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I was looking into fun builds that would work with the bug bears "Long-Limbed" feature and thought of the Astral Self monk which increases the range of unarmed strikes made with the "Arms of the Astral Self" feature. So I searched and found this thread about that exact topic. Do the Bugbear's Do the Bugbear's Long-Limbed trait and the Way of the Astral Self's astral arms stack for reach?

I understand that the two features are named differently so they would stack as per the DMG Errata but do they stack as per their descriptions?

The Bugbears Long-Limbed feature states, emphasis mine:

When you make a melee attack on your turn, your reach for it is 5 feet greater than normal.

The Arms of the Astral Self feature states, emphasis mine:

... When you make an unarmed strike with the arms on your turn, your reach for it is 5 feet greater than normal.

Does the term greater than normal refer to only the characters unmodified reach? Or does it stack as the first one will make it it 10ft and that is now the "normal" then the other will modify the new "normal"?

My apologies if this counts as asking the same question.

Number268
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    Unfortunately, I think this is a duplicate. It really looks like your question here is “which answer on this linked question is correct?”, which would be a duplicate. As you can probably tell from the voting distribution on my answer there (+10/-8), this one is probably just unclear and up for debate, and I do t think rehashing it here will do much good. That said, someone else might have a different idea about this, or a way to revise your question to be able to stand alone, so leaving it up is a good idea. You’ve written a good question, I just think we’ve been here before. – Thomas Markov Nov 29 '21 at 09:42
  • There is some discussion of a similar question frame at this meta. – Thomas Markov Nov 29 '21 at 09:57
  • I just couldn't think of a way to frame it better so that it's not specifically about the bugbear and astral self combination since it was the only two things I could think of that has the same term affecting the same thing. I would love to figure out a way to make it standalone though as I think I'm asking a different question that's more specific about that interaction of that wording. – Number268 Nov 29 '21 at 11:01
  • I made a similar argument in my answer here and it was much more well received. – Thomas Markov Nov 29 '21 at 11:03
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    I will say that a general question of this type might not really be answerable, I imagine every situation where this comes up will be slightly different. – Thomas Markov Nov 29 '21 at 11:03
  • Ah I see. It probably is too general. That second link helped me a lot in my thinking of it and answers my question at least to me. Thank you so much, you've been very helpful! Should I delete this post as it's a duplicate or leave it up? – Number268 Nov 29 '21 at 11:09
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    It’s fine to leave it up. It’s well written and may help people find that discussion later. The search function doesn’t always cooperate and duplicates can help with that. – Thomas Markov Nov 29 '21 at 11:10

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