D&D 5E (2014) I am not ready to ready the ready action...

[pukunui]

Most recently my group used readied actions to attack an elemental creature that kept blinking in and out. They couldn’t do anything on their turns because the creature wasn’t there, so they’d ready an attack for when it reappeared on its turn.

 

[Shiroiken]

By the way, you always have a viable action to take: dodge.

This is a horribly underused option, IME. When I've used it as a player, I get strange looks from the other players.

 

[jgsugden]

My uses of Ready in the past 6 months:

* Ready to cast fireball on the fighters turn so that I can clear a path to the big bad guys in the back for her.
* Ready to cast invisibilty on the party after the fighter attacks.
* Ready to Ready to banish the demons once they swoop in to range.
* Readied a hold monster to cast it right after the enemy went so that it would be longer before they had a chance to save again.

Losing out on this option changes a lot of things in the game. The PCs should know about it and get to use it.

 

[Dausuul]

Ready to cast fireball on the fighters turn so that I can clear a path to the big bad guys in the back for her.

Ha, yes, that's another use case I forgot about: Since Delay has been abolished, the only way to switch your position in combat order (if going by the book) is to Ready. It doesn't affect my play group since we use a variant on side-based initiative, but normally this would be a fairly common scenario.

 

[Jonathon Robinson]

As a DM, I'm really happy there is a Ready mechanic I can fall back on, but I prefer my players not to use it explicitly. What I prefer my players to do instead is give me a narrative such as: "when the dragon swoops down to bite me, I want to jump on him" or "when the invisible creature attacks, I want to immediately stab the air where it looks like he was coming from"

It is a subtle difference but as a DM I'm able to fit the player's narrative into the story much better when I understand what the player is trying to achieve. Otherwise players become less creative and just "ready the attack action for when the creature hits me"


One other issue I have with the ready action is that it can turn the tide of battles. If there's a break in the battle (e.g. some creatures hide) then the players can ready an action to attack the first one they see, thus essentially gaining a free turn and removing the advantage of being hidden (since they see 360 degrees). It would almost make more sense to re-roll initiative, or run some sort of WIS/DEX check to see if the character can react in time to the suddenly charging goblin. But I digress...

 

[Jonathon Robinson]

Ha, yes, that's another use case I forgot about: Since Delay has been abolished, the only way to switch your position in combat order (if going by the book) is to Ready. It doesn't affect my play group since we use a variant on side-based initiative, but normally this would be a fairly common scenario.

Ready doesn't change your combat order RAW. However, you can use ready to go after another player such as "after the wizard clears a path I charge in" I don't really like this because it feels weird to get two turns so close together. I preferred 4e rules that permanently moved your turn order.

 

[the Jester]

Unfortunately, readying a spell is a terrible tactic, because of two reasons:

1) If the trigger doesn't occur before your next turn, or if you give up the readied action to do something else (i.e. use your reaction for OA or else) you lose the spell slot anyway. An intelligent enemy could very much decide to not attack you, if he sees you readying a spell (which is actually quite visible, since you cast the spell on your turn and only release it on your reaction), to make you waste your spell.

2) Between the casting and the releasing of the spell, you are concentrating, even if the spell itself doesn't require concentration, so you are even more vulnerable to losing the readied spell.

By the way, you always have a viable action to take: dodge.

Oh yeah, I always forget about the readying rules for spells. I handwaved the "lose your spell slot no matter what" clause away because I don't want to disincentivize readying a spell so much.

I agree about Dodge- I always suggest it when someone can't make up their mind what their character is going to do.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've DMed 5e so far for 3 different gaming groups (plus one PbP game, not considered here) and all those groups were mostly of beginners, so I never actually told them that this action exists in the game as a combat option. When I have beginners, I purposefully keep things simple

Good call.

Back to my yesterday's musings, I was asking myself why not try to explicitly tell the player myself about the ready action, and see how they use it? So I went to take a second look at the PHB description of it, and then I searched the Sage Advice compendium and website to have a better picture. And my conclusion was: why bother?

Sometimes, complexity is the price of simplicity. They clearly wanted to avoid your initiative order changing in combat, so no Delay, and Ready uses your Reaction. Simple, right?

...

It's more clunky and complicated that it really needed to be, otherwise there wouldn't be so many Sage Advice about it (and you pretty much need to read those to understand how Ready works with or against spellcasting).

Heh. ;|

And it doesn't seem a generally useful tactic. The main dealbreaker is how your readied action takes effect after the trigger...Overall, except presumably in corner cases, it doesn't really sound to me like readying any action against any trigger is worth. You're better off just taking your action now than to wait until a trigger.

And you give up any other use of your already precious Reaction.

Ready is marginal at best, as well as oddly complicated for trying to be simple. But, you have to think: 'who uses ready?' Characters who don't have anything worthwhile to do on their turn. The normally-melee character with every foe too far out of range. The character who can't see any foes (because they're all invisible or hidden or whatever). The character with nothing that can affect any of the currently target-able enemies for some transient reason. Etc...

In other words, ready is there to give the guy with no options a bad alternative, so he can't claim he's useless and just indignantly stalk away from your table, never to return, but he's still just as screwed as you intended him to be when you set up the situation.

Yep, even the stuff that seems dumb or pointless is all about DM Empowerment. ;P

But I suppose that other gaming groups are using it regularly, so I gotta ask: how often do you use the Ready action, and what is your typical use of it?

Seriously, though, yes, Ready has gotten used now and then. Like any other action declaration, I use judgement in resolving it rather than sticking to any real or imagined RAW. So if a player wanted to ready an attack or grapple or whatnot to 'interrupt' a spell being cast, or get in the way of an attack or whatever he feels it's important/useful to do with some timing rather than right now, he can make the attempt.

Please don't just play devil's advocate or come up with fabricated scenarios where you think you would use it... I want to hear real stories of players/DM using the ready action satisfactorily, so that I can convince myself it's worth telling my own players about it

It's not worth telling them about, though, honestly. If a player declares an action that Readying would help resolve, use it - explain it in that context - and move on after, no different than any other ruling for being loosely based on an existing, complicated/problematic rule.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Ready doesn't change your combat order RAW. However, you can use ready to go after another player such as "after the wizard clears a path I charge in" I don't really like this because it feels weird to get two turns so close together. I preferred 4e rules that permanently moved your turn order.

That's actually something to keep in mind, is that it effectively lets you take two turns in a row (if you don't mind pre-committing to the first action). If you're fighting a group of ogres or something, and they're likely to break formation after the first fireball, you can use this to hit them twice before they know any better.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Overall, except presumably in corner cases, it doesn't really sound to me like readying any action against any trigger is worth. You're better off just taking your action now than to wait until a trigger.

One common scenario is when a ranged attacker keeps retreating behind cover, making use of the overly-generous movement rules to become a non-target whenever they aren't attacking. You can ready an action to fire back when they come out, but you only get one attack and they get all of theirs.

If you don't have enemies use that specific tactic, and the players also don't think of it, then readied actions are less likely to become necessary.