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View Full Version : (PF) help me simplify ready action



Kasbark
2012-09-24, 04:27 PM
Long story short, i'm working on streamlining and speeding up combat, and the turn has come to ready action. I think ready action adds some interresting tactics to combat, but it's by no means fast and easy to use.

Below is what i've written so far as replacement for the stock ready action.

Readying an action always takes up a standard action, regardless of what action you ready.
When reading an action, you select one of the actions below. At any point before your next turn, when the conditions of the action is met, you declare that you have a readied action you wish to take. You immediately take your action, even though it's your opponents turn and he is in the middle of the action that triggered your readied action. You do not have to take your readied action the first time it's triggered, but doing so runs the risk of loosing it, if your trigger is not met again before your next turn.
You can take a 5-foot step as part of your readied action, but only if you don't otherwise move any distance during the round.
Readying an action does not change your initiative.

Ready vs Approach – You ready an action to when an enemy gets within reach of you. As soon as an enemy gets within reach of you, you can make a single attack at your highest base attack bonus. You can even apply a Combat maneuver to this attack if you are normally able to make one. If you ready this action with a ranged weapon, enemies count as triggering this any time they move.

Ready vs Spellcasting – you ready an action to attack whenever an enemy you can attack begins casting a spell. When this action is triggered you make a single attack at your highest base attack bonus.

Ready Counterspell – You ready to Counterspell an enemy spellcaster. This action triggers when any enemy begins casting a spell. Make a spellcraft check (DC 15 + spell level) If you succeed you can automatically counterspell the enemy by casting the same spell as him. In this case neither spell takes effect. If you fail the roll, or are not able to cast the same spell as the enemy you can also attempt to counterspell with a Dispell Magic, in which case you must succeed a caster level check (DC 11 + enemy caster level)

I'm looking for feedback on potential problems with this change, and additional actions combatants need to be able to ready.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for replying!

Waargh!
2012-09-24, 08:06 PM
I say be more flexible when it comes to performing a weapon or natural attack with a Standard Action. Simply let the player do whatever they want at any point of time as long as they announce that they are reserving a weapon attack:
-Before or after an enemy within range moves, you can attack
-Before or after an enemy casts a spell you can attack
-Before or after an enemy does anything else, you can attack
-If you haven't used the action by the beginning of your turn, you can use it prior of anything else

If it is a melee action and you don't move on your current turn, allow a 5-ft step as well.

To use a spell or another special ability you have to ready it as normal.

Effectively
a) For melee it makes it faster and more flexible as you just ready the attack and then can decide according.
b) Gives an extra edge on ranged-based combat as to control the area against casters
c) You don't penalize if the situation is not right, making it hard to play or more rare. You want to protect your fragile ally against that evil sneaky cleric while fighting a big bad brut. It makes sense to keep an eye on him and when that evil sneaky cleric approaches and shoots "Harm" you smack her. If she doesn't approach, you still smack the big bad brut you were fighting. You essentially sacrificed your full-round action and the option to smack the brut first, so this sounds fair to me