Community

The assassin power called Shade venom allows you to expend an opportunity attack at the start of your target's turn to 'compel it to make a melee basic attack against itself with combat advantage'.

The question is: do they use an action to do this? Often powers say "as a free action" but I'm unsure of whether that would be the case here, or whether they have to spend their own standard action to make the melee basic attack.

Cheers. 

EDIT: It's not too different to commander's strike, I guess. So maybe they do do it as a free action (even though it doesn't say anything). 

Feb 8, 2010 -- 3:16AM, erleni wrote:

I think RAI you're correct but be aware that you don't expend an opportunity attack but an opportunity action.

Whereas i have no idea whether or not a standard is used for the affected creature's turn, *this* piece is semantic: from an action economy standpoint, there is no difference, between 'opp actions' and 'opp attacks' - opp attack is merely one kind of opp action, and that leaves you with none until the next combatant's turn.

Feb 8, 2010 -- 7:29AM, tilobin wrote:

Feb 8, 2010 -- 3:16AM, erleni wrote:

I think RAI you're correct but be aware that you don't expend an opportunity attack but an opportunity action.

Whereas i have no idea whether or not a standard is used for the affected creature's turn, *this* piece is semantic: from an action economy standpoint, there is no difference, between 'opp actions' and 'opp attacks' - opp attack is merely one kind of opp action, and that leaves you with none until the next combatant's turn.

From an action economy point of view you are right. But there is the possibility in some cases that you may not be able to make opportunity attacks but you'll still be able to take opportunity actions (the Spriggan Thorn's Mark of Thorns ability is an example, the fact that you are flying can be another one, Lieth the Naga has an aura that prevents OAs, and there are some more). These cases are not frequent but they may happen.