[5E] Interrupting a Spellcaster via Ready Action

[DND_Reborn]

I think you can play like that if you want to do it. But I would never trigger on the attack but on something else. And that is allowed by RAW. My trigger would be"draw an arrow". If you can shoot the bow without completely draw an arrow, yes you are faster.

Sure, that works by the official rules, but then you are getting around the attack by just wording your trigger differently, even if your intent is the same: act before the bowman attacks, as soon as he begins to. I do agree if the bowman already had a an arrow ready, it is likely he might get off the shot before you pull the lever and maybe even before I fire the crossbow.

I find it unfortunate that the official rule works this way and I would prefer a different mechanic. Of course, I suppose you can default to the rules for tied initiative, maybe allowing you and the bowman to both roll a d20 to see who acts first?

Back to the OP, however, if such wording means you could act before the bowman attacks, why wouldn't you be able to pull the lever or fire the crossbow before a spellcaster casts? If he fell because the lever was pulled, he might not have a valid target he could see. I suppose you could also simply resolve the crossbow attack and allow the caster to complete the spell. As others have posted, there is no mechanic for disrupting a spell in 5E (other than Counterspell) by dealing damage unless the spell takes more than one round to cast.

At any rate, I think this is definitely a flaw in the system IMO unless it was intentional simply to allow each table to rule as they see fit.

 

[5ekyu]

What?
Even when you lost initiative you gave up your action to attack later. No you can't stop the caster from casting. Where exactly did I say that? You can just threaten to kill. Once again if you could stop caating with the readied action you already were able to do so on the round before (on lower initiative). If your attack does not kill the wizard the spell gets cast as normal. I mean, when did I say differently? I am still shocked about what you read into posts or rules.

I included the reference to a case of s house rule interrupting casting cuz it's part of the ongoing discussion - not necessarily as a part of your specific reference. It's one case here there might be a tactical gain vs doing a little more damage - as opposed to the magical fun or dead binary thst was being imagined.

As for init sequrnce, I was just observing how wrong the references yo linking ready snd "win initiative" were. It kept bring brought IP as if its a reward for winning init, but it's not tied to that at all. Its just who is next.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I included the reference to a case of s house rule interrupting casting cuz it's part of the ongoing discussion - not necessarily as a part of your specific reference. It's one case here there might be a tactical gain vs doing a little more damage - as opposed to the magical fun or dead binary thst was being imagined.

As for init sequrnce, I was just observing how wrong the references yo linking ready snd "win initiative" were. It kept bring brought IP as if its a reward for winning init, but it's not tied to that at all. Its just who is next.

In the first eound of combat winning initiative and using the readied action before someone may act is the same. And it is the same result. You give up an action to act later because you want an actual roleplaying game instead of just standing there whacking on the other one because you think you have to because of the wrong reading of a rule.
Also don't quote me and then adress different people's arguments. Don't attack me for things I never said or even explicitely spoke against because it was a part of the opening post 10 pages ago.
The last discussion was just about the part whenthe readied action happens and RAW it is not after the enemy completed an action in the game sense but after something your character saw or heard happens which might be as little as moving a finger just an inch which is not the same as casting a spell.
Just to repeat myself: I would not make the wizard roll a concentration check because it would encourage readying actions in fights too much. Especially for rogues who give up little to do so.
On the other hand if you somehow like it that high level fighters can trade a lot of attacks for the low chance of actually disrupting the casting of a spell, that would not break the game.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

My player says, "I don't want to do anything offensive but If he reaches for the spell component pouch, I'm going to assume he's casting a spell and I'm going to cast silence on him."

I second everything else, but here I want to add that to actually use silence if he starts casting a spell you start
casting silence on your turn and hold the energy until your next turn which might result in a very cost inefficient trade if you go by RAW. I would allow to hold a spell for as long as you use the readied action on consecutive turns but that is a house rule.
What this rule shows however that it is impossible to cast a spell in as little time as a single reaction to fire it off immediately. It is not even enough time to cast the spell and let it loose after the enemy has completed his trigger. So we need to assume spellcasting takes more time than swinging with a swird which you can ready wirhout giving the intend away. This however is only my interpretation and even if someone diaagrees it does not belittle the fact that RAW the trigger explicitely does not have to be an action.

 

[5ekyu]

If you watch the movie more closely you notice that after someone has a knife on the throat the combat stops for a few seconds in most cases. So the threat of stabbing is real. If you always alllow a spell to be faster than the one threatening to stab, all movies would just result in the one with the knife just killing the hostage instead because using his actiob to build a threat of killing is futile.

So once again: the one with the knife at somepoint took his turn to ready an action which makes him give up his action on his turn in favour of building the threat.
Because the threat is killing the victim is real, noone can just shoot the man with the knife without risk.
So at least if you want to shoot, you at least have to win some contest. Either a dex contest for speed (initiative) or some other contest. Deception vs insight or whateber is appropriate. Often in films the victim does something the person with the knife didn't think expect, sometimes shoving the one with the knife away. In game terms that would be not doing something what would be perceived as the trigger of the readied action. Using the shove action when it is the victims turn most probably.

Yes, you got it. For the dramatic stad-off scene you are fretting over, the Han-shoots-first errr.., ready-goes-first house rule fails to reproduce the scenes too. The drama isnt heightened if the one side only has one choice.

But, again, in 5e there is no real kill-on-demand rule either, so barring the case of the hostage happening yo be at low HP and low damage threshold vs a major frighin' high yield damage attack, the threat is minimal, not lethal - hp and three death saves and all.

So, the key is, for that case you bring up, all allowing ready-first foesvisbpass the "problem" to a different part of the ruleset. It doesnt make the scene work, it just spotlights a different issue.

Sure the GM csn eldct for GM fiat to dead for special cases, but they could do that for ready-first too ' eliminating the need for ready-first rules.

And again you laser in on spell... "always allow the spell to be faster " so let me ask for clarity, is it your notion that ready goes first is spell specific as in "ready goes before spells" or also for any action, like firing a loaded crossbow at the hostage taker?

Me, ran games for long time with ready goes first. Ran games for years with ready goes second. Ran games with simultaneous decided by a check or roll or stat. Ran games where getting the ready goes first required a different process than a ready goes second did - to get ready goes first you had to succeed at the initial "attack" at higher difficulty and then elect to "hold it" but the ready goes after did not.

None of these were better or worse, none were bulletproof just different in the things they promoted and the ones they skewed.

But, across the board, the ready often skewed scenes snd play towards niche cases more and more tied to how favorable the ready action rules got. You ran into "ready action issues" more often the more your rules let ready action advsntages.

I personally prefer the 5e RAW of ready-after because it produces fewer cases of problem- because ready is less powerful and so it is used less often.

Going back to "Make Ready Great Again" with ready-first or ready-interrupt house rules would not be a direction I would take cuz I have seen these before in play and they end up usually not "fixing the hostage knife scene" as much as they create a lot of other oddball edge Hurley burly combat exploits.

So with ready-last, these hostage drama scenes take a different form, hostage in another room with minions drop weapons or they kill hostage... etc.... a scene that doesnt spiral into the hp-death-save-vs-knife conflict.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

[MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION]

You still miss the target.

1. RAW Ready goes 2nd, but not after an action but a perceivable trigger. So hostage scenarios are an edge case as well as having a killing shot. It is also possible to circumvent the trigger and still cast a spell. (Subtle casting metamagic etc.)

2. Hostages are often low level bystanders or badly wounded people. For the scene it is not necessary to do a killing blow, just the threat of it.

3. I even second you in rulings that make ready an action a rare scenario. So no concentration. But I like it as a gamble you might take in those situations.

4. I just strongly disagree with your reading of "finishes the trigger". We would not have the discussion if it was worded as in previous editions "finsihes the triggering action". In that case the spell would go off no question.
But I really like the wording of 5e RAW because it rewardsclever thinking on both sides.
[MENTION=6987520]dnd4vr[/MENTION]

As you can read in my post: I don't think the rule is in anyway jnfortunately written. Actually it works perfectly. No backloop. No time traves. Just a simple trigger reaction and then tine goes on normally. The only thing you as a DM have to take care off: you don't say: the wizards ignores your threat and just casts you have to say: ignoring your warning the wizard still moves his hand. And now the PC decides: shoot or not. The player might get a sense motive pr perception chech to notice what the intend of the movement is, but now you have to decide possibly before you know what the movement means.
That alligns perfectly with movie scenes that depic such situations.

 

[5ekyu]

Good. Since we (at least) agree on how the official rules work, now we can discuss how absurd they are IMO. While you are correct that examples exist where you would get shot first, there are also examples where the lever is pulled. Since it could go both ways, why don't the rules reflect that? How could these scenarios never arise in play testing and if they did, why rule it in such an ambiguous manner?

Consider what you wrote: "if he was moving onto the trap door and that was your trigger, you could drop him then." So, the reasoning here is that because he was moving and not attacking, your reaction is faster? He is moving when he draws an arrow to shoot, takes aim, and fires. How is that faster than him walking, or you pulling the lever?

There are no speeds for actions, so unfortunately it comes down to the wording of the trigger--which is sad IMO since the intent is clear and it becomes a case of word-smithing.



Thanks. I was hoping it would be a clear example. Now we are just talking semantics. Obviously the intent to pull the lever before the attack is there either way. Has D&D gotten to that point? Where wording is so nit-picky that it causes such strange results?

Your idea of stopping the action and rerolling initiative in this case would work, but that is a DM deciding how to proceed. Like many of the rules in 5E, perhaps it was left this way to create options for the DM/table to use as they see fit. I know other editions had so many rules to make such situations overly clear and they wanted to avoid having a horde of rules.

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Same situation except now I am a player as well (new text in italics):

A bowman is standing over a trap door in the floor and you have your hand on the lever that triggers it. He is holding his bow, but his arrows are still in his quiver. He has valuable information, so you don't want to just trigger the trap and possibly kill him. I am there ready to fire my crossbow at the guy if he moves at all. You have won initiative and are acting first. I am second. The bowman is last:

You: I tell him not to attack or I will pull the lever.
Me: If he moves at all I am just going to shoot him with my crossbow.
DM: Ok, so you are Readying your action to Use an Object, the lever, if he attacks. And you are Readying your attack with the crossbow if he moves.
You: Yep. I know I could interact with it for free now, but I don't want to do it unless I have to.
Me: Sure shooting! *laughs
DM: Sure, he shoots you then.
You: What!? Wait, don't I get to pull the lever first?
DM: You would think so, huh? But since the triggering action was his attack, and your readied action doesn't take place until after the triggering action, he still gets his attack against you.
You: That can't be how it works!?
DM: Sure it is. Page 191 of the PHB. I'll read it to you: "When the trigger event occurs [his attack], you can either take your reaction right after the trigger finishes or ignore the trigger." So, you can pull the lever after I resolve his attack on you, but not before it. Sorry.
Me: Wow, that sucks.
You: Then what was the point of my standing there holding the lever???
DM: Nothing, I guess you should have just pulled it on your turn and hoped he survived. *grins*
Me: Well, don't I get to shoot him? My circumstance for attacking was if he moves at all, he must be moving to draw an arrow and shot.
DM: Huh? Oh, well... yeah, I guess so. You get to roll to attack him first.
You: Wait, wait, wait! So, he can shoot his crossbow first, then the bowman is shooting me, and then I get to pull the lever? This is so messed up...

So, unfortunately, because of the wording and despite the intent of both you and me, I would get to shoot and you get shot. I think this ruling needs some serious revamping.

"How absurd they are" as you observe is an opinion. As I have said, house rules are great. By all means make house rules and I hope you eliminate all those absurdities you are bothered by. Got a few house rules myself.

Me? Played a lot of RPGs with lotsa lotsa different init systems and "ready" rules. Each produced different problems. Each had their own absurdities.

The difference was that the frequency that ready-action-issues came up in play was always directly proportional to how much the rules favored the ready. The more they attempted to resolve the niche case the more they made the niche case a common event, not niche. You spotlight the glitch even more.

As for walking onto trapdoor vs being on trapdoor example - seems obvious to me. One he is already there - other he is moving there.

As for moving vs bowing - one set to one way one set to another - I got no rationale for bowing always wins vs moving always wins or one loses vs one wins cuz honestly there are many many imagined examples that can go either way - many other factors at play that the rules dont try to assess.

I mean, what if the mover is halted or slowed? Shouldn't that fit into the level vs mover vs bow isdues?
What if the mover is proficient in athletics vs a bow guy not proficient in bow? Shouldn't the more skilled archer have a better chance at first than novice picking up the bow for first time. (Ever played in systems where "first resolve" was determined by net successes at task? I have. Adds a whole different take an ready that makes fretting over "ready first" quite absurd to some.)

So, fussing over the degrees of absurdity between two different who goes first is like fussing the relative quality of Twinkies vs Hot Pockets.

But, taking that into the realm of general bashing with "How could these scenarios never arise in play testing and if they did, why rule it in such an ambiguous manner?" Is truly absurd.

They did occur in playtesting and they made a decision, design choice, to produce a simple and ready-is-fairly-weak rule that you find unsatisfactory. If I had to guess, at least part of that choice came from them also seeing that more powerful ready led to more cases of problems.

You want mo' ready mo' often? House rule it. Maybe you will find that silver bullet that system after system has failed.
But my guess is it wont be from a ready tweak.

Why?

**The Underlying Issue is not Ready**

The underlying issue is the initiative system.

5e uses an "actor based init" where who is doing a thing determines when it gets done and what us being done has no impact on that in most cases.

That is the underpinning of the action system.

When one frets about how you want to lever faster than bow or bow faster than lever, that is trying to turn it into an "action based init" where **what you are doing** is a lot more important than **who is doing it.**

I refer you to Unisystem variants and more than a few other systems where the resolution is determined by **action type** and "initiative" is more for declaration and decision.

In those systems the default may be that "weapon in hand" beats "move and bow" hands down, no special rule needed.

A facet of those is you tailor resolution order to fit genre... Buffy puts even quick spells last, melee before ranged iirc. Meanwhile Doctor Who resolved talking-before-running-before-sciencing-before-fighting as a matter of course. Meanwhile more scifi action resolves weapon in hand first before draw-n-fire or move-n-fire - as a matter of course.

But, guess what? That's a bit more complex than roll init and resolve in order of actor and let's not fo a lot of parsing of bow faster than dagger or spell stuff. Its was a design choice for the 5e core rules to use the simpler actor-based approach. Same approach that gave a weak-ready.

I dont like hot pockets but like twinkies, yet that doesn't drive me to think hot pockets are absurd or that the makers of hot pockets failed to taste test. Just that they went a different direct than I like. I can buy twinkies or even buy hot pockets and try and fix them up.

 

[5ekyu]

In the first eound of combat winning initiative and using the readied action before someone may act is the same. And it is the same result. You give up an action to act later because you want an actual roleplaying game instead of just standing there whacking on the other one because you think you have to because of the wrong reading of a rule.
Also don't quote me and then adress different people's arguments. Don't attack me for things I never said or even explicitely spoke against because it was a part of the opening post 10 pages ago.
The last discussion was just about the part whenthe readied action happens and RAW it is not after the enemy completed an action in the game sense but after something your character saw or heard happens which might be as little as moving a finger just an inch which is not the same as casting a spell.
Just to repeat myself: I would not make the wizard roll a concentration check because it would encourage readying actions in fights too much. Especially for rogues who give up little to do so.
On the other hand if you somehow like it that high level fighters can trade a lot of attacks for the low chance of actually disrupting the casting of a spell, that would not break the game.

"because you want an actual roleplaying game ,,,"

Ah the our roleplaying is better than your cuz we use different rules argument. Yay! No, wait... yawn. Posturing about who wants role plays vs [insert pejorative de jour] is not convincing of the merit of the rules being discussed.

I am convinced that many games, the vast majority in fact, have ***actual roleplaying*** regardless of their take on niche ready actions choices - but hey, if it's important for you to divide ***actual roleplaying*** from those who use different rules - that says something.

As for quoting you and including elements of the larger discussion in my response, your request is duly noted but wont be granted. The overall context of the discussion matters - discussions do not happen in isolation. My suggestion is if you dont want to have sprll interruptions brought into replies, another thread with different title (this thread is titled with reference to interrupting spell casters after all) might be your best option. It's likely to fail tho. Trying to control what other people say is tough on a discussion forum.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

"because you want an actual roleplaying game ,,,"

Ah the our roleplaying is better than your cuz we use different rules argument. Yay! No, wait... yawn. Posturing about who wants role plays vs [insert pejorative de jour] is not convincing of the merit of the rules being discussed.

I am convinced that many games, the vast majority in fact, have ***actual roleplaying*** regardless of their take on niche ready actions choices - but hey, if it's important for you to divide ***actual roleplaying*** from those who use different rules - that says something.

As for quoting you and including elements of the larger discussion in my response, your request is duly noted but wont be granted. The overall context of the discussion matters - discussions do not happen in isolation. My suggestion is if you dont want to have sprll interruptions brought into replies, another thread with different title (this thread is titled with reference to interrupting spell casters after all) might be your best option. It's likely to fail tho. Trying to control what other people say is tough on a discussion forum.

At least your comments should not deliberately ignore my statements or RAW. As long as you ignore texts you read I assume my game is better than yours. I really can't stand DMs that try to impose a rule on me that actually does not exist (and insisting that it is RAW).

 

[5ekyu]

At least your comments should not deliberately ignore my statements or RAW. As long as you ignore texts you read I assume my game is better than yours. I really can't stand DMs that try to impose a rule on me that actually does not exist (and insisting that it is RAW).

That's the difference between us, I assume GMs and groups who run things different from my tastes are just different people with different preferences - and I dont need to dub one better or worse.

To me it's not about a measuring contest, but about each playing the game they like.

But hey, you do you.