[RPG] If a Gnome is riding a Dragonborn who is riding a horse, who can be targeted when the horse provokes an opportunity attack

combatdnd-5emountopportunity-attacktargeting

We have a gnome fighter and a dragonborn bard in our campaign. The gnome sometimes gets in a makeshift sling on the dragonborn's back to shoot arrows at enemies during combat. Thus far I've considered the dragonborn an independent mount when opportunity attacks (OAs) arise, and have also granted the gnome cover as applicable.

Recently the dragonborn received a horse. Now the gnome is on the dragonborn's back and the dragonborn is on the horse. If the horse is a controlled mount and it provokes an OA then the attacker can choose to attack the horse or the dragonborn. On mounts the PHB states (198):

… if the mount provokes an opportunity attack while you’re on it, the attacker can target you or the mount.

This seemed straightforward at first but then we realized the dragonborn, not the horse, is the gnome's mount. However the dragonborn will never provoke an opportunity attack on its own because the rule on opportunity attacks states (PHB 195):

You also don’t provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction.

In this case neither the dragonborn nor the gnome can provoke an opportunity attack because they are not moving using their movement, action, or reaction. Only the horse can provoke an opportunity attack.

If the attacker cannot attack the gnome in this case, then the gnome is completely safe from OAs.

If the horse provokes an opportunity attack can the attacker decide between the dragonborn, the horse, and the gnome?

Best Answer

Note up-front that allowing PC to ride another PC is already up to DM discretion as to whether the PC (the dragonborn in the case) has the "appropriate anatomy" to be a mount. Playing around with this can allow fun things like your gnome/dragonborn duo but also things like centaur stacks. The rules also clearly are not written to handle mounted stacks. But I will give you first a purely rules-based ruling and then what I consider to be a more reasonable ruling.

First, I will clear up a confusion about the rules that greatly affects the discussion.

Mounted riders can be targeted by OAs provoked by mounts, but do not provoke themselves

There is a clear delineation in the rules between provoking an OA and being the target of an OA. Normally, a creature that provokes the OA is the only available target for an OA. However the mounted combat rules creates an exception to this:

if the mount provokes an opportunity attack while you’re on it, the attacker can target you or the mount.

Note the language used. The mount "provokes" and you can be "targeted". If they intended to say that the rider also provoked OAs then they would have simply said:

if the mount provokes an opportunity attack while you’re on it, you also provoke an opportunity attack.

But they made a decision not to do so, instead just allowing the attack to be directed at mount or rider. So, as written, the rider does not provoke OAs as indicated by the general rule for OAs which is not overridden by any aspect of the above rule:

You also don’t provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction.

You can see a direct impact of this ruling here.

RAW is unclear if the gnome can be targeted — DM decision

if the mount provokes an opportunity attack while you’re on it, the attacker can target you or the mount.

The rules create a hierarchy in which a mount has a rider. The rider of the mount can be targeted by opportunity attacks that the mount provokes. However it is not clear whether the gnome would be considered a rider of the horse as well as of the dragonborn or just a rider of the dragonborn. Thus the RAW has two possible interpretations. As a DM, you have to decide how you want to rule it. I will discuss both and outline how they work out.

Option 1: Gnome is a rider of both mounts

if the mount provokes an opportunity attack while you’re on it

This has a bit of very specific support in that it seems that you are considered a rider of a mount if you are "on it". While that is not defined, it is hard to argue that the gnome is not "on" the horse even though they are not directly riding on the saddle.

If you rule this way, then the gnome is a valid target if either the dragonborn or the horse provokes an OA.

However, this ruling is messy and doesn't make a ton of sense intuitively. It also means you have to deal with the fact that the gnome is mounted on two things and any rules that affect mounts or their riders could create complicated interactions.

Option 2: Gnome is a rider of only the dragonborn

In this interpretation, the gnome is considered to be a rider only of the dragonborn and the gnome is not affected by anything that affects the riders of the horse (but not the riders of the dragonborn).

In this case, the gnome is a not a valid target if the horse provokes.

Reasonable ruling: just consider them both mounted only on the horse

The gnome gains no benefit to being mounted on the dragonborn while also being mounted on the horse. All this does is add needless convolution and confusion for no added benefit for anyone. As a DM, a very reasonable ruling that simplifies matters for you is to just consider them both as mounted on the horse while the dragonborn is mounted. That means that (like RAW option #1) the gnome would also be a valid target for OAs that the horse provokes. This makes sense from a narrative perspective and simplifies the rules because you avoid the ambiguities that mount stacking has entirely. As soon as the dragonborn dismounts simply consider the gnome mounted to the dragonborn again.

Considering reach

Of course, being able to be targeted by an attack is still limited by the reach of the attack. It might be worth noting that depending on how and if you track the vertical height of this mounted stack, the gnome might be out of reach for most attacks with a range of 5 feet.

Related Solutions

[RPG] Can you grapple a creature as an opportunity attack

As Miniman's answer points out, you cannot grapple as an opportunity attack because an opportunity attack does not give you an Attack action. However, your situation doesn't actually call for an opportunity attack. Instead, it sounds like you had readied an action. From Basic Rules page 72:

Sometimes you want to get the jump on a foe or wait for a particular circumstance before you act. To do so, you can take the Ready action on your turn so that you can act later in the round using your reaction.

First, you decide what perceivable circumstance will trigger your reaction. Then, you choose the action you will take in response to that trigger, or you choose to move up to your speed in response to it...

When the trigger occurs, you can either take your reaction right after the trigger finishes or ignore the trigger. Remember that you can take only one reaction per round.

When you ready an action, you declare that you intend to do something out of your turn in response to something specific happening. For example, you can ready an action by saying "If an enemy comes through that door, I will fire an arrow at them." If an enemy does come through the door, you can then immediately use the readied action and shoot them.

Therefore, if you state on your turn, "I want to grapple the gnome if he tries to get past me," and you have not taken another action on your turn, you would be able to grapple the gnome as he moves past you. If the gnome doesn't try to get by you, the action is wasted. You can also choose to ignore the trigger and take an attack of opportunity as your reaction instead.

Keep in mind that you must declare a Ready action on your turn. Ready actions are actions, like attacks or casting spells. If your turn had already passed when you declared you'd grapple the gnome, your DM would be right in ruling that you can only make an attack. However, if you declared it on your turn, and hadn't already attacked or acted, your DM should have allowed you to grab the gnome.

[RPG] Does the Goblin Boss’s Redirect Attack provoke an opportunity attack

Yes, if the second Goblin is not within the Reach of the thing making the opportunity attack

It seems a bit weird, however the criteria for triggering an opportunity attack are:

You are moving out of the reach of a hostile creature
This movement is from one of your Actions, Bonus Actions, Movement or Reaction
You have not taken the Disengage action
You are not Teleporting

For this question we can discount Point 4, as the Goblin Boss can't teleport.

We'll also ignore Disengaging for now.

For Point 2, the movement is by the Goblin Boss' Reaction, which fulfills that criteria

For Point 1, if the swapping with the second Goblin does not cause the Goblin Boss to leave the Reach of any hostile creature, it will not trigger an Opportunity attack. In the diagrams below, the first set of movement will not trigger an opportunity attack, while the second set will.

EG    ->    EB
B           G


EBG   ->    EGB

E - Enemy; 
G - Goblin; 
B - Goblin Boss

Note that wherever the second Goblin is moved from, it does not trigger an Opportunity attack from anything as its movement is forced by the Goblin Boss.

As for using Disengage (via Nimble Escape), it only stops OAs for the rest of your Turn, not the entire Round.

So, if someone had Readied an action to hit the Goblin Boss when the Boss did a specific thing, then the Goblin Boss did that thing on the Boss' turn, and in Reaction the Boss used Redirect Attack, that would not trigger an OA, wherever it moved, as it is still the Boss' Turn so Disengage is still in effect. But normally, Disengage would not help for this.