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

[BenjaminPey]

The goal is absolutely not to circumvent a limitation by a clever arrangement of the rules, and it is specifically this characterization of my genuine interpretation of the rules that I object to, and the reason I’m still here trying to explain to people how I arrived at this interpretation.

So what is the goal of the readying part, if not circumventing the limitation? That what I was saying: give me a meaningful trigger ("if he get close to the prince", "if she draws her sword"), manifest it in the fiction (make it even more meaningful), then you have another goal than "doing this thing the rules would rather I don't", and then it's not necessary rules-lawyery. But as the OP framed it, there was no other goal. It was entirely devised to get around this specific limitation. It was to avoid paying "the costs and obeying the limitations on your turn", to quote you back.

 

[mamba]

It does, but the magic item effects they were asking about were not spells. I would still say it’s not possible, because Readying the Magic Action to do something other than casting a spell does not list the same exception as using it to cast a spell does, so clearly you do take the Magic Action using your Reaction in response to the trigger in that case.

wait, are you saying you are not using the Magic Action at all when you Ready a spell, not even as a reaction?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Clearly that’s the case, yes. Except in the specific case of using Ready to cast a spell, in which case there are other instructions in the text, which tell you to simply cast the spell as normal, and release it later as your Reaction.

Going in circles. Where is "cast as normal" defined?

I read it as you cast it using your magic action immediately instead of when the teigger happens.

Again, that doesn’t make any sense because you only get one Action per turn, and you’ve already used it on the Ready Action.

Your opinion.
Special case. In this specific beats general case, you immediately take another action.

I think see see where the disconnect is coming from though. Because “Action” is both the name of a resource and the name of the category of thing you spend that resource on, we’re walking away with two different interpretations of what the Ready Action is doing, mechanically. You’re parsing it as Ready allowing you to you spend the action (using a lower-case a here to distinguish the resource from the thing you spend the resource to do) in response to a specified trigger, on a specified Action, rather than on your turn, at the additional cost of a reaction (again, lower case r because I’m talking about the resource).

OK.

Under the above interpretation, it makes sense that you wouldn’t think of Ready as really being an Action in and of itself, as well as why the idea that you wouldn’t have an action resource available to spend on Magic wouldn’t even occur to you, because you’re not thinking of Ready as a thing that costs an action, but as a special rule that lets you spend that resource at a nonstandard time. Likewise, the above interpretation never even occurred to me until just now, because it breaks the fundamental structure of the action economy as I understand it. It’s, like, a completely alien way of looking at the action rules to me.

Yeah. Your opinion is as alien to me. I can see your reasoning behind it. But that does not mean I agree with your opinion.

The way I see it, you can’t ever spend actions (the resource) outside your own turn. The only way you can ever act off turn is with a Reaction (uppercase R here), which always has a specific trigger, and an effect you can spend your reaction (the resource) to perform when the trigger occurs. The Ready Action is a real, discrete Action, the effect of which is essentially to create a bespoke Reaction that you can only use until the start of your next turn.

You can take reactions on your own turn actually. So it is possible to use two actions in one turn.
Actually, if I read it right, you can start your turn with ready as an action, set the trigger to "attack, if I see an enemy when I move around the wall"...
By your interpretation, a fighter can use action surge, ready a spell (from my wand, not using a slot), with the trigger: "if I see an enemy being hit by my other spell" to blast twice in the same turn...

You spend your action on your turn to choose a trigger, and an Action, whose effects this special Reaction allow you to spend your reaction replicate. But, in the specific case of casting a spell, the Action that you normally use to do this also comes with additional restrictions and resource costs that other Actions don’t. So, the Ready Action carves out a specific exception to how it (the Ready Action) normally works. You have to “cast the spell normally,” which is to say, you have to obey the casting restrictions for the spell like those set by the required components, and you spend the additional resources at that time, the spell just doesn’t take effect yet. Then the trigger allows you to spend your reaction to “release” the spell, which is to say, choose your targets and apply the effect. At no point are you really taking the Magic Action, because the Magic Action is a completely different thing with different rules for how to resolve it.

I disagree.

And you certainly can’t be spending your action on the Magic Action when you’ve already spent it on the Ready Action.

Why not. You can attack someone on your own turn with the right ready.
Since readying does not immediately end your turn. You can move and use a bonus action as normal.

I think my interpretation is cleaner and more consistent with the fundamental structure of D&D 5e’s action economy.

I don't think so.
It is a workaround for the fighter to ignore the restriction of his action surge.

I guess that goes without saying, because if I didn’t think that, it wouldn’t be my interpretation.

Yes.

But, I think that might be a more nuanced way to express what I mean by saying “I think it’s RAI.”

I don't think so. Why go out of the way to disallow the magic action if that is possible. If you followed tge playtest the intend was that action surge should never be used to cast a spell.
But I agree: action surge should also tell us that ready is also forbidden. It would be cleaner. And no fighter should ever need to ready with their action surge.

Fun fact: a fighter can ready two different actions but is only able to take one.

I don’t pretend to know the designers’ intent, and I do find @Seramus ’s reasoning for why they don’t think it was specifically intended to work that way convincing.

I do not. I followed the playtest. The first rewording was listong specific actions, clearly missing the spellcasting action and I think alsp the ready action. I even think there was a video where crawford told us that just disallowing the newly introduced magic action is cleaner and easier...

It’s just that, I can’t see any way the alternative interpretation could be intended because it just… isn’t how the rules work in my understanding.

No problem.

It’s not so much that I think the designers went out of their way to provide a way to cast a spell with Action Surge.

No. They actually went out of their way to make a positive list first. But then people complained that there are things the fighter should be able to do.

Rather, I think that casting a spell with the Ready Action when you use an Action Surge is a natural consequence of the system as a whole working exactly the way it’s intended to work.

I disagree.

And I don’t imagine this is something the designers would put any effort into trying to “fix” because it isn’t really contrary to the intended design in any way that matters.

The designers left WotC. They won't fix anything. Having read the new sage advice, I have no trust in the new rules responsibles...

You still can’t spend the action (resource) that Action Surge grants you to cast a spell. That you can use it to set up a way to use another resource to cast a spell doesn’t seem like a problem in any way. It comes at an additional cost, it eats your concentration, and it carries a risk of being disrupted, so it’s not really reproducing the thing the change to Action Surge was designed to prevent.

Concentration yes. Risk of being disrupted, not so much. You can action surge first to ready and set the trigger to "If I see myself drawing the wand".

It’s doing a different, similar, but meaningfully less powerful thing.

Open for exploits. But that is the ready action's fault to be honest.

Now, if someone disagrees with me on how meaningful that difference is, I can completely understand that.

Thank you.

That’s perfectly reasonable and I wouldn’t begrudge anyone ruling that this can’t be done at their table.

Neither do I begrudge you using your interpretation at your table.

What I object to is the assumption that a player who interprets it as I do must be “rules lawyering” to try to exploit some tricksy wording loophole.

No. But I politely to ask him to follow my ruling if I am the DM and I explain why I think it is the interpretation with unwanted consequences and that this was most probably not intended (going by the playtest changes).
And even if it was, I would not want that. But I would also have a word with a rogue setting triggers like "if I see someone starting their turn..."

It doesn’t look like a loophole to me. It looks like the system operating smoothly and according to the way it was made to operate.

It certainly lools like a loophole to me. I would just not begrudge you if you don't see it as a loophole. I just would not allow it.
Why: because if I as a DM use such loopholes I would feel bad.

I'd rather have both sides agree to gentleperson rules to not search for loopholes and certainly not plan to use them in the middle of a session. If it comes up spontanely, I'd let it even work once. And then we will talk about that later.
I also talked to my players why I won't use 2024 suggestion or allowing to carry the cleric with spiritguardians around many times per turn... even if the rules would allow it.

That the interaction may not have been anticipated doesn’t, to me, automatically mean it must be counter to intent.

No. But it is no prove that it was intentional either.

Am I making any sense?

Actually yes.
I just don't agree.

 

[Charlaquin]

That fighters are good at doing fighty things. Less good at doing magicky things.

That doesn’t answer the question. A Fighter can cast a spell and then attack. But they can’t attack and then cast a spell. What’s the in-fiction reason for that?

So, what is the fictionnal difference between readying your spell and casting your spell, up to the point of, but not including, the release?

Well, this depends on what casting a spell actually is in the fiction. I’m rather fond of Gorilla of Destiny’s theory of magic, which postulates that casting a spell involves releasing energy (in the form of a spell slot) into an n-dimensional field (that he calls a Gygax field, but I think should more properly be called “the weave”), and shaping the waves to a particular amplitude and direction to produce a particular magical effrct. Verbal, somatic, and material components, then, may be memory aids for the caster to remember precisely how to manipulate the field to the proper specifications for the spell you want to cast, though my preferred interpretation is that they actually create a resonance in that field to induce the appropriate waves. It may be that spellcasters themselves don’t agree on the mechanics, and the memory aid interpretation is favored by wizards, while the resonance interpretation is favored by bards. Regardless, when Readying to cast a spell, the caster performs those components and expends the magical energy (the “spell slot”) but doesn’t release that energy into the weave/Gygax field immediately. They instead hold that energy in suspension until the opportune moment.

Why a fighter with caster levels (or the arcane knight subclass) is able to do this after attacking with their weapon but is not able to release the energy immediately after attacking depends on why they’re able to cast a spell before attacking but not after attacking. Because what the heck an “action surge” is and why it works the way it does is currently undefined. It’s an abstract rules construct. Give me an explanation for what it is and why it works like the rules say it does, and I’ll incorporate that into an explanation of why holding the magical energy is possible to do with it but immediately releasing it into the weave/Gygax field isn’t.

 

[Charlaquin]

Right, so this interpretation would also prohibit you from using Action Surge to Ready any of the magic item abilities I mentioned in my earlier post, correct? As Action Surge prevents you from using the Magic action.

Action Surge prevents you from using the Magic Action on your turn. To quote:

You can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On your turn, you can take one additional action, except the Magic action.

Once you use this feature, you can’t do so again until you finish a Short or Long Rest. Starting at level 17, you can use it twice before a rest but only once on a turn.

The Ready Action, in my understanding, doesn’t allow you to take another Action on your turn. It allows you to take it later, as a Reaction.

 

[Teemu]

Action Surge prevents you from using the Magic Action on your turn. To quote:

You can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On your turn, you can take one additional action, except the Magic action.

Once you use this feature, you can’t do so again until you finish a Short or Long Rest. Starting at level 17, you can use it twice before a rest but only once on a turn.

The Ready Action, in my understanding, doesn’t allow you to take another Action on your turn. It allows you to take it later, as a Reaction.

But your interpretation of the Ready action is that you can't take the Magic action with the Ready action since that would be 2 actions. So how do you then reconcile the idea that you're taking a Magic action as a Reaction? If Magic action can be a "subordinate" action within a Reaction, could it not also be that during the Ready action you take during your turn?

 

[James Gasik]

How are they explicitly allowed to sneak attack when it's not their turn? What is the wording?

Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack roll if you have Advantage on the roll and the attack uses a Finesse or a Ranged weapon.

That's once per turn, not once per round. If you can find a way to get the attack off turn, it works. That can be either with an opportunity attack, a reaction attack (from say a Battlemaster dip or a Battlemaster giving them a reaction attack), or Actions Surge/Haste+Ready. I'm sure there's other tech involved to allow this, I've never actually felt the need to. I know that in the playtest they wanted to change the language to 1/round, but got backlash over it. I saw one guy arguing "off-turn Sneak Attack is healthy design because it allows other classes to support the Rogue in getting their off turn attacks. YMMV.

Personally, I didn't see the point. The Rogue is almost guaranteed to get Sneak Attack, to the point that I wonder why they bothered with restricting it, they could have just said "the first attack you make each round gets this bonus damage as long as you use the right weapon". I know, legacy probably, or just to give an explanation for why they get the damage.

So it feels like being able to occasionally double the damage is a bit unnecessary (to me). Rogue isn't the best damage dealing class (nor do I think it should be), it's just fairly consistent about the damage it deals. But since they made sure you could do this, it seems to me that anything else exploitative in the rules can't be dismissed out of hand when trying to discern RAI.

 

[Charlaquin]

So what is the goal of the readying part, if not circumventing the limitation? That what I was saying: give me a meaningful trigger ("if he get close to the prince", "if she draws her sword"), manifest it in the fiction (make it even more meaningful), then you have another goal than "doing this thing the rules would rather I don't", and then it's not necessary rules-lawyery. But as the OP framed it, there was no other goal. It was entirely devised to get around this specific limitation. It was to avoid paying "the costs and obeying the limitations on your turn", to quote you back.

I see. You’re saying the goal of *performing this sequence of game actions” is to circumvent a limitation, not that the goal of interpreting the rules as permitting this sequence of game actions is to do so.

But, see, the way I interpret the rules, this sequence of game actions isn’t restricted. You’re not circumventing a limitation by performing it, you’re just taking legal game actions. What is the goal of taking those actions? Well, presumably to produce the effects those actions cause. I believe in the example case it was wall of fire?

 

[James Gasik]

Yes, I made this point upthread. 4e is similar.

But then Ready isn't an action in itself; and it has to be described as something you do in lieu of taking an action.

Why? Why can't it just be a special way to take an action?

 

[Charlaquin]

wait, are you saying you are not using the Magic Action at all when you Ready a spell, not even as a reaction?

I don’t think that’s entirely clear, but in my opinion you do perform the Magic Action as a Reaction when you Ready casting a spell.