Question about a specific use of Readied Action

[gruthunder]

One of my players wants to use a readied attack power to attack a monster using the trigger "the monster targets me with an attack" to essentially interrupt the attack so that he can hit it before it uses its attack despite readied actions being reactions. Is this possible? I can't find anything limiting triggers in the rules.

 

[pemerton]

One of my players wants to use a readied attack power to attack a monster using the trigger "the monster targets me with an attack" to essentially interrupt the attack so that he can hit it before it uses its attack despite readied actions being reactions. Is this possible? I can't find anything limiting triggers in the rules.

I am not an expert on Readied actions in 4e - they come up in my game only occasionally.

That said, the single most important thing about a Readied action is that it is a reaction - so it takes effect after whatever action triggered it.

That raises the question of "what is a triggering action"? The example in the 4e PHB makes it clear that any part of movement itself counts as an action for Readying purposes; so "actions" for readying purposes aren't coextensive with "actions" for action economy purposes.

That said, it seems to me both as a matter of ingame logic and keeping things under control balance-wise that a trigger should be something that the PC can plausibly respond to. This might vary with class, skills, tier of play etc (eg a 1st level fighter can't probably ready a bow shot at anyone trying to read his/her mind; a 21st level psion, though, probably can). But I don't think it includes "targetting with an attack" as anything distinct from the attack being declared, targets assigned, and attack and damage rolled.

To give an example of what I think would be permissible (and extrapolates the logic of the PHB example): if your player declares as a Readied action "I attack anyone who targets me with an attack" then if an enemy used Twin Strike, and the first attack was made against your player's PC, then your player could respond with his/her Readied attack before the attacking enemy got to make the second attack of its Twin Strike. That's a type of interruption, but it's not literally an Immediate Interrupt, and is probably not quite the power up your player is hoping for. (Which, to reiterate, I think is not allowed by the rules of the game.)

 

[MoutonRustique]

I'm pretty sure this is one of those cases where either side can be "right". There are many different triggers used for both interrupts and reactions - all of which (as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said) "dissect" what we would usually call an "action" into a whole bunch of different "concepts" (I'm running out of words to use here...)

Personally, I view rules in this lens: if monsters and players have access to this new strategy, is it good enough that it merits being used on a regular basis?

If it is - then I reject the rule : it would change to many things, be a hassle and an all around PITA.

The one your player is proposing falls straight into that concept - having the option to "preemptively counter-attack" open to anyone (no need for a power), will offer massive headaches. And not just to you - think of all the skirmisher-type foes that get to move on a hit. Those become auto-negate-melee-attack powers. And the strategy is such a good one, only an idiot would not use it.

Also you could very easily get in the situation where two foes with access to those kinds of powers adopt the same strategy : they both ready and stare each other down. Which can be cool in some situations - but usually, it's just stupid.

On the other hand, it can dramatically alter the strategies based upon the type of opponent (based upon their having hit-and-move powers or not) which can open up a whole new paradigm of play. Which can be awesome or, you know, suck egg. Which it is depends upon the playstyle you and your table are looking for.

IMO - of course.

tl;dr : don't do it bro.

 

[RedSiegfried]

gruthunder, your player is in the right. He can certainly set the trigger to be "an enemy targets me." IIRC there are all sorts of powers that have "when X targets Y" as a trigger for an immediate action and there's nothing in the rules for Ready An Action that says you can't do that.

And yes, the readied action always happens as an Immediate Reaction, so if you want to "interrupt" something, the key is to set the trigger to be something that will happen just before the thing you want to "interrupt." And of course readying an action always has a downside ... if your trigger never occurs, you've just wasted your Standard Action for that round.

Many shenanigans can be pulled with readied actions, but I've never seen a player actually do any of them in real play. Mainly because they know what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Not to argue with any of the above advice, all of which is good.

But I have to share some observations or insights or dumb ideas (take your pick) about 4e rules interpretations....

There are a lot of items and powers that are in essence 'exceptions' (per 'exception based design') not so much in that they clearly spell out an exception, but in that the way they're written, they don't work unless you cut them a little slack when it comes to when an immediate action, especially a reaction, can be triggered and by what. That's one of the trade-offs of the 4e design philosophy vs the hard-line RAW of 3.x or the rulings-not-rules of 5e. How an individual instance of a rule works can contain an exception, so it can be clear how that instance works, but when a general rule is tricky to interpret, you can't look at clearer/more-specific instances for guidance, because they're /exceptions/.

Ready is a more general rule, so it doesn't get cut any of that slack. You need to ready in response to something. Readying an attack when an enemy moves within reach, for instance - you can generally see him move, no problem, he gets close enough, you hit him. Even fairly simple ready tricks like that can mess with some things, though. For instance, if a monster has a very powerful immediate action power, readying to attack it on it's own turn in whatever way seems expedient can prevent that power from being used. Overruling how ready works in such cases is one way to go, changing the power to a 1/round free action or non-action though can head it off in the first place. The former would be the '5e way' - just rule however works at the moment, RAW/RaI/prior-rulings notwithstanding. The latter is the 4e way - fix the rule up front, and fix the 'right' rule, the specific one, with an exception to the normal rule, don't change general rules to make specific cases work better.

Based on that, Readying for 'targeting' is something I'd hesitate to allow. It's little more than intent, I'd expect readying vs an attack, and it'd be a reaction to the attack, not a hair-splitting exception that 'reacts' to the attack roll or the hit or miss before the damage roll. Those are necessary for a lot of weird little powers, leader abilities, magic items, and the like, but they're not precedents for 'Ready.' There are no precedents in exception-based design. By the same token, if the only concern is that this ready-to-attack-before-an-attack trick is going to break a specific power or two, you could also just address the potentially broken power...

 

[masteraleph]

One of my players wants to use a readied attack power to attack a monster using the trigger "the monster targets me with an attack" to essentially interrupt the attack so that he can hit it before it uses its attack despite readied actions being reactions. Is this possible? I can't find anything limiting triggers in the rules.

As you've noted, it basically functions as an Immediate Reaction. The rules are slightly ambiguous as far as "targeted" goes, but in general, I'd say that the attack has to be finished, presuming that target/attack roll/damage are all part of the same thing (note that the RC is explicit in saying that hit and damage can't be split by a reaction).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is perfectly valid by RAW and there's no clear cut reason to disallow it. Lets analyze it from an action economy standpoint:

The PC sacs his standard action to ready an action to attack in reaction to an incoming attack. He could have JUST ATTACKED, so in the general case he's actually WORSE off doing this readying. He may avoid some sort of immediate action, or possible gain some other advantage using this tactic, but its just a tactic like any other. It isn't 'broken', any more than concentrating your fire on one enemy is 'broken'.

Now, there's a question here: What EXACTLY is the trigger? The rules are a bit unclear on just how precise a trigger must be. Can you say "when one of those monsters over there targets me with an attack"? Maybe, maybe not. You can CERTAINLY say "when Orc #3 targets me with an attack", but the other way might conceivably produce some other advantage. Even then though I don't really see it as being a serious issue. Maybe in theory there's some way to abuse this, the rules are complex and there are a lot of weird corner-cases, but I seriously doubt its going to be a some big huge cheese. If it is then you drag the player off in a corner and talk it out.