AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Meh, we went through the same discussions with 4e, and clearly you guys did too and inevitably came to no real conclusion because there IS no good conclusion. The 4e 'Ready an Action' rules are quite ambiguous. The general discussion talks about describing what triggers, and then the actual boxed rules text is almost diametrically opposite, stating that it has to be an action of a specific enemy, etc. If you play it that way however it wrecks a good bit of the usefulness and leads to illogical situations at times. The problem is there will never be a bright line as to what is "significant enough" or "exact enough wording" to count as a legitimate trigger. Like all things in RPGs you MUST leave leeway because the rules of a game don't define what can happen, they can only resolve it when it DOES happen. Saying "You may only trigger an action via an action of your own taken on your own turn" (or some such construct, which is what you're basically saying) is just as bad as AD&D's "A wizard cannot swing a sword". Inevitably a player says "My wizard picks up the sword and swings it" and the refusal of the rules to provide a way to handle that doesn't make it any less necessary for the DM to ACTUALLY handle it, it just makes the rules less useful.
So, if I can make a recommendation, just tell us how to handle the "when I yell go you all charge. DM I'm yelling when the orc comes through the door!" and provide us with a nice sidebar that explains your rationale and possible different options in different situations, because the very first thing that will happen is the unexpected. This ain't no wargame.
