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Hi All,
I like to play the Bard/Support character, and I'm always looking for ways to better boost the group. I've taken particular liking to the Immediate Action Bard Spell "Gallant Inspiration".
I thought of making the spell into a wand. But before plunking down the funds for it, I did a little research to find that all wand use is a Standard Action, regardless of the spell's casting speed (If it's faster than a standard action).
However, to circumvent this issue, I've been given the idea to use a "Ready Action" with a Wand of Gallant Inspiration.
This raised a small list of questions that I NEED to have answered before I go through with buying the wand.
1. When I ready an action, am I allowed to say the trigger is, "A missed attack roll of my choosing."
2. Am I allowed to say, "A missed saving roll of my choosing", as per question 1?
3. Will this wand cost 4,500, or 6,000 gold (Because it is a bard-only spell)?
4. Will this still require a Concentration check?
5. Will this still not provoke Attacks of Opportunity?
6. Is any of this even allowed in the first place?
Thank you very much. ^.^
I'm never the best on wand rules, but regardless of anything else for 1 and 2, you can't choose at the time for a readied action but you can choose ahead of time. Examples:
NOT ALLOWED: I choose to ready an action if I am attacked.
Rogue attacks you, you say you dont want your readied action.
Fighter then attacks you, now you decide you want your readied action.
This is not allowed as you are making the decision AFTER you state you are readying.
ALLOWED: I choose to ready an action if I am attacked by either the Fighter or Barbarian only.
This would mean that if anyone else attacks you then your readied action wont go off. You gain specificity but you risk wasting your readied action if the wrong person attacks you.
This raised a small list of questions that I NEED to have answered before I go through with buying the wand.
1. When I ready an action, am I allowed to say the trigger is, "A missed attack roll of my choosing."
I think there was a big discussion a while back on whether you could choose whether or not to have your readied action go off, or if you had to take it on the first time your "trigger" happened. I think it came up as a resounding "first trigger sets it off". There's a cheesy way around it, if you ready to cast the spell when an ally says "Yes, I want help!" after an attack. If they miss and you'd want to trigger the spell, ask if they need help, and if they say "Yes, I need help!" then your spell goes off. Now, you're probably shouting this in the middle of combat, which may draw attention to yourself.
2. Am I allowed to say, "A missed saving roll of my choosing", as per question 1?
No, as the spell does not work on saving throws. It only works for attack rolls and skill checks.
3. Will this wand cost 4,500, or 6,000 gold (Because it is a bard-only spell)?
6,000 gold, as it's not on any of the Wizard/Sorc/Cleric spell lists.
4. Will this still require a Concentration check?
Why would it? See #5 below.
5. Will this still not provoke Attacks of Opportunity?
Wands do not provoke, and unless a monster near you has a ability that changes that, it stays the same.
6. Is any of this even allowed in the first place?
Why not? Honestly, it's a bit worse than taking the spell as one of your spells known, because you won't get a standard action on your turn.
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Right, I forgot it was only for Attacks and Skill Checks. I was thinking of Saving Finale for the saving throw, because I also use that.
Thank you all for your responses. I do like David Montgomery's suggestion of having the trigger be someone asking me for help. I can find a way to make that work.
I now have another question:
If I ready the action using "Call for help" as the trigger and the following happens:
-An Ally gets grappled.
-I choose to cast Immediate Action "Liberating Command" in an attempt to get them free.
-They Fail the Escape Artist Check and call for help.
Questions:
1. Am I even allowed to cast "Liberating Command" after choosing to ready an action for something else?
2. If I am allowed to cast "Liberating Command", Can I still use the wand to add to their Escape Artist check if they fail and call for more help (The trigger)?
Edit: Charon, I use the Daredevil Bard, so I don't get Inspire Courage. ^_^
Right, I forgot it was only for Attacks and Skill Checks. I was thinking of Saving Finale for the saving throw, because I also use that.
Thank you all for your responses. I do like David Montgomery's suggestion of having the trigger be someone asking me for help. I can find a way to make that work.
I now have another question:
If I ready the action using "Call for help" as the trigger and the following happens:
-An Ally gets grappled.
-I choose to cast Immediate Action "Liberating Command" in an attempt to get them free.
-They Fail the Escape Artist Check and call for help.Questions:
1. Am I even allowed to cast "Liberating Command" after choosing to ready an action for something else?
2. If I am allowed to cast "Liberating Command", Can I still use the wand to add to their Escape Artist check if they fail and call for more help (The trigger)?Edit: Charon, I use the Daredevil Bard, so I don't get Inspire Courage. ^_^
Firstly, If I understand you correctly then:
1) No you can't change the action you ready, if you ready an action to attack and circumstances change but your trigger still activates you cant choose to instead heal someone on your trigger.Also as David stated in his post the "Help" trick is very cheesy and I know that if you were using that in a game I was running then I wouldnt be too impressed and would be equally cheesy by probably starting to make you take perception checks to see if you heard them say help etc.
Somewhat off-topic - one thing to remember is that Gallant Inspiration doesn't stack with Inspire Courage. (That & using my swift actions for arcane strike are why my bard doesn't use it.)
A couple of things that struck me:
1) While Inspre Courage and Gallant Inspiration don't stack, you do use the higher of the bonuses - so you could cast Gallant Inspiration, even if Inspire Courage was ongoing.2)Immediate Action vs Swift Action
You get both in a round - so you could use your swift action for Arcane Strike, and still be able to cast Gallant Inspiration (or Feather Fall) if it is one of your known spells.
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Cathal,
I had trouble wording the question clearly, I admit.
In the scenario I presented, I was visualizing it in this order:
1. Ready Action with Wand of G.A., Trigger: Call for Help.
2. See ally get grappled and cast "Liberating Command", Action to use the wand is still readied.
3. Ally Fails Check and calls for help.
4. Use readied action, casting from the wand to help.
Is this allowed?
I thought that an immediate action used up your swift action in the following round. (I just checked - and it's correct. By using gallant inspiration I'd be giving up arcane strike in the coming round.)
Source please.
I am not seeing that when I am looking at the CORE, page 182
Edit: Found it, page 189.
Learn something new every day.
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Only if the call for help trigger is in the form of a code word. I'm thinking something like "By Torag's (Grabthar's) Hammer!," "Oh god, oh god, we're all gonna die!," or maybe just, "Spoon!"
Seriously, though, I think that works. I'm not aware of anything that says you can't take an immediate action while you have a readied action, so it should be ok.
EDIT: This was a response to Brigg's post.
I now have another question:
If I ready the action using "Call for help" as the trigger and the following happens:
-An Ally gets grappled.
-I choose to cast Immediate Action "Liberating Command" in an attempt to get them free.
-They Fail the Escape Artist Check and call for help.Questions:
1. Am I even allowed to cast "Liberating Command" after choosing to ready an action for something else?
2. If I am allowed to cast "Liberating Command", Can I still use the wand to add to their Escape Artist check if they fail and call for more help (The trigger)?
1. Readying an action does not use up your Immediate Action, which Liberating Command is.
2. Yes, but it wouldn't do much good. Liberating Command and Gallant Inspiration are both competence bonuses. As pointed out above, you get the higher of the two bonuses. At caster level 4, your Liberating Command is guaranteed to give as much bonus as the maximum Gallant Inspiration can give.
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I'm not convinced Gallant Inspiration will work as a wand, even with a readied action.
It's supposed to be an immediate action spell that takes places after someone misses an attack, so it's really in the middle of their attack. Casting it as a standard action from a wand seems like it would take too long to work in the middle of someone else's action. That's why the spell is normally an immediate action, which represents a much smaller expenditure of time than a standard action.
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I'm not convinced Gallant Inspiration will work as a wand, even with a readied action.
It's supposed to be an immediate action spell that takes places after someone misses an attack, so it's really in the middle of their attack. Casting it as a standard action from a wand seems like it would take too long to work in the middle of someone else's action. That's why the spell is normally an immediate action, which represents a much smaller expenditure of time than a standard action.
I believe you can ready any standard action, even if it comes from a wand.
And readied actions interrupt people's actions, explicitly stated below.
Ready Action from the PRD:
You can ready a standard action, a move action, a swift action, or a free action. To do so, specify the action you will take and the conditions under which you will take it. Then, anytime before your next action, you may take the readied action in response to that condition. The action occurs just before the action that triggers it. If the triggered action is part of another character's activities, you interrupt the other character. Assuming he is still capable of doing so, he continues his actions once you complete your readied action.
So I think what happens is this.
1. You ready your standard action: "I will ready to activate my wand of gallant inspiration when an ally in range fails an attack."2. The triggering condition happens: your ally fails an attack.
3. The standard action goes off: the wand of gallant inspiration activates, and the spell goes off. The spell permits your ally to add 2d4 to an attacking roll, if they get enough to turn that miss into a hit, it is a hit instead.
4. Your initiative order moves to just above your ally's.
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Whether or not you think a standard action is fast enough is beside the point, you can ready an action to fire an arrow when an enemy casts a spell and hit them with your arrow before they cast a quickened spell. That happens with a readied standard action and is entirely legal.
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I'm not convinced Gallant Inspiration will work as a wand, even with a readied action.
It's supposed to be an immediate action spell that takes places after someone misses an attack, so it's really in the middle of their attack. Casting it as a standard action from a wand seems like it would take too long to work in the middle of someone else's action. That's why the spell is normally an immediate action, which represents a much smaller expenditure of time than a standard action.
I believe you can ready any standard action, even if it comes from a wand.
And readied actions interrupt people's actions, explicitly stated below.
Ready Action from the PRD:
You can ready a standard action, a move action, a swift action, or a free action. To do so, specify the action you will take and the conditions under which you will take it. Then, anytime before your next action, you may take the readied action in response to that condition. The action occurs just before the action that triggers it. If the triggered action is part of another character's activities, you interrupt the other character. Assuming he is still capable of doing so, he continues his actions once you complete your readied action.So I think what happens is this.
1. You ready your standard action: "I will ready to activate my wand of gallant inspiration when an ally in range fails an attack."2. The triggering condition happens: your ally fails an attack.
3. The standard action goes off: the wand of gallant inspiration activates, and the spell goes off. The spell permits your ally to add 2d4 to an attacking roll, if they get enough to turn that miss into a hit, it is a hit instead.
4. Your initiative order moves to just above your ally's.
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Whether or not you think a standard action is fast...
I think what Fromper was implying that because the spell is intended to work as an immediate action, does it still work as intended when "slowed" to a standard action via a wand?
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Fair point, but that is a RAI question. RAW I see no issue here. There's nothing that states spells slowed from immediate actions to swift or standard actions fail to function. You can still cast liberating command on someone on your turn and have it function identically to casting it on them on someone else's turn.
The ready action expressly permits standard actions to react to enemy action, and can even interrupt swift or free actions (I shoot him if he talks). So, in that instance, a standard action is the same "speed" as an immediate action. It's just a clunky artifact of the system that makes those readied standard action actions seem "slower" when in reality they are the same speed.