Kicking in the door and reserved actions, flat-footed, etc. [Archive] - Wizards Community

Kicking in the door and reserved actions, flat-footed, etc. [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
omnicrondelicious
10-22-07, 12:04 AM Situation from my game earlier tonight:

The player's notice a secret door. Because they are making all kinds of noise, the orcs on the other side of the door hear them and start preparing a defense - flipping over a table, drawing weapons, etc.

The players search for traps, unlock the door, then listen and hear a faint sound of wood scraping on stone (the table sliding into position), then discuss strategy. Both sides are now aware of each other. By this time the orcs are in position and the front three have readied actions to hurl throwing axes when the door opens. The PCs brace themselves and one kicks in the door.

What happens?

My first inclination was to give the orcs an immediate attack due to their reserved actions, then have everyone else roll for init. The players convinced me that since everyone on both sides of the door were simply waiting for the door to open, to treat everyone as the same and just roll inits normally.

I'm still not sure that was the correct thing to do - the orcs had explicit reserved actions that didn't really depend on what came through the door. The PCs didn't have explicit reserved actions - they were just waiting to see what was on the other side and would adjust their actions accordingly.

Secondly, in either situation, would you consider anyone to be flat-footed? It seems weird that both sides are expecting imminent death on the other side of the door and are ready for it, yet would be flat-footed. But I believe RAW says anyone who hasn't acted is flat-footed.

thanks,
.o.
calronmoonflower
10-22-07, 12:09 AM You cannot ready actions outside of combat.

As both sides are aware no surprise round will occur, but the orcs position might be fortified.
Eightbitmage
10-22-07, 07:37 AM You cannot ready an action outside of combat, I assume that is what you mean by reserved actions. If you want to attack and the opponent is unaware of you that is your action during the surprise round. If the opponent is aware of you then initiative is rolled because otherwise you couldn't tell who would act first if you could ready outside of combat.

Also yes, if your turn has not come up you are flatfooted.
mvincent
10-22-07, 12:22 PM you couldn't tell who would act first if you could ready outside of combat.Yup (well, I guess you could handle multiple readied actions with another initiative roll). My own rule of thumb is "If you would've readied an action outside of combat (were it allowed), then you get to go on the surprise round".

This works out nicely, since you can only ready a standard action, which is all you are allowed on a surprise round anyway. It's useful even if everyone on both sides acts on the surprise round, since it still lessens flat-footed time (reasonable for someone that is prepared for combat).
Loren Pechtel
10-22-07, 02:41 PM Nobody's flat-footed but I would give the orcs a standard action. The orcs are focusing on one small thing--the door, and one action--attacking whoever shows up there.

The PC's, however, only know that someone is there, they don't know where and will have to locate their foes.
Cifer
10-22-07, 05:41 PM IMO, an encounter (and in this case, the combat) starts as soon as one side becomes aware of the other and decides to do something. This means you roll initiative about one round before the door-kicking occurs, the orcs get to ready their actions, the PCs can delay some and the fighter-guy can kick in the door.

"With my crossbow pointing at the door, I wait for something to burst in so I can shoot it" is pretty much the classical readied action.
Kernath
10-23-07, 09:35 AM IMO, an encounter (and in this case, the combat) starts as soon as one side becomes aware of the other and decides to do something.

This seems pretty fair to me. If the orcs get to ready actions, then so do the players. There is no regulation on exactly WHEN you get to roll initiative, so doing so upon discovery is probably a good time.
Salla
10-23-07, 01:14 PM This is a straight initiative situation, no surprise round, since each group is aware of the other.
mvincent
10-23-07, 01:35 PM There is no regulation on exactly WHEN you get to roll initiative, so doing so upon discovery is probably a good time.If initiative is rolled before the door is opened, then pretty much everyone would (and should) have a readied action. So then you have to determine what order those readied actions go in... so you are back to square one.
Kernath
10-23-07, 04:42 PM If initiative is rolled before the door is opened, then pretty much everyone would (and should) have a readied action. So then you have to determine what order those readied actions go in... so you are back to square one.

Then you just use the initiatives you rolled, because they didn't really mean anything until that point.
mvincent
10-23-07, 04:45 PM Then you just use the initiatives you rolled, because they didn't really mean anything until that point.That's my point.
Loren Pechtel
10-23-07, 09:05 PM This seems pretty fair to me. If the orcs get to ready actions, then so do the players. There is no regulation on exactly WHEN you get to roll initiative, so doing so upon discovery is probably a good time.

I disagree. The players can't ready attack actions as they don't have targets to attack. There aren't going to be any orcs bursting through the door to hit. They have to locate the orcs--which are probably enough off to the side that they need to come into the doorway to see them.

PC: "I ready an action to attack the first orc I see".

DM: The fighter kicks open the door and gets hit by arrows from somewhere. You don't see the point of origin.
Marcus Majarra
10-23-07, 11:38 PM I disagree. The players can't ready attack actions as they don't have targets to attack. There aren't going to be any orcs bursting through the door to hit. They have to locate the orcs--which are probably enough off to the side that they need to come into the doorway to see them.

PC: "I ready an action to attack the first orc I see".

DM: The fighter kicks open the door and gets hit by arrows from somewhere. You don't see the point of origin.
Actually, this entire reasoning is mostly wrong. You can ready actions however you want. If your triggering conditions aren't met, your readied action just isn't triggered. Your example indicates that the PC readies to attack the first orc he sees. If he doesn't see any orcs, his readied action never triggers, although he still has that action readied. Thus, if the fighter had kicked open the door and an orc comes into line of sight of the readying character (even as a result of the door being kicked open), the readied action takes place.

This said, mvincent made a great point. Allowing everyone to ready actions outside combat basically results in the equivalent of a surprise round for all the readying characters, as all the readying characters have to sort out who gets his standard action first, which is resolved by initiative rolls. Of course, if all the characters are readying, it's like saying everyone gets to act in the surprise round, which is like saying that everyone is aware of everyone and that no surprise round actually exists.
Salla
10-23-07, 11:57 PM Allowing everyone to ready actions outside combat basically results in the equivalent of a surprise round for all the readying characters, as all the readying characters have to sort out who gets his standard action first, which is resolved by initiative rolls. Of course, if all the characters are readying, it's like saying everyone gets to act in the surprise round, which is like saying that everyone is aware of everyone and that no surprise round actually exists.

Very zen.
omnicrondelicious
10-24-07, 03:52 AM Wow. This is quite the gray area. There are two opposing views, and both are pretty explicitly supported by the DMG:

Cifer nailed it - the encounter didn't begin when the door was opened, it began when the orcs heard the PCs. To paraphrase the DMG on page 22, an encounter begins when one or more creatures become aware of the other side. Later in the same section, it says the GM can call for initiative whenever the exact order matters. But until then, just keeping track of rounds is fine. So the orcs can reserve an action because the encounter has begun and rounds are ticking by, but we haven't yet rolled initiative because the exact order doesn't matter yet. Likewise, nobody will be flat-footed after the first round the encounter begins.

The other side is that even though they parties are aware of each other it is still not technically combat. So no reserved actions and every one is flat-footed until the parties can actually directly interact and initiative is rolled. This is supported in the DMG in two places: in the "Both Aware but Cannot Interact Immediately" example on page 23, initiative is rolled when the fighter opens the door - that happens to be the event that allows the two sides to interact. Presumably, and somewhat strangely to me, that also suggests that despite being aware of each other and readied for battle, combatants are indeed flat-footed until they get their first action in initiative order.

The second supporting section is a couple pages later, DMG 26: "Don't allow players to use the ready action outside of combat. While the above examples [illustrating how covering a door with a crossbow might work] are all acceptable in the middle of an encounter, a player cannot use a ready action to cover a door with his crossbow outside combat. It's okay for a player to state that he's covering the door, but what that means is that if something comes through that door he's unlikely to be caught unaware. If the character coming through the door wasn't aware of him, he gets an extra standard action because he surprised the other character, and so he can shoot the weapon. Otherwise, he still needs to roll initiative for his character normally."

There is enough contradiction and ambiguity here to allow both perspectives unfortunately. I lean towards the first interpretation - that the encounter begins when one or more characters become aware of the opposition. The above paragraph says it's acceptable to cover a door in the middle of an encounter, which to me means any time after the first round that one or more sides became aware of the other. But really you could look at it either way.

Thanks for the interesting rules debate y'all.
Marcus Majarra
10-24-07, 07:09 AM Very zen.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it fall, does it get a surprise round?
Frugal
10-24-07, 10:25 AM I can see doing it 1 of 2 ways, either roll initiative when the orcs become aware of the party and allow the orcs to ready actions or roll initiative right when the door is opened.

In either case, both parties are aware so no surprise round. I'm inclined to roll initiative when the orcs hear the party and then have them setup, make their noise, the party hears and is then aware and able to react.

Now yes, it does get odd with resolving readied actions but you can handle that with looking at things like line of sight, or initiative order if you need to. For instance, if one party member opens the door then the people behind him with readied actions most likely don't have line of sight to the orcs so they can't make a readied action. If they do have line of sight (and their readied condition applies) then I'd go by initiative order to figure out who gets "the drop" on who in terms of getting off a readied action first since that's what initiative is supposed to represent anyway.

Adjudicate who's flat-footed based on whether they've acted since they became aware. For instance, the orcs become aware of the party and start acting, they're not flat-footed and could quite possibly setup surprise (if they were quieter), the PCs hear the orcs and begin acting, any of the PCs that act aren't flat-footed either.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
omnicrondelicious 10-22-07, 12:04 AM	Situation from my game earlier tonight: The player's notice a secret door. Because they are making all kinds of noise, the orcs on the other side of the door hear them and start preparing a defense - flipping over a table, drawing weapons, etc. The players search for traps, unlock the door, then listen and hear a faint sound of wood scraping on stone (the table sliding into position), then discuss strategy. Both sides are now aware of each other. By this time the orcs are in position and the front three have readied actions to hurl throwing axes when the door opens. The PCs brace themselves and one kicks in the door. What happens? My first inclination was to give the orcs an immediate attack due to their reserved actions, then have everyone else roll for init. The players convinced me that since everyone on both sides of the door were simply waiting for the door to open, to treat everyone as the same and just roll inits normally. I'm still not sure that was the correct thing to do - the orcs had explicit reserved actions that didn't really depend on what came through the door. The PCs didn't have explicit reserved actions - they were just waiting to see what was on the other side and would adjust their actions accordingly. Secondly, in either situation, would you consider anyone to be flat-footed? It seems weird that both sides are expecting imminent death on the other side of the door and are ready for it, yet would be flat-footed. But I believe RAW says anyone who hasn't acted is flat-footed. thanks, .o.
calronmoonflower 10-22-07, 12:09 AM	You cannot ready actions outside of combat. As both sides are aware no surprise round will occur, but the orcs position might be fortified.
Eightbitmage 10-22-07, 07:37 AM	You cannot ready an action outside of combat, I assume that is what you mean by reserved actions. If you want to attack and the opponent is unaware of you that is your action during the surprise round. If the opponent is aware of you then initiative is rolled because otherwise you couldn't tell who would act first if you could ready outside of combat. Also yes, if your turn has not come up you are flatfooted.
mvincent 10-22-07, 12:22 PM	you couldn't tell who would act first if you could ready outside of combat.Yup (well, I guess you could handle multiple readied actions with another initiative roll). My own rule of thumb is "If you would've readied an action outside of combat (were it allowed), then you get to go on the surprise round". This works out nicely, since you can only ready a standard action, which is all you are allowed on a surprise round anyway. It's useful even if everyone on both sides acts on the surprise round, since it still lessens flat-footed time (reasonable for someone that is prepared for combat).
Loren Pechtel 10-22-07, 02:41 PM	Nobody's flat-footed but I would give the orcs a standard action. The orcs are focusing on one small thing--the door, and one action--attacking whoever shows up there. The PC's, however, only know that someone is there, they don't know where and will have to locate their foes.
Cifer 10-22-07, 05:41 PM	IMO, an encounter (and in this case, the combat) starts as soon as one side becomes aware of the other and decides to do something. This means you roll initiative about one round before the door-kicking occurs, the orcs get to ready their actions, the PCs can delay some and the fighter-guy can kick in the door. "With my crossbow pointing at the door, I wait for something to burst in so I can shoot it" is pretty much the classical readied action.
Kernath 10-23-07, 09:35 AM	IMO, an encounter (and in this case, the combat) starts as soon as one side becomes aware of the other and decides to do something. This seems pretty fair to me. If the orcs get to ready actions, then so do the players. There is no regulation on exactly WHEN you get to roll initiative, so doing so upon discovery is probably a good time.
Salla 10-23-07, 01:14 PM	This is a straight initiative situation, no surprise round, since each group is aware of the other.
mvincent 10-23-07, 01:35 PM	There is no regulation on exactly WHEN you get to roll initiative, so doing so upon discovery is probably a good time.If initiative is rolled before the door is opened, then pretty much everyone would (and should) have a readied action. So then you have to determine what order those readied actions go in... so you are back to square one.
Kernath 10-23-07, 04:42 PM	If initiative is rolled before the door is opened, then pretty much everyone would (and should) have a readied action. So then you have to determine what order those readied actions go in... so you are back to square one. Then you just use the initiatives you rolled, because they didn't really mean anything until that point.
mvincent 10-23-07, 04:45 PM	Then you just use the initiatives you rolled, because they didn't really mean anything until that point.That's my point.
Loren Pechtel 10-23-07, 09:05 PM	This seems pretty fair to me. If the orcs get to ready actions, then so do the players. There is no regulation on exactly WHEN you get to roll initiative, so doing so upon discovery is probably a good time. I disagree. The players can't ready attack actions as they don't have targets to attack. There aren't going to be any orcs bursting through the door to hit. They have to locate the orcs--which are probably enough off to the side that they need to come into the doorway to see them. PC: "I ready an action to attack the first orc I see". DM: The fighter kicks open the door and gets hit by arrows from somewhere. You don't see the point of origin.
Marcus Majarra 10-23-07, 11:38 PM	I disagree. The players can't ready attack actions as they don't have targets to attack. There aren't going to be any orcs bursting through the door to hit. They have to locate the orcs--which are probably enough off to the side that they need to come into the doorway to see them. PC: "I ready an action to attack the first orc I see". DM: The fighter kicks open the door and gets hit by arrows from somewhere. You don't see the point of origin. Actually, this entire reasoning is mostly wrong. You can ready actions however you want. If your triggering conditions aren't met, your readied action just isn't triggered. Your example indicates that the PC readies to attack the first orc he sees. If he doesn't see any orcs, his readied action never triggers, although he still has that action readied. Thus, if the fighter had kicked open the door and an orc comes into line of sight of the readying character (even as a result of the door being kicked open), the readied action takes place. This said, mvincent made a great point. Allowing everyone to ready actions outside combat basically results in the equivalent of a surprise round for all the readying characters, as all the readying characters have to sort out who gets his standard action first, which is resolved by initiative rolls. Of course, if all the characters are readying, it's like saying everyone gets to act in the surprise round, which is like saying that everyone is aware of everyone and that no surprise round actually exists.
Salla 10-23-07, 11:57 PM	Allowing everyone to ready actions outside combat basically results in the equivalent of a surprise round for all the readying characters, as all the readying characters have to sort out who gets his standard action first, which is resolved by initiative rolls. Of course, if all the characters are readying, it's like saying everyone gets to act in the surprise round, which is like saying that everyone is aware of everyone and that no surprise round actually exists. Very zen.
omnicrondelicious 10-24-07, 03:52 AM	Wow. This is quite the gray area. There are two opposing views, and both are pretty explicitly supported by the DMG: Cifer nailed it - the encounter didn't begin when the door was opened, it began when the orcs heard the PCs. To paraphrase the DMG on page 22, an encounter begins when one or more creatures become aware of the other side. Later in the same section, it says the GM can call for initiative whenever the exact order matters. But until then, just keeping track of rounds is fine. So the orcs can reserve an action because the encounter has begun and rounds are ticking by, but we haven't yet rolled initiative because the exact order doesn't matter yet. Likewise, nobody will be flat-footed after the first round the encounter begins. The other side is that even though they parties are aware of each other it is still not technically combat. So no reserved actions and every one is flat-footed until the parties can actually directly interact and initiative is rolled. This is supported in the DMG in two places: in the "Both Aware but Cannot Interact Immediately" example on page 23, initiative is rolled when the fighter opens the door - that happens to be the event that allows the two sides to interact. Presumably, and somewhat strangely to me, that also suggests that despite being aware of each other and readied for battle, combatants are indeed flat-footed until they get their first action in initiative order. The second supporting section is a couple pages later, DMG 26: "Don't allow players to use the ready action outside of combat. While the above examples [illustrating how covering a door with a crossbow might work] are all acceptable in the middle of an encounter, a player cannot use a ready action to cover a door with his crossbow outside combat. It's okay for a player to state that he's covering the door, but what that means is that if something comes through that door he's unlikely to be caught unaware. If the character coming through the door wasn't aware of him, he gets an extra standard action because he surprised the other character, and so he can shoot the weapon. Otherwise, he still needs to roll initiative for his character normally." There is enough contradiction and ambiguity here to allow both perspectives unfortunately. I lean towards the first interpretation - that the encounter begins when one or more characters become aware of the opposition. The above paragraph says it's acceptable to cover a door in the middle of an encounter, which to me means any time after the first round that one or more sides became aware of the other. But really you could look at it either way. Thanks for the interesting rules debate y'all.
Marcus Majarra 10-24-07, 07:09 AM	Very zen. If a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it fall, does it get a surprise round?
Frugal 10-24-07, 10:25 AM	I can see doing it 1 of 2 ways, either roll initiative when the orcs become aware of the party and allow the orcs to ready actions or roll initiative right when the door is opened. In either case, both parties are aware so no surprise round. I'm inclined to roll initiative when the orcs hear the party and then have them setup, make their noise, the party hears and is then aware and able to react. Now yes, it does get odd with resolving readied actions but you can handle that with looking at things like line of sight, or initiative order if you need to. For instance, if one party member opens the door then the people behind him with readied actions most likely don't have line of sight to the orcs so they can't make a readied action. If they do have line of sight (and their readied condition applies) then I'd go by initiative order to figure out who gets "the drop" on who in terms of getting off a readied action first since that's what initiative is supposed to represent anyway. Adjudicate who's flat-footed based on whether they've acted since they became aware. For instance, the orcs become aware of the party and start acting, they're not flat-footed and could quite possibly setup surprise (if they were quieter), the PCs hear the orcs and begin acting, any of the PCs that act aren't flat-footed either.