Ready action hit blinking creature while material

[Ravingdork]

With respect, I disagree.

[Cleanthes]

Late to this party but the internet is forever. So: if you're going to allow this readied attack to avoid the miss chance, doesn't the same thing apply to the blinking caster readying an action to cast a spell? It would give the blinking caster a way of ignoring the 20% chance that his spell goes off in the wrong plane. The logic is exactly the same. But that makes blink an even stronger option, which seems to me a bad idea. So for game balance reasons, I wouldn't allow either use of a readied action.

[TGMaxMaxer]

If you changed your trigger to "When the enemy hits me/or an ally" I would let you have the 20% chance instead.

Because for them to hit, that is the situation that had to have happened in that instant.

Other than that, I can't see timing it right when it is random without using something that gave you insight into their state in that exact moment.

If they flicker in and out on the half second, and it typically takes a person between 1 and 2 seconds to process a change to their environment and react to it, then even the "readied actions happen right before the action that triggered them" means that right before you could see them, they were phased out. Since your trigger is them phasing in, and readied actions happen prior to that occurring, you would actually be arguing that you go from a 50% chance to hit to a 100% chance to miss as they are explicitly ethereal at that moment.

[Cavall]

The rules state that not even the barghest knows when it will blink in or out. In fact it's ability to move through object it's entirely random, not even allowing the target to know when to move.

If the person under the effects does not know when a random effect will come in and out, the person targeting them will not either.

You are incorrect Ravingdork. 50% miss chance without some way to negate it. Waiting for it would simply not work. The sword would have a 50% chance to pass through while being swung just as it always would. Patience versus random patterns will not pay off.

[dragonhunterq]

Put me in the readying will not work camp. The blinking is random, unpredictable even to the point that the person under the effect of it can miss by going ethereal at the wrong moment. It is not a measured pulse that you can time.

A person who walks through a door can be safely assumed to still be there .5 of a second later, the same cannot be said of a blinking foe.

[Shiroi]

I don't feel a readied action should help in this situation, and a lot of people have already quoted why.

I do wonder, however, why I can't know where you are and just leave my sword in you until you pop back around it. Presumably this is like hitting an auto crit against touch ac without the miss chance, you rematerialize with a sword inside your breastplate. Though I'd use a cheap disposable sword since it'd probably ruin mine.

I get why this doesn't work rules wise, and perhaps mechanically it would only shunt you in a direction of your choosing with a d6 of damage, but it's a solution I wonder why nobody questions.

[Kyaaadaa]

Shiroi wrote:

I don't feel a readied action should help in this situation, and a lot of people have already quoted why.

I do wonder, however, why I can't know where you are and just leave my sword in you until you pop back around it. Presumably this is like hitting an auto crit against touch ac without the miss chance, you rematerialize with a sword inside your breastplate. Though I'd use a cheap disposable sword since it'd probably ruin mine.

I get why this doesn't work rules wise, and perhaps mechanically it would only shunt you in a direction of your choosing with a d6 of damage, but it's a solution I wonder why nobody questions.

In reality I would think that anything occupying the space that you are returning to would swap places with you, hence a portion of your sword (hopefully the cheap disposable one) is now in the Ethereal, and no longer attached to your blade, much like moving a blade half-in and half out of a portal... SLICE. But a much simpler solution is the shunt, though a sword wouldn't be ample enough material to cause 1d6 damage... maybe a whole tower shield, but even then, I'd just adjust the individual with Blink 5 feet randomly with no damage at all.

Focused more on topic, though it seems the issue is settled: Blink is not only took random, but possibly too fast, for a readied action to work. By the time you swung sword into space, Lord knows you might miss air due to the time it takes to swing. Your readied action could easily make your chances WORSE than 50%.

[CampinCarl9127]

I think others have already perfectly explained why this wouldn't work, but I want to throw my weight in with the "Ready action does not counter a 3rd level spell" crowd. Ravingdork, you are wrong.

[Kyaaadaa]

SO since I actually read Ravingdork's posts in their entirety, and he asked specifically for RAW, here is mine:

PRD wrote:

You “blink” quickly back and forth between the Material Plane and the Ethereal Plane and look as though you're winking in and out of reality at random. Blink has several effects, as follows.

Physical attacks against you have a 50% miss chance, and the Blind-Fight feat doesn't help opponents, since you're ethereal and not merely invisible. If the attack is capable of striking ethereal creatures, the miss chance is only 20% (for concealment).

You can 100% ready an action to attack a blinking creature as he enters the material plane, but since his spell effect has not ended, he is still entitled to the effects of the spell. I use this next part specifically to qualify this reasoning:

PRD wrote:

Any individually targeted spell has a 50% chance to fail against you while you're blinking unless your attacker can target invisible, ethereal creatures.

Any individual who can cast a targeted spell must have LoS and a valid target, thus the character blinking must have been in the Material Plane at the time of casting, otherwise the spell would fail... which it has a 50% chance to do. Since Blink does not state if this is because the Blinker winked out of existence before he completed his spell, or if the Blinker did so just as the spell was coming at him and missed, it would assume that its probably a combination of both, leading back to my previous post: an attack aimed a Blinker is still doomed to fail 50% of the time by mere random chance.