Readying an action

TL:DR... Can you ready an action against someone NOT doing something, and can you walk around doing nothing with an action readied against something as vague as "If they suprise me."

I have a campaign I am DM'ing, and one of my players is... a bit trigger happy, I suppose you could say.

Last night's session, they were explorting a crypt, and he announces "I'm readying a spell." Then they encounter a handful of NPC's who basically say "you shall not pass." the PC's and NPC's argue back and forth, and then suddenly the player who readied a spell says "That's it, all these guys need a reflex save, I cast fireball."

Me: "Okay, roll initiative, and do the fireball during your turn."
Him: "No, I readied an action."
Me: "Against what!?"
Him: "Against them not letting us pass."
Me: "That's not how readied actions work."
Him: "Yes it is."
Me: "Fine, then all of the NPC's have an attack readied too."
Him: "You can't do that, that's metagaming!"

And we argued about it for several seconds. My question, who is right, and why? I've reviewed the RAW, and it's clear, but kinda vague... It implies you can ready an action and since it's outside of combat, it can change pretty quickly and easily. However, being able to walk around and say "If I see something, fireball it." or "If they DON'T do something, fireball them" seems kinda silly.

I have had this problem.

You cannot ready actions outside of initiative order, so the I ready an attack if someone surprises me is not possible. That is what perception, initiative, and surprise rounds are for.

Now, if you get in a situation where combat is imminent, and the players are tensed and ready for a fight, then it is probably a good idea to go into initiative right then, not a turn later when the enemy comes charging around the corner.

For example, the players are in tense negotiations with a group of bandits who want them to pay the toll. You should probably run the negotiations in initiative order, that way, the players AND the bandits can ready actions, spread out, take cover, etc. just be clear to the players that initiative order idoes not mean combat. It just means you need everyone to account for their actions every 6 seconds. Otherwise, you end up with situations where players are doing 30 seconds worth of actions while that have 6 seconds of conversation.

As for the rest, the proper conditions for readying an action are left vague, but there is some room for common sense. I don't let players use and/or conditions. They get a single condition, and I interpret their condition to the letter. Vague conditions are likely to have unintended consqeuences. I ready an action to shoot the guy who surprises me, a merchant in the bazaar accidently bumps your elbow... BOOM.

Example, the players here a large group running toward them around the corner, we go into initiatiave, and the archer says I ready an action to shoot the first creature that runs around the corner. The fair princess comes running around the corcer being chased by a group of orcs 15 feet behind her. Guess who the archer shoots.... Being trigger happy has some definate drawbacks.

I don't think he can ready any action before the battle has started. By that logic he would be first in anything because he has always readied a fire ball 'just in case'. Also, casting a fireball takes time and is quite obvious with all the gestures and what not. If he starts to cast the fireball, everyone rolls initiative and he fires it on his turn.

TL:DR... Can you ready an action against someone NOT doing something, and can you walk around doing nothing with an action readied against something as vague as "If they suprise me."

No... because a readied action needs a trigger. And also if your readied action does not go off by the end of the current turn, you lose the action.

I shall bequeath onto you the initiative mantra! Make your players learn it. Force them to repeat it whenever they try to weasel their way onto the top of the initiative order:

"I cannot call initiative. Initiative is not shotgun. Therefore, I shall not presume to try calling it. Initiative rolls are there for a reason."

First when he called out he was readying a spell you should be asking him what the trigger is. If there is no answer for this or it is vague like, "if they surprise me" then you need to make sure at that point it is known that it won't work as a trigger for a readied action.

Then call for perception checks from the players and ask the initial player if he is trying to hide that he is getting ready to cast a spell. If he says he is then the perception is against his sleight of hand check. If not, just pick DC 10 and call it good. Then call for initiative. Anyone who makes their perception check and the readier get to act in the surprise round...

Then go round by round... each round his readied action expires.

He'll get bored of that pretty quick. Explain that readying an action is a combat action, so you have to be in combat to do it. I think you will find this clears up quickly. If not you have player issues, not rules issues.

Sean Mahoney

In my games, I'm a big fan of rolling initiative early and often. If the party approaches a group with unknown intentions on either side, and both groups are aware of each other, roll initiative while they are still some distance away. That does three things.

1) It serves as a tool to give each player equal time to say something or do something as I cycle through the initiative counts. If someone wants to start casting buffs, then I'm already tracking rounds for duration.

2) It also makes it harder to immediately identify friend from foe. If you roll initiative for non-hostile meetings, there's no DM cue for how to treat the NPC.

3) If player wants to be a loose cannon and fireball the group, he can. The recipients could have readied actions though, depending on the setup. Could be he just fireballed a group of pilgrims that were in a bad mood, or brigands intent on robbing them.

But to the OP, ready is a combat action, and you can't ready an action if you aren't sequencing actions by initiative.

I too always had questions about ready actions during combat.

For example, I had always wounder if during combat, you could say, "I ready a standard action" because you want to see how something plays out. For example, if you say, and this is after initiative of course,

"I want to ready a standard action, if he cast a fireball, I want to charge him, if he wants to charge me with a spear, I want to trip him, if he wants to run away, I want to cast grease under him." As one readied action? Conceivably, with exception of maybe the spell due to casting time maybe, a well train warrior, or a clever bard would be ready and expecting a multitude of situations.

Could you just say that you want to act to interrupt his action, even if you don't know what the action might be? In the event that both parties ready an action for the other guy, they would just end up having a staring contest.

Side question, I tried this on a GM once, where I ready a move action to move away from an enemy if he came at me with a melee attack, there by getting away from his attack range. He went ballistic and claim this to be broken.

Could you also apply that as a free five-foot step if it took you out of range?

Although I rarely ready actions anymore against many GMs, since many of them will take it to simply do another action. Yes, I'm sure that ooze knew what I was going to do... I got the point where I stated a ready action but writing it down on a flash card, and then flipped it over when they triggered the even. My success rates went from near 0%, to around 50%

You can't "blanket ready". You need to have a specific trigger (not several chained together with "OR") and also say what you'll do to the target.

"I'll see what happens" doesn't work, nor does a generic "I want to disrupt whatever he does".

Note that GMs who simply not do what you prepared against are metagaming. It's a jerk GM move, even if it might be unintentional. The exception is that if you play a, say, archer, and each round you stand there and ready an action against spellcasting.

"I'll see what happens" doesn't work

Waiting to see what happens is a Delay. You choose to do nothing and see what happens. Then you can act later on in whatever fashion you like. The downside is you don't get to do anything, and you can't interrupt another creature during its turn.

I ready a move action to move away from an enemy if he came at me with a melee attack, there by getting away from his attack range.

You can ready a move action, triggered by an enemy moving closer to you. Since the ready is triggered by his move action, you would move before him, which means he could choose to move in a different direction. Or move all the way up to you if he has the speed. Or charge.

You can ready a move action, triggered by an enemy moving closer to you. Since the ready is triggered by his move action, you would move before him, which means he could choose to move in a different direction. Or move all the way up to you if he has the speed. Or charge.

All depends on how the readied action is worded. I don't think you necessarily preempt the entire action, but instead interrupt the action as it is unfolding.

For example, say a bad guy is 20 feet away, and you ready an action to move if he moves within 10 feet of you. The guy has to move 10 feet towards you before the action is triggered. You can then move as part of the readied action, suspending his move. After your move, the bad guy can choose if he wants to continue his movement or not. He couldn't undo the 10 feet of movement to charge instead though. That movement has already occurred.

Grick wrote:

You can ready a move action, triggered by an enemy moving closer to you. Since the ready is triggered by his move action, you would move before him, which means he could choose to move in a different direction. Or move all the way up to you if he has the speed. Or charge.

All depends on how the readied action is worded. I don't think you necessarily preempt the entire action, but instead interrupt the action as it is unfolding.

For example, say a bad guy is 20 feet away, and you ready an action to move if he moves within 10 feet of you. The guy has to move 10 feet towards you before the action is triggered. You can then move as part of the readied action, suspending his move. After your move, the bad guy can choose if he wants to continue his movement or not. He couldn't undo the 10 feet of movement to charge instead though. That movement has already occurred.

This is why the rules language for readying needs an overhaul. As written, it creates time paradoxes.

This is why the rules language for readying needs an overhaul. As written, it creates time paradoxes.

If you don't view actions as atomic, I think it is okay as written.

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.

As long as you are okay with the idea of shoe-horning an action into the middle of another action, I think it works fine.

This all stems from trying to force an order on simultaneous events, but without that, combat would be much more complicated to run.

Well, my concern (regarding time paradoxes) is this bit:

The action occurs just before the action that triggers it.

That's the problem, right there.

Now, if I were GMing a home game, I'd insert a tiny-but-effective bit of eratta:

The action occurs just before the event that triggers it finishes resolving.

Boom. Problem solved. There was a huge thread with heated arguments about readying (especially in regards to someone else charging), and I think these extra two words* solve pretty much that whole thread.

*Okay, I also changed an instance of the word "action" to "event", because there was also a small side issue of the text seeming to imply (to some readers) that you can only ready against a discreet action, making it impossible to ready against an event like your companion falling unconscious. This fixes that. But that's off-topic for this post.

Well, my concern (regarding time paradoxes) is this bit:

Ready wrote:

The action occurs just before the action that triggers it.

That's the problem, right there.

Now, if I were GMing a home game, I'd insert a tiny-but-effective bit of eratta:

Jiggy's Ready wrote:

The action occurs just before the event that triggers it finishes resolving.

I think I've always been doing that mentally. If you view actions as having a start time and end time, then readied actions go off after the start time, and before the end time, of the action that triggered it. The resolution of the initiative count isn't sufficient to track it at that level, so things look out of sequence by that measurement. Maybe we need ... SEGMENTS!

Jiggy's Ready wrote:

The action occurs just before the event that triggers it finishes resolving.

I think I've always been doing that mentally.

That's probably what most people do, and likely the RAI. Maybe I'm just being a grammar Nazi by insisting that "before X" and "before X finishes" mean two very different things. There can be a big difference between "You need to fill up with gas before you run your errands" and "You need to fill up with gas before you finish running your errands", you know? ;)

Back to the OP:

Last night's session, they were explorting a crypt, and he announces "I'm readying a spell." Then they encounter a handful of NPC's who basically say "you shall not pass." the PC's and NPC's argue back and forth, and then suddenly the player who readied a spell says "That's it, all these guys need a reflex save, I cast fireball."

this is probably what I would have done (which is in line with your approach).

When any player announced they wanted to do something aside from talking or movement outside of threatened spaces, I'd roll initiative and start sequencing the turns at that point. Could be casting a spell, drawing a weapon, readying a shield, retrieving an item, etc.

Anyone (good guy or bad guy) prior to the player announcing their intention to act could choose to delay or ready an action. It would be a bit meta-gamey for someone to attack based on the knowledge that the spellcaster planned to cast fireball later in the round, unless it was cued by something else.

Really, to be fair, the player should just ask to measure time in rounds at that point and not publicly declare their actions beforehand.

If the bad guys readied an action vs. a spell being cast, they'd get their standard or move action to do something beforehand. Without something like spellcraft, they'd react the same way to fireball as prestidigitation though.

Unless the good or bad guys had some kind of cue, the player that decided to end the parley and attack would be the first one to get both standard and move actions. Anyone going beforehand would only get a readied action vs. something specific.