I noticed something recently. The Extra Attack feature gives you an additional attack when you “take the Attack action on your turn.” I’d previously overlooked that “on your turn” clause because your turn is when you normally take the Attack action. But that’s not the case if you’re using the Ready action to take the Attack action during another combatant’s turn. Have other DMs been relying on this clause to limit Readied Attack actions to a single attack and I’m just late to the party?
The same “on your turn” clause exists in the rules text for a Dragonborn’s Breath Weapon trait, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me why a Dragonborn PC wouldn’t be able to Ready their Breath Weapon. The “Attack action on your turn” phrase appears again in the Great Weapon Master feat without an obvious reason why which turn the action takes place in is relevant. So I could see it being argued that the intent of the phrase isn’t to apply a limitation, but is to clarify it’s referring to the ‘Attack action’ rather than ‘an attack’ more generally. In that scenario, taking the Attack action when it wasn’t your turn would not have even been considered as a possibility.
It’s also worth considering that there is a lack of parity between PCs and monsters if this limitation is enforced, because nothing I’ve found in the rules prevents a monster from using Ready with a Multiattack action. So should neither monsters nor PCs be able to attack more than once when they use Ready? Should both be able to? Or is the disparity right and proper?
Have other DMs been relying on this clause to limit Readied Attack actions to a single attack and I’m just late to the party?
RAW a readied attack is only a single attack, though it's not a rule I'm super fond of. And yes, multiattack lacks explicit wording preventing readying it, though the discussion of multiattack in the monster manual indicates that its intended purpose is for creatures that get multiple attacks on their turn. I'm pretty sure this is a case of "most of the time we forget that ready even existed, we were trying to prevent multiple attacks with opportunity attacks".
As you're guessing, some traits, features, or feats only work on your turn when that wording appears in the rules. The classic example is indeed the Extra Attack feature.
It's also true you could define the Ready Action trigger to happen on your own turn, though that's not common.
Sorry, I forgot about Multiattack. I'd say it's not possible to Ready it, since using it requires the creature to take the Attack action.
Multiattack
Some creatures can make more than one attack when they take the Attack action. Such creatures have the Multiattack entry in the “Actions” section of their stat block. This entry details the attacks a creature can make, as well as any additional abilities it can use, as part of the Attack action.
I've never bothered enforcing this for Ready attacks on other people's turns, but also I've found that (in my personal experience at least) players actually taking the Ready action in combat is so rare that it almost never matters.
Sorry, I forgot about Multiattack. I'd say it's not possible to Ready it, since using it requires the creature to take the Attack action.
The way monsters are written up does not actually enforce such a restriction.
Maybe. But the next answer in the SAC also suggests Multiattack is not intended to be used off turn. For example, for Opportunity Attacks/Reactions:
What actions can monsters use to make Opportunity Attack? Are Multiattack and breath weapon actions allowed?
When making an Opportunity Attack, a monster can make any single melee attack listed in its stat block. A monster also has the option to make an Unarmed Strike as an Opportunity Attack, following the normal rules of an Unarmed Strike.
An action, such as a breath weapon effect, that doesn’t include a melee attack roll isn’t eligible to be chosen for an Opportunity Attack. Additionally, a monster can’t use its Multiattack when making an Opportunity Attack, because the use of Multiattack specifically predicates on taking the Attack action, and an Opportunity Attack takes a Reaction.
It’s all a bit of a hodgepodge of different criteria for attack and Attack action modifiers with “on your turn” being one of the least consistent in where it appears among Feats, Features, and Traits. It often feels arbitrary and I don’t know that it’s worth the cognitive overhead of tracking when it does or doesn’t apply. For instance, there are at least four core feats with on-hit push effects; Tavern Brawler, Charger, Crusher, and Shield Master; is there any logic to which ones only work on your turn? I understand where “during an Attack action” and “once a turn” are used much more implicitly.
At least I’m not the only one who doesn’t like what it does with Ready.
Yeah, wordings such as "on your turn" (e.g. Grappler's Punch and Grab), "once per turn" (e.g. Cleave), or no restrictions (e.g. Push) are found across the book. So a game element may or may not have restrictions.
The Sneak Attack description specifies that you can use the feature once per turn, but it’s not limited to your turn. The feature also doesn’t limit the number of times you can use it in a round.
You sometimes get a chance to use Sneak Attack on someone else’s turn. The most common way for this to happen is when an enemy provokes an Opportunity Attack from you. If the requirements for Sneak Attack are met, your Opportunity Attack can benefit from that feature.
I think the most applicable rule here is “Specific Rules override General Rules.”
The Attack Action is GENERALLY taken on your Turn, and if we made that a hard and fast rule, Ready Action would never work. Same goes for Movement.
Let’s also look at Readying Spells. It says you actually CAST the spell on your Turn, but you HOLD releasing it based on your Ready Trigger. If that same mechanic for Magic ACTIONS is applied to all Actions, then you are technically doing those Actions on your Turn. You are just HOLDING them until your Ready Trigger occurs, then you ‘Release’ the Action. For spells it’s a matter of holding the energy and process in your mind which would be synonymous to holding the idea of an Action and trending your muscles to execute it.
At least that is how I would Rule it. I think I’ve read somewhere that your Ready Action is supposed to coincide with the intended timing of a Turn. If that’s the case, then there shouldn’t be anything wrong with Readying a FULL Action with EVERYTHING that comes with that Action. If you Ready your Movement, you have access to all of your Movement, so why not the same for your Action?
It’s all a bit of a hodgepodge of different criteria for attack and Attack action modifiers with “on your turn” being one of the least consistent in where it appears among Feats, Features, and Traits. It often feels arbitrary and I don’t know that it’s worth the cognitive overhead of tracking when it does or doesn’t apply. For instance, there are at least four core feats with on-hit push effects; Tavern Brawler, Charger, Crusher, and Shield Master; is there any logic to which ones only work on your turn? I understand where “during an Attack action” and “once a turn” are used much more implicitly.
At least I’m not the only one who doesn’t like what it does with Ready.
I agree with you for the most part, but at first glance, I know Charger wouldn’t fit into that category because you can ready ONLY an Action OR a Movement. Charger requires you Move at least 10’ before making the Attack to Push your target. Since you cannot Attack AND Move, Charger doesn’t apply.
I don’t know about the others you’ve mentioned. I’ll try to look them up sometime and edit this comment with what I find.
I think the most applicable rule here is “Specific Rules override General Rules.”
The Attack Action is GENERALLY taken on your Turn, and if we made that a hard and fast rule, Ready Action would never work. Same goes for Movement.
Let’s also look at Readying Spells. It says you actually CAST the spell on your Turn, but you HOLD releasing it based on your Ready Trigger. If that same mechanic for Magic ACTIONS is applied to all Actions, then you are technically doing those Actions on your Turn. You are just HOLDING them until your Ready Trigger occurs, then you ‘Release’ the Action. For spells it’s a matter of holding the energy and process in your mind which would be synonymous to holding the idea of an Action and trending your muscles to execute it.
At least that is how I would Rule it. I think I’ve read somewhere that your Ready Action is supposed to coincide with the intended timing of a Turn. If that’s the case, then there shouldn’t be anything wrong with Readying a FULL Action with EVERYTHING that comes with that Action. If you Ready your Movement, you have access to all of your Movement, so why not the same for your Action?
Keeping in mind that D&D isn't a simulator :)
The round is supposed to represent simultaneous actions by all creatures involved in the combat. Initiative is an artificial construct designed to allow the resolution of all these simultaneous actions in a manageable way. All initiative determines is the order of action resolution - not the order in which the creatures actually take their actions (e.g. if the first creature needs 6 seconds to take their actions then each subsequent creature also needs 6 seconds then with 10 creatures in a combat, the round takes a minute if the actions were actually resolved sequentially - instead, actions in D&D are occurring at the same time and initiative is just a mechanism to allow for a logical resolution of those actions. (Folks have played around with simultaneous initiative/turn concepts but I haven't tried any myself).
With that in mind, the Ready action represents waiting until some trigger occurs for the creature to resolve its action. The length of the wait time is not defined (since D&D is not a simulator - it is just trying to create a reasonably fun method of resolving combat). Anyway, personally, I attribute the reduction in available time for the character's action when it is readied as a "logical" explanation of why extra attack doesn't work with readied Attack actions. Spellcasters have to maintain concentration on their spell until it is released when using the Ready action and martial classes lose access to Extra Attack.
Of course, all of that is just hand wavy explanations of why the rules might work the way they do. The short answer is that the rules are very clear that Extra Attack only applies when taking the Attack action and not when taking the Ready action to make an attack. Personally, I like to attribute that to the Ready action requiring more time in a turn to complete the desired goal because the character waits for a trigger ... but every DM is welcome to interpret it differently.
I think TarodNet has a point, Sneak Attack is a good example of a constrained ability. That’s because each constraint (“once per turn”, “Finesse or Ranged weapon”, “attack with Advantage”) has a certain logic and is independently memorable. “Once per turn” on Extra Attack and other abilities doesn’t rise to that bar. Yes, you can make the argument that a Readied action should be more constrained than one taken during your turn because you have “less time”. But if that was the intent, I would expect which abilities were constrained that way to follow a certain logic and be predictable. They don’t and aren’t. For instance, if all effects that allowed for a follow-up (like Shield Bash, Grappler’s Punch and Grab, and the Light weapon property) were limited to your turn that makes sense, but why is the Cleave weapon property different? Why have the limitation on some but not all Push effects? And what “takes longer” about Dragon’s Breath and the extra damage from Great Weapon Master?
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I noticed something recently. The Extra Attack feature gives you an additional attack when you “take the Attack action on your turn.” I’d previously overlooked that “on your turn” clause because your turn is when you normally take the Attack action. But that’s not the case if you’re using the Ready action to take the Attack action during another combatant’s turn. Have other DMs been relying on this clause to limit Readied Attack actions to a single attack and I’m just late to the party?
The same “on your turn” clause exists in the rules text for a Dragonborn’s Breath Weapon trait, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me why a Dragonborn PC wouldn’t be able to Ready their Breath Weapon. The “Attack action on your turn” phrase appears again in the Great Weapon Master feat without an obvious reason why which turn the action takes place in is relevant. So I could see it being argued that the intent of the phrase isn’t to apply a limitation, but is to clarify it’s referring to the ‘Attack action’ rather than ‘an attack’ more generally. In that scenario, taking the Attack action when it wasn’t your turn would not have even been considered as a possibility.
It’s also worth considering that there is a lack of parity between PCs and monsters if this limitation is enforced, because nothing I’ve found in the rules prevents a monster from using Ready with a Multiattack action. So should neither monsters nor PCs be able to attack more than once when they use Ready? Should both be able to? Or is the disparity right and proper?
RAW a readied attack is only a single attack, though it's not a rule I'm super fond of. And yes, multiattack lacks explicit wording preventing readying it, though the discussion of multiattack in the monster manual indicates that its intended purpose is for creatures that get multiple attacks on their turn. I'm pretty sure this is a case of "most of the time we forget that ready even existed, we were trying to prevent multiple attacks with opportunity attacks".
As you're guessing, some traits, features, or feats only work on your turn when that wording appears in the rules. The classic example is indeed the Extra Attack feature.
It's also true you could define the Ready Action trigger to happen on your own turn, though that's not common.
EDIT: ninja'd by Pantagruel666!
Sorry, I forgot about Multiattack. I'd say it's not possible to Ready it, since using it requires the creature to take the Attack action.
The way monsters are written up does not actually enforce such a restriction.
I've never bothered enforcing this for Ready attacks on other people's turns, but also I've found that (in my personal experience at least) players actually taking the Ready action in combat is so rare that it almost never matters.
pronouns: he/she/they
Maybe. But the next answer in the SAC also suggests Multiattack is not intended to be used off turn. For example, for Opportunity Attacks/Reactions:
It’s all a bit of a hodgepodge of different criteria for attack and Attack action modifiers with “on your turn” being one of the least consistent in where it appears among Feats, Features, and Traits. It often feels arbitrary and I don’t know that it’s worth the cognitive overhead of tracking when it does or doesn’t apply. For instance, there are at least four core feats with on-hit push effects; Tavern Brawler, Charger, Crusher, and Shield Master; is there any logic to which ones only work on your turn? I understand where “during an Attack action” and “once a turn” are used much more implicitly.
At least I’m not the only one who doesn’t like what it does with Ready.
Yeah, wordings such as "on your turn" (e.g. Grappler's Punch and Grab), "once per turn" (e.g. Cleave), or no restrictions (e.g. Push) are found across the book. So a game element may or may not have restrictions.
A good example of all this is Sneak Attack:
I think the most applicable rule here is “Specific Rules override General Rules.”
The Attack Action is GENERALLY taken on your Turn, and if we made that a hard and fast rule, Ready Action would never work. Same goes for Movement.
Let’s also look at Readying Spells. It says you actually CAST the spell on your Turn, but you HOLD releasing it based on your Ready Trigger. If that same mechanic for Magic ACTIONS is applied to all Actions, then you are technically doing those Actions on your Turn. You are just HOLDING them until your Ready Trigger occurs, then you ‘Release’ the Action. For spells it’s a matter of holding the energy and process in your mind which would be synonymous to holding the idea of an Action and trending your muscles to execute it.
At least that is how I would Rule it. I think I’ve read somewhere that your Ready Action is supposed to coincide with the intended timing of a Turn. If that’s the case, then there shouldn’t be anything wrong with Readying a FULL Action with EVERYTHING that comes with that Action. If you Ready your Movement, you have access to all of your Movement, so why not the same for your Action?
I agree with you for the most part, but at first glance, I know Charger wouldn’t fit into that category because you can ready ONLY an Action OR a Movement. Charger requires you Move at least 10’ before making the Attack to Push your target. Since you cannot Attack AND Move, Charger doesn’t apply.
I don’t know about the others you’ve mentioned. I’ll try to look them up sometime and edit this comment with what I find.
Keeping in mind that D&D isn't a simulator :)
The round is supposed to represent simultaneous actions by all creatures involved in the combat. Initiative is an artificial construct designed to allow the resolution of all these simultaneous actions in a manageable way. All initiative determines is the order of action resolution - not the order in which the creatures actually take their actions (e.g. if the first creature needs 6 seconds to take their actions then each subsequent creature also needs 6 seconds then with 10 creatures in a combat, the round takes a minute if the actions were actually resolved sequentially - instead, actions in D&D are occurring at the same time and initiative is just a mechanism to allow for a logical resolution of those actions. (Folks have played around with simultaneous initiative/turn concepts but I haven't tried any myself).
With that in mind, the Ready action represents waiting until some trigger occurs for the creature to resolve its action. The length of the wait time is not defined (since D&D is not a simulator - it is just trying to create a reasonably fun method of resolving combat). Anyway, personally, I attribute the reduction in available time for the character's action when it is readied as a "logical" explanation of why extra attack doesn't work with readied Attack actions. Spellcasters have to maintain concentration on their spell until it is released when using the Ready action and martial classes lose access to Extra Attack.
Of course, all of that is just hand wavy explanations of why the rules might work the way they do. The short answer is that the rules are very clear that Extra Attack only applies when taking the Attack action and not when taking the Ready action to make an attack. Personally, I like to attribute that to the Ready action requiring more time in a turn to complete the desired goal because the character waits for a trigger ... but every DM is welcome to interpret it differently.
I think TarodNet has a point, Sneak Attack is a good example of a constrained ability. That’s because each constraint (“once per turn”, “Finesse or Ranged weapon”, “attack with Advantage”) has a certain logic and is independently memorable. “Once per turn” on Extra Attack and other abilities doesn’t rise to that bar. Yes, you can make the argument that a Readied action should be more constrained than one taken during your turn because you have “less time”. But if that was the intent, I would expect which abilities were constrained that way to follow a certain logic and be predictable. They don’t and aren’t. For instance, if all effects that allowed for a follow-up (like Shield Bash, Grappler’s Punch and Grab, and the Light weapon property) were limited to your turn that makes sense, but why is the Cleave weapon property different? Why have the limitation on some but not all Push effects? And what “takes longer” about Dragon’s Breath and the extra damage from Great Weapon Master?