Does turning around count as moving for triggering Brace?

Question

My fighter took Superior Technique as Fighting Style. This gives me the the Combat Maneuver Brace, which says (emphasis mine):

When a creature you can see moves into the reach you have with the melee weapon you're wielding, you can use your reaction to expend one superiority die and make one attack against the creature, using that weapon. If the attack hits, add the superiority die to the weapon's damage roll.

The wording of a similar mechanic in the Polearm Master feat differs slightly:

While you are wielding a glaive, halberd, pike, quarterstaff, or spear, other creatures provoke an opportunity attack from you when they enter the reach you have with that weapon.

The word "enter" makes it very clear to me that the opponent needs to enter the reach for the trigger to happen, but "moving into" is less clear to me. It could be that they are semantically the same, but both my DM and I are unsure.

So, for example, if the opponent is already within my reach and it turns around to attack someone else: does turning around count as moving for triggering Brace?

Answer 1

D&D doesn't have facing, so "turning around" isn't really a thing that creatures can do, mechanically. Therefore, "turning around" isn't something that would be relevant to printed rules text (whether it's a reasonable trigger for things like readied actions is another issue, beyond the scope of this question). That is, D&D doesn't* make you track which direction any particular creature is looking (or whether they're looking over their shoulder while walking forward, etc.).

That aside, "[w]hen a creature ... moves into ... reach" is pretty clear: the creature must be out of reach and then move into reach for that trigger to take effect. Simply turning around wouldn't necessitate or even imply that the turning creature's distance from you has changed; quite the opposite: "turning around" implies that the creature's distance hasn't changed. Since the creature's distance hasn't changed, they clearly can't have moved into reach - either they were within reach before they turned around or they're still out of reach after they've turned around.

If you're asking about the UA version's trigger ("an enemy you can see moves within 5 feet of you"), turning around still wouldn't qualify: movement is a game-mechanical term that means "go to a meaningfully-different place on the map (eg., to another square on the grid)". It's assumed that creatures are generally moving (in the "not standing like a statue" sense of the word) throughout their turn (eg., dodging a sword, shifting to exploit an opening, etc.); but, that's not "movement" in the game-mechanical sense of "changing where you are on the map". The movement rules touch on and imply this, but don't call this out explicitly, unfortunately.

* at least, not generally. Previous editions have had some facing-like rules, especially for flying creatures (mostly around how much they can change their velocity per round); I haven't come across any such rules in 5e, though.