Gaping "Ready Action" hole
- Thread starter Eric Finley
- Start date
How could it not? Readied actions change your initiative permanently -- would you have one point at which you make saves and take ongoing damage, and another one in which you take your turn (in which case, you can delay to get the "save at beginning of turn" to shake off status effects before they limit your actions...of course, to a degree you can do that now. "when my turn ends, charge the minotaur. Ok, I attempt to save against the slow/immobilize effect, and then charge!"
Mind, one (not at all inconsistent) interpretation of: "the end of your turn always takes place" is that whenever a full round goes by when you didn't get a turn (because you took a readied action that moved you earlier in the initative), then your minimal turn takes place at the end of that turn (eg, start turn, end turn). This does mean you'd get a free save (and damaging effects would get a free wack at you) when you did a "ready to go earlier", but it would avoid effects being extended by as much as a full turn via readied actions (not to mention players losing a chance to save because they chose to ready actions).
No, it MAY change your initiative, the trigger may never happen. At end of turn effects go off when you've declared your ready action, not when you've taken it.
Good try. Considering Baker's track record of infinite turns and giving powers better than Time Stop to 5th level characters in 3.5E I wouldn't be surprised if there are huge gaping holes as bad as infinite turns in 4E. There has already been an infinite damage hole.
The Ready Action rules do need to be tweaked a bit, they aren't clear and I think they do let you ready an action with a readied action which is ridiculously abuseable.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Powers which grant an ally a bonus of any sort with a duration other than immediate come into effect at the end of any
immediate actions triggered by the use of the power.
That is the first and simplest order of business right there. Close off the hole where another character can double dip on your status effects. It is a bit harder to rule out effects caused by a condition put on the target, but it does help.
Obviously a ready cannot EVER trigger another ready, that is just common sense.
I think the final issue you just say that if someone has NO regular turn coming, you do the start/end stuff when their action would trigger. It is the most reasonable thing.
There are still advantages you can get from readying, but they are less and mostly require an AP.
Eh, it is just an algorithm. Diagram it out, you'll see the obvious point to kill the whole thing.
immediate actions triggered by the use of the power.
That is the first and simplest order of business right there. Close off the hole where another character can double dip on your status effects. It is a bit harder to rule out effects caused by a condition put on the target, but it does help.
Obviously a ready cannot EVER trigger another ready, that is just common sense.
I think the final issue you just say that if someone has NO regular turn coming, you do the start/end stuff when their action would trigger. It is the most reasonable thing.
There are still advantages you can get from readying, but they are less and mostly require an AP.
Eh, it is just an algorithm. Diagram it out, you'll see the obvious point to kill the whole thing.
Iron Sky
Procedurally Generated
There's actually another Ready Action issue that we've had problems with. It mostly has to do with the Ready Action being an Immediate Reaction. Scenario:
The player readies and action to attack with his longsword as soon as an enemy moves adjacent. His turn ends.
An enemy 2 squares away with a power that lets it shift 6 moves past the player and ends 3 squares away. At this point, the triggering action completes(the monster's move action) and the player can take his readied action. Except, now the monster is 3 squares away!
The the exact same situation triggers if you ready a ranged attack to shoot an enemy as soon as they move out from behind a wall.
The enemy is behind a wall, so out of line of sight and effect. They run out into the open as a move action and end their turn behind another closer wall, again out of line of sight and effect. At this point the player's action triggers, so they can make the ranged attack, except now the enemy is again untargetable!
This may be beating a dead dog, but say there is an enemy 2 squares away and a player readies an action to blast the enemy with a range 5 power as soon as the enemy moves. The enemy walks 4 squares away as a move action and ends 6 squares away from the player, at which point the player's reaction triggers and the enemy is out of range of the power.
When it came up, we just hand-waved it and let the relevant attack happen while the enemy was actually targetable (breaking RAW) just because the situation was so ridiculous from an in-character perspective.
Are we misreading/misinterpreting something, or is this actually RAW?
The player readies and action to attack with his longsword as soon as an enemy moves adjacent. His turn ends.
An enemy 2 squares away with a power that lets it shift 6 moves past the player and ends 3 squares away. At this point, the triggering action completes(the monster's move action) and the player can take his readied action. Except, now the monster is 3 squares away!
The the exact same situation triggers if you ready a ranged attack to shoot an enemy as soon as they move out from behind a wall.
The enemy is behind a wall, so out of line of sight and effect. They run out into the open as a move action and end their turn behind another closer wall, again out of line of sight and effect. At this point the player's action triggers, so they can make the ranged attack, except now the enemy is again untargetable!
This may be beating a dead dog, but say there is an enemy 2 squares away and a player readies an action to blast the enemy with a range 5 power as soon as the enemy moves. The enemy walks 4 squares away as a move action and ends 6 squares away from the player, at which point the player's reaction triggers and the enemy is out of range of the power.
When it came up, we just hand-waved it and let the relevant attack happen while the enemy was actually targetable (breaking RAW) just because the situation was so ridiculous from an in-character perspective.
Are we misreading/misinterpreting something, or is this actually RAW?
Based on an old WotC post on these forums about a year ago, I intepret a move action as not just being 1 single action of going from point A to point B, but rather an Action that is made up of the movements through each individual square.
It is my understanding (based on their ruling answer) that a reaction (or interupt) can occur at any point along the movement path, not just the beginning and end squares.
Eric Finley
First Post
NOMan is correct.
And chaotix42's suggestion is essentially a less formal version of what I suggested, and what I'll rule in my games. (And, given that I'm currently a player with a newish GM, what I'll suggest he rule should it come up.) When you ready an action, if the trigger occurs then as an immediate reaction you actually do two things:
- Take the action you readied
- Commit to delaying your next turn until just before whoever's turn it is at the moment. You do this using the normal delay-turn mechanic, and you get to do it even if you may have been stunned/dazed in the meantime (and thus couldn't ordinarily delay your turn).
Most of the time, this will work exactly like players expect the normal readying rules to work. But it'll close all the loopholes I can see, using the same careful definition of a delayed turn and how it gets split up.
I'm happy with that.
As for readying an action for the end of your own turn, that's explicitly disallowed by two things: one, the end of your turn is not "during someone else's turn" and thus you cannot take any immediate actions there; and, two, PHB p.268 & 269, "No Action" - you can't take an action of any kind (free, immediate, or otherwise) during the start of your turn or the end of your turn.
It's more obscure with regards to other peoples' turns, since neither restriction applies there... but as a DM, my own call would be that while the ambiguity of the words "triggering action" is elsewhere a problem, now that we've established that they mean the ordinary English sense of the word "action", we can use that... and thus the only permissible trigger events are actual in-game actions, not events from the sequence of play. This is supported by p.268, where it talks about how if you ready something with respect to an opponent's movement, they have to move at least 1 square first. Their turn is broken down into substeps, yes... but not an infinitely divisible continuum of substeps, merely a discrete list of small but not infinitesimal substeps, such as one square's movement.
Oh, and I also realized that "readying a Ready Action" doesn't actually need to be disallowed - the rules already make it useless to do so. I ready an action; my turn ends (and my one-immediate-action-per-round counter resets). I take my readied action (this is an immediate reaction and uses up my one immediate per round), stating that I want to ready another action. When the second trigger comes up, I still haven't seen my turn, so my allowed quota of immediate actions hasn't reset... so I have to miss that trigger, not take the triggered action, and not reset my initiative for a second time. No problem.
And, yes, something to keep in mind if players start to get tricky with Ready Action in your games... it does burn your immediate action. Use with caution if there are any other immediate actions you'd like to be able to take...
Even more explicitly:PHB p.291 said:
PHB p.268 said:
And chaotix42's suggestion is essentially a less formal version of what I suggested, and what I'll rule in my games. (And, given that I'm currently a player with a newish GM, what I'll suggest he rule should it come up.) When you ready an action, if the trigger occurs then as an immediate reaction you actually do two things:
- Take the action you readied
- Commit to delaying your next turn until just before whoever's turn it is at the moment. You do this using the normal delay-turn mechanic, and you get to do it even if you may have been stunned/dazed in the meantime (and thus couldn't ordinarily delay your turn).
Most of the time, this will work exactly like players expect the normal readying rules to work. But it'll close all the loopholes I can see, using the same careful definition of a delayed turn and how it gets split up.
I'm happy with that.
As for readying an action for the end of your own turn, that's explicitly disallowed by two things: one, the end of your turn is not "during someone else's turn" and thus you cannot take any immediate actions there; and, two, PHB p.268 & 269, "No Action" - you can't take an action of any kind (free, immediate, or otherwise) during the start of your turn or the end of your turn.
It's more obscure with regards to other peoples' turns, since neither restriction applies there... but as a DM, my own call would be that while the ambiguity of the words "triggering action" is elsewhere a problem, now that we've established that they mean the ordinary English sense of the word "action", we can use that... and thus the only permissible trigger events are actual in-game actions, not events from the sequence of play. This is supported by p.268, where it talks about how if you ready something with respect to an opponent's movement, they have to move at least 1 square first. Their turn is broken down into substeps, yes... but not an infinitely divisible continuum of substeps, merely a discrete list of small but not infinitesimal substeps, such as one square's movement.
Oh, and I also realized that "readying a Ready Action" doesn't actually need to be disallowed - the rules already make it useless to do so. I ready an action; my turn ends (and my one-immediate-action-per-round counter resets). I take my readied action (this is an immediate reaction and uses up my one immediate per round), stating that I want to ready another action. When the second trigger comes up, I still haven't seen my turn, so my allowed quota of immediate actions hasn't reset... so I have to miss that trigger, not take the triggered action, and not reset my initiative for a second time. No problem.
And, yes, something to keep in mind if players start to get tricky with Ready Action in your games... it does burn your immediate action. Use with caution if there are any other immediate actions you'd like to be able to take...
Artoomis
First Post
You cannot do an "infinite stun" because you can't use a non-event as a readied Action trigger.
Missing an action due to being stunned cannot be a trigger. You simply cannot use a trigger based upon something not happening.
You could, of course, use a trigger of when "the monster next acts," which will let you re-stun the monster after his next action (perhaps it's a move before an attack, so that the attack is avoided).
OF course, it's possible the monster won't act, so you miss your action as the trigger never occurs.
Thus, no problem (potential abuse) with Ready an Action actually exists.
Rules Analysis:
Missing an action due to being stunned is not an action (by any definition) and thus an illegal trigger.
Missing an action due to being stunned cannot be a trigger. You simply cannot use a trigger based upon something not happening.
You could, of course, use a trigger of when "the monster next acts," which will let you re-stun the monster after his next action (perhaps it's a move before an attack, so that the attack is avoided).
OF course, it's possible the monster won't act, so you miss your action as the trigger never occurs.
Thus, no problem (potential abuse) with Ready an Action actually exists.
Rules Analysis:
PHB page 291 said:
Missing an action due to being stunned is not an action (by any definition) and thus an illegal trigger.
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