D&D: Sage Advice Updates – Now With Dual Wield
Another round of updates from Sage Advice. Make sure to take note, all you rules lawyers.
Or for those of you in the UK, rules barristers and solicitors. I hope some of you make it to rules magistrates one day–and personally believe that if you work hard, apply yourself, and keep up to date with updates like this, one day we’ll be presenting byzantine rules questions before you M’lud/lady.
At any rate, this go round, we’ve got a few important clarifications. Things like the Eldritch Knight not being able to cheese their way into Advantage by casting True Strike with War Magic and making an attack (they all happen simultaneously), or the fact that Twin Spell can in fact twin a casting of Wish (provided of course that you have the spell points for it). We’ll get a little more in depth with what some of these rules clarifications mean for the game below, so read on.
New rules questions and answers are gathered in the Sage Advice Compendium, which collects official rules answers in one PDF. You can see which sections of the compendium are new this month by looking for any paragraph in a shaded box.
If you have a D&D rules question, please reach me on Twitter (@JeremyECrawford), where I answer questions every week. Many of those answers eventually end up in the Sage Advice Compendium.
There are quite a few this month, but I wanted to grab a few to mull over and whet the the appetite for the rest of the rules. Things like this clarification to two-weapon fighting.
Important things to keep in mind, you have to attack with a light weapon in either hand (either as your bonus action or your initiating action), which is different from taking an attack action.
This one cleans up the headache of a third faction joining the fray. Don’t worry about whose first turn is when a fight’s been going on for a few rounds when those assassins waiting in the wings join the fray.
This one is helpful to know. Any spell that spreads it’s damage across multiple creatures like that is fair game. Handy if you’re making multiple damage rolls, though it does make just casting a big AoE like fireball a little more efficient of a choice for this metamagic.
Good to know that even adding half of your proficiency bonus lets you qualify. Also, this makes Bard/Rogues the ultimate skill-monkey. Or if you’re a remarkable, or even terrific athlete, like the Homestar Runner, you’re going to be swimming in successful checks.
I’ve made this mistake myself. Things like sneak attack damage doubling with crits is probably the source of this confusion. And finally here’s a note about readied actions.
There are several more in the pdf, which we’ve linked below. Monks get some attention–things like, Monks get darts to give them a ranged attack option, not a monk weapon option. Or Elemental Monks can swap out Elemental Attunement even though you know it automatically, so you can give yourself a secret bonus option.
Check out the latest Sage Advice
I consider myself more of a rules consular.
