If the Haste spell is cast on a Bladesinging wizard, can the Bladesinger cast three cantrips in a turn using the Extra Attack feature?

Question

If the haste spell is cast on a Bladesinging wizard, can the Bladesinger cast three cantrips in a turn using the Extra Attack feature?

For instance, say I'm a level 6 Bladesinging wizard, with haste already active. Can I do all of the following on the same turn?

Cast booming blade to attack a target 5 feet from me
Forego my second attack to cast shocking grasp
(a) Use the additional action granted by haste to cast infestation

All 3 spells are cantrips.

Alternately, can I do steps 1 and 2 above, then:

(b) use my additional action from haste to cast misty step (instead of infestation)

In this case, it's 2 cantrips and a bonus-action spell.

I've read a lot about reaction spells from War Caster, or Action Surge spells, or Quickened Spells from a sorcerer, but I haven't heard if it's ok to load up my turn with cantrips as a Bladesinger with haste, as per my 2 examples above.

score 18 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 18 '21 at 17:33

18

In order:

Cast Booming Blade to attack a target 5 feet from me

Yes. There's no issue here.

Forego my second attack to cast Shocking Grasp

This will not work. Per the rules on the Bladesinging wizard's Extra Attack feature (Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, pg. 76):

Starting at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn. Moreover, you can cast one of your cantrips in place of one of those attacks.

Casting a cantrip doesn't count as "taking the Attack action" – even if, in the course of performing that cantrip, you make an attack against a creature and roll an attack roll.

Use my action from Haste to cast Infestation

The action granted from Haste doesn't allow you to cast spells (Player's Handbook, pg. 250):

[...] it gains an additional action on each of its turns. That action can be used only to take the Attack (one weapon attack only), Dash, Disengage, Hide, or Use an Object action.

Use my action from Haste to cast Misty Step.

Sort of. You can't use an action to cast a bonus-action spell. So the action granted by Haste doesn't allow you to cast Misty Step (also, again, that action can't be used to cast spells).

However, as established already, the only other spell(s) cast this turn were cantrips, so you are legally allowed to use a bonus action to cast Misty Step this turn, regardless of the presence of Haste.

edited Nov 18 '21 at 17:33

V2Blast

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answered Nov 18 '21 at 03:27

Xirema

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It is legal to use the 1-attack Attack action from Haste to use the Bladesinger feature to cast Booming Blade, though, right? That could be noted, though it's not super relevant. – Phoenices Nov 18 '21 at 04:39
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@Phoenices Probably not. If we don't have a question here addressing that interaction we should create one; but either way, I'm pretty sure the Attack Action taken using the Haste Action would not qualify to trigger the Bladesinger Extra Attack feature's ability to replace an attack with a cantrip. – Xirema Nov 18 '21 at 04:53
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That's a tough one, and should be asked if it hasn't been already. I'd be inclined to allow it because of the ambiguity of which one is "more specific". – J. A. Streich Nov 18 '21 at 06:39
@Xirema I think it would. Haste's extra Action doesn't disallow the use of the Extra Attack Class Feature, it just limits you to a single attack - and you only need one attack to replace it with a cantrip. – nick012000 Nov 18 '21 at 12:31
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There's nothing [sic] about "forego". It's a widely accepted alternate spelling, listed as such by most English dictionaries. – Doug Warren Nov 18 '21 at 16:26
@nick012000 The Extra attack doesn't turn the cantrip into a weapon attack, so that part of the haste spell isn't met. Ergo, you can't use the cantrip on the hasted action, even though you could on, say, an action surge if you multiclassed fighter. Just like you can grapple or shove on a hasted action. – J. A. Streich Nov 18 '21 at 19:45
@J.A.Streich It doesn't turn cantrip into a weapon attack, it turns a weapon attack into a cantrip. You take an Attack Action with one weapon attack, and then replace that weapon attack with a Cantrip. – nick012000 Nov 19 '21 at 00:31
@nick012000 I disagree. There are other attacks, like grapple and shove, that are also excluded. They are allowed by other rules as part of an Attack action, but this specific rule from the casting of haste excludes them, and the cantrip would fall into that category. – J. A. Streich Nov 19 '21 at 03:50
@Phoenices To use booming blade, you would use the Cast A Spell action, not the Attack action, because booming blade is a spell. As part of the spell, you make an attack roll using a weapon, but that doesn't turn it into an Attack action - it's still Cast A Spell. That means it doesn't trigger the Bladesinger's feature, and it doesn't work with haste. – anaximander Nov 19 '21 at 10:21
@anaximander Oh, I was referring to using the bladesinger's extra attack feature to do so. We now have another question about that, and I'm too lazy to hunt it down, though it shouldn't be too hard. – Phoenices Nov 19 '21 at 19:03

Exempt-Medic · Answer 2 · 2021-11-23T19:43:53.573

The haste spell's additional action cannot be used to cast a spell or to use any bonus action

The haste spell states:

Choose a willing creature [...] it gains an additional action on each of its turns. That action can be used only to take the Attack (one weapon attack only), Dash, Disengage, Hide, or Use an Object action. [...]

The haste spell does not grant an additional bonus action, but instead an action, and because it is restricted to specific action types it cannot be used to take the Cast a Spell action. This is one reason neither of the scenarios you've described can work.

Casting the booming blade spell does not count as taking the Attack action and so does not activate Extra Attack

The booming blade spell is a spell, so it requires the Cast a Spell action. For more information on this distinction the following two questions exist:

Because booming blade does not use the Attack action, you cannot benefit from Extra Attack and cannot cast an additional cantrip.

The only rule impacting what spells can be cast in a single turn outside of the action economy rules is this:

A spell cast with a bonus action is especially swift. You must use a bonus action on your turn to cast the spell, provided that you haven't already taken a bonus action this turn. You can't cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action.

It can be confusing to read, but the bottom line is that so long as you do not cast any bonus action spells, you can cast whatever spells the action economy allows for. Meanwhile, if you cast a bonus action spell, all other spells cast on that turn must have been and be action cantrips. Similarly, if you cast any non-action or non-cantrip spell, you cannot cast any bonus action spells on that turn.

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 18 '21 at 17:36

No, you cannot cast all three

You can't cast all three cantrips in the same turn. Not because there is a rule against casting multiple cantrips in a round; there is no such rule. However, casting Booming Blade is an action that allows you to make an attack. It is not an Attack action, so your Bladesinging wizard's Extra Attack feature would not apply. You are not taking an Attack action; you are casting a spell.

Also, haste does not allow you to cast spells at all with its additional action (PHB, pg. 250):

That action can be used only to take the Attack (one weapon attack only), Dash, Disengage, Hide or Use an Object action.

The Cast a Spell action is not included in this list, and the Attack can not be substituted with a cantrip as it specifies weapon attack.

score 1 · Answer 4 · 2021-11-18T23:59:15.727

Existing answers have done a good job explaining why Extra Attack only works with the Attack action, not casting spells, and that you can't cast a spell with Haste.

So what can you do?

With your action Attack, using your Extra Attack feature to cast Booming Blade in place of one of your attacks.
With your Haste action Attack, and use your Extra Attack feature to "cast one of your cantrips in place of one of those attacks." (note: you only have one attack, but you only need to replace one to cast a cantrip) - using it to cast Shocking Grasp
Cast Misty Step with your bonus action

Unfortunately you won't be able to fit 3 Action cantrips into your turn because you only have 2 Actions and 1 bonus action. The best you can do is 2 cantrips and one bonus action spell.

J. A. Streich · Answer 5 · 2021-11-18T19:18:04.330

No, this doesn't work

Can I cast booming blade to attack a target 5 feet from me.

Sure. Booming blade is a cantrip, you can either spend your whole action casting it using the Cast a Spell Action, or use the Extra Attack feature to cast it as the first or second attack of the Attack action. I imagine you mean as the first attack of an Attack action.
Forego my second attack to cast shocking grasp.

Here you run into a problem. You can only replace one attack with a cantrip per Attack action.

Starting at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn. Moreover, you can cast one of your cantrips in place of one of those attacks.
Use my action from haste to cast misty step.

It doesn't look like you can. The haste spell specifically says it is just a single attack which it specifies is just a single "weapon attack" and it is arguable more specific because it isn't talking about "any attack action" but just this one granted by this spell. This is a problem with infestation also. Even if it could use haste to cast, misty step is a bonus-action spell so you can't cast it as an action, but you can still cast it using your bonus action.

That would bring you to two spells per turn tops. Multiclassing to gain Metamagic could let you Twin a spell to get to three, or using your reaction during your turn to cast a reaction spell to kind of get three spells (it is just one spell, but it adds an extra target), or maybe some crazy magic item could get you to three... But being a Bladesinger alone can't do it. That said, Attack with sword, cast booming blade and bonus-action misty step away is a pretty powerful combo, even if you can't sneak in the shocking grasp.

"Multiclassing to gain Metamagic could let you Twin a spell to get to three" - note that Twinned Spell doesn't let you cast an extra spell; it just lets you target a second creature with a spell that can normally only target one creature at its current level. So it'd still just be 2 spells this way – one of those spells just has 2 targets. — V2Blast, Nov 18 '21 at 17:40
I'm confused by this line: "The haste spell specifically says it isn't the Attack action". The haste spell says: "Choose a willing creature [...] it gains an additional action on each of its turns. That action can be used only to take the Attack [...] action." It is still the actual Attack action, it is just also limited — Exempt-Medic, Nov 18 '21 at 17:53
That was the mess my comment referred to. I was part way through cleaning it up when real life happened. — J. A. Streich, Nov 18 '21 at 19:18