Resolving immediate defense actions in a PbP

[reveal]

So I’m in a quandary here. A player in my 3.5 Eberron PbP wants to know about a ring in the Magic Item Compendium that allows a person to, as an immediate action, declare they want to use the ring to gain a +2 deflection bonus to AC against a single attack. The ring can do this four times a day. At the table, I would simply tell the player, “X attacks you” and the player would let me know before the attack was resolved whether or not they wanted to use the ring. In a PbP, however, it’s not that simple.

I don’t like the idea of telling the player “X hits you for Y damage” only to allow the player to say “I would have used the ring!” and have to retcon everything. I think that puts too much power in the hands of the player. Also, I don’t want to slow things down just to ask the player “do you use the ring?” before every single attack against them in combat. OTOH, I don’t want to tell the player “no you can’t have it” because it’s a pretty cool “not in the face!” item.

So what ways could I do this to not slow things down and not put too much power in the players hands but still keep things fun and fair?

 

[irdeggman]

Well if it is an Eberon game then you must already have a system to handle spending Action Points to add to die rolls too right?

For things like this I believe having conditional actions specified like if "I roll a 5 on my attack roll then spend an AP to increase it" or something like that works best.

Now my interpretation of immediate actions is that unless the item itself specifies otherwise then the damage roll is part of the attack and not something subsequent that can have an immedate action used between the attack and damage rolls.

As far as Eberon goes since it uses AP the rules specify not to use the option of rolling damage and attack rolls at the same time, but that does not mean they are subsequent actions only that knowing the potential damage being dealt could affect the decision to use an AP to modify the attack roll.

 

[Thanee]

Either allow for retcon (but only in easy circumstances, where the change does not make the rest of the combat round inconsistent and provoke further changes; simple stuff like, ok, the attack did not hit you after all, you take 10 less damage, does work well enough) or only via previously determined triggers (like a Ready Action).

You really don't know how complex this can get until someone has learned the Celerity spell.

Bye
Thanee