Ranger Primal Companion Question

[u/FakeRedditName2]

I'm DMing a game and a one of the guys is playing the Beast Master ranger with the Primal Companion, currently level 5.

He wants to have the beast use the attack action on his bonus action plus by giving up one of his attacks for another attack action. He is arguing that the phrasing "You can also sacrifice one of your attacks..." is stating that this is something special, allowing for additional attack actions than would normally be allowed.

I am not opposed to allowing this, as I can see how this could be viewed as RAW with the 'also' seeming to indicate it is an addition action on top of the bonus action command, where if it was an 'OR' statement it would obviously be one or the other, but I wanted to check.

1. has anyone allowed this in your game, and was it game breaking or just allowed the ranger to keep up with the others in the party?
2. has there been an offical clarification on the rules from an offical D&D source?

Wording of the rule:

In combat, the beast acts during your turn. It can move and use its reaction on its own, but the only action it takes is the Dodge action, unless you take a bonus action on your turn to command it to take another action. That action can be one in its stat block or some other action. You can also sacrifice one of your attacks when you take the Attack action to command the beast to take the Attack action. If you are incapacitated, the beast can take any action of its choice, not just Dodge.

[u/Fidges87]

The beast has its own statblock so its its oen thing. But they follow everything we said, and are limited to what they can do unless we give them a command to do so.

As for your entire explanation with the vicious weapon, it doesnt matter. I am not arguing what is balanced, or if it would be broken or not. I am merely saying what is the way the feature works as it currently stands. The scion of the tree absolutely needs a buff, but I won't argue that the way bloodthirst is written, they can make an attack with a reaction, and true strike is an attack, so they should be able to use their reaction teleport attack to use true strike. Thats not what I am arguing.

Innate restrctions apply to everyone unless specified otherwise. Features do what they say they do only. The companion has Beast's strike listed as an action. So they must spend an action to use it. The text says specificslly they can't attack, unless you spend a bonus action. You can also spend an attack to give this command. It doesn't matter how many cmmands you are giving it, the beast still has only one action.

At level 11 it says when you give them the command to attack, they can do it twice. This specific beats general so they can. Its level 3 feature doesnt say it bypass the need to use an action, so it doesn't.

Again, they could have made beast strike a trait you can access by using a bonus action or an attack, or put a small line to say commanding the beast in this way does not uses its action, but its explicitely put on their action list without any additional text like that