Readied actions as Interrupts instead of Reactions

[Sadrik]

So what would the effects be of changing Readied actions to Immediate Interrupts instead of Immediate Reactions?

Do interrupts triggered by a descriptive trigger differ from those triggered by a hard and fast trigger? Remember that readied actions are triggered by descriptive triggers and not actual "actions" per se. Remember also that readied actions can only occur after initiative is rolled for an encounter.

Examples:
"Freeze we are taking you hostage!"
Trigger: If the goblin takes a hostile action
Power: Magic Missile

Fighter holds the line in a hallway
Trigger: If anything comes adjacent to me I attack it
Power: Reaping Strike

Ranger watches the trenches
Trigger: If that bugger pops up out of cover I shoot him
Power: Twin Strike

How would these differ when using Reactions vs. Interrupts?

 

[keterys]

Couple things you could do as interrupts:

Fighter readies Tide of Iron for when a monster attacks. On hit, the monster is knocked out of melee reach and its attack and action are wasted.

Paladin readies Ardent Strike as a charge for when an unmarked enemy attacks an ally. Monster declares attack, gets hit by the ardent strike then takes divine sanction damage and penalty to hit for the already declared attack when he was unmarked.

Deft Strike to or Nimble Strike attack and move in such a way the enemy's attack is wasted.

Ready adequate moves and attacks against Solos such that they'd always either A) not be able to land a melee attack or B) provoke opportunity attacks for ranged attacks. It requires tactics and teamwork, but you can do horrible things to Solos with readied interrupts.

Etc.

 

[Sadrik]

I see the problem is interrupt movement and its ability to negate attacks and what not.

What if a house rule was adopted to change immediate interrupts was instituted that allowed the movement portion of it to always happen after the other person got a chance to react to the interrupt? So in all of your examples the movement would occur, however, the person whose turn it was would always gets a chance to react with whatever they were trying to do before the interrupter moved away or they got moved away. This may play havoc with some established powers where their intent is to escape an attack by using an interrupt move. Those few powers could be closet cased in.

 

[Alex319]

A major category of issue I can see here is marking abilities becoming a lot more powerful. Since you can preemptively mark someone after they've declared their attack against someone else, you can ensure that they always get the mark penalty.

Example:

2 paladins against one monster. Initiative order is P1, P2, M.

P1 readies action: "Attack and mark M when M attacks P2, or when M takes divine challenge damage from P2."

P2 readies action: "Attack and mark M when M attacks P1 or when M takes divine challenge damage from P1."

If M attacks P1, P2's readied action goes off first, attacking and marking the monster. But M has already declared his attack against P1, so he has to attack him, taking the divine challenge damage and mark penalty, and triggering the readied action attack from P2. Either way the monster has taken two attacks, plus Divine Challenge damage, and both paladins still end up in front of the monster in initiative order.

----

Another thing related to the "auto-negate attacks via interrupt movement" is that there are other ways to auto-negate an attack that don't involve movement. For example you could ready a wall of ice to cast in the path of an enemy spell to block its LOS. I'm not sure it's actually feasible to do this without requiring a lot of special cases. Unless maybe these kind of tactics are what you're looking for?

 

[LostSoul]

I think it would be okay if you coupled it with some DM adjudication.

Some actions would be Reactions and some Interrupts.

As DM, you'd have to make the players aware before they took their action.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Personally I think keterys's examples demonstrates why you shouldn't do it. In other words, I would follow the general rule that ready actions are immediate reactions.

You could allow ready actions as immediate interrupts on a case by case basis, notifying your players of the possibility. 99% of the time immediate reactions works out fine, the last 1% the players can explain why they want the action as an interrupt.

 

[Mesh Hong]

The problem I have with readying an interrupt is that you are acting before the event that you are triggering from which means you have some sort of sixth sense about what is going to happen.

I might be missing something here but arn't all of your examples actually reactions?

Examples:
"Freeze we are taking you hostage!"
Trigger: If the goblin takes a hostile action
Power: Magic Missile

As soon as the goblin makes a hostile action you blast him magic missile, how can you tell he is going to do a hostile action before he does it? This has to be a reaction not an interrupt.

EDIT: actually this is reasonably close to my example where I might allow it

Fighter holds the line in a hallway
Trigger: If anything comes adjacent to me I attack it
Power: Reaping Strike

As written this is clearly a reaction. An interrupt happens before the stated trigger action, in this case before the creature stands adjacent to the fighter, which would probably mean that the fighter couldn't attack it!

Ranger watches the trenches
Trigger: If that bugger pops up out of cover I shoot him
Power: Twin Strike

Again this is a reaction to the target popping into view, it isn't an interrupt.

I think you might be in a situation where you are either over thinking the situation or just not fully realising the difference between interrupts and reactions. (of course I might also be getting the wrong end of the stick and you might have just chosen poor examples ).

The only example I could see where you might want to apply an interrupt instead of a reaction is:

Fighter stands toe to toe with the enemy unsure of his intentions
Trigger: Enemy makes an attack
Power: <Fighter attack power> against enemy

EDIT: this is reasonably close to your first example.

In the above case I can see an advantage to using an interrupt rather than a reaction because you want to get in the first strike. You obviously already have a higher initiative and have foregone your attack so you are not getting that much of an undue advantage from this.

I might allow the above case but impose an attack penalty on the action, maybe -2 to attack.

This is theoretical though as it has never come up in my play experience.