opportunity Attacks, and this section describes how to avoid them. Which is also why you have the Disengage action. The Opportunity Attack section is worded as "take a Reaction to make one melee attack with a weapon or an Unarmed Strike" because those are - typically - the only types of attacks available to Player Characters (other than spell attacks, which require War Caster to make Opportunity Attacks with.)
Monsters can also make Opportunity Attacks, and can do so with whatever melee attacks they have available. They also could make an Unarmed Strike as an Opportunity Attack, but it would typically just deal 1 + Strength Modifier damage, so not worth it.
Do you have a cite to the 2024 rules that explicitly says that an NPC or Player can use one of their attacks as an Opportunity Attack despite that attack not involving a weapon or Unarmed Strike? Just so that I have it ready to point to in case its contested.
A simple "no duh you can do that because that's how its always been done at pretty much every table I've been at" can work to resolve this, but having something RAW would be even better. Something "written in stone" as it were.
Because atm I just don't see anything RAW indicating that I, the Player, can make an Opportunity Attack without using a Weapon or Unarmed Strike. If you can find it, please link it so that I can have it.
Rend is NOT an attack with a weapon ("Natural Weapons" are gone) and it is NOT an Unarmed Strike (despite using the creature's body part). When you use Rend it's also NOT the Attack action, even though it is an Action that makes an Attack. So it's just this weird thing I can do that doesn't perfectly align with the rule for Opportunity Attacks or the Attack action. The same thing applies to Multiattack.
Do you have a cite to the 2024 rules that explicitly says that an NPC or Player can use one of their attacks as an Opportunity Attack despite that attack not involving a weapon or Unarmed Strike? Just so that I have it ready to point to in case its contested.
A simple "no duh you can do that because that's how its always been done at pretty much every table I've been at" can work to resolve this, but having something RAW would be even better. Something "written in stone" as it were.
Because atm I just don't see anything RAW indicating that I, the Player, can make an Opportunity Attack without using a Weapon or Unarmed Strike. If you can find it, please link it so that I can have it.
Rend is NOT an attack with a weapon ("Natural Weapons" are gone) and it is NOT an Unarmed Strike (despite using the creature's body part). When you use Rend it's also NOT the Attack action, even though it is an Action that makes an Attack. So it's just this weird thing I can do that doesn't perfectly align with the rule for Opportunity Attacks or the Attack action. The same thing applies to Multiattack.
Sage Advice clarified this here. It says that a monster can use any single melee attack listed in its stat block, or a regular unarmed strike, as an opportunity attack.
Rend (as well as any similar monster attack) is using the Attack action, as is Multiattack. This is explained in the Monster Manual here (weird place for it, I know).
So it's not in the books, just in a Sage advice. Not what I was looking for, but nice to have.
If Multiattack uses the attack action, shouldn't it work with extra Attack? But we know that it doesn't. It's been known now for a while that actions like Multiattack are separate actions from the Attack Action, which is why they don't work with Extra attack. Could you post the quote from that book? I don't own it on this website.
So it's not in the books, just in a Sage advice. Not what I was looking for, but nice to have.
The rules support that a monster (any creature, really) can make Opportunity Attacks:
Reaction
A Reaction is a special action taken in response to a trigger defined in the Reaction’s description. You can take a Reaction on another creature’s turn, and if you take it on your turn, you can do so even if you also take an action, a Bonus Action, or both. Once you take a Reaction, you can’t take another one until the start of your next turn. The Opportunity Attack is a Reaction available to all creatures.See also “Opportunity Attacks” and chapter 1 (“Actions”).
This topic has been discussed before, but keep in mind that some of those threads are from before the 2025 Monster Manual and the updated 2024 SAC, so IMO they should be revisited with all the new information we have:
[...] If Multiattack uses the attack action, shouldn't it work with extra Attack? But we know that it doesn't. It's been known now for a while that actions like Multiattack are separate actions from the Attack Action, which is why they don't work with Extra attack. Could you post the quote from that book? I don't own it on this website.
If you're using the Attack action to perform the Multiattack from the statblock, that's what you get—not the Extra Attack feature from your class.
Some creatures can make more than one attack when they take the Attack action. Such creatures have the Multiattack entry in the “Actions” section of their stat block. This entry details the attacks a creature can make, as well as any additional abilities it can use, as part of the Attack action.
I must acknowledge that, as I mentioned in past threads, I used to wonder whether monsters using melee attacks with claws, teeth, or other body parts were considered to be making Unarmed Strikes under the following rules:
A melee attack allows you to attack a target within your reach. A melee attack typically uses a handheld weapon or an Unarmed Strike. Many monsters make melee attacks with claws, teeth, or other body parts. A few spells also involve melee attacks.
Instead of using a weapon to make a melee attack, you can use a punch, kick, head-butt, or similar forceful blow. In game terms, this is an Unarmed Strike—a melee attack that involves you using your body to damage [...]
But I was wrong. The specific actions in a statblock are simply what they are: melee, ranged, or spell attacks that a monster can make, not weapon or an Unarmed Strike per se.
BTW, here are two more threads that might be helpful for the OP:
Good answers here, more or less what I would have said. For a bit of redundancy: As TarodNet pointed out, the Reaction section in the glossary is what you could point to if needed to show all creatures can make an Opportunity Attack.
As for monster attacks/multiattack, them using the Attack action is a new phenomenon introduced in the 2025 Monster Manual. Multiattack still wouldn't work with a feature like Extra Attack, however, because Multiattack itself is not an attack (lower case attack, not to be confused with the Attack action), and Extra Attack specifically says "You can attack twice (or three times at level 11 for Figthers) instead of once whenever you take the Attack action on your turn."
So it's not in the books, just in a Sage advice. Not what I was looking for, but nice to have.
Unfortunately you won't find any more than that. The issue here is that they made a design choice to dumb it down and simplify stuff to such a degree that it actually doesn't really work. We just have too accept that the monster statblocks work just like the PC's character sheet on DDB but with 80% or so of the information missing.
If Multiattack uses the attack action, shouldn't it work with extra Attack? But we know that it doesn't. It's been known now for a while that actions like Multiattack are separate actions from the Attack Action, which is why they don't work with Extra attack. Could you post the quote from that book? I don't own it on this website.
This is a good example really. Multiattack is listed as an Action in the statblock but that is actually incorrect. This is the explanation from the Monster Manual on how to read the statblock, it says that for the "Action" heading:
But just a little bit down under the same "Action" heading (and same page in the physical book IIRC) it goes on to say:
Multiattack
Some creatures can make more than one attack when they take the Attack action. Such creatures have the Multiattack entry in the “Actions” section of their stat block. This entry details the attacks a creature can make, as well as any additional abilities it can use, as part of the Attack action.
And this makes it somewhat confusing. "Multiattack" can't both be a separate action that the monster can take and something that modifies the Attack Action for the monster, and yet that's what it says.
So what you need to do is accept that they have simplified it too much and mentally re-create a full character sheet for the monster. Multiattack isn't an action but rather the monster version of the Extra Attack feature (just more strictly limited in which attacks it gets to make with it).
And you need to use the same re-create mindset for "Rend". It isn't really an action the monster can take but rather a sort of attack they can do with the Attack Action. My Rogue has an "Dagger" option under actions on its character sheet but that doesn't mean that he has a "Dagger" action, it just means that he can use the dagger he has in his inventory to make an attack with the Attack Action. Now the Saber-Toothed Tiger doesn't have an inventory tab in their statblock but you need to imagine that they do have one and that "Rend" is listed on it. Of course the "Rend" option isn't a weapon because nothing says it is, it just is something that they can use when making an attack.
I mean the statbloc isn't even internally consistent ffs. The "Multiattack" action says that the tiger "makes two Rend attacks" but "Rend" isn't an attack, it is defined as an action.
And this lack of consistency extends to the SAC answer. Because it says "a monster can make any single melee attack listed in its stat block". But most (all?) monsters doesn't have any attacks listed, they have actions that involve attack rolls.
Yeah, all that stuff in the 2025 Monster Manual really feels like a kind of "patch" thrown in after the fact. Like they realized they had a problem with this, but too late to make radical changes to the design of every stat block, so they papered over it.
What you're suggesting — treating the individual actions in the stat block more like "attack options" that can be used with the Attack action or an opportunity attack — definitely felt like how it was intended to work even before the Sage Advice thing came out, so that's how I've always done it.
Good answers here, more or less what I would have said. For a bit of redundancy: As TarodNet pointed out, the Reaction section in the glossary is what you could point to if needed to show all creatures can make an Opportunity Attack.
As for monster attacks/multiattack, them using the Attack action is a new phenomenon introduced in the 2025 Monster Manual. Multiattack still wouldn't work with a feature like Extra Attack, however, because Multiattack itself is not an attack (lower case attack, not to be confused with the Attack action), and Extra Attack specifically says "You can attack twice (or three times at level 11 for Figthers) instead of once whenever you take the Attack action on your turn."
Yeah that's what I was thinking. Thanks for the Link though!
Using the 2024 Rules. I have 6 Levels in Moon Druid and 1 Level in Monk. I'm Wildshapped into a Saber-Toothed Tiger (CR 2).
4 Questions:
Here's the 2024 MM Statblock for Saber-Toothed Tiger in case you need to see it to answer:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/5195187-saber-toothed-tiger
1. Can I use my Bonus Action to make an Unarmed Strike?
Yes, though some have argued that NPCs can't make Unarmed Strikes, so check with your DM. I'd say these people are wrong, but I've seen the argument out there.
Anyway, you maintain your class features when wild shaped, meaning you maintain the Monk Martial Arts' Bonus Unarmed Strike feature.
2. What is the damage of that Unarmed Strike?
1d6 (your Martial Arts die) + 4 (the Saber-Toothed Tiger's Strength modifer).
3. Can I make Opportunity Attacks?
Yes. All creatures can make Opportunity Attacks.
4. What is the damage of my Opportunity Attack?
2d6 + 4, as you'd be using the Saber-Toothed Tiger's Rend attack.
Would there be an issue with using my Martial Arts die (1d6) for the Unarmed Strike damage since "Natural Weapons" are not Monk weapons? Are "Natural Weapons" even a thing anymore? What even is the Rend attack?
As for Opportunity Attacks, the 2024 PHB says " 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 how would I use the Rend attack since it is nether a weapon attack or Unarmed Strike? If it IS an Unarmed Strike why wouldn't the Unarmed Strike from Martial Arts use the Rend damage? (2d6 + 4)
An Unarmed Strike in 2024 is "A melee attack that involves you using your body to damage, grapple, or shove a target within 5 feet of you."
I agree with what you said, but I'm just seeing a few small details in the rules that could make it all wrong given a different much more strict RAW reading, so I want to make sure.
Natural weapons are not a thing anymore, no. Rend is simply an attack that the Saber-Toothed TIger can make when it takes the Attack action. I think some of your confusion might stem from you conflating Player functions with NPC functions; while some functions of PCs and NPCs are the same or similar, many are not, and should be treated as such.
For example, while Natural Weapons aren't a thing anymore, monster attacks like Rend aren't weapon attacks either; they're their own thing. They are specifically called out in the "Melee Attack" section:
"A melee attack allows you to attack a target within your reach. A melee attack typically uses a handheld weapon or an Unarmed Strike. Many monsters make melee attacks with claws, teeth, or other body parts. A few spells also involve melee attacks."
This right here clearly explains that monster attacks are neither weapon attacks nor an Unarmed Strike.
Your particular build can use your Martial Arts die for your Unarmed Strike while wild shaped, because you maintain your class features while wild shaped, and using your Martial Arts die for an Unarmed Strike is a class feature.
As for Opportunity Attacks, the Player's Handbook is (mostly) written in a way for Players to describe what they can do. The section of the glossary you quoted specifically starts with "You can make an Opportunity Attack..." because it's talking about Player Characters. You'll also find in the Combat section of the PHB these lines:
This is there because NPCs and monsters can also make Opportunity Attacks, and this section describes how to avoid them. Which is also why you have the Disengage action. The Opportunity Attack section is worded as "take a Reaction to make one melee attack with a weapon or an Unarmed Strike" because those are - typically - the only types of attacks available to Player Characters (other than spell attacks, which require War Caster to make Opportunity Attacks with.)
Monsters can also make Opportunity Attacks, and can do so with whatever melee attacks they have available. They also could make an Unarmed Strike as an Opportunity Attack, but it would typically just deal 1 + Strength Modifier damage, so not worth it.
Do you have a cite to the 2024 rules that explicitly says that an NPC or Player can use one of their attacks as an Opportunity Attack despite that attack not involving a weapon or Unarmed Strike? Just so that I have it ready to point to in case its contested.
A simple "no duh you can do that because that's how its always been done at pretty much every table I've been at" can work to resolve this, but having something RAW would be even better. Something "written in stone" as it were.
Because atm I just don't see anything RAW indicating that I, the Player, can make an Opportunity Attack without using a Weapon or Unarmed Strike. If you can find it, please link it so that I can have it.
Rend is NOT an attack with a weapon ("Natural Weapons" are gone) and it is NOT an Unarmed Strike (despite using the creature's body part). When you use Rend it's also NOT the Attack action, even though it is an Action that makes an Attack. So it's just this weird thing I can do that doesn't perfectly align with the rule for Opportunity Attacks or the Attack action. The same thing applies to Multiattack.
Sage Advice clarified this here. It says that a monster can use any single melee attack listed in its stat block, or a regular unarmed strike, as an opportunity attack.
Rend (as well as any similar monster attack) is using the Attack action, as is Multiattack. This is explained in the Monster Manual here (weird place for it, I know).
pronouns: he/she/they
Oh, the forum bot. Nice. Thanks.
So it's not in the books, just in a Sage advice. Not what I was looking for, but nice to have.
If Multiattack uses the attack action, shouldn't it work with extra Attack? But we know that it doesn't. It's been known now for a while that actions like Multiattack are separate actions from the Attack Action, which is why they don't work with Extra attack. Could you post the quote from that book? I don't own it on this website.
The rules support that a monster (any creature, really) can make Opportunity Attacks:
This topic has been discussed before, but keep in mind that some of those threads are from before the 2025 Monster Manual and the updated 2024 SAC, so IMO they should be revisited with all the new information we have:
If you're using the Attack action to perform the Multiattack from the statblock, that's what you get—not the Extra Attack feature from your class.
This is from the 2025 MM:
I must acknowledge that, as I mentioned in past threads, I used to wonder whether monsters using melee attacks with claws, teeth, or other body parts were considered to be making Unarmed Strikes under the following rules:
But I was wrong. The specific actions in a statblock are simply what they are: melee, ranged, or spell attacks that a monster can make, not weapon or an Unarmed Strike per se.
BTW, here are two more threads that might be helpful for the OP:
Good answers here, more or less what I would have said. For a bit of redundancy:
As TarodNet pointed out, the Reaction section in the glossary is what you could point to if needed to show all creatures can make an Opportunity Attack.
As for monster attacks/multiattack, them using the Attack action is a new phenomenon introduced in the 2025 Monster Manual. Multiattack still wouldn't work with a feature like Extra Attack, however, because Multiattack itself is not an attack (lower case attack, not to be confused with the Attack action), and Extra Attack specifically says "You can attack twice (or three times at level 11 for Figthers) instead of once whenever you take the Attack action on your turn."
In general I agree with @Jaysburn and the rest here.
Unfortunately you won't find any more than that. The issue here is that they made a design choice to dumb it down and simplify stuff to such a degree that it actually doesn't really work. We just have too accept that the monster statblocks work just like the PC's character sheet on DDB but with 80% or so of the information missing.
This is a good example really. Multiattack is listed as an Action in the statblock but that is actually incorrect. This is the explanation from the Monster Manual on how to read the statblock, it says that for the "Action" heading:
But just a little bit down under the same "Action" heading (and same page in the physical book IIRC) it goes on to say:
And this makes it somewhat confusing. "Multiattack" can't both be a separate action that the monster can take and something that modifies the Attack Action for the monster, and yet that's what it says.
So what you need to do is accept that they have simplified it too much and mentally re-create a full character sheet for the monster. Multiattack isn't an action but rather the monster version of the Extra Attack feature (just more strictly limited in which attacks it gets to make with it).
And you need to use the same re-create mindset for "Rend". It isn't really an action the monster can take but rather a sort of attack they can do with the Attack Action. My Rogue has an "Dagger" option under actions on its character sheet but that doesn't mean that he has a "Dagger" action, it just means that he can use the dagger he has in his inventory to make an attack with the Attack Action. Now the Saber-Toothed Tiger doesn't have an inventory tab in their statblock but you need to imagine that they do have one and that "Rend" is listed on it. Of course the "Rend" option isn't a weapon because nothing says it is, it just is something that they can use when making an attack.
I mean the statbloc isn't even internally consistent ffs. The "Multiattack" action says that the tiger "makes two Rend attacks" but "Rend" isn't an attack, it is defined as an action.
And this lack of consistency extends to the SAC answer. Because it says "a monster can make any single melee attack listed in its stat block". But most (all?) monsters doesn't have any attacks listed, they have actions that involve attack rolls.
Yeah, all that stuff in the 2025 Monster Manual really feels like a kind of "patch" thrown in after the fact. Like they realized they had a problem with this, but too late to make radical changes to the design of every stat block, so they papered over it.
What you're suggesting — treating the individual actions in the stat block more like "attack options" that can be used with the Attack action or an opportunity attack — definitely felt like how it was intended to work even before the Sage Advice thing came out, so that's how I've always done it.
pronouns: he/she/they
Yeah that's what I was thinking. Thanks for the Link though!
Perfectly sums up my frustration with the lack of clarity and thought put into the new rules Thezzaruz. Very annoying.