Can an action be readied with the trigger for the action being "when the duel begins"?
For example, I want to cast a spell, or charge, or fire an arrow, as soon as the duel begins, but before anyone takes their turn. The reason I am bringing this up is because the GM is saying that you cannot ready an action out of combat, and is saying that as such, I cannot prepare an action right before the start of a duel.
I can't find any rules that say I am unable to do this, but he remains adamant that I need a surprise action to be able to do this. I want to be sure I am not missing anything in the rules about this. Am I?
You cannot ready actions out of combat, your GM is perfectly following the rules. While I cannot give a specific page in the core rule book it is not in the section for 'Ready' on page 203. Will edit when found.
Edit.
I was completely wrong. However, reading actions out of combat or initiative order is highly recommended against. Surprise rounds exist solely for this reason as does rolling for initiative. To avoid situations such as this.
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It is reasonable for you GM to require you to have to have a surprise round to do this sort of thing. Otherwise, your enemies should just constantly have a readied action to charge you as soon as you open a door, or in your case as soon as the duel starts.
So how do you resolve it? Both combatants are aware of one another, they are both trying to get the edge on the other and go first? What do you do when they both want to ready actions before the fight? There is a "surprise" round. Only, you both go in it. But who goes first? The one with the highest imitative. Oh wait! Why not resolve this like normal combat instead of trying to use game constructs to gain an advantage where none should exist.
You can pretty much assume in a duel both sides are trying to do the same thing. So if your readying so is your opponent. Its basically initiative,
Although there's still debate in the community, the rules for readying an action fall under the header of "Special Initiative Actions", which has a description of, "Here are ways to change when you act during combat by altering your place in the initiative order." So to me, that says pretty clearly that readying an action occurs only during combat.
So I don't believe that you could ready an action before a duel started. You would roll initiative to begin the duel, and the higher roll would go first; that character could choose to ready an action then.