No Delay Action & Other Sage Advice - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 pukunui Aug 17, 2015 15:28:44	Jeremy Crawford explains why they didn't include a delay action in 5e in this month's Sage Advice column. Can you delay your turn and take it later in the round? Nope. When it’s your turn, either you do something or you don’t. If you don’t want to do anything, consider taking the Dodge action so that you’ll, at least, have some extra protection. If you want to wait to act in response to something, take the Ready action, which lets you take part of your turn later. For a variety of reasons, we didn’t include the option to delay your turn: Your turn involves several decisions, including where to move and what action to take. If you could delay your turn, your decision-making would possibly become slower, since you would have to consider whether you wanted to take your turn at all. Multiply that extra analysis by the number of characters and monsters in a combat, and you have the potential for many slowdowns in play. The ability to delay your turn can make initiative meaningless, as characters and monsters bounce around in the initiative order. If combatants can change their place in the initiative order at will, why use initiative at all? On top of that, changing initiative can easily turn into an unwelcome chore, especially for the DM, who might have to change the initiative list over and over during a fight. Being able to delay your turn can let you wreak havoc on the durations of spells and other effects, particularly any of them that last until your next turn. Simply by changing when your turn happens, you could change the length of certain spells. The way to guard against such abuse would be to create a set of additional rules that would limit your ability to change durations. The net effect? More complexity would be added to the game, and with more complexity, there is greater potential for slower play. Two of our goals for combat were for it to be speedy and for initiative to matter. We didn’t want to start every combat by rolling initiative and then undermine turn order with a delay option. Moreover, we felt that toying with initiative wasn’t where the focus should be in battle. Instead, the dramatic actions of the combatants should be the focus, with turns that could happen as quickly as possible. Plus, the faster your turn ends, the sooner you get to take your next turn.
#2 LordTwig Aug 17, 2015 17:12:34	The majority of this Sage Advice is pretty uncontroversial. However, the part you quoted about delaying actions seems a little weak. It is not that it is logically incorrect in any way, it's just weak. 1. Slowing down play is really minimal. As a DM it is basically, "Your turn, what do you do?" "I delay" Done! The DM can then just ignore that player unless they speak up and take an action really you lose maybe half a second, maybe a full one? Really not a big deal. 2. How does delaying make Initiative meaningless? It assumes you are always going as fast as possible. That's why Initiative matters, generally it is always better to go first. On those rare occasions when it is an advantage to go later, you delay so that your high Initiative advantage is not a disadvantage. You can never just decide to go faster, but you can always decide to go slower, or do nothing at all. It's the easiest thing in the world! I am completely at a loss at how delaying makes Initiative meaningless. I can't even really argue this point it makes so little sense. 3. This is the only real valid reason. It would certainly make the game more complex. There would be no way around creating special rules to handle spells that expire on a characters round. The simplest rule would just be that it expires on the Initiative that it was cast. Not really a complex rule, but more complex than no rule at all, and it would be one more thing to keep track of in the Initiative round. Other than that this Sage Advice column was solid.
#3 ankiyavon Aug 17, 2015 18:20:54	Removing Delay was fine, for the reasons he talked about, but there was really no reason to remove Ready. A readied action has all the decisions already made and does not alter your place in initiative.
#4 pukunui Aug 17, 2015 18:24:00	ankiyavon wrote:
#5 Rastapopoulos Aug 17, 2015 20:42:28
#6 FallingIcicle Aug 17, 2015 20:56:18	I was surprised by the goodberry ruling. 40 hp of total healing for a 1st level spell is a bit much.
#7 pukunui Aug 17, 2015 22:45:41	Rastapopoulos wrote:
#8 LupusRegalis Aug 18, 2015 0:28:07	I could swear that M.Mearls or someone else had said that Archery Fighting Style did work with any weapon used for a Ranged Attack. One of those non-sensical rulings along the same lines as why the Duelist Fighting Style allows for the use of Shields. Glad to see them take care of at least one of those. But then they go on to talk about the Staff and for some reason maintaining that Monks are unable to use Two-Handed weapons as part of their style. Ridiculous.
#9 Rya.Reisender Aug 18, 2015 0:41:40	I'm happy that the goodberry thing is finally officially clarified. I agree mostly with why delaying an action is bad, especially that it raises complexity too much for the DM. The only argument that I see is weak is that it would make initiative pointless. That wouldn't be the case because the one who goes first has priority on decision if he wants to go first or not then. So that's still an advantage. But yeah too hard for DM to keep track off.
#10 Noon Aug 18, 2015 3:21:33	I'm not sure what delay does that ready an action doesn't already do? It just sounds like delay is really just some kind of 'I win' button - "they do X? Then I stop them instantly, hurrah!" Just ready your action. The fantasy of just reacting however you want is definately high fantasy. Generally I disagree with something, but that quote makes sense to me (perhaps they should say it makes the turn order of initiative meaningless, rather than saying it makes initiative meaningless perse)
#11 frothsof Aug 18, 2015 6:23:55	Sooo glad there's no delay action or archery style for thrown melee weapons
#12 Grazel Aug 18, 2015 7:26:33	Noon wrote:
#13 ZHDarkstar Aug 18, 2015 8:54:17	That Goodberry ruling is ridiculous...
#14 TenaciousJ Aug 18, 2015 9:27:25	It's 40 HP of healing spread out over 11 actions. 1 to cast it and 1 action per berry consumed. It's a potent out of combat heal for sure. I guess it doesn't seem like much to me after 3.5's wands of lesser vigor or divine metamagic persisted mass lesser vigor. FallingIcicle wrote:
#15 Rya.Reisender Aug 18, 2015 9:31:53	I agree, goodberry is not all that overpowered even with that ruling, as long as you consider that it requires you to multiclass for it and using a single one consumes an action.
#16 ankiyavon Aug 18, 2015 10:53:08	pukunui wrote:
(Reply to #8) Clutchbone	LupusRegalis wrote:
#18 Greenstone.Walker Aug 18, 2015 16:37:25	Rastapopoulos wrote:
#19 Noon Aug 18, 2015 16:47:17	Grazel wrote:
(Reply to #18) LordTwig	Greenstone.Walker wrote:
#21 ShinQuickMan Aug 18, 2015 18:51:15	LordTwig wrote:
#22 FFSAA Aug 18, 2015 19:02:34	ShinQuickMan wrote:
#23 Greenstone.Walker Aug 18, 2015 20:34:07	ShinQuickMan wrote:
#24 dmgorgon Aug 18, 2015 20:34:16	The "guard" action has existed since the gold box games.
(Reply to #17) LupusRegalis	Clutchbone wrote:
(Reply to #17) The_White_Sorcerer	Clutchbone wrote:
#27 Captain_Kobold Aug 20, 2015 3:20:59	LupusRegalis wrote:
#28 Core-Earth-Stormer Aug 20, 2015 7:17:04	The column is titled sage advice for a reason ladies and gentlement. Take any ruling that Crawford, Mearls, the ghost of Gygax or anyone who has ever written the sage advice column as an advice only. If you want to use Delay action or some variant of the bonus disciple of life gives on goodberry, or if you want to rule that monks can use two handed or a melee weapon not normally considered a monk weapon do so. it is your game as long as you and the players are having fun thats all that matters.
#29 Coredump00 Aug 20, 2015 15:39:42	I don't understand why this is such a big deal. 5E is designed to be streamlined and fairly simple, so no Delay action. But its not like Crawford has said you must return your DnD books if you decide you like Delay and want to use it.... JC and Mearls bashing down your door with the DnD Swat team to make sure you never delay.... Its a very simple mechanic to add in... so if you like it just add it into your games.
(Reply to #29) Clutchbone	Coredump00 wrote:

Post/Author/DateTime

Post

pukunui

Aug 17, 2015 15:28:44

Jeremy Crawford explains why they didn't include a delay action in 5e in this month's Sage Advice column.

Can you delay your turn and take it later in the round? Nope. When it’s your turn, either you do something or you don’t. If you don’t want to do anything, consider taking the Dodge action so that you’ll, at least, have some extra protection. If you want to wait to act in response to something, take the Ready action, which lets you take part of your turn later.

For a variety of reasons, we didn’t include the option to delay your turn:

Your turn involves several decisions, including where to move and what action to take. If you could delay your turn, your decision-making would possibly become slower, since you would have to consider whether you wanted to take your turn at all. Multiply that extra analysis by the number of characters and monsters in a combat, and you have the potential for many slowdowns in play.

The ability to delay your turn can make initiative meaningless, as characters and monsters bounce around in the initiative order. If combatants can change their place in the initiative order at will, why use initiative at all? On top of that, changing initiative can easily turn into an unwelcome chore, especially for the DM, who might have to change the initiative list over and over during a fight.

Being able to delay your turn can let you wreak havoc on the durations of spells and other effects, particularly any of them that last until your next turn. Simply by changing when your turn happens, you could change the length of certain spells. The way to guard against such abuse would be to create a set of additional rules that would limit your ability to change durations. The net effect? More complexity would be added to the game, and with more complexity, there is greater potential for slower play.

Two of our goals for combat were for it to be speedy and for initiative to matter. We didn’t want to start every combat by rolling initiative and then undermine turn order with a delay option. Moreover, we felt that toying with initiative wasn’t where the focus should be in battle. Instead, the dramatic actions of the combatants should be the focus, with turns that could happen as quickly as possible. Plus, the faster your turn ends, the sooner you get to take your next turn.

LordTwig

Aug 17, 2015 17:12:34

The majority of this Sage Advice is pretty uncontroversial. However, the part you quoted about delaying actions seems a little weak. It is not that it is logically incorrect in any way, it's just weak.

1. Slowing down play is really minimal. As a DM it is basically, "Your turn, what do you do?" "I delay" Done! The DM can then just ignore that player unless they speak up and take an action really you lose maybe half a second, maybe a full one? Really not a big deal.

2. How does delaying make Initiative meaningless? It assumes you are always going as fast as possible. That's why Initiative matters, generally it is always better to go first. On those rare occasions when it is an advantage to go later, you delay so that your high Initiative advantage is not a disadvantage. You can never just decide to go faster, but you can always decide to go slower, or do nothing at all. It's the easiest thing in the world! I am completely at a loss at how delaying makes Initiative meaningless. I can't even really argue this point it makes so little sense.

3. This is the only real valid reason. It would certainly make the game more complex. There would be no way around creating special rules to handle spells that expire on a characters round. The simplest rule would just be that it expires on the Initiative that it was cast. Not really a complex rule, but more complex than no rule at all, and it would be one more thing to keep track of in the Initiative round.

Other than that this Sage Advice column was solid.

ankiyavon

Aug 17, 2015 18:20:54

Removing Delay was fine, for the reasons he talked about, but there was really no reason to remove Ready.

A readied action has all the decisions already made and does not alter your place in initiative.

pukunui

Aug 17, 2015 18:24:00

ankiyavon wrote:

Rastapopoulos

Aug 17, 2015 20:42:28

FallingIcicle

Aug 17, 2015 20:56:18

I was surprised by the goodberry ruling. 40 hp of total healing for a 1st level spell is a bit much.

pukunui

Aug 17, 2015 22:45:41

Rastapopoulos wrote:

LupusRegalis

Aug 18, 2015 0:28:07

I could swear that M.Mearls or someone else had said that Archery Fighting Style did work with any weapon used for a Ranged Attack.

One of those non-sensical rulings along the same lines as why the Duelist Fighting Style allows for the use of Shields.

Glad to see them take care of at least one of those.

But then they go on to talk about the Staff and for some reason maintaining that Monks are unable to use Two-Handed weapons as part of their style. Ridiculous.

Rya.Reisender

Aug 18, 2015 0:41:40

I'm happy that the goodberry thing is finally officially clarified.

I agree mostly with why delaying an action is bad, especially that it raises complexity too much for the DM. The only argument that I see is weak is that it would make initiative pointless. That wouldn't be the case because the one who goes first has priority on decision if he wants to go first or not then. So that's still an advantage. But yeah too hard for DM to keep track off.

#10

Noon

Aug 18, 2015 3:21:33

I'm not sure what delay does that ready an action doesn't already do?

It just sounds like delay is really just some kind of 'I win' button - "they do X? Then I stop them instantly, hurrah!"

Just ready your action. The fantasy of just reacting however you want is definately high fantasy.

Generally I disagree with something, but that quote makes sense to me (perhaps they should say it makes the turn order of initiative meaningless, rather than saying it makes initiative meaningless perse)

#11

frothsof

Aug 18, 2015 6:23:55

Sooo glad there's no delay action or archery style for thrown melee weapons

#12

Grazel

Aug 18, 2015 7:26:33

Noon wrote:

#13

ZHDarkstar

Aug 18, 2015 8:54:17

That Goodberry ruling is ridiculous...

#14

TenaciousJ

Aug 18, 2015 9:27:25

It's 40 HP of healing spread out over 11 actions. 1 to cast it and 1 action per berry consumed. It's a potent out of combat heal for sure. I guess it doesn't seem like much to me after 3.5's wands of lesser vigor or divine metamagic persisted mass lesser vigor.

FallingIcicle wrote:

#15

Rya.Reisender

Aug 18, 2015 9:31:53

I agree, goodberry is not all that overpowered even with that ruling, as long as you consider that it requires you to multiclass for it and using a single one consumes an action.

#16

ankiyavon

Aug 18, 2015 10:53:08

pukunui wrote:

(Reply to #8)

Clutchbone

LupusRegalis wrote:

#18

Greenstone.Walker

Aug 18, 2015 16:37:25

Rastapopoulos wrote:

#19

Noon

Aug 18, 2015 16:47:17

Grazel wrote:

(Reply to #18)

LordTwig

Greenstone.Walker wrote:

#21

ShinQuickMan

Aug 18, 2015 18:51:15

LordTwig wrote:

#22

FFSAA

Aug 18, 2015 19:02:34

ShinQuickMan wrote:

#23

Greenstone.Walker

Aug 18, 2015 20:34:07

ShinQuickMan wrote:

#24

dmgorgon

Aug 18, 2015 20:34:16

The "guard" action has existed since the gold box games.

(Reply to #17)

LupusRegalis

Clutchbone wrote:

(Reply to #17)

The_White_Sorcerer

Clutchbone wrote:

#27

Captain_Kobold

Aug 20, 2015 3:20:59

LupusRegalis wrote:

#28

Core-Earth-Stormer

Aug 20, 2015 7:17:04

The column is titled sage advice for a reason ladies and gentlement. Take any ruling that Crawford, Mearls, the ghost of Gygax or anyone who has ever written the sage advice column as an advice only. If you want to use Delay action or some variant of the bonus disciple of life gives on goodberry, or if you want to rule that monks can use two handed or a melee weapon not normally considered a monk weapon do so. it is your game as long as you and the players are having fun thats all that matters.

#29

Coredump00

Aug 20, 2015 15:39:42

I don't understand why this is such a big deal. 5E is designed to be streamlined and fairly simple, so no Delay action. But its not like Crawford has said you must return your DnD books if you decide you like Delay and want to use it.... JC and Mearls bashing down your door with the DnD Swat team to make sure you never delay....

Its a very simple mechanic to add in... so if you like it just add it into your games.

(Reply to #29)

Clutchbone

Coredump00 wrote: