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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6146799" data-attributes="member: 42582">The effect can't be literally instantaneous, can it - I mean, that glowing bead has to cover some distance and is doing so via ordinary motion through space, not via teleportation."Instantaneous" as a spell duration I have always taken to be a technical term that is borrowed from the ordinary English word but is then used to explain the spell's relationship to other mechanical factors (like dispelling, counterspelling, concentration etc). Wall of Stone is also instantaneous, for instance, but I assume that it is open to the player to describe the wall as "growing" out of the stone surfaces with which it must be merged, and therefore as taking some (brief) time to appear.Similarly, I would assume that if a PC cast a range touch freeze liquid spell with an instantaneous duration, the player could narrate that in the classic super-hero movie fashion of the liquid solidifying at the point of physical contact and the ice then spreading out through the liquid to the extent of the spell's AoE.I don't see why not.But this wouldn't work if the readied action must take place entirely prior to the other character commencing his/her action - because at the point before the charge commences, the would-be charger is out of reach of the longspear wielder.So if we can mentally break down the charge into multiple episodes internal to the single game-mechanical action (eg a series of moves that culminate in an attack; the 4e PHB actually has a lengthy discussion of this in its presentation of the rules for readying and immediate reactions), then can't we do the same for the fireball? - though the casting is a single game-mechanical action it has constituent elements, like first conjuring the bead and then discharging it and then the bead travelling to its destination and exploding there.I agree with this, and see it as consistent with what I've written just above. What you are calling the "game grammar", I have called the "single game-mechanical action".And you are correct that the timing issues matter. In Rolemaster (and many other resolution-heavy systems) movement is not automatic, so the player of the dodging character could declare the dodge earlier (when the bead is conjured) for an easier movement check, or later (once the bead is thrown) for a harder movement check. The trade off for taking the easier check would be that the caster gets to choose another target.But in D&D movement is generally automatic, so the player of the dodging PC has no reason not to declare the dodge late rather than early. Is this a feature or a bug? The general view, at least in relation to 3E, seems to be that casters are over- rather than under-powered, so it doesn't seem to me that it will break the game. But that's theorycraft, not experience.But I don't see, on your account, how you think the person who readies actually gets an attack:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The player of a PC declares a readied action - "If NPC charges, I'll stab her with my longspear as she enters my reach"; </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">NPC, who is 30' away from PC, commences to chage; </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">PC's readied action triggers before NPC's action, and fails, because NPC is out of reach of a longspear; </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">NPC then gets to resolve her charge.</li> </ul>The only way that readying against a charge works is if we assume that PC's attack can take place after NPC's action has commenced (ie once NPC has covered 20' of distance) but before NPC's action has been completed (ie before NPC covers the last 5' and stabs PC with her sword).Furthermore, that this is possible seems to be contemplated by the phrase "If the triggered action is part of another character’s activities, you interrupt the other character", which - as I said upthread - is literally incoherent but appears intended to mean "if the triggering action/condition is part of another character's activities, you - the readying character - interrupt that other character". The whole idea of interrupting another character's activities is that you do something after they have commenced but before they complete. In the case of a fireball, this would be doings something after they have conjured the glowing bead, and perhaps after they have hurled it, but before it has got to you.So are all martial standard actions, including charging - within the mechanical framework of the game they occur all at once. But that doesn't mean that a charging character is literally telepoting, taking no time to traverse the distance that s/he charges. Likewise nothing in the fireball spell suggests that it takes literally no time for the glowing bead to be conjured and discharged. The spell description itself refers to the bead 'streaking" from the caster's finger to it's destination - and streaking by definition is an event that occurs over a non-zero course of time.Instantaneous is a technical term - part of the "game grammar" as tomBitonti puts it.</blockquote>

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