Should you be able to dodge a fireball by readying an action?

[Thurbane]

Ah, so this is the same as the silly sitation with RAW as where a slowed character or zombie can do a 1x charge, but a normal character cannot ready a charge. That always bugged the heck out of me, seems completely counterintuitive.

...I don't suppose the Rules Compendium has addressed this?

 

[Mistwell]

Rules Compendium answers some of these questions.

You can ready a standard action, a move action, a swift action, or a free action. To do so, you must specify what you want to do and the conditions under which you will do so. Then, any time before your next turn, you can take the readied action in response to those conditions. The action occurs just before whatever triggered it. If the triggering condition is part of another creature's activities, you interrupt that creature's turn. Assuming the interrupted creature is still capable of doing so, it continues its turn once you complete your readied action...you act immediately before any creature whose activities triggered your readied action...

 

[RangerWickett]

How about this? Is it possible to ready an action to shoot an arrow at an incoming fireball, to cause it to detonate prematurely?

When can an immediate action go off? If I can cast celerity, and someone shoots a fireball at me, when can I use the spell? Is there any way I can use celerity to move out of the area of a fireball without getting hurt? It's apparently possible to use immediate actions to gain energy resistance right as a spell hits you, or to teleport away from an attack (abrupt jaunt, from PHB2), so could you use celerity to give you a chance to dodge a fireball?

 

[Hypersmurf]

Rules Compendium answers some of these questions.

Interesting. So under the new wording, is there anything preventing a triggering condition of "If the ogre successfully hits me", so that misses won't trigger it, but a hit will trigger an action that takes place just before 'whatever' - the successful hit - does the triggering?

How about "The ogre hits me for at least ten points of damage"?

-Hyp.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

To the OP:
Didn't read through the whole thread, so it may have already been mentioned, but the rules DO agree with you. Crack open Complete Warrior sometime. Specifically, the chapter on Fantasy Warfare, page 124, under "Disperse" (It's one of the listed Historical warfare tactics).

Well, it's designed for a large formation and thus the wording still leaves some questions, but I think the intent to be able to ready an action to run out of a fireball's blast range is quite clear.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Well, it's designed for a large formation and thus the wording still leaves some questions, but I think the intent to be able to ready an action to run out of a fireball's blast range is quite clear.

Right, but it doesn't help any specific individual avoid the fireball; it reduces the number who can possibly be caught in the radius.

The officer sees someone casting fireball; he gives a command; the ready actions trigger and the soldiers move outwards; then the caster completes his spell, the fireball comes into effect, and the caster makes all pertinent decisions. He now chooses where to place that fireball; he just can't catch as many in the blast as he thought.

-Hyp.

 

[Zaruthustran]

How about this? Is it possible to ready an action to shoot an arrow at an incoming fireball, to cause it to detonate prematurely?

No, because there's no "tick" of gametime between the beginning and end of the Fireball spell. Once the [cast fireball] action is initiated, it can't be stopped or interrupted by the Ready action.

Think of each action as a line of code in BASIC (or some other programming language). Each action is "executed" by the game in order, one at a time. Once the action is begun, it runs all the way through to the end.

then why would it not be possible to ready to move away from ground zero of a fireball?

See above. From the D&D game engine's point of view, casting and detonation are one and the same. It takes no time for the bead to streak to the target. That is, according to the rules. This is the rules forum, after all. Personally, I think an occasional houserule allowing someone to dodge a fireball for cinematic effect would be fun. But there's a separate forum for that discussion.

So, you can ready an action to pre-empt the casting. But once the casting has actually begun, the D&D game does not allow the Ready action to interrupt it. You can't "ready to move once the bead starts to move from the wizard's hand" because that specific instant of time does not exist in D&D. You can only ready to preempt the entire action, not just a particular part of an action. *

When can an immediate action go off? If I can cast celerity, and someone shoots a fireball at me, when can I use the spell? Is there any way I can use celerity to move out of the area of a fireball without getting hurt? It's apparently possible to use immediate actions to gain energy resistance right as a spell hits you, or to teleport away from an attack (abrupt jaunt, from PHB2), so could you use celerity to give you a chance to dodge a fireball?

I'm not an expert on the immediate action. The wording is that an immediate action can be performed "at any time -- even if it's not your turn." So by my reading, you could take an immediate while some other creature's action is executing. You could take that action in the non-time between the fireball bead emerging from the wizard's hand and it detonating on target.

-z

* Interestingly, it seems that you can ready to pre-empt part of a move action. You could ready an action to attack if a creature enters a room, for example. I think the D&D game engine interprets a single 30' move action as a series of six consecutive 5' square moves. So if someone with a 30' move entered a room that's 10' away, you would attack after the creature moved 10', and then he'd get to complete the other 20' of movement--an example of using Ready to interrupt, as opposed to preempt, an action. But I think movement is definitely an exception to the rule.

 

[Diirk]

* Interestingly, it seems that you can ready to pre-empt part of a move action. You could ready an action to attack if a creature enters a room, for example. I think the D&D game engine interprets a single 30' move action as a series of six consecutive 5' square moves. So if someone with a 30' move entered a room that's 10' away, you would attack after the creature moved 10', and then he'd get to complete the other 20' of movement--an example of using Ready to interrupt, as opposed to preempt, an action. But I think movement is definitely an exception to the rule.

How about "I ready an action to tumble away when that ogre swings at me with his longsword the second time" ? The Ogre full attacks, the first attack hits, the second attack gets preempted by the readied action and the character tumbles away. The ogre's full attack was interrupted. However he may continue it if there are other character's within reach.

Heck, even "I ready an action to tumble away when the ogre swings at me with his longsword" would work... that Rules Compendium text states "Then, any time before your next turn, you can take the readied action in response to those conditions." which suggests you can elect to ignore a triggering condition... in which case you haven't used the readied action and you should be able to use it if the triggering condition occurs again.

 

[RangerWickett]

Okay, see, this is why I didn't post this thread in Rules in the first place. I was less concerned with whether the rules (all praise be to the almighty RAW) allow me to do this cool thing than I was if you think that from a narrative or realism perspective it should be possible.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

(Jumping to the end...)

Rulewise, the Fireball is a physical bead that could fail to reach the intended location for a number of possible reasons.

Would you allows someone to Ready an action in order to purposefully interfere/block this bead's path and thereby save his friends?

If yes, does that not imply that some actions are possible in response to the Fireball bead in flight?