Rules Questions about the definition of activities and the ready action.

[Nyehhehhehheh]

So from what I've read in the player core "single actions" are defined anything that uses the "1 action symbol" or takes one action for that matter. But on page Player Core pg. 414 it explains single actions and activities as two seperate types of actions, implying that an action is either a single action, or an activity, regardless of the action costs.

Cast a spell is clearly defined as an activity too, right? Despite some spells only requiring a single action.

Are there two definitions of a "single action" or am I just overthinking it?

The ready action says you can only ready a single action, and I'm not sure if that refers to the action cost, or the type of action you can prepare.

[Errenor]

Nobody really knows, it's a mess.
But most I suppose just count all of the terms as more or less synonyms for single action activities/actions.
And so Ready can be used with anything which takes 1 action.
There are (or were?) people who are more restrictive about it, but personally I don't see any sense in it.

[TheFinish]

You can Ready anything that costs 1 Action or a Free Action (as long as the free action doesn't already have a trigger) so you can ready 1 Action spells even though technically Cast a Spell is an "activity".

[Ascalaphus]

IMO there's insufficient evidence that "action" and "activity" were really meant to be strongly separated concepts. It mostly gets used as if actions were a bit shorter and simpler and activities take a bit longer. But there are two-action things that get called actions and one-action activities with multiple sub-actions.

If it was really intended that they were strongly separate, in order to make it function for some important piece of game balance, then they needed to spell it out way more explicitly.

If the distinction is really important, it can't be this vague.

[Finoan]

It really is a mess. Ready isn't even the biggest culprit here.

Ready wrote:

You prepare to use an action that will occur outside your turn. Choose a single action or free action you can use, and designate a trigger...

The Summoner's ability Act Together is.

Act Together wrote:

You and your eidolon act as one. Either you or your eidolon takes an action or activity using the same number of actions as Act Together, and the other takes a single action. For example, if you spent 2 actions to Act Together, you could cast burning hands (2 actions) and your eidolon could Strike (1 action), or your eidolon could use its Breath Weapon (2 actions) and you could Stride (1 action).

This lets you each use separate exploration activities like Avoid Notice as you travel.

If the 'single action' half of Act Together isn't compatible for using 1-action activities, then the Summoner isn't able to cast their 1-action cantrips like Boost Eidolon with it. Which IMHO falls pretty heavily into the 'doesn't work as intended' and 'problematic repercussions' category.

[Trip.H]

Another annoying angle to this issue is that there are actions, and then there are actions.

The concept of an action as "things you do," versus the resource of your 3A actions per turn. Really should not have been the same word.

As far as Activities go, they seem to be chains of one or more actions, committed to all up front.

My best definition really is "An activity is a special type of action, one that initiates a chain of one or more other actions. Activities often use special text to modify these actions, which are referred to as subordinate actions."

__________________

What is absolutely asinine about Cast a Spell being an apparent exception, due to being a single thing you do, but is called an activity...
is that after studying this issue a few times, I'm 90% sure the dev called Cast a Spell an activity because it is multiple "actions", as in the 2A resource-actions.

So, you have two fundamentally different "multiple actions" way to gain the "activity" moniker.

Things of any _A cost that chain multiple actions together, like a 1A [Skirmish Strike] = [Strike] + [Step], means that it is "an activity."

Any anything that is 2A and up is also "an activity" because it costs multiple As-as-resource.

No, I'm not kidding, and yes, holy shit is that f#!!ing dumb and confusing.
(and it's not even true all the time! 1A spells exist, FFS, ugh)

__________________

I really hope I am wrong on this one. If anyone has seen a single 2A+ ability be called "an action" instead of an activity, please let me know.

[Trip.H]

Finoan wrote:

Thankfully, that Act Together text says "spends" an action, so we can know it is talking about the other "action" that folks here often call "A" as in the resource.

I can only think the RaI of "single action" means 1A, and is not intended to be language banning activities.

____________

There's also the unintuitive manner in which all activities are actions, but not all actions are activities.
This is the other "action" meaning, the "things you do" version of the term.

An activity is a sub-type of action, one denoted by that action being composed of one or more other actions.

Because of this, "single action" can still allow one to perform an activity.
The text would need to call out activities as being disallowed to prevent them.