Does moving by means of a bonus action provoke opportunity attacks?

Question

The criteria for not provoking an opportunity attack when leaving an opponent’s reach are:

• Take the Disengage action or
• Teleport or
• Move (or be moved) without using your action, reaction, or movement.

The actual rules text is:

You can avoid provoking an opportunity attack by taking the Disengage action. You also don't provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction.

Consider, for example, a Barbarian’s Instinctive Pounce feature:

Instinctive Pounce

7th-level barbarian feature

As part of the bonus action you take to enter your rage, you can move up to half your speed.

This moves the barbarian without using any of their movement, and using a bonus action. Does this meet the “without using your action” criterion to avoid provoking?

Answer 1

The rules unfortunately use natural language and seemingly contradict themselves. Ask the GM

Reading with natural language, the rules seem to state that both bonus actions and reactions are actions

Some rules quotes on bonus actions and reactions:

Various class features, spells, and other abilities let you take an additional action on your turn called a bonus action.

Certain special abilities, spells, and situations allow you to take a special action called a reaction.

I would absolutely assume this means bonus actions and reactions are both actions. If an item has a special or additional fee, in either case I would agree it has a fee. If something is a special or additional action, I would naturally conclude it must also be an action.

---

Yet when something requires your action, it doesn't mean your bonus action or reaction

Countless features throughout the game use phrases such as "as an action" or "using your action" or similar and these refer to your actual, big action. Similarly there is the fighter's Action Surge:

On your turn, you can take one additional action.

This only lets you take an additional action and does not allow for a second bonus action (or reaction) despite bonus actions literally being called "an additional action". The SAC settles this clearly:

Q. Does the fighter’s Action Surge feature let you take an extra bonus action, in addition to an extra action?

A. Action Surge gives you an extra action, not an extra bonus action.

---

Nonetheless there are times the rules refer to an action and do include bonus actions

Further complicating this are One With Shadows and an SAC entry concerning it:

When you are in an area of dim light or darkness, you can use your action to become invisible until you move or take an action or a reaction.

Q. Does using a bonus action break invisibility from a warlock’s One with Shadows invocation?

A. Taking a bonus action breaks the invisibility of a warlock’s One with Shadows. A bonus action is an action.

So here we see "take an action" include bonus actions because "a bonus action is an action". And yet, Action Surge, when letting you take "an additional action" apparently does not allow for an additional bonus action. Furthermore, why is there this rule, if bonus actions really are actions:

anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action

Perhaps the rule is just redundantly repeating information. Or perhaps it's clarifying that, unlike with Action Surge, in these specific scenarios, when something affects your action it also affects your bonus action.

---

Meanwhile, reactions are not meant to be considered actions

We should also note that while bonus actions are not called out explicitly in One With Shadows, reactions are. The practice of calling out reactions but not bonus actions is extremely common throughout the rules, such as in the Incapacitated condition, and this seems to indicate that reactions are not actions. According to Crawford, and the most upvoted answer to this related question this is the case:

Actions and reactions are different. If an effect, like the haste spell, shuts off one, it doesn't necessarily shut off the other. 

Actions and reactions are different.

This is despite the fact that reactions are described nearly identically to bonus actions, which somehow are actions (well... except when they aren't, like Action Surge).

---

Putting it all together for opportunity attacks

You also don't provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport, or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction.

So what happens if you move using your bonus action? The written rules are really a lot of a mess. At times they assume bonus actions are actions (One With Shadows), at times they assume they are not ("as an action" and Action Surge), and at times they assume reactions are not actions (listing both out in various features). Meanwhile, the text that supports that bonus actions are actually actions is almost identical to the description of reactions, so why would we interpret these phrases to have completely different meanings? (This sheds more confusion on why bonus actions are actions and thus whether they are actions at all).

I don't see any real way to reconcile all of these rules in a coherent manner. Bonus actions simultaneously do and do not count as actions, and I don't see any easy way to know when each is the case. The writers unfortunately used natural language, which didn't help here, and picking through them for the RAW gets mixed results. I say, ask the GM.

---

At my own tables, using your bonus action to move provokes opportunity attacks, whether this is a houserule or not, I could not say.

Answer 2

Yes, unless you take the Disengage Action or teleport before entering in rage.

Instinctive Pounce description just says that as part of the bonus action employed to enter in rage you can move up to half of your speed.

It does not say that when you exit from an enemy's reach using the extra movement provided by such feature you do not provoke opportunity attacks, hence general rules apply:

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 occurs right before the creature leaves your reach.

There are conditions to be satisfied to do not provoke opportunity attacks (emphasis mine):

You also don't provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction.

Since a bonus action is an action\$^\dagger\$ and moreover you are using your movement, these conditions are not met.

---

The someone or something part in the above rule does nor refer to yourself even if the same sentence talks about your movement, action or reaction. There are spells and abilities that forces creature to use their actions and/or movement.

For example, consider the following situation: a PC is in a melee fighting with a goblin and an enemy spellcaster 10 feet away from the PC casts Fear, paying attention to include in its AoE only the PC, who fails the saving throw. Per description (emphasis mine)

While frightened by this spell, a creature must take the Dash action and move away from you by the safest available route on each of its turns, unless there is nowhere to move.

The PC is forced to move in its turn, but even taking the safest available rute they must go out from the reach of the goblin, provoking thus an opportunity attack (if the Goblin has still its reaction available).

In this case, there is someone (the spellcaster) and/or something (the spell) that moves the PC by forcing them to use their very action/movement.

---

\$^\dagger\$ See for example the rules and the Sage Advice Compendium, under the question Does using a bonus action break invisibility from a warlock’s One with Shadows invocation?.

Answer 3

Yes

Whenever you move of your own volition, you are "using movement". To be clear, there is no specific "movement" feature... there is the broad subject of Movement (PHB chapter 8, as I recall), which includes—among other things—the specific feature "Speed" (capitalized in this answer to clarify that it's a special "activity" during your round), and in particular, Speed during combat (rather than, say, Traveling Speed).

For example, let's say your character has a Speed of 30 feet. That means your character can "move" up to 30 feet per round of combat based on your Speed value.

Now, consider perhaps the most common way to move more than your Speed allows during combat: the Dash Action. The Dash Action gives you extra movement equal to your Speed (plus any modifiers). Specifically, the Dash Action states:

When you take the Dash action, you gain extra movement for the current turn.

(emphasis mine)

This makes it clear that you are still just "moving using movement" (e.g. Speed) even when you are doing so by using your Action, rather than some specific "movement" feature, because the Dash Action doesn't "let you move", it just increases your movement. Remember also that movement isn't restricted to a one-time activity during your round... you can split your movement up as much as you want, however you want, within your turn; a bit here, half of it there, etc.

Now, consider the Instinctive Pounce feature. As your quote says,

As part of the bonus action you take to enter your rage, you can move up to half your speed.

So, still during your turn (when using a Bonus Action), you are given the opportunity to add half your Speed's movement again to your normal Speed¹. Whether you choose to use that opportunity is up to you, but whenever you do choose to capitalize on it, you do so using your movement. In other words, your Speed of 30 would become 45... and to move around, you use movement afforded to you by your Speed value.

As the opportunity attack quote says:

You also don't provoke an opportunity attack when [...] someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction.

Because someone (you) is moving you, and doing so by using your movement (that is available to you as part of your Speed), this criterion is not met. Therefore, you are still susceptible to an opportunity attack if you would otherwise trigger one with said movement.

^{1 - It may be worth pointing out that this could be interpreted as just using half your normal/default Speed (e.g. half of the original 30 feet), but that seems unlikely, since you can always just 'move up to half your Speed' whenever you want during your turn anyway... which would make such a feature pointless.}

Answer 4

Opportunity Attacks have nothing to do with when a creatures moves itself

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 occurs right before the creature leaves your reach.

The text that matters here is moves out of your reach. It says nothing about it being a bonus action, an action, a reaction, or movement on your turn. Therefore, the turn phase that the movement happens in does not matter to provoking opportunity attacks.

There are separate rules and rulings on forced movement, which generally does not provoke an Opportunity Attack. But if the creature does the moving itself, it will generally provoke. It doesn't matter if it moves using an action, bonus action, reaction, or movement phase. A Rogue's bonus action dash would provoke Opportunity Attacks, and this is not really in question. Other answers are quoting rules on forced movement, but that is something different. We are talking (usually) about voluntary movement by a creature. @TylerH's answer gives further logic on why the forced movement rules do not apply: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/190881/57553

But let's dig further.

You also don't provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction.

There seems to be confusion as to what "someone" means above. I submit that trying to extend that to yourself is creating rulings where none are necessary. But even if it includes yourself, the rules say "without using your movement." The barbarian feature says,

you can move up to half your speed.

That is using your movement. I am not going to try to define how moving up to half your speed uses your movement, because that again delves past the real meaning of words. We are back to: moving yourself provokes Opportunity Attacks.

If movement does not provoke an Opportunity Attack, that will be noted in the feature, like a Swashbuckler's movement after attack. The example given does not include such an exclusion, so it will invoke opportunity attacks.

Answer 5

You can avoid provoking an opportunity attack by taking the Disengage action. You also don't provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction.

The latter part says nothing of the character, you, moving themselves, it entirely concerns other entities moving you. Linguistically speaking you are not someone or something in that sentence.

So

Move (or be moved) without using your action, reaction, or movement

is wrong,

Are moved without using your action, reaction, or movement

would be correct. You are moving with Instinctive Pounce so you are subject to attacks of opportunity.