Assume I wield a Whip in one hand and a dagger in the other.
If a creature moves from 5ft to 10ft it has technically moved out of my reach (dagger), but at the same time it is still inside my reach (whip). When does it provoke opportunity attacks from me?
I am fully aware that this would not enable me to make off-hand attacks since the whip is not a light weapon, just to cut that issue out of the question.
You can use your one reaction to execute an opportunity attack to attack with the dagger if the opponent steps out of 5 foot reach. Or the Whip if the opponent steps out of 10 feet reach.
This is supported by the descriptions of the reach property (post-PHB-errata) which says:
This weapon adds 5 feet to your reach when you attack with it, as well as when determining your reach for opportunity attacks with it.
But you only get one or the other as you only get one reaction until after your next turn.
Since a whip is not a light weapon you can't use two-weapon fighting with a dagger.
But that only relevant to when you are taking your turn. The rule is limited to a grant of a bonus action to attack with the second light weapon. There is no rule prohibiting you from holding any combination of two one handed weapons. Without both of them being light you can only attack with one or the other with an attack option.
Also note that you only get one bonus action regardless of how many you could have.
In my opinion the main advantage of using two one-handed weapons without being able to use two-weapon fighting is to take advantage of some special property on one weapon versus the other. For example the use of a whip and a longsword. The whip has reach but less damage. So close in you use the longsword but if you need to attack an opponent further away you can attack with the whip. And it expands you flexibility in using a reaction for taking an opportunity attack.
From page 69 of the Players Rules for Basic D&D 5e.
You can take only one bonus action on your turn, so you must choose which bonus action to use when you have more than one available.
From page 74 of the Players Rules for Basic D&D 5e.
When you take the Attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand.
and
You can make an opportunity attack when a hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach. To make the opportunity attack, you use your reaction to make one melee attack against the provoking creature.
From page 70 of the Players Rules for Basic D&D 5e.
When you take a reaction, you can’t take another one until the start of your next turn. If the reaction interrupts another creature’s turn, that creature can continue its turn right after the reaction.
Read the errata again This property also determines your reach for opportunity attacks with a reach weapon. The answer is still clear, if you are holding two weapons it is the character's choice as to which applies when taking a reaction for an opportunity attack.
– RS Conley May 09 '19 at 13:45Let's look at the sequence of action and of the logic here. For the sake of simplicity, we'll use a dagger and a whip to be our nonreach/reach weapons:
Enemy is within your current reach - They are currently in your active reach if you are wielding a whip because it has the Reach property which extends your reach when using it by 10' and they are also in range of your dagger if they are within 5'.
This weapon adds 5 feet to your reach when you attack with it, as well as when determining your reach for opportunity attacks with it.
Enemy moves further away - This triggers an Opportunity Attack
You can make an opportunity attack when a hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach.
The PHB Errata also confirms this:
This property also determines your reach for opportunity attacks with a reach weapon.
At this point, we know that when wielding a whip you have a 10' reach and that OAs are triggered when a creature leaves your reach. With your dagger, you have a 5' reach, and movement outside of that range triggers an OA with the dagger.
Therefore, the conditions for leaving range have been met:
Just a reminder that you only get 1 reaction per turn. If you use it at 5', then you've used it. If you wait until they leave 10', then you've used it then.
When you take a reaction, you can't take another one until the start of your next turn.
What matters here is the wording on Opportunity attacks and Reach weapons. Specifically:
You can make an opportunity attack when a hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach. (PHB 195)
Reach. This weapon adds 5 feet to your reach when you attack with it.(PHB 47)
Emphasis mine. In both cases, the rules text refers to your reach, not your weapon's reach. Weapons do not have reach, and you only ever have one reach: 10 feet, or 5 feet.
With the RAW definition, the story ends here, since your reach is only 10 feet when you're attacking with the whip. At all other times, your reach is 5 feet, so you get an opportunity attack when an enemy moves from 5 feet away to 10 feet away, but not from 10 feet away to 15 feet away.
However, if you use Mearls' interpretation, where your reach is always 10 feet when using a reach weapon, it gets a bit more complicated. Since your reach is always 10 feet, this means you can attack things from 10 feet away all the time, even when you're attacking with your dagger, using the strict raw interpretation with just that one extra houserule.
Since your reach is 10 feet, this means that an enemy moving from 5 feet away to 10 feet away does not provoke, while an enemy moving from 10 feet away to 15 feet away does.
Of course, since you're already adding in one houserule (albeit an officially sanctioned one), it's not a stretch to imagine you'd add a second houserule to fix this as well. How this affects things is entirely up to what houserule you use.
This answer assumes Mearls' interpretation of the reach and opportunity attack rules as requested.
The Reach weapon property, from the Player's Basic Rules, page 47:
Reach. This weapon adds 5 feet to your reach when you attack with it.
Reach is a property of specific weapons. Your reach with your whip doesn't change your reach with your dagger.
From page 74:
You can make an opportunity attack when a hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach.
So in this situation the hostile creature is moving out of your [dagger] reach, triggering an opportunity attack. The fact that it's still in your [whip] reach doesn't prevent that.
Note that this isn't unbalanced, because you only have 1 reaction per round, so this trick won't let you get 2 opportunity attacks.
You can make an opportunity attack when a hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach. (PHB 195)
The reach property (post-PHB-errata) says:
This weapon adds 5 feet to your reach when you attack with it, as well as when determining your reach for opportunity attacks with it.
So the whip's reach only applies for determining your reach for OAs with the whip. It has no effect on your reach with the dagger.
So when wielding two weapons with two different reaches you have two different reaches for the purpose of provoking OAs.
Of course you would only be able to react to one of the OAs per turn since you only get one reaction, but they would trigger this way nonetheless.
I'm not extensively versed in the rules, but as I've read it, 5e is agnostic to handedness. They've done away with off-hand weapons in favor of the "light" property. When fighting with two weapons, you can take the bonus attack with the second weapon if they both have the light property. There is no distinction between a primary and secondary weapon beyond which weapon is used for the first attack.
However, that places no restriction on wielding or attacking with both weapons on the same turn, as with the "Extra Attack" feature. I can't find anywhere that says the extra attack has to be with the same weapon, meaning a 5th level fighter could attack once with the dagger and once with the whip, even attacking different targets.
Given that the game places no restrictions on the choice of weapon or hand used, regardless of the official position, I'd rule that you can make the opportunity attack with the dagger when they move from 5-10, or with the whip when they move from 10-15. You can opportunity attack with any method you have available, but only when it would be triggered by that method.
In essence, when the creature moves from 5-10, the dagger is triggered, and the player can then use their reaction to attack. If they choose not to, and the creature later moves from 10-15, the whip is triggered. If the creature stays at 10, then the player loses out on any opportunity attacks for not taking the dagger. However, if they took the dagger attack, they'd have no reactions left when they moved to 15 to attack with the whip.
According to Mike Mearls, looks like it's your choice which of the moves to spend your reaction on.
Eugene Katz
@eugenekatz
@mikemearls if I'm holding a 5' and 10' reach weapons, do I get opportunity attach when enemy moves adjacent->5' or 5'->10'? Or my choice?
9:48 PM - 30 Apr 2016
Mike Mearls
@mikemearls
@eugenekatz your choice if 2 separate weapons
9:16 AM - 1 May 2016
Of course the enemy might decide to move from adjacent -> 5' and then, if you didn't take the opportunity attack, decide not to move further. Would mean you don't get an opportunity attack at all.
Opportunity Attacks
In a fight, everyone is constantly watching for enemies to drop their guard. You can rarely move heedlessly past your foes without putting yourself in danger; doing so provokes an opportunity attack. You can make an opportunity attack when a hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach. To make the opportunity attack, you use your reaction to make one melee attack against the provoking creature. The attack interrupts the provoking creature's movement, occurring right before the creature leaves your reach.
-PHB p. 195. Basic p. 74
The issue is that Reach is not clearly defined with regards to opportunity Attacks.
I wrote the answer you linked to and the problem is that 1 co-designer, Mike Mearls, tweeted that reach was always on and thus players wielding reach weapons could only make OAs when they left the longest range. In contrast, Jeremy Crawford, the other co-designer said reach only applied when making an attack roll and thus by default a PC could threaten the 1 square radius around them.
The exact wording for opportunity attacks says they trigger when leaving a player's reach, so the question you have to answer is do you think Mearls or Crawford is how you want to run your game when it comes to reach. If you think it's Mearls, then the monster really hasn't left your reach until it moves out of range of the whip, but if you think it's Crawford, then your default reach for OA triggering is always 1 anyway.
What I find unclearly defined in the rules is how long the benefit to reach lasts when using a weapon with reach.
Consider again the text:
Reach. This weapon adds 5 feet to your reach when you attack with it.
Emphasis added.
Clearly we cannot believe that every time you swing a whip your reach increases, first to 10, then to 15, then to 20 and so on. This is obviously not the intended interpretation.
So, how long does the benefit to reach last? Your attack? Your turn? The entire round? Until your next turn? This much seems to be unclear when working strictly within RAW.
An overly-restrictive interpretation would be that when your opponent triggers the opportunity attack, you are not currently attacking with any weapon at all. In that case, your reach is 5 feet. If you take this interpretation, then opportunity the opportunity attack only occurs if the opponent moves out of your 5 foot reach.
An alternative interpretation that I consider worth some merit requires an imaginative interpretation of "when you attack." It is this: whichever weapon you use for the attack action should also be the weapon with which you make opportunity attacks.
Using this interpretation, even if fighting two-handed, it is unambiguous which weapon is used to perform opportunity attacks, and therefore unambiguous what your reach is for opportunity attacks. If two weapon fighting, you would use the same weapon used for your primary attack action, not the weapon used for your bonus action. In the whip/dagger combination, which is not compatible with two weapon fighting, you would use the weapon most recently used to attack.
Specifically addressing the whip/dagger situation, it is already understood that because a whip is not light, a character cannot use a bonus action to enable attacking with both weapons in a round. While not explicitly stated in RAW, I consider it a reasonable extension that a reaction also does not enable attacking with the second weapon.
