Isn't a round only 6 seconds? So the fighters spend the first minute or two of the fight cautiously approaching each other. That seems in accordance with the source material to me.
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When do you throw initiative?
- Thread starter Water Bob
- Start date
Isn't a round only 6 seconds? So the fighters spend the first minute or two of the fight cautiously approaching each other. That seems in accordance with the source material to me.
Love to hear those thoughts.
Strictly by the rules, though, it's not a legal move. I'm trying to learn the game as written before I house rule anything.
I thought about doing this with the Delay Action, but I think the rules cover it well. If you don't do anything with your Delay Action, you just hesitated for the entire six second combat round and did nothing.
Thus, if three combatants all use the Delay Action, they can all stand there, waiting for something to happen. And, when nothing does happen, the entire round goes by and nothing changes.
I think the works.
Love to hear those thoughts.
Unfortunately, it doesn't translate readily to 3E, since I'm working with 2E-style initiative.
The basic initiative system is this: At the start of the round, you declare what you're doing. (DM declares first, then players going clockwise, just to keep things simple.) Then everybody rolls 1d6 for initiative, and the DM starts counting down from 6. When the DM calls your initiative count, you resolve your declared actions. If two people act on the same initiative count, their actions happen simultaneously*.
Originally I had separate rules for aborting your declared action and readying an action, but after reading this thread and pondering for a bit, I decided it made more sense to combine the two. The way it works now, when your turn comes around, you can either resolve your standard action or "hold the action." If you hold the action, you don't use the standard action right then, but you reserve the option to jump back in and resolve that action at any point until the end of the round. (You can't hold your move action. Move actions are use-it-or-lose-it.)
If the round ends and you still haven't executed your held action, you can hold it over to the next round. If you do this, you must declare the same standard action again, but your initiative is automatically increased to 6.
So, taking the "gladiator problem," let's say your gladiators are called... oh... Roy and Thog, just to pick two names out of the air.
They start 40 feet apart. Each of them declares that he will move, then attack. They roll initiative; Roy gets 4 and Thog gets 2.Roy moves 30 feet (they are now 10 feet apart). He's too far away to attack Thog yet, so he holds his attack action.
Thog could move up, but then Roy would jump in and get the first shot. Being smarter than he looks, Thog declines to use his declared move, and holds his attack action. The round ends.
Next round, both combatants have held actions. If they keep those actions, they get to go on initiative 6. Both of them do so; once again, they will move, then attack. Since they have the same initiative, they act simultaneously. They move forward until they're in melee range, and then both attack at the same moment. At this point, neither has any reason to continue holding--they'd just be giving the other guy the first hit.
[size=-2]*This will obviously require some judgement calls from the DM. 2E-style initiative does not lend itself to the kind of rigid, tightly defined rules WotC favors.[/size]
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KahnyaGnorc
First Post
Couldn't a combatant move within charging range, then ready an action when their opponent comes within 10' of them (entering the square 2 squares away). The readied action is to sidestep the charge, like a matador with a bull!
Olgar Shiverstone
Legend
For delay, I agree. But ready is not delay -- ready is an action that just needs a trigger, and if both parties ready, you have a Mexican standoff, so having the last party execute provides the trigger to break the standoff.
What would be the point? It ends up the same way. You ready. If your opponent charges, you will evade, and then you get the next action and take the first swipe. Your opponent knows this and so does not charge. Once again, Mexican standoff.
KahnyaGnorc
First Post
Not really, because you can move and ready an action (readying an action is a Standard Action), so you move closer, ready, then closer, ready, etc. and your foe does the same. Eventually, you both get close enough to fight. Most fights of this type, at least in fiction, have the two combatants slowly close in on each other and not charging (unless you have the young, hotheaded hero who is subsequently beaten down by his foe, an older mentor-type).
Technically, not the way you described it, because with a Ready Action, the character can move either before or during the Readied Action, but not both.
But, let's think about this...
Our hero is in square E.
ABC
DEF
GHJ
And, he has nish. He readies an action to move into square G as soon as his foe charges into square B.
The only way this would work is if the charging character runs out of movement when he reaches square B. Otherwise, he's going to keep going into square E and attack our hero, who is now in square G, with the charge. Remember that there are no facing rules in the basic game (not without using the optional Facing Rules or a House Rule). Thus, ending the charge in square E instead of square B is legal as long as the charging character has the movement to get there.
And if both parties ready an action, but neither party has their "trigger" come to fruition, then I would think that the round is wasted with the two just looking at each other, waiting. Everything would "reset" on their nish numbers in the next round.
No, you don't. You close, ready, close, ready, and then stop and ready when you reach a certain range. You can never get close enough to fight unless you're willing to give your opponent the first shot.
No matter how you work it, you always come down to a point where your opponent is standing there with a readied attack. If you move into reach, she can make that attack before you have a chance to hit back. So you have the choice between eating the readied attack, or stopping out of reach and readying an attack of your own. The optimal strategy is to do the latter. Your opponent is then faced with the same choice.
You can ready to evade instead of attack, but the dynamic doesn't change. Your evasion would negate your opponent's attack; you would then act next and get the first strike. Therefore your opponent prefers to wait rather than give away that advantage.
The "gladiator problem" very seldom comes up in play, first because there are usually more than two combatants in a D&D fight, second because it requires that the combatants start more than 40-60 feet apart and neither has a ranged option, and third because most players and DMs aren't hell-bent on executing a theoretically perfect combat strategy.
But if it does come up, it really is a Mexican standoff; the best move is not to play.
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Yep. If you don't ready an attack, you'll be charged, and your opponet will get the first strike.
But, he won't charge because he figures that you're readying an attack the same way he is.
There's really no way around this without writing a house rule or doing something "in game" to make the gladiators fight.
If this situation takes place in a field with no one else around and no cover to speak of, the situation can get hopeless. It will probably be up to the GM to make the NPC do something stupid in order to get the game going.
If you've got two PCs fighting like this in an open field with no cover, I'm not sure what a GM would do to get the game going.
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