Use a free action after a charge?

Flipguarder said:

I have a huge problem with a barbarian stacking 80 things on top of a charge and refusing to let me mark after a charge. I understand the logic of it, but AT MOST, a charge gets one triggered free action on it when I DM.

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Well, the DM is always free to decide under what conditions a player is allowed to take a free action. However I would be careful to make sure you explain to the people playing in your game that you aren't going to allow barbarians to do stuff that any experienced player building a barbarian will expect to be able to do and will probably build their character around doing.

jeffhartsell said:

Free actions I don't think are immediate interrupt actions, so you have to resolve the triggering action. As such, if a barbarian reduced a foe to 0 with a charge, no other actions (other than via an action point) can be taken, thus no swift charge. Same goes for the warden marking as a free action.

This gets tricky if you had a free action that triggered on a hit or on damage. In that case you could trigger the action during the charge and it will resolve after you resolve the charge.

A foe being reduced to zero is the result of the charge action, and a barbarian can't take any non-action point actions at that point.

I wonder how this works if you use an action point to charge at the begining of your turn? Does an action point charge end your turn?

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Except this entire theory of yours instantly runs into a giant iceburg and joins the Titanic as soon as you actually examine the rules carefully. Free Actions absolutely DO come within other actions. How else can things like Elven Accuracy work? Read the rule on PHB p269 and you can see that making an attack is a process which includes a number of steps, any one of which can trigger free actions which are resolved immediately. Any that haven't been resolved by the "deal damage" process of step 5 are then resolved by the "apply other effects" process of step 5 (the very last thing in the resolution process). Since we have already inarguably determined that free actions happen during other actions when they are triggered then your whole argument simply falls apart.

Just because triggered free actions are not called immediate interrupts does not stop them from interrupting other things. It simply means they don't follow the particular rules specific to immediate actions. There are a number of reasons why this is true. For one thing immediate actions cannot happen during a player's own turn (it would create various infinite loop situations) and further they have restrictions on how many of them can be used in a given period of time (1 immediate per player turn). Those limitations were put in place to restrict players ability to do things outside their own turn, but free actions are designed to work in all the situations where immediate actions don't. Thus some things need to be triggered free actions in order to be useful and work with the rest of the rules, and many of those actions MUST occur within other actions to work.

Flipguarder said:

Explain to me why that's relevant. I was grouping the end of a charge with stunned an unconscious because all three say "you can't take actions", not because one leads to another.

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yes, I wasn't thinking

AbdulAlhazred said:

Well, the DM is always free to decide under what conditions a player is allowed to take a free action. However I would be careful to make sure you explain to the people playing in your game that you aren't going to allow barbarians to do stuff that any experienced player building a barbarian will expect to be able to do and will probably build their character around doing.

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I have a method of dealing with that type of thing. If he uses two or more actions after a charge (or simply goes against something I don't think is right, or violates a houserule I have neglected to mention), I let him for the remainder of the current session. Then, I ask him to re-work his character to fit my rules, then if he decides on bigger changes for his character then we work together on how to fit that into the story. It's worked out so far.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Well, the DM is always free to decide under what conditions a player is allowed to take a free action. However I would be careful to make sure you explain to the people playing in your game that you aren't going to allow barbarians to do stuff that any experienced player building a barbarian will expect to be able to do and will probably build their character around doing.

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exactly. I was referring earlier to a dud. By disallowing those free actions, you'll have a barbarian in the group who constantly fires duds. It will happen a lot. Crits and kills on a charge? I stopped counting. So the barbarian has these great fun features, but no, the DM always says, you can't do it. Dud! That's so frustrating, I would definitely stop playing barbarians. This can't possibly be the intention of the rules! Particularly since there are good ways to always allow free actions that are triggered.

Orcus Porkus said:

exactly. I was referring earlier to a dud. By disallowing those free actions, you'll have a barbarian in the group who constantly fires duds. It will happen a lot. Crits and kills on a charge? I stopped counting. So the barbarian has these great fun features, but no, the DM always says, you can't do it. Dud! That's so frustrating, I would definitely stop playing barbarians. This can't possibly be the intention of the rules! Particularly since there are good ways to always allow free actions that are triggered.

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I can understand your frustration while playing a barbarian under my rules. But not even close to the majority of barbarian powers are charges. You'd need to build a very specific character to be charging ALL the time. Only 6 (i may have miscounted, it may be 7) powers out of all of the barbarian class powers can be used as charges. That's up to level 30, includes dailies and 1 at will.

AbdulAlhazred said:

... Free Actions absolutely DO come within other actions. How else can things like Elven Accuracy work? Read the rule on PHB p269 and you can see that making an attack is a process which includes a number of steps, any one of which can trigger free actions which are resolved immediately. Any that haven't been resolved by the "deal damage" process of step 5 are then resolved by the "apply other effects" process of step 5 (the very last thing in the resolution process)...

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Right. Because of this, virtually any appropriate free action can be done in conjunction with a Charge but not with conditions that disallow all actions.

Thus the barbarians ability to get another charge (free action when opponent gets damaged down to zero) both makes sense and is allowed.

Technically, these free actions happen in conjunction with the charge, not after it, even though it may appear to be after.

So, from everything that people have posted regarding a charge / free actions, I take it this fighter power combination would be acceptable?:

Level 1 at will fighter power - Knockdown assault
Special: When charging, you can use this power in place of a melee basic attack.

plus

Level 3 encounter fighter power - Shield Slam (free action)
Trigger: You hit an enemy with a melee attack.

Nice find. Since it's a free action, it absolutely triggers. The power is designed to work as a fine follow up attack for shield fighters. All it does is push the target and knock it prone. Makes total sense too after a charge. Once per encounter... it adds fun to the game. Now show me the fighter who takes this over Sweeping Blow or Rain of Blows.

After reading this thread, I've learned 2 things.

1) RAW, you can't take free actions after a charge.
2) Any good DM will allow free actions after a charge (within reasonable limits).

And yes, I know #2 is no-true-scotsman, but I think a good DM would be willing to modify unnecessary limitations in the interest of fun and realism.

Keep in mind that the DMG rules for Overland Flight mandate that if something using overland flight moves during its turn "takes actions to do anything else, it crashes." So apparently talking while you're overland flying causes you to hurtle into the ground. (Without DM intervention, that is.)

Point being, this is one of those area where a good DM will step in determine what would be reasonable. I'm pretty sure that's within the general intent of 4e's design principles, if not the exact letter of the rules.

Actually, my fighter does. As a defender build (sword & board) I felt it was more important for the flavour of the character to take powers that emphasized the use of the shield - shield bash & shield slam. Between those two and knockdown assault, my fighter is usually refered to as the school yard bully by one players in our group - pushing people over and taking their lunch money.