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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5606411" data-attributes="member: 58197">No, you don't. You close, ready, close, ready, and then stop and ready when you reach a certain range. You can never get close enough to fight unless you're willing to give your opponent the first shot.No matter how you work it, you always come down to a point where your opponent is standing there with a readied attack. If you move into reach, she can make that attack before you have a chance to hit back. So you have the choice between eating the readied attack, or stopping out of reach and readying an attack of your own. The optimal strategy is to do the latter. Your opponent is then faced with the same choice.You can ready to evade instead of attack, but the dynamic doesn't change. Your evasion would negate your opponent's attack; you would then act next and get the first strike. Therefore your opponent prefers to wait rather than give away that advantage.The &quot;gladiator problem&quot; very seldom comes up in play, first because there are usually more than two combatants in a D&amp;D fight, second because it requires that the combatants start more than 40-60 feet apart and neither has a ranged option, and third because most players and DMs aren't hell-bent on executing a theoretically perfect combat strategy. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> But if it does come up, it really is a Mexican standoff; the best move is not to play.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 5606411, member: 58197"] No, you don't. You close, ready, close, ready, and then stop and ready when you reach a certain range. You can never get close enough to fight unless you're willing to give your opponent the first shot. No matter how you work it, you always come down to a point where your opponent is standing there with a readied attack. If you move into reach, she can make that attack before you have a chance to hit back. So you have the choice between eating the readied attack, or stopping out of reach and readying an attack of your own. The optimal strategy is to do the latter. Your opponent is then faced with the same choice. You can ready to evade instead of attack, but the dynamic doesn't change. Your evasion would negate your opponent's attack; you would then act next and get the first strike. Therefore your opponent prefers to wait rather than give away that advantage. The "gladiator problem" very seldom comes up in play, first because there are usually more than two combatants in a D&D fight, second because it requires that the combatants start more than 40-60 feet apart and neither has a ranged option, and third because most players and DMs aren't hell-bent on executing a theoretically perfect combat strategy. :) But if it does come up, it really is a Mexican standoff; the best move is not to play. [/QUOTE]

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