I'm playing a commander and in last night's game I was first in initiative in two combats. RAW, it seems that since none of my allies have had their turns yet in order to get access to reactions, therefore none of my tactics that utilised their reactions could be used.
The RAW about using reactions before your turn seems to include 'GM discretion' but has there been any official ruling on this? At present, it seems like winning initiative is actually disadvantageous for a commander, which surely is an oversight...?
I'd love to hear whether anyone else had come across this one. (Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere, but search seems to be broken. I tried google but the stupid AI overviews diagree with themselves and I couldn't find an answer to this or even Battlecry errata.)
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AI is not going to have much worthwhile to say about Pathfinder. Two editions, lots of online disagreements, people discussing impractical RAW for the fun of it, and more discussion about the competition means that there is a lot of things that can make AI even less reliable than usual.
"The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens."
Generally, I would assume that if the party isn't ambushed and the Commander could be using their Warfare Lore for initiative, the party will typically have reactions available. If not, Commander can give one out for free.
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I'm playing a commander and in last night's game I was first in initiative in two combats. RAW, it seems that since none of my allies have had their turns yet in order to get access to reactions, therefore none of my tactics that utilised their reactions could be used.
The RAW about using reactions before your turn seems to include 'GM discretion' but has there been any official ruling on this? At present, it seems like winning initiative is actually disadvantageous for a commander, which surely is an oversight...?
I'd love to hear whether anyone else had come across this one. (Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere, but search seems to be broken. I tried google but the stupid AI overviews diagree with themselves and I couldn't find an answer to this or even Battlecry errata.)
The "official ruling" is GM discretion. That's it.
The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens.
RAW, you can't use reactions before your turn unless your GM says you can, and your GM can say you can for pretty much any reason they want.
For example: At my tables, players can use reactions unless they are ambushed or otherwise caught by surprise. I assume that experienced adventurers opening a door in a dungeon are ready for trouble and thus they can react to it.
An example of where they wouldn't would be if they straight up get caught by an ambush they had no idea was there, or they're in a social setting and combat suddenly happens (ie: during a diplomacy moment in a city someone attacks them and they didn't realize it was going to happen).
So my method is "you can use reactions unless I say otherwise (or you're a Guardian)", which just shifts the default. Another GM can run it so you can't use reactions until your turn barring a special circumstance (or you're a Guardian). Both of those are RAW.
Thus if you're playing a Commander you need to talk to your GM about how they're running this. If they're not going to let allies react to your tactics and you win initiative, you may want to delay or do something else.
Personally I think my way is more player friendly, especially for Commanders. But a GM doing it the other way is still fully legal RAW. So you need to just talk to them and get on the same page about how they're going to run it.
If not, Commander can give one out for free.
Just to note that this doesn't work RAW:
The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens.
The rule is "can use reactions", not "gets a reaction". It doesn't matter how many the Commander gives you if you're not allowed to use reactions: you're still not allowed to use reactions.
The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens.The rule is "can use reactions", not "gets a reaction". It doesn't matter how many the Commander gives you if you're not allowed to use reactions: you're still not allowed to use reactions.
The rules are inconsistent on this.
Counterexample: Guardian's Ever Ready ability.
You always gain a reaction whenever you roll initiative for combat, but you can use it only for reactions from guardian feats or class features.
A GM saying, "Sure, you always have your reaction after you roll initiative, but you still aren't allowed to actually use it," doesn't feel like the GM is playing in good faith. Even though that is what the RAW that you quoted says.
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Oh, and to be clear, I do agree with the overall ruling that the game rules have explicitly set it up so that the GM has to decide at the start of each and every encounter if the PCs get their reaction (or can use their reaction) before the start of their first turn.
So there isn't going to be any "official ruling" on that to create a general rule for reactions at the start of encounters. There already is - but sometimes people just don't like that the general rule is that the GM decides each time.
If not, Commander can give one out for free.Just to note that this doesn't work RAW:
The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens.The rule is "can use reactions", not "gets a reaction". It doesn't matter how many the Commander gives you if you're not allowed to use reactions: you're still not allowed to use reactions.
Sure, but "the Commander gave me a reaction" is a really good reason for the GM to allow it even just looking at RAW.
The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens.The rule is "can use reactions", not "gets a reaction". It doesn't matter how many the Commander gives you if you're not allowed to use reactions: you're still not allowed to use reactions.The rules are inconsistent on this.
Counterexample: Guardian's Ever Ready ability.
You always gain a reaction whenever you roll initiative for combat, but you can use it only for reactions from guardian feats or class features.A GM saying, "Sure, you always have your reaction after you roll initiative, but you still aren't allowed to actually use it," doesn't feel like the GM is playing in good faith. Even though that is what the RAW that you quoted says.
Yes, it's a classic "RAW is a troll ruling" situation, isn't it?
Oh, and to be clear, I do agree with the overall ruling that the game rules have explicitly set it up so that the GM has to decide at the start of each and every encounter if the PCs get their reaction (or can use their reaction) before the start of their first turn.
So there isn't going to be any "official ruling" on that to create a general rule for reactions at the start of encounters. There already is - but sometimes people just don't like that the general rule is that the GM decides each time.
Yeah, agreed. Though the rule is "no, unless the GM says so". It's certainly one of the vaguer areas of RAW in terms of how much table variance it can have.
I just changed it in my game to "yes, unless the GM says so, and here's a couple of examples of when that might happen." Which means everyone knows what to expect and that's worked pretty well for us.
Yes, it's a classic "RAW is a troll ruling" situation, isn't it?
For that particular example scenario: yeah, that definitely would be a troll RAW ruling.
Yeah, agreed. Though the rule is "no, unless the GM says so". It's certainly one of the vaguer areas of RAW in terms of how much table variance it can have.
I just changed it in my game to "yes, unless the GM says so, and here's a couple of examples of when that might happen." Which means everyone knows what to expect and that's worked pretty well for us.
That is similar to how I run it. Lacking the ability to use reactions before your first turn feels like the replacement for a surprise round. So if the party is somewhere that they are expecting trouble (dungeon delving and the like), then they are not generally going to be surprised when the expected trouble does happen and will have their reaction available immediately by default. Only being ambushed successfully would change that. For places where they are feeling more safe (in town, or walking along the king's highway where they passed a guard patrol 5 minutes ago) then I might switch up the default to be that being attacked would be more unexpected.
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This is an instance where I am glad they didn’t try to get too gritty with rules for when characters have reactions before their first turn. As a GM, I tend to be pretty granular with the decision, and it often depends on the exact reactions the players have, what skills were used for initiative and what exploration activities lead into combat.
For example, I usually don’t let a character take a reactive strike on the first round before their turn, especially if they rolled perception on initiative. Even if they were scouting or searching, they got caught out.
If a character with shield feats has a special reaction and is raising a shield as an exploration activity, I’ll generally allow all those types of reactions.
For the commander tactics, I think it is still so situational I don’t really have a baseline yes or no. I don’t gotcha players with the decision, but I have said no to prevent players from doing really bad ideas that I feel like the commander character would no better than to be trying to set up.
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Yeah, agreed. Though the rule is "no, unless the GM says so".
It's not, though? The rules genuinely don't imply a default "no". The GM needs to tell you yes or no depending on the situation.
"The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens."
If anything, "depending on the situation in which the encounter happens" would suggest that rolling initiative while already aware of the enemies and able to act would usually mean being able to use reactions.
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Also many Tactics do not require Reactions to be used.
And the Commander can just Delay.
Going first is not that good for Martials actually. Which also means Martials do not actually need to invest into Initiative-boosting effects BTW.
This is what I came to say.
It's true that Commanders aren't really rewarded for high initiative.
But also keep in mind the Commander's class feature basically just replaces using Perception with Warfare Lore, which advances more quickly than Perception for the class.
It's never bad to have high initiative, because you can always delay.
But I would say in general, as a GM, I don't allow reactions before a characters first turn, but there are exceptions (some abilities primarily or only make sense to be used as a reaction to starting combat).
Thanks everyone for all the replies, lots of food for thought there and some great nuance I hadn;r appreciated. I'm going to put my head together with the other two in my group who GM and try and come up with a consistent house rule we can use across all our games. :)