Can free actions be used as interrupts?

[Marius Delphus]

I'm not sure specifically what the "warden thing" is, but if it involves using the free action mark during another creature's action, then it seems to me as though it comes down to whether you want to allow "interjection" as I've defined it above. So yeah, possibly house rule territory.

It's like in older editions of Magic: The Gathering (and I'm reaching back to pretty vague memories here, so forgive me if I'm in error), there was a difference between Instant and Interrupt speed, but now everything (except combat damage, as of the most current rules, IIUC) is on the "LIFO stack." I think D&D deserves to have more complex timing than Magic, but I'm not sure how that plays out from a rules or player enjoyment perspective.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You know, that whole conversation on the podcast.. I don't know what to think about it. They brought up how they said it was good for wardens, but dropped the bombshell that the warden thing was always agaisnt the rules but everyone lets them do it anyway as a house rule.

Up until this point it's been assumed the warden example was the rules as intended, but apparently it's the house rule as intended!

The whole thing just gets more amusing all the time. Since podcasts are not at all anything official I think the safest course of action is to utterly ignore whatever was said in that podcast. That doesn't resolve anything, but at least we have a somewhat consistent story that way. Perhaps this whole thing will motivate them to provide at least a definitive FAQ entry.

 

[webrunner]

I'm not sure specifically what the "warden thing" is, but if it involves using the free action mark during another creature's action, then it seems to me as though it comes down to whether you want to allow "interjection" as I've defined it above. So yeah, possibly house rule territory.

Up until the podcast it was taken for granted that the rules allowed a warden to use his mark while moving. The original source of this was a Dragon article which had a bunch of tips (i think it was a defender article? Not sure)

The whole thing just gets more amusing all the time. Since podcasts are not at all anything official I think the safest course of action is to utterly ignore whatever was said in that podcast. That doesn't resolve anything, but at least we have a somewhat consistent story that way. Perhaps this whole thing will motivate them to provide at least a definitive FAQ entry.

Kinda makes the whole Q&A section on the podcast oddly meaningless doesn't it?

 

[Marius Delphus]

My instinct tells me you shouldn't be able to interject a free action into your own action, but I'm not 100% sold, given that you can interject at all.

 

[Ghost0]

This may be only tangential, and possibly in a better thread, but I constantly struggle with the Free Action of variable resistance that many demons have. It is unclear because the trigger is that they "take" damage of a certain type, but the effect is that they "gain resist xx to the triggering damage type."

Does anyone have insight as to whether the demon resists the triggered damage they took, or only the type of damage of the damage they took after that?

 

[Marius Delphus]

If you treat it like feather fall (a pseudo-interrupt, or as I'm calling it, an "interjection"), it can protect the demon against the damage he's about to take as well as the same type of damage later on. If you treat it instead like a reaction, then it only protects the demon against the same type of damage later on.

How do you picture the demon in combat? Does he grunt as he takes the first hit, then grow a thicker skin or something? Or does he look at the PC that's about to hit him with typed damage, grit his teeth, and do the same thing before the attack hits?

[EDIT: Sadly, it's looking more and more like we might actually need some rules to distinguish between free actions that can be used as if they were reactions and free actions that can be used more like interrupts... unless they can only be reactions, which is one possible way to play it. But some official clarity on the matter would be nice.]

 

[Herschel]

I was thinking some more about this and I'm thinking "no". Here's why:

Simply stated, it's an action that does not specifically state it can interrupt another action. Unless specifically worded, one action completes before another begins (kind of like an immediate reaction to being attacked, the attack still completes with damage and status effects applied before the reaction actually "goes off").

As a free action, it can happen at any time (unless specifically worded otherwise) BETWEEN other actions (so between a creature's move and attack, for example) and unlike interrupts, it can happen during your own turn.

For example: if you have a free action that lets you move if a target moves adjacent to you, you could use it after his move action, but not if the target has charged because it's still part of an ongoing action.

 

[eamon]

Feather Fall has a trigger though; a creature in range falls.

Hmm, quite right! ...and looking through powers, it looks like most free actions where this would be at all relevant actually have triggers - dwarven armor is one of few exceptions. Or the interjection wouldn't be more effective than a reaction (and it seems free actions don't have interrupt status unless required).

But there are others; such as Pray for More: It has no trigger, and let's you reroll a damage roll.

All in all though, it looks like this reinterpretation has far fewer consequences than I first thought; the warden gets a little screwed, and probably a few items, but it's mostly irrelevant.