Rules Corner: Alternate Reaction

The rules, as written right now, only allow a single attack to be made as a readied action. At first, this really isn't much of a problem. However, as players become more powerful and get more and more abilities (including extra attacks), the “ready an action” option gets less and less useful. For that reason, I hope to provide an alternate system I've seen and personally used.

The New System

Using the “ready an action” action allows the player or creature to take their turn later in the round (for purposes of effects, only the initiative order turn is used). As a result, the option remains useful for the entire length of a campaign.

Problems and Solutions: Keep the Trigger?

The above, as written, doesn't keep the trigger. It allows the player to use their turn as normal. This can cause a wide range of problems, include from stealth attacks. For these cases, I have a few solutions that could work.

First, players attacked successfully from stealth cannot react. This goes for spellcasters too. This is to prevent using the reactions to always attack right before a stealthed creature attacks.

Secondly, the trigger can be kept as normal. The only different is that more conditions and actions can be added (“I pull the lever when someone steps on the trapdoor” can change into “I pull the lever when someone steps on the trapdoor and move back to the rest of the party after doing so”). This is my preferred solution since it keeps it simpler and also makes extra-attack oriented classes keep up with wizards. It does, however, force wizards to keep concentrations to attack and extra-attack oriented characters not too (I deem this to be not too much of a big deal given the often area attack nature of spells allows them to do more damage overall).

Problems and Solutions: Concentration

There are a couple of problems that may be quickly apparent. The first comes for spellcasters. Previously, they had to ready a spell and maintain concentration. The above may let them to do the same thing without concentration. This makes the rule useless except for effects that require concentration to maintain.

If this is fine, you can ignore this section and go as is. However, you can also decide that spellcasters still need to maintain concentration to cast their spells but attacks do not. One will give a distinct disadvantage to spellcasters, but spells are quite powerful already so it might be seen as fine.

Problems and Solutions: Multiple People Delaying Actions

If two people are delaying their actions and then they both want to react, there is a problem with who goes first. In these cases, I say that the person who waited the longest acts first. This is quite straight forward I think, though feel free to point out any issues if you see them.