Overwatch Style / Vortex and Initiative issues

[Prof. Löwenzahn]

Hello community,

my group is planning a 4vs4 Arena mode (every player makes a team of 4 Lvl 9 PCs). My head is aching over the need to counter every possible build my opponents might come up with, but I think I got some awesome stuff against spellcasting.

It is basically an archer with the Overwatch Style feat chain, resulting in Overwatch Vortex (via multiclassing in Master of Many Styles Monk to get it without BAB requirement).

So what I am planning to do is ready 4 ranged attacks in our preparation time before I see the other PCs, triggering "when A/B/C/D starts casting a spell". I managed my damage output so they lose their spell on almost every hit, but now I have a question about the initiative stuff:

1. Let us say there are 4 casters in the opponent team, each try to cast, each of them gets interrupted. Does my Initiative go right before the last caster, meaning the other 3 casters may freely cast spells before I am able to ready again?

2. Now there are only 2 casters. I know I only need one shot to interrupt them, so I ready "when A casts", "when B casts", "when A casts a second time", "when B casts a second time". Both try to cast, get interrupted, my Initiative goes before B, but since I readied another shot I can interrupt A when it is his turn, shoving my Init before A, so B gets a try, but I also readied this. Legit?

3. First fight is over, now in the second combat my opponent already knows what I am up to and decides to ruin this plan. Initiative order is "Me", A, B, C, D. I ready 4 ranged attacks against each one casting a spell. A, B and C do other stuff, like trying to kill the Archer in melee. D casts a stupid cantrip or so, my Init goes down to D. A and B attack in melee, C casts a cantrip, I shoot once but cannot do anything else. Same happens next two rounds with B and A casting, so they locked me in my Overwatch Vortex for 4 rounds. Is this possible and is there any way to negate this possibility?

I find it quite difficult to get my head around this readying multiple attacks, since usually you ready only one action and if it does not trigger, you get your normal turn at your first Init place.

Thanks in advance.

[Blind Monkey]

Prof. Löwenzahn wrote:

(via multiclassing in Master of Many Styles Monk to get it without BAB requirement)

I think MoMS got nerfed so that you cannot do this anymore. It only ignores requirements for Style feats (which are now only #1 in the chain), so the main reason the archetype exists now is a 2 level dip to get fuse styles and pick up the first feats as bonus feats. But anyways, if you did have the feat:

1. I think you are right about the initiative, though if you use Overwatch every round your place in initiative will change every single round as you cycle through the other characters being the last one you hit.

2. Yes but technically you are maybe skipping your own turn in the second round and then ending with going before B, resulting in A getting a turn the next round before you go again before B.

(Personally I am thinking the initiative change rule is complicated and was a bad idea, but that is neither here nor there.)

3. If you are worried about this you can simply ready your action to "Shoot mans whenever they start to take a non-walking-around action" to make sure you get them every turn unless they don't take an action.

[James Risner]

MoMS doesn't skip prereq for non style feats in style chains.

[The Sideromancer]

An alternative would be to use special ammo to force concentration checks longer. Even if the bait the shot with a cantrip, they run into problems if they try to cast later, freeing your actions some.