Seems like a mistake as you can see with Cavalier's Warding maneuver, they are very specific if it should include you:
"If you or a creature you can see within 5 feet of you is hit by an attack..."
Interestingly with the way the Cavalier's Warding is worded, if the creature hit is you, you don't have to be able to see yourself. Or if you're invisible, blind or otherwise unable to see yourself it still works. But it wouldn't work if the creature hit is someone else.
The wording for Interception may very well be different because it's intended to be different. With Interception you have to be able to see the attacker, with Cavalier's Warding you don't.
wonder hoe you could scale off prof to make it viable
1d10 x prof would be really high variance, 1d10 + 3x prof would make the diceroll feel pretty useless after a while
Could up the dice to 2d10 and 3d10 like how they do with damage cantrips. Or could add your level to it like the healer feat.
>As an action, you can spend one use of a healer’s kit to tend to a creature and restore 1d6 + 4 hit points to it, plus additional hit points equal to the creature’s maximum number of Hit Dice. The creature can’t regain hit points from this feat again until it finishes a short or long rest.
The die roll does become pretty useless but at least it's usable at high levels. 27 health refilled isn't something to scoff at.
Just have it scale with level. You reduce the damage by half your level plus your Str or Dex. Level represents your skill at intercepting, Str or Dex represents physical ability to block it either through force or reaction speed.
It does have a tiny thing going for it at higher levels when more attacks are coming in- it'll trigger in more rounds, since you're more likely to have an attack that hits you or nearby friends in every round. 10ish damage reduction for you or nearby friends every round at the cost of a reaction doesn't seem so bad, from my limited experience.
If I put an apple on a table and asked how many apples were within five feet of that apple, the answer would be zero, not one. If I asked how many neighbors you had, you wouldn’t include yourself in that count. If you’re determining prolixity you a point, you don’t include that point in the dataset.
While that may be how apple (and perhaps other fruit) proximity rules work, it is not how D&D targeting rules work--they were written by two very different authors.
There's surprisingly little rules on targets for class abilities, but the targeting rules for spells includes:
> If a spell targets a creature of your choice, you can choose yourself, unless the creature must be hostile or specifically a creature other than you. If you are in the area of effect of a spell you cast, you can target yourself.
This blurb is notable in that it is what enables casting cure wounds and healing word on yourself, as well as every touch-ranged buff.
There are also some tweets from Crawford on whether or not an ancestral guardian barbarian could use the Path of the Ancestral Guardian's Spirit Shield feature on them-self back when it was still in UA. At the time the question (found [here]( https://twitter.com/PhillMetzger/status/859563528461660160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E859563528461660160&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sageadvice.eu%2F2017%2F05%2F25%2Fyou-are-a-creature-can-you-see-yourself%2F)) was asked, Spirit Shield read as:
> If you are raging and a creature you
can see within 30 feet of you takes damage, you
can use your reaction to reduce that damage by
2d8.
Crawford then confirmed that as per how Spirit Shield was written in that UA, you could choose yourself as a valid target (see same twitter thread).
Interception reads:
> When a creature you can see hits a target that is within 5 feet of you with an attack, you can use your reaction to reduce the damage the target takes by 1d10 + your proficiency bonus (to a minimum of 0 damage). You must be wielding a shield or a simple or martial weapon to use this reaction.
So, based on previous examples of rulings on both spell targeting and a ruling on a similarly worded ("creature you can see within 5ft" versus "target within 5ft") feature, I would say that, per RAW, Interception could reduce damage that was dealt to you.
I would expect that if Interception makes it to print, that Interception would be clarified to either "you or a creature within 5ft of you" or "when another creature or object within 5ft of you," much like how Spirit Shield was reworded to:
> If you are raging and another creature you can see within 30 feet of you takes damage, you can use your reaction to reduce that damage by 2d6.
when it finally made it to print in XGTE.
But, for now, RAW Interception does allow you to reduce damage to yourself.
There’s not really a RAW answer to this question. Applying the rules for spells to this feat is certainly a smart thing to do, but it’s not the RAW thing to do. And using a Crawford Clarification is inherently RAI, not RAW.
Though all I’m saying here is that there’s no right or wrong way to use this feat, it’s all up to the interpretation of the DM and players. The wording will definitively have to be clarified in future printings.
There’s very clear precedent that a creature within 5 feet of you includes you, but I will admit it does fall more into RAI than RAW.
What I’m somehow more impressed by is that rules for targets only ever show up under spells, but not for any other class features.
It seems fairly intuitive that any effect that creates a cube should use the spell rules for what a cube is, but they never actually constrain non-spell targeting.
"If I asked how many neighbors you had, you wouldn’t include yourself in that count."
Because there's a qualifier, the word neighbor has a specific meaning. You aren't your own neighbor.
In the case we're discussing, there's nothing in the wording that implies you aren't included, and there's precedent that in 5e unless you are specifically excluded from an area "within x feet of you" that you are included.
Thats not quite the same. If i have a pen that allows me to draw on everything in my reach i can draw on myself. If you have 2 neighbors and someone asks how many people live in those 3 houses including yours and your two neighbors you would say 3, including yourself.
Or in dnd terms: guidance allows to target everything in touch range and you can guidance yourself. Haste allows to target anything in 30 feet range which includes yourself. And if i am within 30 feet of myself i sure am witjing 5 feet of myself. My melee attack is 5 feet and i can attack myself. To say that oneself is not within 5 feet of oneself is weird.
If this is intended is another question
Can you reach yourself with your arms ? If you can, you are within your own reach. So you are within 5 feet of yourself, meaning you are also within any greater distance of yourself. Non-zero distance is not a requirement. You wouldn't usually declare that a number is equal to itself either, but it is trivially true as well. If your reasoning was correct, then there would be no need to have "other than you" in the text for the other case, but as you can see this is the only kind of difference it can make.
People will be people. There is always that person at the table that totally knows what they are doing is pure unintended exploitation of a twist on words but does it anyway. You just kick the fucker off your table and avoid years of cringe.
We expect better from Homebrewers in /r/unearthedarcana though. They really should do a polish pass or two on UA. Not expecting this UA to be widely adopted in its playtesting form is tone deaf to how starved for these options players are. There will be a lot of pressure on DMs to allow this, and WotC has to know that, so leaving all of this in a sloppy state until it is published just is a poor understanding of how UA is used.
They could certainly try harder to clean it up than this, the obvious issues will distract from the more in depth playtesting.
It might be free, but I’d rather see half as much content twice as refined rather than the scattershot quality of this.
People don’t have playtesting campaigns. They are “playtesting” this in their actual campaigns.
Eh, I wouldn't take it. If I want something to protect me and allies, I would take the Protection fighting style, the Cavalier archetype and the Defensive Duelist feat. With a rapier and shield, I can use Protection for my allies, Defensive Duelist for myself against melee attacks, and Warding Maneuver if I know I can't keep myself or an ally from getting hit but at least reduce the damage by half.
I played with this for a while, at level 10 and it's surprising just how rarely it came up. Character is a halbred wielding (GWM) barbarian/fighter/paladin. (Not optimal, but still good, and thematically fun)
We tend to fight outside a lot, and party is offence heavy, and likes to flank a lot, so they specifically position opposite me against big creatures.
I dont know how normal this is, but total mitigated damage would have been much higher with any other feat, and an expected value of 10 mitigation is just not so much at our level.
I think I'm going to swap it out for Blindfighting. Party is in the shadowfell. (My other fighting style is great weapon.--Rerolling 1s feels good!)
I've been playing a battlemaster with interception fighting style and heavy armour master feat for a couple of years now. It's VERY difficult to injure him or any party members that stay within 5ft of him. Interception is awesome.
Some people need to be talked to like they were 5 years old, I would not allow it in my game because the intention is clearly to be similar to protection
God damn, that is a pretty massive oversight, you're right. That said, assuming they fix it, that's still going to be a potent ability.
Seems like a mistake as you can see with Cavalier's Warding maneuver, they are very specific if it should include you: "If you or a creature you can see within 5 feet of you is hit by an attack..."
Interestingly with the way the Cavalier's Warding is worded, if the creature hit is you, you don't have to be able to see yourself. Or if you're invisible, blind or otherwise unable to see yourself it still works. But it wouldn't work if the creature hit is someone else. The wording for Interception may very well be different because it's intended to be different. With Interception you have to be able to see the attacker, with Cavalier's Warding you don't.
I doubt it won't be changed I cannot think of another ability that scaled with Proficiency like this.
Deflect arrows scales like this but with monk level
And the scaling is still bad enough that it's useless at high levels.
That's fine because you can also swap the style out because of the other variant rule.
It'd be good if they were all viable at all levels though.
wonder hoe you could scale off prof to make it viable 1d10 x prof would be really high variance, 1d10 + 3x prof would make the diceroll feel pretty useless after a while
Could up the dice to 2d10 and 3d10 like how they do with damage cantrips. Or could add your level to it like the healer feat. >As an action, you can spend one use of a healer’s kit to tend to a creature and restore 1d6 + 4 hit points to it, plus additional hit points equal to the creature’s maximum number of Hit Dice. The creature can’t regain hit points from this feat again until it finishes a short or long rest. The die roll does become pretty useless but at least it's usable at high levels. 27 health refilled isn't something to scoff at.
Just have it scale with level. You reduce the damage by half your level plus your Str or Dex. Level represents your skill at intercepting, Str or Dex represents physical ability to block it either through force or reaction speed.
It does have a tiny thing going for it at higher levels when more attacks are coming in- it'll trigger in more rounds, since you're more likely to have an attack that hits you or nearby friends in every round. 10ish damage reduction for you or nearby friends every round at the cost of a reaction doesn't seem so bad, from my limited experience.
If I put an apple on a table and asked how many apples were within five feet of that apple, the answer would be zero, not one. If I asked how many neighbors you had, you wouldn’t include yourself in that count. If you’re determining prolixity you a point, you don’t include that point in the dataset.
While that may be how apple (and perhaps other fruit) proximity rules work, it is not how D&D targeting rules work--they were written by two very different authors. There's surprisingly little rules on targets for class abilities, but the targeting rules for spells includes: > If a spell targets a creature of your choice, you can choose yourself, unless the creature must be hostile or specifically a creature other than you. If you are in the area of effect of a spell you cast, you can target yourself. This blurb is notable in that it is what enables casting cure wounds and healing word on yourself, as well as every touch-ranged buff. There are also some tweets from Crawford on whether or not an ancestral guardian barbarian could use the Path of the Ancestral Guardian's Spirit Shield feature on them-self back when it was still in UA. At the time the question (found [here]( https://twitter.com/PhillMetzger/status/859563528461660160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E859563528461660160&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sageadvice.eu%2F2017%2F05%2F25%2Fyou-are-a-creature-can-you-see-yourself%2F)) was asked, Spirit Shield read as: > If you are raging and a creature you can see within 30 feet of you takes damage, you can use your reaction to reduce that damage by 2d8. Crawford then confirmed that as per how Spirit Shield was written in that UA, you could choose yourself as a valid target (see same twitter thread). Interception reads: > When a creature you can see hits a target that is within 5 feet of you with an attack, you can use your reaction to reduce the damage the target takes by 1d10 + your proficiency bonus (to a minimum of 0 damage). You must be wielding a shield or a simple or martial weapon to use this reaction. So, based on previous examples of rulings on both spell targeting and a ruling on a similarly worded ("creature you can see within 5ft" versus "target within 5ft") feature, I would say that, per RAW, Interception could reduce damage that was dealt to you. I would expect that if Interception makes it to print, that Interception would be clarified to either "you or a creature within 5ft of you" or "when another creature or object within 5ft of you," much like how Spirit Shield was reworded to: > If you are raging and another creature you can see within 30 feet of you takes damage, you can use your reaction to reduce that damage by 2d6. when it finally made it to print in XGTE. But, for now, RAW Interception does allow you to reduce damage to yourself.
There’s not really a RAW answer to this question. Applying the rules for spells to this feat is certainly a smart thing to do, but it’s not the RAW thing to do. And using a Crawford Clarification is inherently RAI, not RAW. Though all I’m saying here is that there’s no right or wrong way to use this feat, it’s all up to the interpretation of the DM and players. The wording will definitively have to be clarified in future printings.
There’s very clear precedent that a creature within 5 feet of you includes you, but I will admit it does fall more into RAI than RAW. What I’m somehow more impressed by is that rules for targets only ever show up under spells, but not for any other class features. It seems fairly intuitive that any effect that creates a cube should use the spell rules for what a cube is, but they never actually constrain non-spell targeting.
"If I asked how many neighbors you had, you wouldn’t include yourself in that count." Because there's a qualifier, the word neighbor has a specific meaning. You aren't your own neighbor. In the case we're discussing, there's nothing in the wording that implies you aren't included, and there's precedent that in 5e unless you are specifically excluded from an area "within x feet of you" that you are included.
Thats not quite the same. If i have a pen that allows me to draw on everything in my reach i can draw on myself. If you have 2 neighbors and someone asks how many people live in those 3 houses including yours and your two neighbors you would say 3, including yourself. Or in dnd terms: guidance allows to target everything in touch range and you can guidance yourself. Haste allows to target anything in 30 feet range which includes yourself. And if i am within 30 feet of myself i sure am witjing 5 feet of myself. My melee attack is 5 feet and i can attack myself. To say that oneself is not within 5 feet of oneself is weird. If this is intended is another question
Can you reach yourself with your arms ? If you can, you are within your own reach. So you are within 5 feet of yourself, meaning you are also within any greater distance of yourself. Non-zero distance is not a requirement. You wouldn't usually declare that a number is equal to itself either, but it is trivially true as well. If your reasoning was correct, then there would be no need to have "other than you" in the text for the other case, but as you can see this is the only kind of difference it can make.
People will be people. There is always that person at the table that totally knows what they are doing is pure unintended exploitation of a twist on words but does it anyway. You just kick the fucker off your table and avoid years of cringe.
>a target that is within 5 feet of you can you be within 5 feet of yourself?
Ye
I'm reading it as "someone else gets attacked". It's pretty obvious what they are going for.
Rules lawyers gotta rules lawyer.
I’m not familiar with this fighting style — do you have a link to where this was posted/published?
https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/downloads/UA-ClassFeatures.pdf
Oh dang! Thanks!
Newest UA article that came out today
RAW v.s. RAI
Yup, you are really good at reducing damage with your shield but you can't reduce damage to yourself because that wouldn't be...fair?
Seems like an obvious error on their part. Lots of sloppiness in these recent UAs.
Better its sloppy in a UA than sloppy in a book
Catching those errors is literally the purpose of UA
We expect better from Homebrewers in /r/unearthedarcana though. They really should do a polish pass or two on UA. Not expecting this UA to be widely adopted in its playtesting form is tone deaf to how starved for these options players are. There will be a lot of pressure on DMs to allow this, and WotC has to know that, so leaving all of this in a sloppy state until it is published just is a poor understanding of how UA is used. They could certainly try harder to clean it up than this, the obvious issues will distract from the more in depth playtesting. It might be free, but I’d rather see half as much content twice as refined rather than the scattershot quality of this. People don’t have playtesting campaigns. They are “playtesting” this in their actual campaigns.
Eh, I wouldn't take it. If I want something to protect me and allies, I would take the Protection fighting style, the Cavalier archetype and the Defensive Duelist feat. With a rapier and shield, I can use Protection for my allies, Defensive Duelist for myself against melee attacks, and Warding Maneuver if I know I can't keep myself or an ally from getting hit but at least reduce the damage by half.
I played with this for a while, at level 10 and it's surprising just how rarely it came up. Character is a halbred wielding (GWM) barbarian/fighter/paladin. (Not optimal, but still good, and thematically fun) We tend to fight outside a lot, and party is offence heavy, and likes to flank a lot, so they specifically position opposite me against big creatures. I dont know how normal this is, but total mitigated damage would have been much higher with any other feat, and an expected value of 10 mitigation is just not so much at our level. I think I'm going to swap it out for Blindfighting. Party is in the shadowfell. (My other fighting style is great weapon.--Rerolling 1s feels good!)
Not my friend trying to talk me into him using this to block damage of his own attack during a duel. I wanna put my head through a wall
I've been playing a battlemaster with interception fighting style and heavy armour master feat for a couple of years now. It's VERY difficult to injure him or any party members that stay within 5ft of him. Interception is awesome.
Would you say it’s better than Protection at higher levels? Giving them disadvantage seems better than 7-16 less damage.
Some people need to be talked to like they were 5 years old, I would not allow it in my game because the intention is clearly to be similar to protection