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

[James Gasik]

I am not one of those DMs because I never played during a time when those spells worked that way. But, in those DMs’ defense, that was such a memorable moment in so many games that we still talk about it today. And the point of the game, both in my opinion and in the text of the How to Play section of the PHB, is to have fun and create exciting, memorable stories. Friendly fire might get in the way of the “have fun” part for some players (and if it doesn’t, calculating the volume of a fireball in a confined space will), but it definitely facilitates the “create exciting, memorable stories” part. So there’s tension there, and I can understand why someone might miss the positive aspect, especially with the way that memory tends to downplay negatives.

My comment was a bit dismissive, you're not wrong in that there can be rewards to the story for taking risks. While some DM's are mean spirited about this sort of thing, that's not universal.

Personally though, I prefer player buy-in for volatile, unpredictable character abilities. I used to love playing Wild Mages in 2e*, fully aware that I would likely meet a bad end one day. My fellow players however, eventually told me that I didn't have their buy-in, lol.

*5e Wild Mages, not so much. You pay a lot for that buy-in, with a class feature that rarely triggers unless the DM is willing to refresh your Tides of Chaos often, and only has a roughly 1 in 3 chance of actually doing you any good. I'm told the 2024 Wild Magic Sorcerer is much better about it, at least.

I once sat down to join a friend's 2e game. I chose to play a Bard. We're in a fight and I decide to cast magic missile, only for the table to groan. It turned out that the DM "interpreted" the area of the spell (one or more missiles in a 10' cube) as meaning each missile affected all creatures in a 10' cube, causing me to blast my own party with damage for daring to strike an enemy they were in melee with. That's something I would have liked explained to me beforehand, lol.

 

[BenjaminPey]

I'm probably not quite as hostile as you are to reading the rules closely, but in this case I agree with you. To me it seems to be an attempt to read the rules with a degree of precision that they don't support. And when we step back to make sense of the overall logic of the rules, the idea that you can't cast a spell in the straightforward way, but you can cast a spell and then hold it's energy to be released when a trigger occurs, makes no sense in the fiction of the game.

I've got nothing against close readings of the rules, really, when that's fruitful and leads to surprising or pleasantly unwelcomed outcomes, but that quoted part, "making sense in the fiction", is the crux, for me, in a ttrpg, the final arbiter in this kind of debates.

I get, too, that 5.24 made a move towards a more technical approach to rules that doesn't always align well with a fiction-first mindset, and that such a technical approach may well be the more enjoyable one for some or most players, and I have nothing against that. To each their own. I even acknowledge that it's totally possible that the designers looked at this interaction between Ready Action and Action Surge, thought it out for a little a bit and went "nah, that's fine, let's keep it there". After all, the only groups who will break the game by allowing it will be the exact same groups who will find a thousand other ways to break the game any way, because that's where their fun is at, and that's fine, too. In the vast, vast majority of cases, it will never come up.

And for good reasons: because it's purely playing the rules, mastering the system (and maybe one-upping the designers, if not the DM), rather than playing the fiction or the characters. And again, nothing wrong with that. Just, not my jam.

 

[mamba]

Other than, you know, the text of the ready action, which specifically says you cast the spell when you use it.

which specifically says you cast the spell as normal, so… the exception is that you do not release the energy immediately but hang on to it, not how the spell is being cast, and the normal way to cast a spell is to use the Magic action, in fact it is required to cast the spell per the spellcasting rules

All of this has been rehashed repeatedly, so I will stop here as well, no point in continuing on with this. I will not convince you, and I continue to be convinced that your interpretation is wrong, so we might as well leave it at that

 

[ECMO3]

So first, there's no fallacy there at all. Even if you disagree with the logic, it's a sound argument.

No it is not. According to youi I am Readying the Magic action so therefore:

1. I Ready the Magic action on my turn specifying the trigger

2. That Magic action occurs when the trigger happens, it has not occured yet when I Ready and may not occur at all

3. I cast a spell on my turn at the same time I Ready

If those 3 things are true then as a point of fact I cast the spell without using the Magic action and if I use my Reaction for something else or the trigger never happens then I cast it without ever using a Magic action.

Second, you are ignoring specific beats general which the later quotes very clearly engage.

No I am asking you for the specific language that lets me use two actions on my turn if one is the Ready action and you have not provided it yet.

I have provided multiple times the verbiage that specifically lets me Ready a spell.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Other than, you know, the text of the ready action, which specifically says you cast the spell when you use it.

I don't understand you here.

This is the relevant part of the ready action:

When you Ready a spell, you cast it as normal (expending any resources used to cast it) but hold its energy, which you release with your Reaction when the trigger occurs. To be readied, a spell must have a casting time of an action, and holding on to the spell’s magic requires Concentration, which you can maintain up to the start of your next turn. If your Concentration is broken, the spell dissipates without taking effect.

You cast the spell immediately when you take the ready action.
You just release the spell when trigger occurs.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

No it is not. According to youi I am Readying the Magic action so therefore:

1. I Ready the Magic action on my turn specifying the trigger

2. That Magic action occurs when the trigger happens, it has not occured yet when I Ready and may not occur at all

3. I cast a spell on my turn at the same time I Ready

If those 3 things are true then as a point of fact I cast the spell without using the Magic action and if I use my Reaction for something else or the trigger never happens then I cast it without ever using a Magic action.



No I am asking you for the specific language that lets me use two actions on my turn if one is the Ready action and you have not provided it yet.

I have provided multiple times the verbiage that specifically lets me Ready a spell.

Do you need some forum guy to gove you permission?
Play as you like. If you think that is the correct way to do it, have fun.

I think if someone else interprets it differently, let them have fun their way.

I guess we won't go out agreeing anyway. We also will never know what "casting the spell as normal" exactly means.

We just know there is a text in the DMG that says we should interpret rules in a friendly way. Make of it what you will.

 

[Seramus]

I do. Obviously it’s impossible to know for sure unless the designers say, but I think my reading is the most straightforward interpretation, and there are several pretty easy ways to change the wording that would have made it not so.

I suppose there's some precedent in the Rogue using a Readied Action to sneak attack outside of their turn. And the designers are on record that they are fine with sneak attacking outside your turn. I imagine some of the reluctance stems from the intentional change to Action Surge to prevent something from happening, as opposed to the more neutral terminology used in Sneak Attack.

 

[Charlaquin]

which specifically says you cast the spell as normal, so… the exception is that you do not release the energy immediately but hang on to it, not how the spell is being cast, and the normal way to cast a spell is to use the Magic action, in fact it is required to cast the spell per the spellcasting rules

Given that nothing about the text indicates that Ready allows you to take a second action on your turn, context makes it incredibly obvious that “as normal” is referring to the normal costs and consequences based on the method of casting (e.g. a class feature, a species feature, a feat, or a magic item). i.e. it means you have to spend the spell slot, or feature use, or magic item charge, and perform the components, or not, as normal per the text of the feature allowing you to cast it.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't understand you here.

This is the relevant part of the ready action:

It says you cast it. This is a specific exception to the general rule that casting a spell with a casting time of 1 action requires using the Magic action. That’s the only way to make sense of the text, given that the Ready Action is not the Magic Action, but it says you can use it to cast a spell with a casting time of 1 action.

You cast the spell immediately when you take the ready action.
You just release the spell when trigger occurs.

Yes, correct, so clearly you have cast a spell, with an action other than the Magic action, which is allowed despite the general rule of the Magic Action being required to cast a spell with a casting time of 1 action. Because of the specific text of the Ready Action saying so, and specific beating general.

 

[Charlaquin]

I suppose there's some precedent in the Rogue using a Readied Action to sneak attack outside of their turn. And the designers are on record that they are fine with sneak attacking outside your turn. I imagine some of the reluctance stems from the intentional change to Action Surge to prevent something from happening, as opposed to the more neutral terminology used in Sneak Attack.

Sure, but what it prevents from happening is the Magic Action. And the Ready Action is not the Magic Action. Granted, it can produce similar effects (e.g. casting spells), but not on your turn, at an additional resource cost (a Reaction and Concentration), and usually not if you’ve already cast a spell that turn, due to the one spell slot per turn rule. So, the fact that it doesn’t prevent the highly specific use case of casting a spell with a magic item, as a Reaction, later in the round… just doesn’t even strike me as some sort of exploit. It’s a completely different thing at that point than what the new wording prevents, and a much less action economy efficient thing at that.