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(Bold emphasis added.) You keep repeating the bolded claim, but it's factually inaccurate. The text outright says that you cast the spell when you Ready it. Sure, it could have been slightly more explicit if they had instead worded it as: "When you take the Ready action to Ready a spell..."...

(Bold emphasis added.) The text of Ready does indeed say the bolded portion. Specifically, it says: "When you Ready a spell, you cast the spell as normal...." I understand (but do not agree with) the arguments that the plain reading of this text is not the best reading of this text. But the...

Ok, so you're making a value judgment that it would be problematic to allow the Ready action to "circumvent[] restraints that are expressed by reference to the Magic action." That's a good reason for you to prefer your reading over mine! :) Since I don't make the same value judgement, it...

In my opinion, this is the weak point in your analysis. While it is true that the Ready action doesn't use the same "[a]s part of the same action" language as Divine Intervention, there are other abilities that don't use that language but which nevertheless allow spellcasting as part of another...

Your conclusion that "[w]e know you MUST pick another action to ready" is incorrect. At a minimum, it is explicitly possible to ready movement rather than an Action based on the rules text that states: "you choose the action you will take in response to that trigger, or you choose to move up to...

I'm not ignoring the context, I simply view the context very differently than you do. I think the simplest reading is that: (a) the Ready Action is indeed an Action; (b) the Ready Action typically permits you take another Action (or move) as a Reaction when a trigger is met; and (c) the...

Despite my overall agreement with @ECMO3 concerning Action Surge and the Ready Action, I concur with you on this sub-point. I'd allow the practical example you provided, but my understanding is that we'd disagree on whether the caster is taking (a) both the Ready Action and the Magic Action on...

Sure it does! And it does so using very similar timing language for Improved War Magic. Consider: (Bold emphasis added.) In the case of Improved War Magic, the spell casting happens "[w]hen you take the Attack action". In the case of the Ready Action, the spell casting happens "[w]hen you...

I question whether casting a spell via Action Surge is truly "something you're not supposed to do" when the fighter subclass Eldritch Knight gives an easy way to do just that via Improved War Magic.

They don't consistently write it that way when casting is part of another action. Consider Improved War Magic, which permits casting a spell as part of an Attack Action: One can use Improved War Magic to cast a spell by using Action Surge to take the Attack Action (as long as one hasn't yet...

Suppose an 18th level Eldritch Knight uses a Magic Action to cast Fireball from a Staff of Fire (without using a spell slot), and then uses Action Surge to take the Attack Action. 18th Level Eldritch Knights have the Improved War Magic feature, which states: Can this Eldritch Knight cast...

Thanks for elaborating! And it's awesome that you encountered a situation in which a timber hitch was called for. To this day I've never needed that knot in real life or in an RPG. :) I acknowledge that shaping what skill is tested is a form of risk mitigation, but on its own it's not the same...

I don't disagree with your assesment of many of the posts in this thread. My response was intended to be limited to your specific complaint that it's exhausting when GMs who favor traditional styles "outright reject" incorporating techniques to avoid "nothing happens" outcomes in their...

I'd be ok with the more-specific emphasis on preventing a game stall. I'm curious, though, if that's too specific a purpose from the perspective of the posters advocating for the adoption of fail forward techniques in traditional games? In terms of the language regarding undermining PC choices...

Rather than characterize Fail Forward as a "recommendable principle in traditional play - with a lower priority than the principle of allowing risk mitigation" (and I greatly appreciate the inclusion of that final caveat, by the way!), what would you think about recharacterizing your proposed...

Very true! But I don't think that's pertinent to my argument. A subsequent roll to avoid alerting Thoth doesn't have "nothing happens" as a possibile outcome on a failure in the first place, so there's no need to apply Fail Forward techniques to avoid such an outcome.

Your examples indeeed aren't quite what I had in mind. The archetypical situation I'm thinking of is where the players proactively strategize to advance one of their goals, and have identified one or more potential points of failure (i.e. points where the plan will likely require some sort of...

It's overly simplistic, but I'm nevertheless a fan of the general principle in modeling that similar things should be modeled similarly and different things should be modeled differently. That way the imprecision inherent in any model is less likely to map similar inputs to wildly different...

In the abstract, avoiding having "nothing happen" is a good thing because it has the decided benefit of helping prevent play bogging down. Game mechanics and/or GMing techniques that prevent a "nothing happens" outcome, however, do work at cross purposes with the players' in-character efforts...

Illusions can indeed be tricky. At my table I've expanded upon the ambiguous points and rough edges of the illusion rules as follows: "physical interaction" means personally touching the illusion (either with a body part or with an object one is wearing or holding) and automatically makes the...