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Okay, we had an interesting situation come up in last night's game and I wanted to get some other interpretations on it.
The party was fighting a high level wizard with a contingency in place to teleport her to safety if her hit points drop below 60.
The party cleric has cast anti-magic field and is continually moving up on the wizard, who moves away on her turn, provoking attacks of opportunity but allowing her to cast a spell and a quickened spell before the cleric moves again.
The party witch is frustrated that the BBEG is in an antimagic field much of the time and she has pretty much nothing to do, so she readies actions to cast spells and use hexes whenever the wizard moves out of the antimagic field. At the time in question she has a readied action to cast an empowered lightning bolt at the wizard when she moves more than 10 feet from the cleric.
So, it gets interesting because the wizard drops below 60 hp while in the antimagic field.
This is how I ruled. The contingency is suppressed inside the antimagic field, but activates as soon as the wizard leaves the antimagic field with less than 60 hp.
I also ruled that the contingency took place before the readied action as an instantaneous effect trumps a readied action, which involves casting a spell. Ultimately the wizard gets away.
Now PC's never like to see the bad guys get away, so there was a little frustration. We are all reasonable friends and no one is prone to ragequit, so we were able to move on quickly. They trust, correctly, that they will eventually get another crack at this evil wizard lady.
So, how would you have ruled? Is there anything in RAW that covers this? During play we usually move on if we can't find an answer within a couple minutes.
What happens to contingency inside antimagic?
Should the lightning bolt have gone off in time to hit (and likely kill) the wizard?
I would have ruled it the same way. The contingency goes off before the readied action or else in invalidates the usefulness of the contingency altogether by allowing things to happen between the condition laid out by contingency and the companion spell cast to activate at that time.
Edit: Also we can contrive the situation a bit to make it a little more clear. Lets say instead of a witch with lighning bolt we have a wizard with fireball. There is no antimagic field. The wizard, being friendly says, I ready to cast a fireball when the BBEG moves 10ft away from the Cleric. On the BBEG turn he moves away, but someone was standing in front of him and the cleric was to his side. As he moves away from their threatened squares he provokes attacks of oppurtunity, reducing his hit points below the threshold for his contingency. At the same time he has completed his movement and is 10ft away from the cleric. So does the contingency go off now or does the fireball go first? I think its clear the contingency goes off. Now ignore any errors I may have made about the amount of movement of relative postion of people I think the case is similar.
It depends on the exact wording of the condition -- there's a decent chance I'd have fizzled it, though your interpretation isn't necessarily wrong.
1) Contingency is not entirely suppressed by the Anti-Magic Field. When the trigger condition occurs, the instantaneous effect goes off... and fails. Spell fizzles.
2) Contingency is suppressed. The trigger is "going below 60 hp". The Wizardess is already below 60 hp. She is no longer going below, she's there. Contingency doesn't trigger.
3) Contingency is suppressed. The trigger is "is below 60 hp" or "gravely wounded" or similarly worded. She exits the area, Contingency triggers and she's teleported off.
You went with 3. I see that as a pretty valid interpretation, as long as she worded it properly (I'd consider Contingency similar to Wishes in their overly literal interpretation of effects -- it's even noted that overly complicated on convoluted conditions may malfunction). That said, it would most definitely pre-empt the Readied Action, and would even trump any Immediate Actions, as it is Instantaneous. The only effect that might beat it would be another Contingency, or an AoO or immediate action that was taken as she moved out of the previous square (as opposed to into the present one) and would have hit her there. The Witch's action is "enter the next square" and requires her to be fully there. If a player had a charge readied (for example) to bullrush her back into the cleric before she fully gets out of range of the effect, that would go off first (triggered on attempt to leave a square, and can hit while she is still there).
I would say it would teleport him away, but the lighten still hits him. I wonder if it was a dead body that got away? No way for the players to tell.
