Ready Action VS Reality

[Spankinstein]

I had a situation occur in my last session DMing. A Bandit had a female prisoner and was bargaining for his freedom. I had him ready an action to take her life if the PCs made a move against him. PCs turn, the wizard casts sleep and the bandit succumbs to the spell. Girl saved.
That’s how I believe RAW the only way the scenario could have played out.
Was there any way the bandit could have made good on his threat RAW? Or is this where rules and reality collide. Should I have created a contest between the wizard PC and the bandit to see who acts first? Would that set a bad precedent?

[Man_Over_Game]

I had a situation occur in my last session DMing. A Bandit had a female prisoner and was bargaining for his freedom. I had him ready an action to take her life if the PCs made a move against him. PCs turn, the wizard casts sleep and the bandit succumbs to the spell. Girl saved.
That’s how I believe RAW the only way the scenario could have played out.
Was there any way the bandit could have made good on his threat RAW? Or is this where rules and reality collide. Should I have created a contest between the wizard PC and the bandit to see who acts first? Would that set a bad precedent?

You just gotta be careful about using combat mechanics in all scenarios.

We use combat mechanics to keep things on the same level. To ensure balance and cohesiveness amidst all the chaos. With too much chaos, tactics break down. DnD players like tactics, thus the combat rules.

But that's all they should be for. What you're describing isn't really "tactics", but rather a dramatic narrative event. Combat and narrative don't HAVE to be separate, but the mechanics DO. You do not use Speed to determine how much shopping you can do in a day. You do not use the Cover rules to determine what shops or people you can find. You should not use mechanic specific terms for determining the events of something that happens out of combat or when tactics are not relevant.

For something like this, I'd probably say it's a contest using Initiative, with the bandit having Advantage (I mean, his knife is on her throat, he has the Advantage, so to speak). Not because Initiative is a valid mechanic for determining who's turn goes first (once again, we want to avoid using strict combat rules when it comes to non-tactical events), but because Initiative already is representative of someone's reaction time. No point in creating a new mechanic/attribute to determine the same thing Initiative already does. RAW doesn't cover this with the Ready action, but it does cover it with the rules on ability checks and contests. Ready only works when combat (and initiative) are relevant, just keep in mind that we only use Initiative, Turns, and Rounds as representations for un-pausing, fluid, 6 second chunks of chaotic combat.

Turns and Rounds are an unfortunate necessity in order to make the game tactical, and not something you should base your narrative around.

Similarly, Chess was used to imitate war. It does not make a good substitute for it, though.

[Great Dragon]

MoG strikes again!!

LoL😎

[Spankinstein]

Thanks. As a PC and DM I want to be consistent and play by the rules as much as possible.

[Chronos]

In order for the wizard to cast Sleep, he has to mumble some words and wave his arms around. There's going to be some time while he's doing that, when the bandit can see him doing that, before the spell actually goes off. Would the bandit interpret that as "making a move against him"? If he's ever had any experience with spellcasters, probably. So his readied action goes off, he attacks the hostage, and does a dagger's worth of damage to her (possibly an auto-crit, depending on just how much he has her at his mercy).

[The Big Bear]

The bandit would have done something had he noticed the wizard casting. As others have stated, this probably shouldn’t be played out turn by turn, although it is certainly possible to play it out that way. What I would have done:

Me: “The bandit sees you lift your wand and begin to chant. He presses his dagger against her throat and reiterates ‘Knock it off or she dies!!’ What do you do?”

If the play states they continue casting, then they have a dead hostage on their hands and hopefully learn to use negotiation in the future.

[Aimeryan]

You can ready an action to occur when something else starts, thus completing the trigger before the action completes. In this case the ready action could have been something like 'If they start to take a hostile action against me I attack the prisoner'.

It is something that has came up before and been strongly discussed; its too late for me to find the thread and link it, unfortunately.

[Hail Tempus]

Was there any way the bandit could have made good on his threat RAW? Or is this where rules and reality collide. Should I have created a contest between the wizard PC and the bandit to see who acts first? Would that set a bad precedent?There’s already a contest to determine who acts first- it’s called rolling for initiative. If the wizard had decided he wanted to cast sleep on the bandit, everyone involved should have rolled for initiative and the confrontation would have gone from there.

Neither PCs nor NPCs should be allowed to ready an action outside of combat. In the scenario you described, if initiative hadn’t been rolled yet, what’s to prevent the wizard PC from readying an action to cast sleep as soon as the bandit starts to kill the hostage?

[NaughtyTiger]

From your description, it sounds like you were in narrative play, not in combat.

There is a lot of argument about:

do rounds exist outside of combat and initiative?
can you ready an action outside of combat and initiative?

after a lot of arguing, the forum has convinced me that the general answer it No to both.


DM options are:

as soon as wizard says, i will cast sleep , roll initiative... if the bandit gets higher init, the dagger fulfills its purpose. or wiz wins, casts sleep. or ranger wins, arrow to the forehead.
stay in narrative mode, bandit sees the wizard getting arcane, and stabs.
stay in narrative mode, let the players have their glory, wizard casts sleep first.

If you are the DM, and you want the players to save the girl, you can choose option 3.


Would that set a bad precedent?
Consistent is overrated, but being clear about which mechanics you will use for the current situation is key.

[Spankinstein]

We were still in rounds.

[Man_Over_Game]

We were still in rounds.

If combat rounds were still relevant, then I'd say it's up to the DM to determine whether or not a spell's components and gestures can be reacted to.

Technically, a Reaction Trigger only interrupts the trigger when it says it does (like with Shield), but otherwise takes place AFTER the trigger (like the Ready Action).

So there are a couple questions the DM (You) has to answer:


Is there a separation of the "Components" phase to the "Casting" phase of a spell? That is, can you act between after the Components are started, but before the spell is actually cast?
Can a Ready Action that requires split-second timing be able to interrupt the occurring trigger? (If I see someone, I cast my held Invisibility spell before they can see me)


If both of those are "No" (and it looks like that's the most RAW-correct answer from everything I know), then it's impossible to interrupt a spell with a Ready Action. Something like Counterspell can, only because of its special interrupt trigger.
If one of those are "Yes", then the bandit should have been able to react before the spell went off.

though, I'd say "Yes" to both. Ready Actions imply inherent risk, and often are a lot less bland than using Counterspell or spamming the "Attack Action" button. They're also usually suboptimal, since it means that a caster risks losing their spell, a martial character is only able to get one attack out of his Action, and it costs the user a Reaction. Lastly, it's often used for narrative purposes (like in your scenario). So to make my games less bland, I make the Ready Action fairly powerful.

If I don't want tactically/narratively boring combat, then I have to take measures to incentivize players to play the most fun way possible. To me, Ready Actions can do just that.

Ask yourself, was your conclusion satisfying? Sure, the players won, but what should have happened? I'm not trying to imply bias in any way, I'm just saying that this is something you should choose, not something that is worth blindly following the system for. 5e's developers are big on the idea of modifying the game to fit your table, and this might be a good example of doing so.

[Man_Over_Game]

this is a particularly bad example, cuz you are readying an action to cast a invisibility. per the rules, you have cast invisibility, but haven't "finished it"...

Still, the Ready Actions dictate that it takes place after the trigger. Even if you are 'holding' the spell, you still obey all timing rules of the Ready action. It's a bad example in the sense that the mechanics of the game aren't very supportive of it (as you spend the spell slot to only hold it for 6 seconds of gameplay) and that it doesn't work well in 5e, but thematically, it makes sense what you're TRYING to do.

Although, a better example is to Ready your action to shoot the hangman's noose when the executioner goes to release the trapdoor lever. The executioner would use his action to release the trapdoor, the "Use an Object" action isn't interrupted and resolves normally (since Readied actions don't interrupt their triggers), the hangman risks breaking his neck (due to the fact that falling is instantaneous), and now the archer can make his Readied Action against the rope.

[sophontteks]

The combat system doesn't support what the bandit wanted to do. But if you end combat, it would. Players can decide out of turn how to approach the situation, and if they want to act before the bandit they would have to roll initiative.

[NaughtyTiger]

The combat system doesn't support what the bandit wanted to do. But if you end combat, it would. Players can decide out of turn how to approach the situation, and if they want to act before the bandit they would have to roll initiative.

Please clarify.
It sounds like you are saying that for the bandit to ready an action, the DM has to end and restart combat.

[sophontteks]

Please clarify.
It sounds like you are saying that for the bandit to ready an action, the DM has to end and restart combat.
No, I'm saying that readying an action is not what the DM wants to do at all. Readying an action is a system for combat, and I'm saying to end combat entirely.

In the game the enemy has given up the fight and the DM wants to switch back to a narrative event. He could end initiative here. It no longer has a purpose anyway. The enemy is no longer fighting the characters. Combat is over. The DM would have an easier time playing out the narrative event without the combat rules, because the combat rules don't support this kind of event. The best a bandit can do is ready an action every time its his turn, while if played outside of combat he and the characters would be on equal footing if they choose to begin combat once more and finish the bandit off.

This could also be done with an opposed dex roll to see whether the bandit or the player acts first.

[Malifice]

I had a situation occur in my last session DMing. A Bandit had a female prisoner and was bargaining for his freedom. I had him ready an action to take her life if the PCs made a move against him. PCs turn, the wizard casts sleep and the bandit succumbs to the spell. Girl saved.
That’s how I believe RAW the only way the scenario could have played out.
Was there any way the bandit could have made good on his threat RAW? Or is this where rules and reality collide. Should I have created a contest between the wizard PC and the bandit to see who acts first? Would that set a bad precedent?

Your trigger should have been worded differently.

You can name any event as your trigger - it doesnt need to be an action.

'When the PCs commerce doing any act i interpret as hostile, i stab the princess.'

Wizard starts casting, readied action triggered, spell goes off after readied action.

[Tanarii]

Technically, a Reaction Trigger only interrupts the trigger when it says it does (like with Shield), but otherwise takes place AFTER the trigger (like the Ready Action).
That's the nub. It makes ruling an interrupt vs a reaction a bit iffy as a DM. (Edit: as in, what counts as the trigger that the Reday action occurs after.)

And players always seem to think the Ready action will interrupt.