D&D 5E (2014) Take the Ready action.

[Ruin Explorer]

So doing it as a reaction puts you ahead in terms of action economy instead of waiting tohide on your turn.

Explain how this is the case.

Ready costs an Action. So you're burning an Action to take do something as a Reaction, which costs an Action. At best that's staying level (assuming your Reaction would have been useless). If you're a Rogue or otherwise can Hide on a Bonus Action, it's a loss.

 

[Mort]

I would agree they nerfed it, but as someone who played previous editions I would say I am elated, not frustrated.

I fully agree that it was justifiably nerfed.

I meant frustrated by the fact that they thought they know the rules, but don't.

Similar confusion /frustration happens with surprise IME.

 

[BookTenTiger]

@Ruin Explorer : Ready is tailor-made for edge cases, so I doubt you're going to find something here that is a "regular use" outside of readying an attack for when an enemy is within range.

But for fun, here's a scenario where Ready a Search would apply:

Let's say the DM throws at you an enemy that can Hide as a Bonus Action. This enemy keeps striking with advantage, then hiding at the end of its turn.

You could say, "I'd like to Ready a Search for when the enemy hides."

The enemy takes its turn, attacks, and hides. This triggers your Perception check. Let's say you succeed.

Your next turn comes up, and now you know where the enemy is, and can attack it. Or you can shout out to your companions where it is. Or whatever.

That's not going to come up a lot! But it's there because sometimes you want to be able to trigger a normal action in weird circumstances. The Ready action is the cost you pay to do something out of order.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Similar confusion /frustration happens with surprise IME.

My experience also.

5E Surprise is pretty confusing, and even a lot of people who are quite sure they know how it works are running it at least a little "off" from the actual RAW or even RAI in some cases. With Ready at least it make sense that they needed to nerf stuff. With Surprise it's kind of the inverse - they nerfed it... a bit... but in a way that made it more complicated and confusing to run, and it's not much of a nerf. With Ready I can see the gain to gameplay. With Surprise I think overall it's a loss to gameplay, all things considered. It comes up more often than Ready and it confuses even more people. There's a reason there was a thousand-post thread on the 5E reddit with people trying to explain Surprise to each other. That's not something any other rules have generated.

 

[BookTenTiger]

My experience also.

5E Surprise is pretty confusing, and even a lot of people who are quite sure they know how it works are running it at least a little "off" from the actual RAW or even RAI in some cases. With Ready at least it make sense that they needed to nerf stuff. With Surprise it's kind of the inverse - they nerfed it... a bit... but in a way that made it more complicated and confusing to run, and it's not much of a nerf. With Ready I can see the gain to gameplay. With Surprise I think overall it's a loss to gameplay, all things considered. It comes up more often than Ready and it confuses even more people. There's a reason there was a thousand-post thread on the 5E reddit with people trying to explain Surprise to each other. That's not something any other rules have generated.

Just to provide a counter-example, the groups I have played 5e with have never been confused by either the Ready Action or Surprise. Many of us have experience with 4e and 3e, some even with AD&D, and some are brand new players.

 

[ECMO3]

Explain how this is the case.

Ready costs an Action. So you're burning an Action to take do something as a Reaction, which costs an Action. At best that's staying level (assuming your Reaction would have been useless). If you're a Rogue or otherwise can Hide on a Bonus Action, it's a loss.

I was saying if there was nowhere to hide on your turn. If you know there will be a place to hide due to an environmental (darkness, fog, invisibility ...). Yes you give up whatever other action you would have taken this turn to be hidden at the start of your next turn (assuming your stealth check succeeds and no one uses search to find you).

To use your rogue example - if there is nowhere to hide this turn I can not take hide as a bonus action this turn. If I ready an action I can start the next turn hidden with all the advantages that applies and then after I expose myself I can take hide again as a bonus action (assuming there is still obscuration on my turn) and then I can move some after that to be in a new location while hidden making it very difficult to be targeted. This is strictly better than taking hide as a bonus action at the start of the turn, moving exposing myself and then still being exposed when my turn ends.

There is also a matter of success. You do not automatically suceed on hide checks, by taking one as a reaction I might start the next turn hidden and if I don't then I can use my BA at the begining of the turn to try again. I get two chances instead of one.

Whether or not that is better than another action you could have taken is a different discussion and dependent on the specific situation.

 

[Charlaquin]

I disagree with that and based on sage advice, so does Jeremy crawford.

The "current turn" is the turn in which the action is taken. If you ready dash you take the "ready action" on your turn and take the "dash action" as a reaction on the turn when when the triggering event happens. This means if the trigger event happens on another turn other than your own you get that movement on that other turn because that is the "current" turn when the dash action is taken.

Correct. But since you can only ready movement or an action, when the triggering event happens you gain movement equal to your speed, and no way to spend that movement.

The wording is particular, Dash gives you extra movement equal to your "speed", it does not double your movement as some people think. Your speed is a statistic on your character sheet, it does not change turn to turn unless there is some effect changing it (grappled, haste, bladesong etc).

Correct.

The example is you quoted is correct. It lets you move your speed on whatever turn the dash action is taken: 0 (movement normally allowed on another turn)+30(additional movement granted from dash)=30 (total movement on that turn). It is also as it states NOT 60 feet, it is only 30 feet.

You have 30 movement, but no rule is allowing you to spend that movement to change your position, since it is not your turn and you did not ready an action to let you move up to your speed.

Of course this is a pretty academic distinction. In actual play, if a players says “I ready to dash when [trigger],” I understand that their intent is to move when [trigger] happens, so I’ll just say “keep in mind you can only move up to 30 feet when you do that” to clarify. The specific terminology they use for how to accomplish that isn’t important.

 

[Flamestrike]

One complication that I haven't seen mentioned is that Readied actions occur after the trigger is complete, which makes some kinds of readied action hard to pull off or require some mental or linguistic gymnastics to get there. The most obvious is readying the Help action. You can't help someone with something after they are done doing it.

"I ready to Help Bob versus the ogre" doesn't actually work. Just use your action to Help.Bob on your turn.

"I ready a movement in case the goblin gets next to me" is fine but you are still going to take an opportunity attack if you leave the goblin's reach.

Ready your action to move so it happens when the Gobin leaves its space instead of when it gets next to you.

Your trigger can be anything.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

@Ruin Explorer : Ready is tailor-made for edge cases, so I doubt you're going to find something here that is a "regular use" outside of readying an attack for when an enemy is within range.

But for fun, here's a scenario where Ready a Search would apply:

Let's say the DM throws at you an enemy that can Hide as a Bonus Action. This enemy keeps striking with advantage, then hiding at the end of its turn.

You could say, "I'd like to Ready a Search for when the enemy hides."

The enemy takes its turn, attacks, and hides. This triggers your Perception check. Let's say you succeed.

Your next turn comes up, and now you know where the enemy is, and can attack it. Or you can shout out to your companions where it is. Or whatever.

That's not going to come up a lot! But it's there because sometimes you want to be able to trigger a normal action in weird circumstances. The Ready action is the cost you pay to do something out of order.

Thank you for an actual example!

However I'm still skeptical this would be a "smart thing to do", which is why I am pretty interested in this. In many cases throwing away your Action in order to blow your Reaction in a very specific way might sound good, but actually doesn't make any sense if thought about a bit harder. If you're going to Ready, you're throwing an Action on the floor. Why not simply Ready to attack the guy when he attacks, or Ready to grapple him when he attacks or something? It really only makes sense if you, personally, have multiple attacks AND you personally, intend to attack the guy. If you're not going to do that, it doesn't make much sense. It also becomes questionable if there are visible, attack-able enemies around.

I get that you're saying it's corner-case - but it's really goddamn corner-case lol.

Just to provide a counter-example, the groups I have played 5e with have never been confused by either the Ready Action or Surprise. Many of us have experience with 4e and 3e, some even with AD&D, and some are brand new players.

With respect, I'm skeptical about this, unless it's solely because you're DMing and are superb at explaining both. If it's not that, I strongly suspect you're just forgetting that it's happened, because I've seen a very consistent issue with both across multiple groups with different players, and it's absolutely reflected very clearly by the number of questions about both on the internet, and the amount of difficulty people have explaining/understanding both (particularly Surprise). That reddit thread was absolutely chock-full of people sure they understood Surprise perfectly, who gave explanations severely at odds with the RAW.

 

[Mort]

My experience also.

5E Surprise is pretty confusing, and even a lot of people who are quite sure they know how it works are running it at least a little "off" from the actual RAW or even RAI in some cases. With Ready at least it make sense that they needed to nerf stuff. With Surprise it's kind of the inverse - they nerfed it... a bit... but in a way that made it more complicated and confusing to run, and it's not much of a nerf. With Ready I can see the gain to gameplay. With Surprise I think overall it's a loss to gameplay, all things considered. It comes up more often than Ready and it confuses even more people. There's a reason there was a thousand-post thread on the 5E reddit with people trying to explain Surprise to each other. That's not something any other rules have generated.

I think, with surprise, the designers honestly thought they were simplifying the mechanic. It probably made prefect sense, during development, to eliminate the surprise round - that kind of thing is prone to an echo chamber!

And again, it's not that the mechanic is bad, it's poorly explained.