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

[Maxperson]

The Ready Action does not specifically say you get a second Action on your turn.

I mean, it says you do a lot more than it says you don't. You are taking the Magic Action for your ready. Then you are casting as normal on your turn. That says Magic Action on your turn a hell of a lot more than the ready rules say that they are allowing a spell as part of the ready action(nothing even hints at that).

And you still haven't responded to post #433 which shows how WotC uses language when one action also allows the casting of the spell as part of that action.

 

[Maxperson]

They don't consistently write it that way when casting is part of another action. Consider Improved War Magic, which permits casting a spell as part of an Attack Action:

Which still very clearly explains that it is part of the Attack Action, unlike Ready Action which doesn't even hint that it is.

 

[pemerton]

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

Your proposed rule - "You may choose to Ready your action (or the ability to move up to your speed). Doing so allows you to take the action as a Reaction in response to a set trigger, which must be a perceivable circumstance." - doesn't treat Ready as an action in itself. Rather, it is a type of adverbial qualification of your action.

So then the rule for action economy would have to be restated: instead of saying "On your turn, you can move a distance up to your Speed and take one action", it would have to say something like "On your turn, you can move a distance up to your speed and either take on action or ready one action or ready additional movement up to your speed."

 

[Charlaquin]

Nor does it specifically say that a <thing that I have my PC do> is both a Reaction and an action having a category (such as Attack, Magic, etc). It leaves that to be inferred.

And the idea of "spending" a Reaction to use an action is not set out in the rules either. Eg when a player has their PC cast a Shield spell, they are not "spending" a Reaction to use an action (such as the Magic action). They are just using a Reaction. The rules text on Reactions is itself unclear about this:

Certain special abilities, spells, and situations allow you to take a special action called a Reaction. A Reaction is an instant response to a trigger of some kind, which can occur on your turn or on someone else’s. The Opportunity Attack, described later in this chapter, is the most common type of Reaction.​

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When you take a Reaction, you can’t take another one until the start of your next turn. If the reaction interrupts another creature’s turn, that creature can continue its turn right after the Reaction.​

According to this, a Reaction is a special action that you take. But according to the Readying rules text, when you take your Reaction you perform your readied action - which is not, itself, a Reaction but something like an Attack of the release of held spell energy.

This is why I say that the rules aren't drafted with sufficient technical precision to yield an answer by close reading. An answer has to be inferred from text and context.

This notion of "action" as both a resource and a thing done is not found in the rules, at least in what I've read. It's your interpretive construction.

As I read it, the rules use the word "action" to describe certain sorts of things that a character might do; to express the rationing/action economy principle in respect of those things; and to set out the timing/turn-by-turn rules for those things. For instance, there is this and this:

The game uses actions to govern how much you can do at one time. You can take only one action at a time.​

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On your turn, you can move a distance up to your Speed and take one action.​

These don't characterise actions as a resource. They state principles about when things can be done.

When it comes to readying a spell, to me the key thing is this:

If readying a spell was handled as it is in 4e, then the character would cast the spell *as their Reaction. This would be described as an "action" (the readied action), and would be a Magic action (albeit performed as a Reaction rather than in the usual fashion).​

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The fact that readying a spell is made *more challenging as a thing to succeed at, by requiring the spell to be cast immediately (with all that entails, about spending a slot and so on) and then adding the additional stuff about holding the energy (with all that entails, including concentration), doesn't - to my mind - change the previous dot point. I still see a casting of a spell, which is a Magic action. The fact that the Casting Time rules don't identify Readying or a Reaction as alternatives to the Magic action for casting 1 Action spells reinforces my thinking on this.​

As I've said, I don't regard my interpretive argument as knock-down. But I do think it makes the whole of the rules text into a coherent enough whole, and it maintains a coherent fiction. (Again, this is something where I agree with @BenjaminPey.)

I mean, I largely find this to be a solid interpretative lens, arguably more consistent with the text than my resource-based interpretation. Credit where it’s due, this is a better reading than my intuition lead me to. That said, where I would differ is that, under this lens, I still see the Magic Action being performed as a Reaction. You’re still using the “additional action (you can take) on your turn” granted by the Action Surge feature to take the Ready Action, the effect of which allows you to take the Magic Action as a Reaction. In other words, either way the action granted by Action Surge is not the Magic Action, it’s the Ready Action.

 

[pemerton]

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.

The rules say that "When you take the Magic action, you cast a spell that has a casting time of an action or use a feature or magic item that requires a Magic action to be activated." The Reaction that follows readying a spell is neither the casting of a spell (the spell has already been cast, with its energy being held) nor the use of a feature or magic item. So your interpretation requires departing from this bit of rules text.

That's not a decisive objection to your interpretation, but it does count against it.

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.

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?

Again, I don't think the rules are well-enough drafted to support these close readings.

For instance, does the additional action from Action Surge have to be taken temporally subsequent to the "one action" that the character can otherwise take on their turn? Or does one perform the addition - so when I use Action Surge I can now take two actions, but one of them may not be the Magic Action. On this latter reading, which to me is more intuitive, a fighter can Action Surge, attack using that additional action, and then cast a spell.

Conversely, the idea that I can't use the additional action to (say) cast a spell or activate a magic item, but that I can use it to ready a spell or the activation of a magic item, to me is quite counter-intuitive. I would avoid this counter-intuitive reading by treating the adverbial phrase "on your turn" as qualifying the rules about how many actions you can take on your turn, and then readying the exclusion "except the Magic action" as qualifying the additional action taken, even if that additional action crystallises only via an off-turn Reaction.

 

[Charlaquin]

Your proposed rule - "You may choose to Ready your action (or the ability to move up to your speed). Doing so allows you to take the action as a Reaction in response to a set trigger, which must be a perceivable circumstance." - doesn't treat Ready as an action in itself. Rather, it is a type of adverbial qualification of your action.

So then the rule for action economy would have to be restated: instead of saying "On your turn, you can move a distance up to your Speed and take one action", it would have to say something like "On your turn, you can move a distance up to your speed and either take on action or ready one action or ready additional movement up to your speed."

Which, would be better phrasing if the intent was not for Ready to be an Action in itself. Ergo, I think it is most natural to conclude that Ready is intended to be an Action in itself.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Reactions are the only way to act off-turn, and they always have a specific triggering condition and an effect you can spend a reaction to do in response to that trigger. If that trigger happens to occur on your turn, nothing prevents you from spending your reaction to do that effect then. This is in contrast to Actions (and Bonus Actions for that matter), which you can only do on your own turn.

Aren't your contradicting yourself here? In the second quote, you say that (i) an Action can only be taken on your own turn and that (ii) a Reaction can be taken both on-turn and off-turn (depending on when the trigger occurs). In the first quote, you say that (iii) a Reaction may involve performing the Magic Action.

Given that (iv) the Magic Action is a type of action, and conjoining that with (ii) and (iii), it follows that an action sometimes may be performed off-turn. Which contradicts (i).

I make this point not as an attack on you - I don't think you've casually asserted a contradiction as if you don't care! - but just to reinforce why I think the rules aren't drafted with sufficient clarity to permit the sort of tight parsing that you are attempting. As well as text, it's essential (in my view) to have regard to context.

 

[pemerton]

Which, would be better phrasing if the intent was not for Ready to be an Action in itself. Ergo, I think it is most natural to conclude that Ready is intended to be an Action in itself.

Whereas I think they've chosen the wording they have so as to make their action economy rules easier to state (ie they don't want to foreground readying, which is relatively complicated, in their basic statement of the action economy).

The fact that this causes some confusion is evident in the actual rules text for readying in all the editions that use it (3E, 4e, 5e) as per my post that quoted the relevant rules, and identified the somewhat garbled shifting of terminology that results from (i) having to refer to the readied action while also (ii) treating readying as an action in itself and (in 4e and 5e) (iii) treating the upshot of readying as an (Immediate) Reaction.

 

[Charlaquin]

The rules say that "When you take the Magic action, you cast a spell that has a casting time of an action or use a feature or magic item that requires a Magic action to be activated." The Reaction that follows readying a spell is neither the casting of a spell (the spell has already been cast, with its energy being held) nor the use of a feature or magic item. So your interpretation requires departing from this bit of rules text.

That's not a decisive objection to your interpretation, but it does count against it.

Well, yeah, it does depart from the text of the Magic Action. Because that’s what the Ready Action says to do when you take it, and in D&D specific beats general. When the Magic Action says you do one thing when you take it, and the Ready Action says you can use it to take the Magic Action but it differs from the normal Magic Action in the following ways, the text of the Ready Action wins.

Again, I don't think the rules are well-enough drafted to support these close readings.

For instance, does the additional action from Action Surge have to be taken temporally subsequent to the "one action" that the character can otherwise take on their turn? Or does one perform the addition - so when I use Action Surge I can now take two actions, but one of them may not be the Magic Action. On this latter reading, which to me is more intuitive, a fighter can Action Surge, attack using that additional action, and then cast a spell.

Yeah, I misremembered the text of Action Surge. I absolutely agree that the order of the two Actions doesn’t matter according to this text. I think the confusion was due to my experience of Action Surge in actual play, where players generally announce their Action and then announce that they want to use their Action Surge to do XYZ, and when phrased that way I would object to a player saying “I use my Action Surge to cast Fireball” or whatever. Though, I would probably say “but we can just say you used your regular Action to Fireball and your Action Surge to attack” and move on, so

Conversely, the idea that I can't use the additional action to (say) cast a spell or activate a magic item, but that I can use it to ready a spell or the activation of a magic item, to me is quite counter-intuitive. I would avoid this counter-intuitive reading by treating the adverbial phrase "on your turn" as qualifying the rules about how many actions you can take on your turn, and then readying the exclusion "except the Magic action" as qualifying the additional action taken, even if that additional action crystallises only via an off-turn Reaction.

Yeah, that would never occur to me, for all the reasons we’ve been discussing. Ready is Ready, no matter what you use it to do as a Reaction, and something you Ready to do as a Reaction is not the additional Action you’re taking on your turn via Action Surge.

 

[Charlaquin]

Aren't your contradicting yourself here? In the second quote, you say that (i) an Action can only be taken on your own turn and that (ii) a Reaction can be taken both on-turn and off-turn (depending on when the trigger occurs). In the first quote, you say that (iii) a Reaction may involve performing the Magic Action.

Given that (iv) the Magic Action is a type of action, and conjoining that with (ii) and (iii), it follows that an action sometimes may be performed off-turn. Which contradicts (i).

I make this point not as an attack on you - I don't think you've casually asserted a contradiction as if you don't care! - but just to reinforce why I think the rules aren't drafted with sufficient clarity to permit the sort of tight parsing that you are attempting. As well as text, it's essential (in my view) to have regard to context.

Again, the double-use of the word Action is complicating communication here. I don’t mean to say that you can’t ever perform an Action-as-thing-you-do outside your turn. Rather, Actions-as-things-you-do normally require you to spend your action-as-resource, which you can only do on your turn. Ready allows you to do an Action-as-thing-you-do using a reaction-as-resource instead of using an action-as-resource, in a specific exception to the general way Action-as-things-you-do work.

Of course, you (at least I think it was you? This conversation is moving quickly, it’s hard to keep track of who’s saying what, especially since several of y’all don’t have avatars/profile pictures…) have convinced me that there’s a better interpretative model than this resource-based one I intuited, so this point may be moot.