Readying an action to avoid melee attacks

[Nails]

D20pfsrd.com wrote:

You can take a 5-foot step as part of your readied action, but only if you don't otherwise move any distance during the round.

Does this mean that as a caster or an archer I can continuously avoid attacks from melee characters by readying actions with the trigger "When he ends his movement?"

1. On my initiative I stay put and ready an action to cast/shoot at target melee character (or trigger my readied action on "the first melee character to end his movement adjacent to me").

2. His initiative. He charges or moves up to me. His movement ends, my readied action triggers, I step away and shoot at him. His movement is now over and I am not in range of a melee attack.

This seems exploitative and meta-gamey to me but it looks legal as far as I can tell. Of course it only works in a theoretical 1v1 situation, and it breaks down if he has a backup ranged weapon, but in this theoretical situation does that combo work to deny melee characters their attacks by abusing the readied action system?

[Umbranus]

Should work.
You give up the chance to make a full attack action for some defence. I don't see why this should be an abuse?
Should the melee do anything else than move up to you then all you did was waste your turn.

[LazarX]

You can't ready movement and an action. You can pick one or the other, not both. You may decide to ready your move, which means you can attack after his action. However if he has lunge, he'll still get his attack in.

If he has a weapon that can reach, he'll still strike or he can settle for just having it ready and you'll provoke when you try to shoot him... or anyone.

[NobodysHome]

And a melee character who doesn't have a reach weapon, Lunge, or Step Up deserves to get shot a few times...

[Komoda]

Change the trigger to, "The first person that threatens me" and reach weapons don't matter if you have he proper escape route.

I find this tactic to be completely hokey and I will never use it or allow it at my table.

I don't believe that RAI was to give you a way to stop all charges with a readied action.

Just my 2 CP.

[BiggDawg]

LazarX wrote:

You can't ready movement and an action. You can pick one or the other, not both. You may decide to ready your move, which means you can attack after his action. However if he has lunge, he'll still get his attack in.

If he has a weapon that can reach, he'll still strike or he can settle for just having it ready and you'll provoke when you try to shoot him... or anyone.

If you ready a move you cannot attack until your next action because readying the move took your standard action. You can only ready a single action and it is the action that is resolved you don't get to take any left over actions from your last turn when you took the ready action. If you use a ready action to fall back from an advancing enemy you would move away and that will end your action and your new initiative will be set just before the enemies. There is no way to ready a move and then attack within the same turn, you have to wait until your initiative next round to attack. The only exception would be a 5ft adjust which you could do as part of a readied attack if you otherwise had not moved that turn, but you couldn't take a move action.

[Xenrac]

You could do this, but only if you didn't move during your turn, because moving any distance during your turn denies you a 5 foot step. So yeah, you could do this, but it'd be most useful with a Crossbow, so you could load, then ready your 5 foot step and attack for someone who charges you.
Or if you knew someone was about to charge you you could draw your weapon, then ready the 5 foot step and shot.
But all in all it's still pretty meta. And you'd have to have initiative to make it work.

[Akerlof]

Nails wrote:

1. On my initiative I stay put and ready an action to cast/shoot at target melee character (or trigger my readied action on "the first melee character to end his movement adjacent to me").

2. His initiative. He charges or moves up to me. His movement ends, my readied action triggers, I step away and shoot at him. His movement is now over and I am not in range of a melee attack.

If you ready for "when he threatens me" or "when he ends his movement" I would probably rule that your readied action went off as soon as that condition was met and if the enemy still had movement available, he could finish the movement.

If you ready for "when he attacks," if he already moved, you would be clear. But since the ready goes off before the actual action, I would rule that he still has a standard action he can take.

If you repeatedly use the tactic, I might allow a bluff check to bluff you into tripping your ready early, (just like I allow casters to bluff casting a spell to trip up people with actions readied to interrupt it.) I would rule a successful feint trips your ready as well.

But, if side stepping that one attacker can dominate an encounter, your GM is either doing it wrong or didn't mean for the encounter to be a challenge anyway.

<edited to add>

Xenrac wrote:

But all in all it's still pretty meta. And you'd have to have initiative to make it work.

I don't know about meta, after all, isn't that exactly what bullfighters do?

It's pretty tactical, but unless you design your group around skirmishing, it will probably be a suboptimal choice.
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