Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="epithet" data-source="post: 6682257" data-attributes="member: 6796566">But in your example, Robin has an arrow drawn and ready to fire before you determine surprise, roll initiative, etc. In that circumstance, Robin should begin the first round of combat with an attack readied.Every 6 seconds is a round, whether it is "combat" or not. If there is no initiative rolled, the assumption is that everyone's actions in that 6 second window occur simultaneously - if you need to know who's action happened first within that 6 second window, that's when you roll for initiative. You absolutely can "use an action" outside of combat. Every spell, for example, is either an action, a reaction, or a bonus action (or a 10 minute ritual, but those are different.) If you cast a normal spell, you have used an action of some sort, whether or not you're in combat or on the initiative tracker.Look, I don't know where this attitude of "the almighty rules only mention a thing in one context, it cannot exist outside of that context" attitude comes from, but I wish it would go back there. I never saw any such thing from Basic through the 3rd edition, but I think with 3.5 and Pathfinder came a level of granularity and specificity that spawned this abomination of "if it isn't expressly written in the rules, it doesn't exist! All hail the Rules as Written!"No one should have to spell out the ability to ready an attack before the encounter starts and initiative is rolled. The DM should be able to react and accommodate the player's actions without every little detail being specified in a hardcover. If a player holds an arrow drawn, pointed at a door, then when something comes through that door and you roll initiative, that player should start the combat with an action readied to shoot the  thing that comes through the door. If he's been holding that shot for long enough, start calling for strength checks to see if he gets disadvantage on the shot. If he's got a crossbow propped on a rest, call for a wisdom check after a couple minutes to maintain the held action. The right answer is never to say "you can't have a shot ready, we haven't rolled initiative yet," because that's penalizing role-play and forcing your players to meta-game the combat to a greater degree, both of which are Very Bad Things.</blockquote>

Verification