Clear the Way, Shove, and free movement

[Ravingdork]

If I use the Clear the Way feat and successfully Shove 5 people, can I Stride the same distance and direction after each success, then after all 5 successes (having moved quite the distance if things fell into place perfectly), I can then Stride up to half my speed again per the Clear the Way feat.

Is that correct; is that how it works?

[Finoan]

This question has been around for a while.

It still looks ambiguous in the new version in PC2.

I would still agree with the people in the previous thread saying that the targeting would require all the targets to be adjacent to you when you first start the action.

How the possible movement from each Shove works is very debatable.

Personally, I would only let you move to follow one of the targets, not multiple of them. You could choose which one after rolling against all of them though.

[Lia Wynn]

I don't see anything ambiguous at all.

When you start the Clear the Way actions, you select up to five targets that are adjacent to you at that point. You resolve all up to five shoves and then Stride up to half your speed.

That is pretty simple.

How you move the ones that you Shove is covered in Shove. You do not move after each shove, since the specific in Clear the Way overrides the general in Shove as it says that you Stride up to half your Speed after resolving the Athletics checks.

There are many abilities that say 'Do X. After resolving X, if you are adjacent to a new target, you may do X again, repeating until' either you miss, or a number of targets.

Clear the Way does not have that language. It has 'Make up to 5 Athletics checks to Shove and then Stride up to half your speed.'

[YuriP]

My interpretation is different especially because of the period at the end of the sentence. I will put the description separately by paragraph to make my point clearer:

Source Player Core 2 pg. 207 1.1 - Clear the Way wrote:

Requirements You’re wielding a melee weapon in two hands.
---
You put your body behind your massive weapon and swing, shoving enemies to clear a wide path.

You attempt to Shove up to five creatures adjacent to you, rolling a separate Athletics check for each target and ignoring the requirement that you have a hand free.

Then Stride up to half your Speed.

This movement doesn’t trigger reactions from any of the creatures you successfully Shoved.

Each attack counts toward your multiple attack penalty, but don’t increase your penalty until you have made all your attacks.

The first point of my analysis is that "You attempt to Shove up to five creatures adjacent to you" is not stated as a Requirements, but rather in the middle of the effect description. So this means that this is not a requirement for you to start the activity, only for you to be able to execute and continue executing the Shove actions. Therefore, as long as there are creatures adjacent to you you can continue using Shove on them even if you are no longer in the origin point and you are Shoving a different creature from the ones you have already shoved.

The other point is that the phrase "Then Stride up to half your Speed" as described occurs after all possible and desirable Shoves have been executed and does not override the ability to keep up with the creatures you used Shove on. You just cannot perform other Shoves after this, because the "Then" makes it clear that this must be executed last in the activity.

For me, this set being executed in this way makes sense in the context of what the activity proposes, Clear the Way for you and for your allies to be able to pass between several opponents who are probably blocking your paths. You are literally opening the way and Striding.

[Easl]

If you interpret this as 5x basic shove action with the stride (and then the final move), then obviously the PC must follow the basic shove rule about stride direction - i.e. they can only do that stride in the direction of the shove.

Which means this would NOT look like pushing one guy sideways, moving forward, pushing the next guy sideways, moving 5 more feet forward, etc. Instead, what would happen is the PC shoves one opponent back, then follows them, then shoves that same person back again, then follows them, etc. Effectively ping-ponging them back up to five times.

I think Lia Wynn's reading is correct. You do all the shoves with no 5' moves in between. This creates a wide path exactly as Clear the Way states, because it can move a whole bunch of surrounding enemies off to the sides. Then you make a move forward. Shove-move-shove-move-etc. creates a narrow skinny path with the same opponent ending up in front of you, it means that both you or any other PCs who follow you could be open to reactive strikes from the opponents left behind because they are still next to the 5' squares you moved through and haven't been shoved, and it also means your final move can't be in the direction you want to go, because there's an opponent standing in front of you.

Besides which, a PC with a 25' move speed getting 5x5'+10' = 35' move (60' of movement with 5 crits!) plus 5 shoves, all for a single action, seems a bit much to me. Though everyone's opinion of TGTBT may vary.

But I didn't look at Finoan's link to the earlier thread, so maybe this point was already covered and answered?

[YuriP]

Moving without walking would still be an option. But I don't think that in some cases this (Please ignore me pushing the monster into the wall, it's because I didn't want to look for a better map at the time) is invalid or useless case of Clear the Way. It may not be the most common case, but it is a possible and valid case in my opinion.

[Easl]

YuriP wrote:

Moving without walking would still be an option. But I don't think that in some cases this

Nice pic. It would work. But it's still creating a narrow path where both the PC Clearing the Way and the PCs following them would be subject to reactive strikes.

Just looking at your two pictures, as the PC strides forward after the first shove, the NPC on the left would be able to use reactive strike against them - because they haven't been shoved yet, they aren't yet part of Clear the Way, and the PC just did a stride right next to them. Then if the PC has someone following them through the gap, that second PC would be subject to a reactive strike from the NPC on the right, who could not use their reactive strike during the first PC's shove-and-stride, but can certainly use it against someone else who strides through the 5' square next to them.

I think the clear purpose is that the PC can shove the left NPC left and the right NPC right. Neither would get a reaction to this because it's in the middle of the Clear the Way action. Then the PC can stride straight forward (again with no reactive strikes) and anyone following them has a nice 15' wide "corridor" they can move down the middle through, letting them also avoid reactive strikes. This also fits the descriptive text of creating a 'wide' path.

[YuriP]

With a creature this size, if it had these reactions, no matter what I did, everyone non-rogue ally who passed by would be subject to AoO RS. They have 15 ft reach!
Clear the Way helps the own PC avoid reactions, but the allies have to fend for themselves.

[Easl]

YuriP wrote:

With a creature this size, if it had these reactions, no matter what I did, everyone non-rogue ally who passed by would be subject to AoO RS. They have 15 ft reach!

Clear the Way helps the own PC avoid reactions, but the allies have to fend for themselves.

I agree that neither interpretation of Clear the Way protects following PCs from reactive strikes if the opponents have a 15' reach.

I also think extreme cases are very poor basis for interpretation of rules (lawyers say: "hard cases make bad law"). To think about the RAW and RAI, it makes much more sense to consider the how Clear the Way functions against 5' reach opponents, which represent probably 90% of opponents amongst the levels that see the most play.