Disengage: move without provoking Opportunity Attacks
Disengage provides a specific protection for movement during the current turn. It does not supply extra distance, undo every hazard or last through all future movement.
Use it at the table
- Spend the action or use a feature that explicitly permits another action cost.
- For the rest of the current turn, your movement does not provoke Opportunity Attacks.
- Track the movement you still have and other applicable effects separately. The protection ends with the current turn.
Make the call
A character with Speed 30 takes Disengage before moving away. With no other modifiers or features, does this let them move 60 feet?
The ruling
No; it changes provoking Opportunity Attacks, not available distance.
Disengage does not add movement. The character still has the ordinary movement available on that turn, subject to terrain and other restrictions. Dash is the action that grants extra movement. The two actions answer different needs, so decide whether the character needs more distance, protection from provoking, or a feature that permits both.
Watch for this mistake
Do not promise that Disengage prevents all consequences along a route. An environmental hazard, a spell effect or a readied action is not automatically an Opportunity Attack. Resolve those by their own rules.
Ask the table
Which reaction is being discussed: an Opportunity Attack or a different trigger?
The source rule
SRD 5.2.1, page 181. Read the official PDF.
If you take the Disengage action, your movement doesn’t provoke Opportunity Attacks for the rest of the current turn.
Source and reuse
This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 (“SRD 5.2.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
The explanation, example and table prompt are Table Ready adaptations; source text has been reflowed and tables reformatted. This guide and its printable card are available under the same CC BY 4.0 license. Independent reference; no official affiliation. These rules are optional for our system-neutral adventures.