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Here's what I'm thinking of implementing in my game:
1) ALL prepped actions go off just before their trigger (as they traditionally have before PF).
2) If the trigger was a spell being cast and it has a cast time of 1 action, then it still goes off, but AFTER the prepped action (assuming the caster is not dropped). If the casting time is longer than 1 action, it is interrupted and fails.
Now THAT would put 1-action spells in the same boat with guns without ruining prepped actions. Spellcasters would not be interrupted constantly, but the function of prepped actions is preserved. Like a gunman I'm holding a prepped action on, telling him to 'drop it', he can still shoot (or cast) but only if he survives my prepped action first.
What do you think?
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Starfinder made some deliberate choices about concentration and interruption. To summarize:
* You lose concentration if you get damaged by an attack that targeted your AC.
* You lose concentration if you take damage from an effect you failed a save against.
* As a consequence, sources of damage that don't grant a saving throw and don't target AC (like Magic Missile, or a Bleed condition) could never interrupt a spell.
* Ready actions that aren't purely defensive go off after their trigger. So they can't interrupt spells. You can't ready a spell, grenade or gun to interrupt spellcasting.
* Attacks of opportunity do go off before the offending spell is complete, so they can interrupt them. In fact, almost nothing else easily interrupts spells.
* There's no concentration check anymore to try to salvage your spells, and there's no defensive casting.
* All touch range spells have text saying they don't provoke, so they're pretty much uninterruptable.
It took me a while to understand what you wanted to achieve. As I understand it, you don't really want to change the chances of a spell being interrupted by a smidgen of damage.
Rather, you want to be able to say, to either a spellcaster or a gunman "if you do one more offensive thing, I'll shoot you first". Basically being able to force surrender of someone at low enough HP that one more attack could kill them them.
Since they're not helpless, it's just a threat: I'll try to shoot you if you do the thing I don't want you to do. And I'll try to damage you so hard that you can't complete the thing.
It keeps the spellcaster and the gunman in the same place: both of them can try to chance it and if your shot doesn't kill them, they get to complete their action.
That's an interesting new spin, I could get behind that.
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Thanks much. I really do suspect what they were trying to do is:
- Get rid of cumbersome concentration rolls
- But then spellcasters get spells ruined too easily
- So to fix it we'll make this distinction between offensive/defensive prepared actions.
But I don't think they've realized yet that this breaks the entire purpose of prepared actions: watch for something and do x if they try to make a move (a privilege I've earned by winning initiative).
Like you said, you can have an overt "drop it or else" situation. Or, you could be watching from a distance, waiting for someone to run between two pillars and shoot them when they go for it.
See - that was another important function of the prepared action: to get around the weird quantized nature of turn-based combat. Otherwise, I can run between two pillars on my turn, exposing myself and yet you can't shoot me as I pass because 'it's not your turn'.
I don't think they knew how profound altering prepared actions was. The solution I'm presenting here accomplishes their aim to let spellcasters get off their 1-action spells and still maintains the integrity of prepped actions.
It also makes a spellcaster think, well I better be quick on the draw and have incentive to add to initiative just like anyone else.
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I don't think we need more incentives for boosting initiative. It's already good to be shooting first. All other things being equal, the guy shooting first is the guy that first downs the other guy so he doesn't get shot back.
It's slightly less important that Pathfinder 1 where winning initiative allows casters to lay down crippling battlefield control - I'm not sad to see that diminished a lot.
I think some of your problems come from deciding how granular to interpret ready triggers. Can you ready for someone "moving" or "moving past this line"? That makes a difference. If you ready for "him getting within reach" then you can effectively strike back against someone doing hit and run tactics. If you can only ready for "him moving" then you can't strike back against someone with Spring Attack.
My own interpretation is that you can ready for things that have a clear game mechanical meaning. You can ready for movement through specific spaces (just like moving through specific spaces can trigger AoOs), but you can't ready for "he starts casting a spell but hasn't finished yet". Basically, movement is more granular than casting a spell. Casting a spell is one indivisible event, movement is a series of steps. Firing shot from a gun can't be interrupted, but you could have a ready action go off in between the first and second parts of a full attack because they're mechanical distinct sub-events.
This clearly requires some GM calling. But under my interpretation, you don't need to revise ready action rules to shoot someone running from cover to cover, you can already do that. "When he leaves cover" is a valid trigger, and the ready action would resolve before he reaches the next cover.
One thing I would watch out for when fiddling with ready action rules. Spellcasting was clearly not intended to be all that interruptable. Touch spells don't provoke, it would be weird if you could disrupt them with a readied action if you by design can't disrupt them with an attack of opportunity. If readied actions can interrupt actions that attacks of opportunity can't, then I think you've overstretched the power of ready actions.
You can ready for movement through specific spaces (just like moving through specific spaces can trigger AoOs), but you can't ready for "he starts casting a spell but hasn't finished yet". Basically, movement is more granular than casting a spell. Casting a spell is one indivisible event, movement is a series of steps. Firing shot from a gun can't be interrupted, but you could have a ready action go off in between the first and second parts of a full attack because they're mechanical distinct sub-events.
But until Starfinder, prepared actions always happened first. So, "firing a shotgun" is a great example. "If he tries to fire his shotgun I will shoot." And you shot because you had the jump (initiative) on him and were already holding an action. That is the way it has always worked until Starfinder decided to complicate everything in order to do away with concentration rolls, but not have spellcasters be certainly interrupted.
Movement is an action. Firing a weapon is an action. Each has a series of steps, even if one doesn't involve moving a miniature.
What I'm proposing is traditional prepped action - and treating 1-action spells like 'attack with weapon'. Seems to work perfectly to achieve their aims of 1-action spells not being squashed.
If its such a big deal, why not just get rid of spell interruption entirely? That way, you could have triggered actions all day without breaking the game. You'd still have the time travel problem, potentially, but at least you wouldn't need to come up with elaborate exceptions.
That's basically what I'm proposing. Spells are not interrupted and prepared actions work as they always have (go off first).
The only caveat is, if the spell has a casting time longer than 1-action, it can be interrupted (most used in combat are 1-action). That's just because (a) the designers are obviously not meaning to protect those spells from interruption, and (b) it makes sense.
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About your thing on 'time travel'. It's just basically saying, I've got the jump on you and my gun is aimed at you - now, if I see your hand start to go for your gun, or your foot for the door, etc - I am in an advantaged spot where it will be easy to shoot you first. That's pretty realistic and what "stickemup" has always been about in real life.
At our table we have always played it that a ready action goes off immediately when triggered. Additionally I allow very specific and precise triggers such as "when he starts to cast" or "if he does anything other than drop his weapon" or "if he reaches for the shiny red button".
To me and those at my table that is the whole point of a readied action. The PC or NPC is using their turn to prepare to stop/ hinder another PC or NPC from doing something in the near future.
This has not caused a single problem at our table, as it is how we interpret and implement the rule. Everyone knows the rule and everyone plans their turns and actions accordingly.
In no shape manner or form has it screwed over the casters in our game.
I am thinking that I may allow the Defensive Casting Feat to also add it's +2 verses readied attacks.