Secret casting of Spell Like abilities

[Albions_Angel]

Hi all,

Just a quick scenario I wondered about. Spell Like Abilities have no components, focuses, etc. So there should be no visible sign of their casting, even if the casting time is 1 round or longer. Specifically, if I had a Dryad holding a party at arrow-point, she could cast Deep Slumber and until it took effect (next round) the party would be none the wiser. She could then enter initiative normally.

On the other hand, she couldnt ready to fire the bow when the first person fell asleep. As she cant ready an action and cast a spell in the same round, right? At least, not a 1 round or full round spell.

[Crake]

On one hand, SLAs always have a cast time of 1 standard action (or the base casting time if it's lower) unless otherwise stated, so the aformentioned deep slumber would only be a casting time of 1 standard action, so you've got that going for you. On the other hand, SLAs do provoke attacks of opportunity, so there must be some kind of recognizable effort or concentration involved. Arguably, this can however be negated with a defensive casting concentration check, which is how I run it in my game: If you can pass a defensive casting check, you can use an SLA even mid conversation and nobody would be any the wiser that you used any kind of magic.

[Jeraa]

Hi all,

Just a quick scenario I wondered about. Spell Like Abilities have no components, focuses, etc. So there should be no visible sign of their casting, even if the casting time is 1 round or longer. Specifically, if I had a Dryad holding a party at arrow-point, she could cast Deep Slumber and until it took effect (next round) the party would be none the wiser. She could then enter initiative normally.

On the other hand, she couldnt ready to fire the bow when the first person fell asleep. As she cant ready an action and cast a spell in the same round, right? At least, not a 1 round or full round spell.

Spell-like abilities and spells with no components (either naturally or removed with metamagic) still provoke an attack of opportunity when used. So there is still something there to indicate casting is being done, though the rules don't indicate what.

Taking a Ready action is a Standard action, so you usually can't cast a spell in the same round as you ready an action. Though any spell that has a shorter casting time (move action, free action, immediate action) could still be done.

You also need to remember the order of actions when using a Ready action. It depends on how your DM reads the rules.


Readying an Action

You can ready a standard action, a move action, or a free action. To do so, specify the action you will take and the conditions under which you will take it. Then, any time before your next action, you may take the readied action in response to that condition. The action occurs just before the action that triggers it. If the triggered action is part of another character’s activities, you interrupt the other character. Assuming he is still capable of doing so, he continues his actions once you complete your readied action. Your initiative result changes. For the rest of the encounter, your initiative result is the count on which you took the readied action, and you act immediately ahead of the character whose action triggered your readied action.

Some read that as "before your next turn", others read it literally as "before your next action". The latter means that if you first Ready an action (as a standard action), then take a Move action (or any other action type), you automatically lose your Ready action as it can no longer happen "before your next action".