Free Action Question

[chriton227]

I've got a L3 Whirling Slayer Barbarian, and I'm trying to figure out how all the potential free actions stack up. Here is what I have:

Rampage: Once per round when I crit, make a Melee Basic Attack as a free action.
Whirling Lunge: Once per encounter when I reduce an enemy to 0hp, as a free action shift 2 and deal 1W off-hand to an enemy I can see.
Rage Drake's Frenzy: while in this rage, once per round when I reduce an enemy to 0hp, make a Melee Basic Attack as a free action.
Whirling Slayer: Once per round when I bloody an enemy, as a free action shift two and gain combat advantage against all enemies adjacent to me at the end of the shift.
Whirling Rend: At-will attack, on a hit does 1W+Str to the primary target and an automatic 1W off-hand to a different enemy adjacent to me.

Here is the situation: I'm in Rage Drake's Frenzy rage and adjacent to two enemies (A and B). I use Whirling Rend on A and land a critical, bloodying A. The secondary target drops B (a minion). Could I then Whirling Slayer shift around A (gaining combat advantage vs. A), make the Rampage Melee Basic Attack, make the Rage Drake's Frenzy Melee Basic attack, then Whirling Lunge shift 2 squares to be adjacent to enemy C and do the 1W off-hand automatic damage to it? Or do some of the free actions kind of get in each other's way preventing me from using some of them because I've done something else since the event that triggered the free action?

And barely related questions: Would hitting and killing a minion trigger Whirling Slayer, or does the target actually have to be bloodied but not dead for it to trigger? On a Whirling Rend crit, does the automatic 1W off-hand damage to another target also maximize, and does it also get magic weapon bonus crit dice and/or high crit weapon dice?

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well, minions do not ever get bloodied, as far as I can tell. Though technically at -1,000,000,000 or so is below the bloodied value, so ....... techically you did bloody htem, and give them the death condition atthe same time.

However, I would say you never bloody minions.

As for the RAW answer to your question, you would probably get all of hte free actions in the order you wish, though a DM might rightly say you only get one of them.

 

[Joshua Randall]

"When you bloody an enemy" is not the same as "when you reduce an enemy to 0 hp" -- and 0/dying/dead is not the same as bloodied, so minions cannot ever be bloodied. (I'm pretty sure there's an update or FAQ or something in PH2/PH3 about the difference between 0/dying/dead and bloodied, but I can't find it right now.)

As for your specific question,

I'm in Rage Drake's Frenzy rage and adjacent to two enemies (A and B). I use Whirling Rend on A and land a critical, bloodying A. The secondary target drops B (a minion).

OK so far.

Could I then Whirling Slayer shift around A (gaining combat advantage vs. A)

Yes.

make the Rampage Melee Basic Attack

No. My interpretation of Rampage is that you have to take the MBA right after the crit, not after you do some other stuff.

make the Rage Drake's Frenzy Melee Basic attack

No. Same reason as above.

then Whirling Lunge shift 2 squares to be adjacent to enemy C and do the 1W off-hand automatic damage to it?

No. You would've had to choose this instead of the shift from Whirling Slayer, at the time you dropped the minion.

I think you could do the following:

Use Whirling Rend against A. Attack die comes up natural 20, which is a crit. Arguably this triggers Rampage's MBA right then, before you resolve the "deal damage" part of the Whirling Rend. So you make the MBA, choosing enemy A (because you know B is going to die anyway).

Resolve the MBA -- and let's hope it doesn't crit or bloody enemy A! -- and then go back and resolve the damage from Whirling Rend. This does two things, essentially simultaneously: bloodies A (per your example) and kills B.

As the DM I would let you choose which order you want to resolve things thereafter.

If you choose B first, then you can use either Whirling Lunge or the free action MBA from Rage Drake's Frenzy.

If you choose A first, then you can use Whirling Slayer.

I don't see any way you can use all of them because I don't think you can save up the free actions.

Even allowing the free action MBA off Rampage (before resolving the damage from Whirling Rend) is kind of cheesy, but you can at least make a case for it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Actually a dying or dead creature IS technically bloodied. Its a bit ambiguous as to what a dead creature actually IS and if it can have states, but at least for the purpose of something becoming bloodied killing a minion would count (as would killing a non-minion assuming you could do enough damage in one shot to both bloody and kill it). Its possible some clarification has been made somewhere that changes this, but barring that RAW suggests that even minions become bloodied when they take (any) damage.

As for the other stuff. The rules are a bit vague, but my interpretation is that the resolution of each granted action which is an effect of another action takes place DURING step 5 of the action which caused it to happen (the 'resolve effects' step). This would happen in a 'nested' fashion. So the immediate results of the first action would cause another action, which resolves WITHIN the context of the first. If multiple effects are triggered then the player gets to decide what order to handle them in. Actions triggered during the resolution of a an action which is itself an effect of another action then happen within the context of that sub-action. Nothing in the rules suggests that you lose an effect simply because other effects were resolved first.

The end result of this is that you may have to take the actions in a specific order, possibly with some choices along the way, but any permutation of actions and triggered effect actions is legal within that limitation. It is also worth noting that there may be cases where the resolution of an effect could make a later one invalid (such as moving out of range of a target or killing that target before another action comes up) since the context of each one will be whatever the situation is at the moment it gets resolved.

Hope that's not too confusing.

 

[Aulirophile]

...Bloodied is "1/2 hp rounded down" Minions have 1 HP. Minions cannot be bloodied, except for the bizarre occasion where a player does non-lethal damage to a minion and lets it lie there dying. Then, sure, technically bloodied since their bloodied value is 0.

That has never actually happened that I have seen, of course, heh.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

...Bloodied is "1/2 hp rounded down" Minions have 1 HP. Minions cannot be bloodied, except for the bizarre occasion where a player does non-lethal damage to a minion and lets it lie there dying. Then, sure, technically bloodied since their bloodied value is 0.

That has never actually happened that I have seen, of course, heh.

There are 2 questions on this point. First is can a creature be bloodied and dead? Maybe not and that's perfectly reasonable but it isn't spelled out in the rules.

Secondly, even if a creature dies during the same attack which bloodies it does the creature not BECOME bloodied (and then dead) due to that attack? In other words you can't go from unbloodied to dead and not go through the bloodied state (at least by any sort of normal means that are covered in the rules).

Like I say, maybe there is a special rule stating that minions are NEVER bloodied, but both of those questions are germane that not being the case.