The Wizard should have gotten his Emergency Force Shield because immediate actions occur before the action that you responded to.
Wizard casts Fireball.
Dweomercats use Dweomer Leap in response to Fireball.
Wizard uses Emergency Force Shield in response to Dweomer Leap.
Order of resolution:
Emergency Force Shield then Dweomer Leap then Fireball.
Put another way: Last in, first out.
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Is this quoted in a rule or FAQ somewhere?The Wizard should have gotten his Emergency Force Shield because immediate actions occur before the action that you responded to.
Wizard casts Fireball.
Dweomercats use Dweomer Leap in response to Fireball.
Wizard uses Emergency Force Shield in response to Dweomer Leap.Order of resolution:
Emergency Force Shield then Dweomer Leap then Fireball.Put another way: Last in, first out.
It doesn't need to be Achaeik just quoted the pertinent text.
It's the only way that makes sense, or else your immediate action isn't occurring immediately.
Most immediate actions occur in response to something else happening, but occur before that action happens. Such as the spell feather fall. You begin to fall but instead you cast the spell quickly and are no longer falling. If your immediate action occurred after you would have fallen to the ground before casting.
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Even the examples given in the Emergency Force Shield spell prove that you have to resolve the spell before you resolve the emergency, or else this happens:
GM: the ceiling collapses. You take damage from falling rocks, in fact, so much damage that you die.
Player: Nope, I use an immediate action to cast Emergency Force Shield. Now all those rocks make a pretty little dome around my force shield.
GM: Yeah, well, that immediate action happens AFTER the rocks kill you, so your corpse is inside that pretty little dome of rocks.
Player: ...
So the immediate action to cast this spell will go first. If it doesn't go first, then there's no reason to cast it because you have already been affected by whatever the emergency is (falling rocks, flood, pouncing dweomercats, or whatever).
Or another way to look at it, if you already take damage from whatever the problem is, then you don't even need an immediate action; you might as well just cast "Non-Emergency Force Field" on your regular turn, if you survived.
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I never thought Pathfinder would have to use the stack.
I thought everyone just used the stack because it was the logical approach.
If you think of using immediate actions before the actions that triggered them even happen, that makes things kinda... impossible. Better to think of immediate actions (or any type of interrupt actions) as actions that happen after the triggering actions started to happen, but before the triggering actions are concluded/finished.
So, if an enemy trips you and you have an immediate actions that prevents you from falling prone, it's not like the tripping action never happen. Better to think the trip action did happen, but before you hit the ground, you used your immediate action that prevented you from falling prone. The triggering actions start to happen, but are interrupted before they are concluded/completed.
The GM ruled that the immediate actions went in order, first to last, which resulted in the Dweomercats getting full round of attacks before the wizard got the chance to cast Emergency Force Shield. Can someone point us to an official ruling on timings of multiple immediate actions in the same round?
I think your GM was wrong.
Immediate actions are interrupt actions, like AoO.
The Mage used Fireball.
Interrupt: The Dweomercats interrupts the fireball action. The Dweomer Leap goes before the fireball.
Interrupt: The Mage interrupts the Dweomer Leap action. The Emergency Force Shield goes before the Dweomer Leap.
And this goes on until someone runs out of interrupt actions.
Immediate Action
A few spells and abilities are immediate actions, which means they can be used during another creature’s turn, possibly interrupting that creature mid-action. When an immediate action is taken, resolve it, then continue with any action that was interrupted. If that activity is no longer valid, the interrupted creature’s action is wasted. If you use an immediate action when it’s not your turn, you give up your next turn’s swift action. If you use an immediate action during your own turn, it uses your swift action for that turn. Below are some examples of common immediate actions.
Relevant part bolded.
Yeah, when an immediate action interrupts an immediate action, the most recently declared immediate action occurs first.
Another way to look at it is with Feather Fall.
1 - Gravity readies an action to accelerate any free-floating object at a rate of 500'/round towards the ground.
2- Hill Giant #5 bullrushes you off a 150' ledge. The DM smiles eagerly, gathering up a fistful of dice.
3 - You say "oh, wait, I cast Feather Fall as an immediate action!", thereby interrupting gravity's readied action.
4 - Feather Fall is resolved, gravity's readied action resumes, only now it pulls you towards the ground much slower and gentler.
5 - DM frowns, knowing that gravity won't get XP and will complain about his class not being able to defeat CR 1 wizards.