Sneak Attacks on Rays

[Artoomis]

Hope you don't mind, Artoomis; I'm gonna reductio ad absurdem your butt .

First, the SRD:


Now for the examples:

I'm fighting a minotaur on a stormy night. It's pitch-black, punctuated by flashes of lightning. Can I ready an action to attack the minotaur as soon as lightning flashes?

No: readied actions occur only in response to "actions." A flash of lightning is not an action per the rules.

When is your intiative? It's supposed to change to just before the person who triggered youir action. I'd make this be a "delay" instead since you are not tiggering off an enemy's action. You have nothing to act before in this case, and, if you did, you be acting BEFORE the lightning. Delay is what you uise to react AFTER some event.

Delay: .... A combatant can ... wait until some time later in the round and act then...

A villain points a crossbow bolt at me and my friends, threatening to kill any of us who make a noise. He readies an action to shoot anyone who makes a noise. A baby that I'm holding yells. Can his readied action go off?

No: readied actions occur "immediately ahead of the combatant whose action triggered the readied action," and the baby is not a combatant.

Is the villian trying to stop the baby from crying, or reacting to the cry? If he's trying to act to just before the baby cries (seeing it about to yell, or something, I suppose), then it pretty well fits within the "Ready Action" intent - providing you've assigned an intiative to the baby - you need that for "Ready Action" to work.

If he is waiting until AFTER the baby makes the noise, then he is DELAYING.

The villain, realizing that "makes a noise" might not work, decides to ready an action to shoot anyone who moves. I try to run away. Does his readied action go off?

No: I'm not fighting him, I'm running away, so I'm not a combatant.

Sure, this works. A "combatant" can certainly be attempting to escape. Besides, this is clearly within the intent, and he shoots you just before you start running.

If you read the readied action text overliterally, it becomes ridiculous. I think that the "conditions" part of the readied action text contradicts the "action" part of the text, and that the conditions part should reign. Otherwise, as I said, it can get silly.

Daniel

I agree it can get silly - especially if you foget about the DELAY action. You should remember:

READY ACTION is to interrupt something - that is, to act just before that thing.

DELAY is to act AFTER something. DELAY is written loosely enough to let you act at ANY TIME - even, for example, when teh lightening goes off (though you'd probabaly want to make a common-sense ruling that only one attack happens while the lightening is happening.

I get the impression that you try and use READY ACTION when you should be using DELAY - and that acts only to you disadvantage as DELAY let's you take you whole action, not just a partial action.

 

[Artoomis]

Another example: I'm being attacked by an improved-invisible rogue, but I have reason to believe the duration on his spell is about to expire. I ready an action to attack him as soon as it expires. Can I do this?

No: the expiration of a spell is not an action as defined by the rules.

Note that I could ready an action to attack him as soon as somebody took an action to make him visible (e.g., my invisible friend cast a silent, stilled dispel magic on him), and that'd work. But I couldn't ready an action to attack him as soon as I can see him.

Feeling reductioed yet?
Daniel

No. What you should do is DELAY until you can see him. Simple.

You CANNOT attack him before you can see him (let's assume you don't know where he is), which is what would happen with a Ready Action.

 

[Pielorinho]

Artoomis, with the lightning example, delay won't work, because I need to act WHILE the lightning is flashing. If I delay, I can only act after the flash, when it's just as dark as before. Readying an action is necessary in this case.

With the baby example, it only works if you consider the baby to be a combatant. Do you?

With my running away, I'm not necessarily a combatant under any normal definition of the word -- I may be a three-year-old toddler, or a bunny rabbit, or a wind-up tin soldier. Would a readied action work against these folks? Do you consider them to be combatants?

The key differences between readied actions and delayed actions is that readied actions go *during*, and are partial actions; delayed actions go *after*, and are standard (or full or whatever) actions. If you only allow readied actions in response to specific actions by combatants, then you bizarrely limit what people can do in combat.


Daniel

 

[LokiDR]

No. What you should do is DELAY until you can see him. Simple.

You CANNOT attack him before you can see him (let's assume you don't know where he is), which is what would happen with a Ready Action.

Artoomis, it seems that, by your reasoning, the only time you would "ready" an action is for spell casting- counter spell or attack and hope the mage loses the spell.

In all other examples given here, you say delay. Delay for the opening of the door. Is this really what a person should be doing to act in the middle of another person's action?

 

[Petrosian]

"READY ACTION is to interrupt something - that is, to act just before that thing."

Thats not a definition of interrupt i recall. nor is it one supported iirc by their examples.

Interrupt is to act WHILE the other thing is being done. not before.

for example, if you had said "READY ACTION is to interrupt something - that is, to act just before that thing ENDS or IS DONE" you would be spt on with interrupt.

Again, if you do not read "comes before" as "begins before" (which is apparently your house rule) but rather as "ends before" (which is consistent with their examples iirc) then there is no problem.

 

[Artoomis]

Artoomis, it seems that, by your reasoning, the only time you would "ready" an action is for spell casting- counter spell or attack and hope the mage loses the spell.

In all other examples given here, you say delay. Delay for the opening of the door. Is this really what a person should be doing to act in the middle of another person's action?

No, I did not say delay for the door. For teh door, you may want to ready an action for whatever he does AFTER he comes through the door, so that you can interrupt his action.

READY AN ACTION is designed to alow you to act BEFORE something. If you want to act AFTER something, you are DELAYING, not READYING.

You can run your game any way you want, but that's the way the rules are written.

Most of the time you would only READY an action if you hope to stop something from happening. Reacting to something (that is, after something happens) is what DELAY is for, and that allows you to take your FULL ACTIONS.

 

[Mr.Binx]

Another example: I'm being attacked by an improved-invisible rogue, but I have reason to believe the duration on his spell is about to expire. I ready an action to attack him as soon as it expires. Can I do this?

No: the expiration of a spell is not an action as defined by the rules.

PHB exerpt p.134 Readying an Action: "..specify the partial action you will take and the conditions under which you will take it. Then, any time before your next action, you may take the readied partial action in response to those conditions."

You only have to specify a condition, not specifically an action, that triggers the readied action. Either way, I think that this thread has become hopelessly lost in ridiculous flames and should reticently be squelched by our holy moderator type peeps unless you guys can calm down.

 

[Pielorinho]

No. What you should do is DELAY until you can see him. Simple.

You CANNOT attack him before you can see him (let's assume you don't know where he is), which is what would happen with a Ready Action.

What if the wizard who cast Imp.Invis. is still hanging around? The spell will end on her initiative, just before she acts. If I'm delaying, I'll definitely go after her. And she can cast the spell again. Result: her rogue friend blinks into visibility and out again, with no chance for me to intervene.

If I ready an action, however, I can attack the rogue once before the spell is renewed.

I may be wrong about how delaying works: we've always played it that, after each person's ENTIRE action occurs, you can choose to stop delaying. However, if you could stop delaying on someone's initiative count after a spell expires and before they act, then you'd be right about this case.

Daniel

 

[Artoomis]

"READY ACTION is to interrupt something - that is, to act just before that thing."

Thats not a definition of interrupt i recall. nor is it one supported iirc by their examples.

Interrupt is to act WHILE the other thing is being done. not before.

for example, if you had said "READY ACTION is to interrupt something - that is, to act just before that thing ENDS or IS DONE" you would be spt on with interrupt.

Again, if you do not read "comes before" as "begins before" (which is apparently your house rule) but rather as "ends before" (which is consistent with their examples iirc) then there is no problem.

Okay, look, let's try this way.

If you READY an action you act on the intitiative just BEFORE the action that trggers it. Obviously, since you can interrupt a spell, you must actually be acting somehwat during the triggerring action. While that's true, the rules effect is that you act BEFORE your opponent's action, with a special rule for spells that says you can interrupt a spell.

Actually, per the SRD, Ready, Ready to interrupt spellcaster, and
Readying to Counterspell are all different actions. The only reason to do that is because the second two actions don't quite exactly fit in the general definition of "Ready."

It appears that interrupting a spell is a special case.

 

[Pielorinho]

Either way, I think that this thread has become hopelessly lost in flames and should reticently be squelched by our holy moderator type peeps.

Really? I thought it was remarkably flame-free. I respect the folks I'm arguing with here -- until this example, I don't think I've disagreed with anything I've seen Artoomis post. I hope, Artoomis, you don't feel flamed; if so, I sincerely apologize.

Daniel