D&D 5E (2024) Using Action Surge to cast spells in 2024

[Maxperson]

And that is what 100% loses me.

The text is "You cast the spell as normal," on your turn. Not you prepare to cast the spell or you ready to cast the spell. It says you actually cast the spell. You then hold the spell (using your concentration) and RELEASE (not cast) it with your reaction.

Right. It's a very clear case of specific beats general. Actions happen later as a reaction unless it's a spell, in which case it happens on your turn as normal and then it only gets released later.

 

[kermit4karate]

It assumes that they wrote the rules the way they did on purpose. If one believes them to have been written in error, or simply dislikes the way they were written, one is free to rule differently.

Absolutely. As I’ve said a few times now, this is us, as DMs, talking shop. A player who tried to use these arguments to say that the DM’s call on this matter was wrong and they should rule differently would be out of line. Equally so whether the DM’s call on this matter was a yes or a no.

You won me over with your last paragraph. There will always be disagreements in a game, but there has to be someone who makes the final determination. Or, people angrily take their toys and go home.

 

[TiQuinn]

You won me over with your last paragraph. There will always be disagreements in a game, but there has to be someone who makes the final determination. Or, people angrily take their toys and go home.

And frankly, I don't want to play with someone who's so determined to be right that they can't move past a rule.

TTRPGs are a commitment of time, and I don't like my time being monopolized by disagreeable people.

 

[Charlaquin]

Those items don't require casting a spell so they don't need Concentration or spending the resource as you take the Ready action.

But you would have to spend the resource when you use the item as a Reaction.

Thus, if you don't think the Ready action with Action Surge using those Magic action items is against the rules, why even have the limit in Action Surge?

So you can’t use Action Surge to cast a spell on your turn, obviously. If you aren’t casting a spell, the restriction isn’t relevant.

Just take the Ready action, say your trigger is the next combatant moves a muscle, and take your Reaction when the trigger occurs, completely bypassing the no Magic action limit on Action Surge.

I would argue that “the next combatant moves a muscle” is not a perceptible trigger. You also explicitly take the Reaction allowed by the Ready Action immediately after its trigger. So, if you specified, “another combatant moves,” you would have to wait until after they completed their movement, which would give them the opportunity to make a ranged attack or cast a spell against you before moving. If you specified them attacking, you would only be able to use the Reaction after they had completed the attack.

Doesn't that seem strange to you? Do you really think that's the intended way Action Surge is supposed to work with the Ready action?

Doesn’t seem particularly strange to me, no. The Ready Action comes with enough reasonable additional restrictions that I don’t think using it to take an Action you wouldn’t otherwise be able to take on your turn as a Reaction later on is perfectly reasonable. Indeed, that’s kind of the entire point of the Ready Action.

 

[Charlaquin]

And that is what 100% loses me.

The text is "You cast the spell as normal," on your turn. Not you prepare to cast the spell or you ready to cast the spell. It says you actually cast the spell. You then hold the spell (using your concentration) and RELEASE (not cast) it with your reaction.

I don’t dispute that. The text of the Ready Action says that you cast the spell on your turn, therefore casting a spell on your turn is, in my reading, part of the effect of the Ready Action. “As normal” refers not to the type of Action you use to cast the spell (because obviously, if you’re casting it as part of the rules for resolving the Ready Action, then the Ready Action is the Action you’re using to cast the spell. It’s downright tautological.) It refers to the rules that govern casting the spell - so, if you’re casting it yourself, you must perform the components and expend a spell slot of the spell’s level or higher. If you’re casting it from a magic item, you don’t need to perform the components or expend a spell slot unless the item specifies otherwise, but you do need to spend the charges, and must cast it at the lowest possible level. If you’re casting it from a Species feature, you expend a use of that feature, and the feature specifies if any components are needed. Etc. It’s just telling you to perform the normal game actions required to cast the spell.

Using the Magic Action as a Reaction later allows you to release the spell, in a specific exception to the way the Magic Action is generally used.

 

[mamba]

You could write the rules that way, but the game designers did not. It is an action instead

it’s putting the text for how to do it in one place instead of repeating much of it under the other actions, and they placed that summary where it thematically belongs

All other actions do things, this one tells you how to do the thing at a different time, it is a different category, and that is why it tells you to pick one of the other actions as the one you actually perform in its text

We will not agree on this… I understand that your interpretation is not nonsensical given the written text, I just disagree with it.

 

[mamba]

Yes, and they also tell you to do that Action later, in response to the trigger

except for the Magic action, you do that one right away during your turn and just delay the release of the result until the trigger occurs

Ready is a meta-action that delays (part of) the actual action until the reaction occurs

You could write it that way, but the game designers didn’t, and so we must read it as its own Action, because it is.

as far as I am concerned they did so to save some space, not because Ready is an action that can be used to do any other action, but at a different time

 

[mamba]

It doesn’t say the Magic Action happens as normal, it says you cast the spell as normal.

yeah, small oversight that leads to all of this. At other places it does tell you that you cast spells with the duration of an action via the Magic action

 

[Blue]

Can you imagine? "You can take an additional action, except the magic action, or a ready action to cast a spell" it's kind of silly. If the designers had to write around every single workaround the players might find there would be so. much. bloat. in the rules. There's a reason for the "Rules Rely on Good-Faith Interpretation." bit on the DMG

Except that it's not a workaround. It takes your Concentration, which is a big cost, and your Reaction, which is often used by both fighters (for action surge) and casters. It's a very different thing with a higher cost.

 

[Maxperson]

“As normal” refers not to the type of Action you use to cast the spell (because obviously, if you’re casting it as part of the rules for resolving the Ready Action, then the Ready Action is the Action you’re using to cast the spell. It’s downright tautological.)

But that makes absolutely no sense. There's zero reason to put something like that in when it's frankly, irrelevant. If it were part of the Ready Action, that phrasing simply wouldn't exist, because there's no reason to put it in. They would simply say, "If you are casting a spell, it's cast during your turn and the energy is held blah blah blah..." Normal vs. abnormal never even comes into it, because it doesn't need to.

You only put the "normal" phrasing into the Ready Action if it's being cast as normal for the Magic Action that you have chosen when you picked Ready Action.