The Ready Action is, in my opinion, underused in dnd.
Initiative order is a useful tool to efficiently navigate through combat, yet it can sometimes lack the weave and intermingling of events that goes on in real life. For example: 'the half elf strikes three times with his longsword; The dragon uses its fiery breath; The wizard casts Slow '- this can feel quite...robotic? Mechanical? I personally feel as if it strips the life, the breath, the blood, sweat and tears, from combat.
This is why the Ready Action is such a valuable resource in combat. It allows for creatures deeds and actions to be more closely linked and related, as a pose to just segmented pockets of pre-baked procedures existing only within the sphere of the character (or monster) acting them out. For example: 'entering a battle stance, the half elf prepares to strike at the dragon at the exact moment that it swoops down low over his head', or 'just as the first orc swings its dark blade in a slaying arc, the wizard conjures a wall of magical force, deflecting the blow. A fraction of a second later, and the blade would have surely cleaved the wizard in two'.
But while it can make your session more realistic, the Ready Action can be wielded to devastating effect. Being a DM myself, I know the power that this action can bring - and sometimes, it can make your deadly encounters suddenly far more annoyingly handleable. But while it is a dangerous tool, danger is fun! Of course, you must coordinate these ideas to your DM beforehand, so he or she is not stuck in the moment deciding wether or not to allow them. In light of some very valid points made, most of these ideas fall into the grey-area of RAW - potential tools that are up to the DM's interpretation.
Use 1: Wall of Force (WoF)
This one isn't unmanageable all the time, but if you're willing to burn some serious spell slots, it is especially effective against creatures with nova attacks, or the Legendary Actions trait.
You can cast spells with a casting time of one action using the Ready Action. I believe it is described as follows: 'When you ready a spell, you cast it as normal but hold its energy, which you release with your reaction when the trigger occurs.' This means that you can trigger WoF when you and your party are targeted by some particularly nasty effect, such as a Dragon's breath weapon. Very nasty indeed.
In the description of WoF, it specifically states that 'Nothing can physically pass through the wall', and that 'It is immune to all damage'. So effectively, you negate all that enemy's (or those enemies') damage for the round. This is sure to piss of the monsters with bigger egos (aka. Dragons, Beholders, Mindflayers, my goldfish Harry). This means you can plan your round like this, if you roll above the enemy in initiative (using the following for initiative order):
Ally attacks. Ally 2 attacks. You ready WoF. Monster attacks causing you to initiate WoF and negate monster's attack.You break concentration on WoF to allow Ally 3 to attack. Repeat process until you run out of spell slots.
This idea becomes more tricky when you encounter creatures with Legendary Actions. Take Tiamat, for example (*cough*). She is able to make a breath weapon attack at the end of each creature's turns in combat as a Legendary Action (she has 5, I believe...), and you can only negate one of these per round with WoF, unless you choose to hold concentration on the spell until the entire round is done, in which case the wall also prevents your allies from attacking Tiamat that round, so nothing happens except for your loss of spell slots.
The way you can get around this dilemma is simple: get each of your allies to take the ready action also - to immediately attack Tiamat after you drop concentration the wall. The allies' actual turns are spent behind the wall, which means that Tiamat has to waste her Legendary actions blasting away furiously at a wall she can't damage. Have fun!
Edit: @Grayfax made a valid point here (2nd last comment, page 4); the party's damage would be significantly reduced if they were forced to take the ready action on their turn.
Use 2: Revived Rouge (RR)
This idea significantly increases the rouge's potency when it comes to damage dealing.
The RR's 3rd level ability 'Bolts from the Grave" is a fantastic way of separating Sneak Attack (SA) damage from one's action. Here is the description:
'You have learned to unleash bolts of necrotic energy from within your revived body. Immediately after you use your Cunning Action, you can make a ranged spell attack against a creature within 30 feet of you, provided you haven’t used your Sneak Attack this turn. You are proficient with it, and you add your Dexterity modifier to its attack and damage rolls. A creature hit by this attack takes necrotic damage equal to your Sneak Attack. This uses your Sneak Attack for the turn.'
At the end of the paragraph, it states that the bolt uses up your SA damage for the turn. Not round. Also, in the PHB it states that you can use SA only once per turn. Again, turn is not the same as round, which gives Rouge the ability to potentially use SA more than once in round. This is great, because what you can do on your turn is this:
Cunning Action + Bolt from the Grave (SA damage) + Ready Action (for attack/ booming blade/ green flame blade + SA).
You just doubled your SA damage. Consistently, every round.
Use 3: Arcane Gate (AG)
This is similar to the WoF idea, except for that it uses a higher level spell slot for additional combat flavour, Doctor Strange style. Here is the basic idea:
1. You ready AG, stating that the trigger is when you are/ your ally is targeted by an enemy's attack. 2. Enemy attacks (eg. Dragon's breath, Orc warhammer), causing AG to spring into existence. Produce one of the portals in front of you, facing the attack dead on (giving you full cover from the attack). Create the other perpendicular to the first, still facing the enemy. 3. AG states that 'Any creature or object entering the portal exits from the other portal as if the two were adjacent to each other'. Watch as the attacker attacks itself! Full counter!
I find this one pretty great. Certain flaws (I think) in this idea are:
It's a high level spell slot (save for boss's large attacks).
The spell states that the the portals hover inches from the ground, so certain DMs may rule that a portal only provides 3/4 cover against AoE damaging effects.
Certain DMs may also rule that some AoE damaging effects do not count as 'objects', and therefore do not meet the requirements of movement through the portals. This may be a valid point.
So there they are. Tell me what you guys think, and feel free to point out flaws. There are probably many (such as my goldfish Harry being an egotistic monster. I'm sorry, Harry.) Remember also that, for the WoF and AG ideas to work, it is essential to stand before any enemies in the initiative order. Coordinate with your fellow adventurers! Many class abilities or other features give bonuses to/advantage on initiative (such as the Alert feat).
Thank you for sharing some pretty cool ideas - ready actions are often misunderstood.
There may be some issues with some of the plans though, based on the sentence in the rules, "When the trigger occurs, you can either take your reaction right after the trigger finishes or ignore the trigger." - I think that would technically mean the party get breathed all over by the dragon, taking the damage and THEN the wall of force goes up between them and the dragon.
That said, I would totally allow it to work as you described in any game I am running, because it's cool planning and the visual is really neat!
The second one works, as far as I can tell. Probably means the UA needs to be fixed before it comes out of playtest, though, because a Revived rogue basically just getting an extra sneak attack for free each round would in fact be pretty broken, and make Revived a significantly better DPS than any other rogue subclass.
1 and 3 don't work, in my opinion. This isn't MTG. If you trigger on the enemy taking an action, your thing will trigger after the enemy has taken their action, not during. With example number 1, if you put up the wall of force AFTER the enemy's already attacked, then you don't negate their damage at all - they've already taken their swing. If you put up the wall of force BEFORE the enemy's attacked, then the enemy gets to do something else with their action instead, since they haven't spent an action doing an attack.
It's like saying "I ready an action - when the enemy shoots an arrow, I'm going to move 5 ft to the left, so they automatically miss!" ...no, that doesn't work.
As Stormknight says, really comes down to whether you can define your trigger as "targeted for an attack" (i.e., interrupting the attack) without that meaning "triggered by an attack" (i.e., after the attack). And for 3, arguable whether spell effects or even cones of dragon breath count as "objects", ymmv.
Arcane Gate can be used for a lot of more optimal things than that.
rogue getting off melee sneak attack weapons from afar. Thievery. Negating falling damage. Express elevator. Re-enacting the fight scene vs Texas from Red Vs Blue. Countless possibilities and uses. It seems a waste of a 6th level slot to just use it to counter 1 attack and then dismiss it. And an attack that, in your scenario, the dragon is immune from anyways...
Right. This is true, but the purpose I had for this example was really to highlight the idea of the Doc. Strange esc use of the ready action Arcane Gate can give as a reaction- dragons were just an example, and while they are most certainly immune to their own breath weapons, they are also cliche examples of 'big bad bosses' in dnd.
And I would argue that the 6th level slot, if used right, is thinkable enough to re-target a nova strike upon the enemy's own head. If we compare to something like the spell 'Primordial Ward', it may not seem so far fetched? To reflect anywhere over 90 damage back upon the enemy, I would say, is a feat.
Btw, I had never considered that Arcane Gate had the option of negating fall damage.....nice one!
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Right. It may require some player-DM cooperation. But I meant more that the trigger for WoF wasn't the actual flame being spewed from the dragon's maw, but rather movements/actions that would hint to the fact that the dragon was about to breathe fire. Dragons, I think, being vain, would put on some fearsome display before actually attacking (ie. spreading wings, raising head to the heavens and gurgling like a mad cow...that sort of thing).
Maybe an insight/ perception check from the player would be necessary to intuit when the attack was going to happen?
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Right. It may require some player-DM cooperation. But I meant more that the trigger for WoF wasn't the actual flame being spewed from the dragon's maw, but rather movements/actions that would hint to the fact that the dragon was about to breathe fire. Dragons, I think, being vain, would put on some fearsome display before actually attacking (ie. spreading wings, raising head to the heavens and gurgling like a mad cow...that sort of thing).
Maybe an insight/ perception check from the player would be necessary to intuit when the attack was going to happen?
'It's like saying "I ready an action - when the enemy shoots an arrow, I'm going to move 5 ft to the left, so they automatically miss!" ...no, that doesn't work.'
- I think this is the definition of the Dexterity bonus in armour class, no? Wether the character is quick enough to dodge out of the way of a certain effect.
I wasn't saying that the player could automatically dodge the certain effect, because that is more like Neo than any mortal can accomplish. But I am certain that this is the definition of the dex bonus in AC.
Arcane Gate can be used for a lot of more optimal things than that.
rogue getting off melee sneak attack weapons from afar. Thievery. Negating falling damage. Express elevator. Re-enacting the fight scene vs Texas from Red Vs Blue. Countless possibilities and uses. It seems a waste of a 6th level slot to just use it to counter 1 attack and then dismiss it. And an attack that, in your scenario, the dragon is immune from anyways...
I don't see how the negating of fall damage is supposed to work, unless you mean a specific variant of the express elevator or the rare case where you're falling towards a fairly steep slope. Arcane gate requires that both ends be on the ground and perpendicular to the ground.
I don't see how the negating of fall damage is supposed to work, unless you mean a specific variant of the express elevator or the rare case where you're falling towards a fairly steep slope. Arcane gate requires that both ends be on the ground and perpendicular to the ground.
This is the sort of thing that is not encompassed in the rules, but can really add to session flavour. The kind of thing you can figure out with your DM- possibly a successful Arcana check to swerve the portal upward? The rules aren't the 'be all end all' of dnd, but useful tools to help with the game.
Arcane Gate can be used for a lot of more optimal things than that.
rogue getting off melee sneak attack weapons from afar. Thievery. Negating falling damage. Express elevator. Re-enacting the fight scene vs Texas from Red Vs Blue. Countless possibilities and uses. It seems a waste of a 6th level slot to just use it to counter 1 attack and then dismiss it. And an attack that, in your scenario, the dragon is immune from anyways...
I don't see how the negating of fall damage is supposed to work, unless you mean a specific variant of the express elevator or the rare case where you're falling towards a fairly steep slope. Arcane gate requires that both ends be on the ground and perpendicular to the ground.
you don’t have slopes? Hills? Or 3 dimensions in your game?
edit: that’s really sad to always be on flat open fields. Or caves with flat wide open fields. And not have to deal with holes, hills, pits, trees, bushes, stagnates, stalactites, broken bits of wall, rotting corpses of animals, actually having to have line of sight on things so moving around your own allies when they jump into your path of fire, etc etc. if you’re having fun you’re having fun. But I would get bored really fast of playing D&D in essentially a 2-d field where there’s no obstacles or changes in elevation during the fights and such. I guess you guys also haven’t had to siege a fort/castle. Deal with drawbridges up. Archers towers. Etc?
never been pushed laterally? Which then has you fall off a cliff either?
Arcane Gate can be used for a lot of more optimal things than that.
rogue getting off melee sneak attack weapons from afar. Thievery. Negating falling damage. Express elevator. Re-enacting the fight scene vs Texas from Red Vs Blue. Countless possibilities and uses. It seems a waste of a 6th level slot to just use it to counter 1 attack and then dismiss it. And an attack that, in your scenario, the dragon is immune from anyways...
I don't see how the negating of fall damage is supposed to work, unless you mean a specific variant of the express elevator or the rare case where you're falling towards a fairly steep slope. Arcane gate requires that both ends be on the ground and perpendicular to the ground.
you don’t have slopes? Hills? Or 3 dimensions in your game?
That isn't what they were implying. Obviously, any game with fall damage has 3 dimensions. And slopes were even mentioned. I'm going to choose to believe you just didn't understand the comment.
Lunali was just pointing out that the portals of arcane gate are perpendicular to the ground. Seeing as how gravity causes you to fall straight down, the ground would have to be angled greater than 45° for the portal to be able to catch you. (At what angle does the ground become a wall?)
Arcane Gate can be used for a lot of more optimal things than that.
rogue getting off melee sneak attack weapons from afar. Thievery. Negating falling damage. Express elevator. Re-enacting the fight scene vs Texas from Red Vs Blue. Countless possibilities and uses. It seems a waste of a 6th level slot to just use it to counter 1 attack and then dismiss it. And an attack that, in your scenario, the dragon is immune from anyways...
I don't see how the negating of fall damage is supposed to work, unless you mean a specific variant of the express elevator or the rare case where you're falling towards a fairly steep slope. Arcane gate requires that both ends be on the ground and perpendicular to the ground.
you don’t have slopes? Hills? Or 3 dimensions in your game?
That isn't what they were implying. Obviously, any game with fall damage has 3 dimensions. And slopes were even mentioned. I'm going to choose to believe you just didn't understand the comment.
Lunali was just pointing out that the portals of arcane gate are perpendicular to the ground. Seeing as how gravity causes you to fall straight down, the ground would have to be angled greater than 45° for the portal to be able to catch you. (At what angle does the ground become a wall?)
At what point are the only angles encountered 0, 45, 90?
i am going to choose to believe you just didn’t understand my comment.
i guess you also have never fallen in a lateral direction, such as on ice either? Or grease?
that’s some 2-d falling if you can only fall downwards and something perpendicular to the ground doesn’t effect it in any way.
i give again the example of being pushed/shoved/thunderwaved, off of a ledge/cliff/into a trap/volcano/swamp/quicksand/fragile ice or slate rock that breaks when you walk on it.
At what point are the only angles encountered 0, 45, 90?
90° is the angle of gravity and the angle on falls in midair (at least according to the rules). 45° is the minimum angle a 10 foot diameter portal has to be to catch a creature that occupies a 5 foot square. No one said anything about 0° (unless you mean the angle of the portal with the ground). And no one said these were the "only" angles.
i am going to choose to believe you just didn’t understand my comment.
When I said it, I was ignoring all your sarcastic personal jabs at Lunali. When you say it back, it is just providing more evidence that you are an [the kind of person who mocks people who dares to try to correct them] hole.
i guess you also have never fallen in a lateral direction, such as on ice either? Or grease?
I have never laterally fallen in a way that resulted in the same kind of damage as 10 feet of freefall. We are talking about fall damage after all.
that’s some 2-d falling if you can only fall downwards and something perpendicular to the ground doesn’t effect it in any way.
i give again the example of being pushed/shoved/thunderwaved, off of a ledge/cliff/into a trap/volcano/swamp/quicksand/fragile ice or slate rock that breaks when you walk on it.
Perpendicular down is the angle of acceleration due to gravity. Even if you fell a relatively short distance of 20 feet, moving horizontally at your dash speed of 10 feet per second, you would hit the ground at a 65° angle at over 25 mph. At your walking speed a 77° angle. At the speed of a thunderwave a 86° angle. At shove speed a 88° angle. So realistically, the ground would need to be tilted around 41° for the portal to safely catch you and reduce fall damage from 20 feet up, and slightly steeper (up to 45°) for anything higher. But the rules say you fall straight down, so that is what almost all advice will be based on.
At what point are the only angles encountered 0, 45, 90?
90° is the angle of gravity and the angle on falls in midair (at least according to the rules). 45° is the minimum angle a 10 foot diameter portal has to be to catch a creature that occupies a 5 foot square. No one said anything about 0° (unless you mean the angle of the portal with the ground). And no one said these were the "only" angles.
i am going to choose to believe you just didn’t understand my comment.
When I said it, I was ignoring all your sarcastic personal jabs at Lunali. When you say it back, it is just providing more evidence that you are an [the kind of person who mocks people who dares to try to correct them] hole.
i guess you also have never fallen in a lateral direction, such as on ice either? Or grease?
I have never laterally fallen in a way that resulted in the same kind of damage as 10 feet of freefall. We are talking about fall damage after all.
that’s some 2-d falling if you can only fall downwards and something perpendicular to the ground doesn’t effect it in any way.
i give again the example of being pushed/shoved/thunderwaved, off of a ledge/cliff/into a trap/volcano/swamp/quicksand/fragile ice or slate rock that breaks when you walk on it.
Perpendicular down is the angle of acceleration due to gravity. Even if you fell a relatively short distance of 20 feet, moving horizontally at your dash speed of 10 feet per second, you would hit the ground at a 65° angle at over 25 mph. At your walking speed a 77° angle. At the speed of a thunderwave a 86° angle. At shove speed a 88° angle. So realistically, the ground would need to be tilted around 41° for the portal to safely catch you and reduce fall damage from 20 feet up, and slightly steeper (up to 45°) for anything higher. But the rules say you fall straight down, so that is what almost all advice will be based on.
what defines the “ground”?
how does “ground” get defined if you have spiderclimb, or are a monk walking on ceilings multiclassed with sorcerer? (9 monk 11 sorcerer)
Edit—- pretty convenient to ignore the rope bridge scenario. And pretty convenient to only choose to believe a lateral fall will only result in damage equivalent of 10 feet fall damage.
like I said- that’s a pretty 2-d world/view. You can call me as names as you want. Doesn’t change the fact. That there’s an entire D&D universe of scenarios outside the box you are only thinking in. And a lot of the stuff outside your box is still RAW.
Robazathus and DxJxC, this is getting too intense.
Personal viewpoint is exactly that - personal. Each of you has valid points. But if you want to have a full on math argument, please do so outside this thread, 'cause it is cluttering up my inbox. And preferably do it without name calling and/or personal jabs, because it is inappropriate to do so on a forum:)
The Ready Action is, in my opinion, underused in dnd.
Initiative order is a useful tool to efficiently navigate through combat, yet it can sometimes lack the weave and intermingling of events that goes on in real life. For example: 'the half elf strikes three times with his longsword; The dragon uses its fiery breath; The wizard casts Slow '- this can feel quite...robotic? Mechanical? I personally feel as if it strips the life, the breath, the blood, sweat and tears, from combat.
This is why the Ready Action is such a valuable resource in combat. It allows for creatures deeds and actions to be more closely linked and related, as a pose to just segmented pockets of pre-baked procedures existing only within the sphere of the character (or monster) acting them out. For example: 'entering a battle stance, the half elf prepares to strike at the dragon at the exact moment that it swoops down low over his head', or 'just as the first orc swings its dark blade in a slaying arc, the wizard conjures a wall of magical force, deflecting the blow. A fraction of a second later, and the blade would have surely cleaved the wizard in two'.
But while it can make your session more realistic, the Ready Action can be wielded to devastating effect. Being a DM myself, I know the power that this action can bring - and sometimes, it can make your deadly encounters suddenly far more annoyingly handleable. But while it is a dangerous tool, danger is fun! Of course, you must coordinate these ideas to your DM beforehand, so he or she is not stuck in the moment deciding wether or not to allow them. In light of some very valid points made, most of these ideas fall into the grey-area of RAW - potential tools that are up to the DM's interpretation.
Use 1: Wall of Force (WoF)
This one isn't unmanageable all the time, but if you're willing to burn some serious spell slots, it is especially effective against creatures with nova attacks, or the Legendary Actions trait.
You can cast spells with a casting time of one action using the Ready Action. I believe it is described as follows: 'When you ready a spell, you cast it as normal but hold its energy, which you release with your reaction when the trigger occurs.' This means that you can trigger WoF when you and your party are targeted by some particularly nasty effect, such as a Dragon's breath weapon. Very nasty indeed.
In the description of WoF, it specifically states that 'Nothing can physically pass through the wall', and that 'It is immune to all damage'. So effectively, you negate all that enemy's (or those enemies') damage for the round. This is sure to piss of the monsters with bigger egos (aka. Dragons, Beholders, Mindflayers, my goldfish Harry). This means you can plan your round like this, if you roll above the enemy in initiative (using the following for initiative order):
Ally attacks. Ally 2 attacks. You ready WoF. Monster attacks causing you to initiate WoF and negate monster's attack.You break concentration on WoF to allow Ally 3 to attack. Repeat process until you run out of spell slots.
This idea becomes more tricky when you encounter creatures with Legendary Actions. Take Tiamat, for example (*cough*). She is able to make a breath weapon attack at the end of each creature's turns in combat as a Legendary Action (she has 5, I believe...), and you can only negate one of these per round with WoF, unless you choose to hold concentration on the spell until the entire round is done, in which case the wall also prevents your allies from attacking Tiamat that round, so nothing happens except for your loss of spell slots.
The way you can get around this dilemma is simple: get each of your allies to take the ready action also - to immediately attack Tiamat after you drop concentration the wall. The allies' actual turns are spent behind the wall, which means that Tiamat has to waste her Legendary actions blasting away furiously at a wall she can't damage. Have fun!
Edit: @Grayfax made a valid point here (2nd last comment, page 4); the party's damage would be significantly reduced if they were forced to take the ready action on their turn.
Use 2: Revived Rouge (RR)
This idea significantly increases the rouge's potency when it comes to damage dealing.
The RR's 3rd level ability 'Bolts from the Grave" is a fantastic way of separating Sneak Attack (SA) damage from one's action. Here is the description:
'You have learned to unleash bolts of necrotic energy from within your revived body. Immediately after you use your Cunning Action, you can make a ranged spell attack against a creature within 30 feet of you, provided you haven’t used your Sneak Attack this turn. You are proficient with it, and you add your Dexterity modifier to its attack and damage rolls. A creature hit by this attack takes necrotic damage equal to your Sneak Attack. This uses your Sneak Attack for the turn.'
At the end of the paragraph, it states that the bolt uses up your SA damage for the turn. Not round. Also, in the PHB it states that you can use SA only once per turn. Again, turn is not the same as round, which gives Rouge the ability to potentially use SA more than once in round. This is great, because what you can do on your turn is this:
Cunning Action + Bolt from the Grave (SA damage) + Ready Action (for attack/ booming blade/ green flame blade + SA).
You just doubled your SA damage. Consistently, every round.
Use 3: Arcane Gate (AG)
This is similar to the WoF idea, except for that it uses a higher level spell slot for additional combat flavour, Doctor Strange style. Here is the basic idea:
1. You ready AG, stating that the trigger is when you are/ your ally is targeted by an enemy's attack.
2. Enemy attacks (eg. Dragon's breath, Orc warhammer), causing AG to spring into existence. Produce one of the portals in front of you, facing the attack dead on (giving you full cover from the attack). Create the other perpendicular to the first, still facing the enemy.
3. AG states that 'Any creature or object entering the portal exits from the other portal as if the two were adjacent to each other'. Watch as the attacker attacks itself! Full counter!
I find this one pretty great. Certain flaws (I think) in this idea are:
So there they are. Tell me what you guys think, and feel free to point out flaws. There are probably many (such as my goldfish Harry being an egotistic monster. I'm sorry, Harry.)
Remember also that, for the WoF and AG ideas to work, it is essential to stand before any enemies in the initiative order. Coordinate with your fellow adventurers! Many class abilities or other features give bonuses to/advantage on initiative (such as the Alert feat).
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D&D Beyond FoundersThank you for sharing some pretty cool ideas - ready actions are often misunderstood.
There may be some issues with some of the plans though, based on the sentence in the rules, "When the trigger occurs, you can either take your reaction right after the trigger finishes or ignore the trigger." - I think that would technically mean the party get breathed all over by the dragon, taking the damage and THEN the wall of force goes up between them and the dragon.
That said, I would totally allow it to work as you described in any game I am running, because it's cool planning and the visual is really neat!
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Use 2 is just a new version of the hasted rogue where you use your hasted action to attack and your normal action to ready an attack.
The second one works, as far as I can tell. Probably means the UA needs to be fixed before it comes out of playtest, though, because a Revived rogue basically just getting an extra sneak attack for free each round would in fact be pretty broken, and make Revived a significantly better DPS than any other rogue subclass.
1 and 3 don't work, in my opinion. This isn't MTG. If you trigger on the enemy taking an action, your thing will trigger after the enemy has taken their action, not during. With example number 1, if you put up the wall of force AFTER the enemy's already attacked, then you don't negate their damage at all - they've already taken their swing. If you put up the wall of force BEFORE the enemy's attacked, then the enemy gets to do something else with their action instead, since they haven't spent an action doing an attack.
It's like saying "I ready an action - when the enemy shoots an arrow, I'm going to move 5 ft to the left, so they automatically miss!" ...no, that doesn't work.
It is also better than hasted rogue because it doesn't require a spellcaster to use its concentration.
I am also dubious of use 1 and 3 per RAW.
As Stormknight says, really comes down to whether you can define your trigger as "targeted for an attack" (i.e., interrupting the attack) without that meaning "triggered by an attack" (i.e., after the attack). And for 3, arguable whether spell effects or even cones of dragon breath count as "objects", ymmv.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Arcane Gate can be used for a lot of more optimal things than that.
rogue getting off melee sneak attack weapons from afar. Thievery. Negating falling damage. Express elevator. Re-enacting the fight scene vs Texas from Red Vs Blue. Countless possibilities and uses. It seems a waste of a 6th level slot to just use it to counter 1 attack and then dismiss it. And an attack that, in your scenario, the dragon is immune from anyways...
Right. This is true, but the purpose I had for this example was really to highlight the idea of the Doc. Strange esc use of the ready action Arcane Gate can give as a reaction- dragons were just an example, and while they are most certainly immune to their own breath weapons, they are also cliche examples of 'big bad bosses' in dnd.
And I would argue that the 6th level slot, if used right, is thinkable enough to re-target a nova strike upon the enemy's own head. If we compare to something like the spell 'Primordial Ward', it may not seem so far fetched? To reflect anywhere over 90 damage back upon the enemy, I would say, is a feat.
Btw, I had never considered that Arcane Gate had the option of negating fall damage.....nice one!
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Yes, I am always hesitant for the rouge of the party to rely on the spell casters.
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Right. It may require some player-DM cooperation. But I meant more that the trigger for WoF wasn't the actual flame being spewed from the dragon's maw, but rather movements/actions that would hint to the fact that the dragon was about to breathe fire. Dragons, I think, being vain, would put on some fearsome display before actually attacking (ie. spreading wings, raising head to the heavens and gurgling like a mad cow...that sort of thing).
Maybe an insight/ perception check from the player would be necessary to intuit when the attack was going to happen?
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Right. It may require some player-DM cooperation. But I meant more that the trigger for WoF wasn't the actual flame being spewed from the dragon's maw, but rather movements/actions that would hint to the fact that the dragon was about to breathe fire. Dragons, I think, being vain, would put on some fearsome display before actually attacking (ie. spreading wings, raising head to the heavens and gurgling like a mad cow...that sort of thing).
Maybe an insight/ perception check from the player would be necessary to intuit when the attack was going to happen?
- I think this is the definition of the Dexterity bonus in armour class, no? Wether the character is quick enough to dodge out of the way of a certain effect.
I wasn't saying that the player could automatically dodge the certain effect, because that is more like Neo than any mortal can accomplish. But I am certain that this is the definition of the dex bonus in AC.
Hi there! I'm a Christian musician based in Canada :)
I don't see how the negating of fall damage is supposed to work, unless you mean a specific variant of the express elevator or the rare case where you're falling towards a fairly steep slope. Arcane gate requires that both ends be on the ground and perpendicular to the ground.
This is the sort of thing that is not encompassed in the rules, but can really add to session flavour. The kind of thing you can figure out with your DM- possibly a successful Arcana check to swerve the portal upward? The rules aren't the 'be all end all' of dnd, but useful tools to help with the game.
Hi there! I'm a Christian musician based in Canada :)
Yes, I did state that near the end of Op. 3.
Hi there! I'm a Christian musician based in Canada :)
you don’t have slopes? Hills? Or 3 dimensions in your game?
edit: that’s really sad to always be on flat open fields. Or caves with flat wide open fields. And not have to deal with holes, hills, pits, trees, bushes, stagnates, stalactites, broken bits of wall, rotting corpses of animals, actually having to have line of sight on things so moving around your own allies when they jump into your path of fire, etc etc. if you’re having fun you’re having fun. But I would get bored really fast of playing D&D in essentially a 2-d field where there’s no obstacles or changes in elevation during the fights and such. I guess you guys also haven’t had to siege a fort/castle. Deal with drawbridges up. Archers towers. Etc?
never been pushed laterally? Which then has you fall off a cliff either?
never pushed someone off a cliff?
That isn't what they were implying. Obviously, any game with fall damage has 3 dimensions. And slopes were even mentioned. I'm going to choose to believe you just didn't understand the comment.
Lunali was just pointing out that the portals of arcane gate are perpendicular to the ground. Seeing as how gravity causes you to fall straight down, the ground would have to be angled greater than 45° for the portal to be able to catch you. (At what angle does the ground become a wall?)
At what point are the only angles encountered 0, 45, 90?
i am going to choose to believe you just didn’t understand my comment.
i guess you also have never fallen in a lateral direction, such as on ice either? Or grease?
that’s some 2-d falling if you can only fall downwards and something perpendicular to the ground doesn’t effect it in any way.
i give again the example of being pushed/shoved/thunderwaved, off of a ledge/cliff/into a trap/volcano/swamp/quicksand/fragile ice or slate rock that breaks when you walk on it.
ever fought on a rope bridge?
90° is the angle of gravity and the angle on falls in midair (at least according to the rules). 45° is the minimum angle a 10 foot diameter portal has to be to catch a creature that occupies a 5 foot square. No one said anything about 0° (unless you mean the angle of the portal with the ground). And no one said these were the "only" angles.
When I said it, I was ignoring all your sarcastic personal jabs at Lunali. When you say it back, it is just providing more evidence that you are an [the kind of person who mocks people who dares to try to correct them] hole.
I have never laterally fallen in a way that resulted in the same kind of damage as 10 feet of freefall. We are talking about fall damage after all.
Perpendicular down is the angle of acceleration due to gravity. Even if you fell a relatively short distance of 20 feet, moving horizontally at your dash speed of 10 feet per second, you would hit the ground at a 65° angle at over 25 mph. At your walking speed a 77° angle. At the speed of a thunderwave a 86° angle. At shove speed a 88° angle. So realistically, the ground would need to be tilted around 41° for the portal to safely catch you and reduce fall damage from 20 feet up, and slightly steeper (up to 45°) for anything higher. But the rules say you fall straight down, so that is what almost all advice will be based on.
what defines the “ground”?
how does “ground” get defined if you have spiderclimb, or are a monk walking on ceilings multiclassed with sorcerer? (9 monk 11 sorcerer)
Edit—- pretty convenient to ignore the rope bridge scenario. And pretty convenient to only choose to believe a lateral fall will only result in damage equivalent of 10 feet fall damage.
like I said- that’s a pretty 2-d world/view. You can call me as names as you want. Doesn’t change the fact. That there’s an entire D&D universe of scenarios outside the box you are only thinking in. And a lot of the stuff outside your box is still RAW.
Robazathus and DxJxC, this is getting too intense.
Personal viewpoint is exactly that - personal. Each of you has valid points. But if you want to have a full on math argument, please do so outside this thread, 'cause it is cluttering up my inbox. And preferably do it without name calling and/or personal jabs, because it is inappropriate to do so on a forum:)
Happy holidays!
Hi there! I'm a Christian musician based in Canada :)