So there you are, ear pressed to the door. You aced your Perception check, and so you know that there are horrible fluttering things on the far side of the portal. Unfortunately, because your fighter has the Stealth of a garbage truck, those things also know that you're preparing to burst through the door. That means surprise rounds are out of the question. And as we all know, you don't get readied actions outside of initiative.
Now obviously, high level PCs have options ranging from "teleport" to "passwall." But when you're just starting out at level 1-2, how do you handle this mess? Faced with an ominous portal, knowing that an ambush is on the other side, and with no other way forward, what's the best way to tactically take the chokepoint without dying?
A kineticist's Elemental Whispers wild talent is perfect for this sort of thing. An infinitely expendable scout is perfect. The spiritualist's phantom is also great, the thing can just pop it's insubstantial head through doors and tell you what's up.
2 levels of water dancer monk or kineticist, or 1 level of spiritualist or death druid and you're all set for ignoring standard ambushes.
0-lvl Spells
Open/Close
Mage Hand
Ghost Sound
Level 1 Spells
Grease
Open and Shut
Hold Portal
Summon Monster I
Summon Minor Monster
Incendiary Runes
Glue Seal
Color Spray
Hypnotism
Sleep
Burning Hands
Cause Fear
Before combat, see if you can open the door just a smidge and cast Grease, Color Spray, Hypnotism, Sleep, Cause Fear, or Burning Hands on the other side before you open the door and charge in. Alternatively, you can open the door just a smidge and cast Ghost Sound behind them as a distraction before you charge in-- You can make Ghost Sound sound like 4 Humans per lvl, and at level 4 you can mimic a Roaring Lion.
If you want to wait for them to charge through, Summon Monster or Minor Monster right on the doorway, or you can put Grease/Incendiary Runes/Glue Seal at the doorway too.
obscuring mist or smokestick at door, open door, let mist move into room or toss more smokesticks (maybe a thunderstone as well if you're really feeling SWAT-y) to allow entry into room without suffering AoO and helping with any readies attacks. Move out of concealment and jump opponents as usual.
I'd also allow any of the distracting actions to count as making a diversion to hide, possibly allowing stealthy character to enter the room under stealth, again helping prevent AoO and readied attacks, though of course unless they find cover inside the room it would end then.
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Enrage them with flavorful comments about their circumstances of birth, until they come to the cokepoint. Where you fight them one by one.
Starting with the easiest point. You can take a readied action outside of initiative. A round is just a gameplay convenience. If you were to say 'I aim my bow at the door and prepare to shoot any creature that I can see through the doorway' then you have readied an action. It's up to the GM to decide whether initiative should be rolled at that point and for gameplay to slow down or whether to continue gameplay at the faster adventuring pace whilst the parry prepares itself.
Tactically it is much harder to be prescriptive because it depends on the party's make up and resources. Some general points though:
Unless you have an urgent need to progress then time is in your side and patience is a virtue. Go quiet for 5 minutes and listen to hear if sounds of activity resume and the enemy has come off alert.
The doorway is a killzone, you do not want to enter unless you have to and can be sure of making it into the room proper. You would be far better with missile fire and AoE weapons through the doorway and/or n:1 melee to creatures stood in the doorway.
If the door can open towards you then that is an advantage as you can control the cover and access it provides. If it opens away then you may wish to consider breaking the door from the hinges to deny your opponents the same advantage.
If you have moveable cover/obstacle, eg a table you may want to move that into a convenient location first.
Be careful when using caltrops and similar. The last thing you want is to find they're inhibiting your advance or retreat. Burning oil is better as it soon goes out. Similarly, be careful using obscuring spells or equipment for the same reasons. They may advantage you initially but may advantage the enemy later in the battle.
If you have a heavily armoured and tower shielded fighter.They may be useful as beach head cover moving through the doorway. Rather like infantry using a tank as mobile cover.
Try and make sure that you're not stood in front of the doorway when it is opened. You will be the focus of any enemy readied actions.
Starting with the easiest point. You can take a readied action outside of initiative. A round is just a gameplay convenience.
Naw man. There's a reason we roll initiative. It's to prevent players from saying "I ready to shoot as soon as I see a monster." This is fundamentally what initiative represents.
Readied Actions can only be performed as a Standard Action, which requires Initiative. If we’re out of Initiative, and you tell me you’re readying your bow to shoot the first monster, I’ll probably automatically allow you to act in a surprise round (barring a circumstance where you get ambushed from behind or something, then you’d have to make a Perc roll vs their stealth check), but you don’t get a “free attack” out of initiative from Readying an Action to “shoot the first monster I see”. It’ll be a surprise round, and you’ll be able to do act.
Starting with the easiest point. You can take a readied action outside of initiative. A round is just a gameplay convenience.Naw man. There's a reason we roll initiative. It's to prevent players from saying "I ready to shoot as soon as I see a monster." This is fundamentally what initiative represents.
Hugo is right. It goes both ways. The orcs behind the door are also readied to shoot whatever comes through. So you end up with a quite realistic situation where the door opens and there's a blizzard of arrows and spells in both directions. Nobody really has time to aim anything or pick a target, and (if the lighting is bad) someone just shot a crossbow into a painting or a Scorching Ray into a pillar. Perception rolls are a thing here, though it helps to be on home turf where you know that's a statue not a warrior.
Seriously, you should be in the initiative/combat timeframe as soon as there's any chance that there's a fight coming. If you've been confronted by a bunch of thugs in a dark alley demanding money, you're in combat time. Don't wait until someone takes the first swing.
The special point is that until people start actually moving, the initiative results aren't relevant and shouldn't be known by the players (lest it drive tactics). As such, you don't need to actually roll initiative at that point. But you can Ready. Doing so does rather tip your hand and might provoke a fight you didn't want (say, by winding up a spell or aiming a bow).
I'd agree that you can totally ready an action in this situation. You're telling me that there are enemies on the other side of the door, and that they're aware of me and I'm aware of them? That's combat.
Now if they're aware of me but not aware that I'm aware of them, that's a little trickier. Stealth (and maybe Bluff) could give me the surprise round as the enemy's ambush is in turn ambushed, but if we botch those rolls, we're back to everyone being aware of everyone.
At which point, everyone readies an action.
...which could be interpreted as everyone rolling Initiative, but I don't like that model for two reasons. The first is that everyone going off of readied actions potentially allows for a much more structured plan. If you know exactly what your allies are going do to and when they're going to do it, you can prepare accordingly.
Secondly, it allows for such plans on both sides to go awry. Readying an action for when the door opens has different advantages and disadvantages than readying an action for when you first see a foe, etc.
Hugo is right.Starting with the easiest point. You can take a readied action outside of initiative. A round is just a gameplay convenience.Naw man. There's a reason we roll initiative. It's to prevent players from saying "I ready to shoot as soon as I see a monster." This is fundamentally what initiative represents.
But he's not right. He's actually the opposite of right. He's wrong.
Have you rolled initiative? If not, then it's not combat. And readying an action is specifically an initiative action.
Here are ways to change when you act during combat by altering your place in the initiative order.
Okay, sure. But when does combat start? If there are two sides that wish each other harm, and both sides are aware of each other...that sounds like an Initiative roll to me.
Hugo is right.Starting with the easiest point. You can take a readied action outside of initiative. A round is just a gameplay convenience.Naw man. There's a reason we roll initiative. It's to prevent players from saying "I ready to shoot as soon as I see a monster." This is fundamentally what initiative represents.But he's not right. He's actually the opposite of right. He's wrong.
Have you rolled initiative? If not, then it's not combat. And readying an action is specifically an initiative action.
Here are ways to change when you act during combat by altering your place in the initiative order.
Despite your statement, it rather sounds like you agree with Mudfoot, Quixote and I. The game should be being played at a round by round rate with initiatives rolled but not revealed by the GM.
I'm specifically against the statement that you can ready actions outside of initiative. If this is a situation where combat has already begun then go ahead and ready actions. But a fighter walking down a corridor is not in combat. A guard who stands watch by a gate is not in combat. Someone waiting outside a Rope Trick spell is not in combat. None of those characters can ready actions.
The only thing you accomplish by readying actions during the villain's monologue is annoying the GM. Combat hasn't started yet. Who goes first is decided by initiative.
A character who has not yet acted during a combat is flat-footed, unable to react normally to the situation.
"Is my character still flat-footed?" That's what you need to ask yourself. (Disregarding Uncanny Dodge, obviously)
Being flat-footed doesn't mean that you are surprised or not aware of your opponents. Being flat-footed means that you haven't yet acted during combat, that you aren't dodging and jumping around in your square.If your GM decided that combat started the moment both sides heard the other beyond the door then ready away. If they're waiting for someone to break the line of sight before combat starts, then you can't ready actions.
But who decides that combat has started? GM fiat, or a specific action? If I as a player waiting outside the door take a full-round action such as Full Defence (achieving essentially nothing), am I in combat? And do I therefore roll initiative? Or suppose that two PCs each draw a weapon (a Move Equivalent action). Who goes first? Roll initiative!
Claiming that this is "combat time" (with initiative) and that isn't is entirely arbitrary and has little to do with actual fighting. And imposing that arbitrary distinction just causes problems like the one that prompted this thread.
One might argue that combat == initiative is RAW, but RAW does not necessarily make a good rule for all circumstances.
As for the flat-footed question: it should come down to whether you can reasonably be expected to be attacked in a relevant way (and are thus not FF). Again, RAW is a simplification that usually works, but not always. So if you're ready to face a charge from an ogre 30' away, you're not FF against him regardless of initiative. But you might well be FF against the goblins that just dropped out of a tree around you, as that's not what you were expecting.
To answer Wonderstell's question about the difference between sentry duty and readying an action is one has an immediate perceived threat and the other does not. There are scenarios, such as keeping a lookout whilst another party member performs a specific action, eg picking a lock that fall between the two. I houserule a concentration check of DC10 +1 per round after the 1st to maintain the readied action. A readied action state of alertness cannot be maintained for more than a few rounds.
Screw knocking, kick the door!
Grab the Rogue, then throw him kicking and screaming into the room...
Steal from the party, again, worm!
I guess I just automatically assumed that all creatures have a readied action to attack threats (or prey in the case of predators) at all times, including the PCs. Since EVERYONE has the action readied, you roll initiative to determine whose readied action goes off first.
If my players were like "Ok, Larry is going to cast Open/Close to open the door, and we've all got Readied actions to attack everything on the other side with a longbow, a heavy crossbow and a wand of Cause Light Wounds" I'd be like "Ok, cool; give me your initiatives. As the door opens you see three orcs, each with Orc Hornbows, waiting with Readied actions to murder anyone that opens their door."
I mean, isn't that how it works?
This is how I have handled it in the past... if everyone is readying an action, then we might as well just roll Initiative now.
In your example, Initiative order would go off exactly like any other normal round of combat with the single exception that everyone has already declared their intended actions for this first round of combat.
The difference between everyone with readied actions and rolling Initiative is that the turn order is much more predictable and that the triggers for those predetermined actions aren't guaranteed.
And I think the difference between being generally vigilant and having a readied action is the difference between being aware of your surroundings and having your hand on the bowstring, arrow nocked, focused on that one point that you've declared you'll loose on. It's definitely not something you can do all the time.
Maybe if you're tiptoeing down a corridor and there are some ominous noises coming from the other side of the door at the end of the hall. But not as just a regular part of your SOP as you trudge through the woods for ten hours a day for a couple weeks.
I don't think it qualifies as an ambush in literally any sense of the word, honestly. Stand off, maybe. A dual, perhaps. I generally just call these things encounters.
Bunch of orcs playing cards hear *something* on the other side of the door... roll some orc perceptions... that *something* sounds like it is wearing metal armor, it is NOT speaking orc, yet it IS speaking, so there might be more than one of *something*... ok guys, put down your cards, *something* is at the door...
Does this mean readied HornBows? Probably not. It means two orcs might have readied bows, and the third is walking towards the door to see what's up.
How many people ready actions at every noise? Must be exhausting.
There's a mechanic for "Readied Actions prior to combat" and that is the entire purpose of the Surprise Round mechanic. You have your weapon out, you're ready to strike/shoot, and you're fully anticipating combat. If they're fully aware of you, and you're fully aware of them, you still roll Initiative to see who goes first.
Imagine for a second that you're DMing a PvP tournament and it's a 64 man tournament in groups of 4 PC's (FFA-style 16 teams with 4 PC's per team) who are put into a Labyrinth/Maze-style dungeon with lots of corners and long, dark corridors-- how would you resolve all 64 of them stating that they have Readied Actions "I shoot/cast a spell on the first enemy I see" fairly between two PC groups that meet up in this dungeon?
There's no way you could have this scenario...
DM: "oh these 4 PC's get a free shot because they had Readied Actions out of combat, but so do the other 4 PC's on the opposing team"...
PC: "okay, who shoots first then?"
DM: "All 8 of you, just roll dice and attack! You all had readied actions!"
...and then say this was proper execution of the rules.
The Surprise Round mechanic is there for a reason, and it neatly resolves this issue via Initiative and with a "pre-combat combat round" where everyone gets to shoot, cast a spell, or move.
I think Ryse has it right. The party and the creatures on the other side of the door all have readied actions that are triggered when one of the party members opens the door. The only way to sort that fairly is to conduct the actions in initiative order.
My concentration houserule would come into effect if the party had spent several rounds preparing. One or more of the creatures could miss their readied action because their alertness level dropped. By the time they act events have moved on into the next round.