D&D 5E Swiftstride Shifter reaction trigger

[jaelis]

This was pointed out by @Inanity: The Swiftstride Shifter in the Eberron book gets the shifting feature:

While shifted, your walking speed increases by 10 feet. Additionally, you can move up to 10 feet as a reaction when a creature ends its turn within 5 feet of you. This reactive movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks.

As written, you can take the reaction at the end of each of your own turns, since you are a creature within 5 feet of yourself. Do you think this is intended, or a wording error?

For reference, the UA Races of Eberron article had different wording:

While shifted, your walking speed increases by 5 feet. Additionally, you can move up to 10 feet as a reaction when an enemy ends its turn within 5 feet of you. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.

I couldn't find anything on twitter from the developers about it.

 

[Inanity]

This was pointed out by @Inanity: The Shiftstride Shifter in the Eberron book gets the shifting feature:

As written, you can take the reaction at the end of each of your own turns, since you are a creature within 5 feet of yourself. Do you think this is intended, or a wording error?

For reference, the UA Races of Eberron article had different wording:


I couldn't find anything on twitter from the developers about it.

Hmm the change of wording seems to indicate that the designers intentionally made it so it can trigger at the end of your own turn. Maybe in the playtest or somthing someone complained that it is odd that a shifter cant use that movement on their turn (if it supposed to simuate super speed anyways then...)... idk...
EDIT: at the very least they wanted allies (like familiars!) trigger it I guess... but oneself is an ally so idk...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think it's one of a number of post-playtest changes to the Eberron rules that are very poorly considered and don't make a lot of sense (most of the rest revolving around Dragonmarks).

I don't agree that it was necessarily intentional. It may well simply be a slip-up or typo caused by the editing (especially if someone retyped it instead of copying & pasting - the weird and oxymoronic addition of the word "reactive" to movement suggests sloppy writing).

I mean do you honestly believe authorial intent was to give shifters the ability to just move an extra 10ft, ignoring OAs, as a reaction, any round they wanted to (whilst shifted)? Because I do not. I'm pretty sure the authorial intent is to allow them to move away from threats, not just randomly move an extra 10ft because their reaction was going spare.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, I wouldn't count the Shifter itself as a creature for this ability.

 

[MarkB]

It does sound cheesy, but on the other hand, getting an extra 10 feet of movement in return for giving up your ability to take any other reaction that round doesn't seem like an unbalanced trade-off.

The only slight concern is the ability to avoid opportunity attacks while doing so, but given that you're only going 10 feet, turning that to your advantage will require some rare circumstances.