Hey Logan Bonner or Mike Mearls, how to handle free actions after charge?

Iron Sky · Sep 17, 2009

I'm not sure how relevant it is to the current discussion, but my roommate just found this tidbit.

If you look up Warden Essentials: Class Acts on D&D Insider (9/14/09) it has this on page 7:

Nature's Wrath

"It's a free action. One thing this means is that you can use Nature's Wrath at any point in your turn, including midway through another action such as a move or charge..."

So, if I read this correctly, in the barbarian case, if you crit, you could take a free action secondary attack in the middle of your current attack. Swift charge could be a bit harder to figure out...

Obryn said:
I really, really hate to ask this - but how does the new At-Will, Warden's Lunge, enter into this?

It seems like a fairly useless power to me unless you can't make Free Actions (including the warden's free action mark) at the end of a charge.

Well, say you have a warden adjacent to 4 creatures and there's one creature one square away. You use Nature's Wrath to mark all the ones adjacent to you, shift next to the other one, then use Warden's Lunge to mark the last one.

Black Arrow · Oct 26, 2009

Breaking news. Rob Heinsoo, lead designer of D&D 4th edition core rules, has commented on this very topic. Per his Barbarian Essentials article in Dragon #380 (requires DDI membership), Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page.

Here's a snippet on his take (hope I'm not violating CoC here): the swift charge power has "a problematic interaction with Rampage... Playing by the rules, a critical hit that reduces an enemy to 0 hit points that triggers both Rampage and swift charge offers only one way to time the attacks. Since you cannot take actions after making a charge attack, you need to use the Rampage attack first, then make the swift charge. That's the letter of the rules, and the way you need to play in situations that stick precisely to the rules."

He also admitted to bending that rule for the Rageblood barbarian in his game -- "the free action Rampage attack is the one attack I let the barbarian make after using a swift charge. It doesn't break the game, it's more fun, and it feels right."

So no free [triggered] actions after a charge if you're playing LFR, but in a home brew game DM's fiat/house rules apply as always.

Herschel · Oct 26, 2009

abyssaldeath said:
It's a social website now. To that I say bleh.

So you prefer anti-social web sites?

keterys · Oct 26, 2009

Well, technically even in LFR if you get a critical that reduces something to 0 hp, you can take the Rampage _during that action_ before it finishes.

But if you end a charge action, yeah, you're done.