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Yeah, I thought I knew how it worked, too.
Readying an action in combat sounds pretty straightforward, right? Instead of doing something on your turn, you instead do something at a later time in the round.
It’s basically just waiting a hot sec before doing what you planned to do, isn’t it?
Well, not really.
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The main confusion here comes from the distinction between readying an action and delaying your turn in initiative.
The former is allowed, with some caveats, while the latter is not — with the exception of homebrew rules, of course.
Here’s the official wording from the Player’s Handbook about readying an action in D&D 5e:
Sometimes you want to get the jump on a foe or wait for a particular circumstance before you act. To do so, you can take the Ready action on your turn, which lets you act using your reaction before the start of your next turn.
First, you decide what perceivable circumstance will trigger your reaction. Then, you choose the action you will take in response to that trigger, or you choose to move up to your speed in response to it. Examples include “If the cultist steps on the trapdoor, I’ll pull the lever that opens it,” and “If the goblin steps next to me, I move away.”
When the trigger occurs, you can either take your reaction right after the trigger finishes or ignore the trigger. Remember that you can take only one reaction per round.
When you ready a spell, you cast it as normal but hold its energy, which you release with your reaction when the trigger occurs. To be readied, a spell must have a casting time of 1 action, and holding onto the spell’s magic requires concentration. If your concentration is broken, the spell dissipates without taking effect. For example, if you are concentrating on the web spell and ready magic missile, your web spell ends, and if you take damage before you release magic missile with your reaction, your concentration might be broken.
So, in simpler terms, on your turn you need to:
A) State the action you’re readying (attack, dodge, dash, etc.)
B) specify the trigger that will cause you to do that
C) Accept the fact that you will do nothing this round if that trigger doesn’t happen.
In addition, actually following through with that readied action costs you your reaction.
A clarification from Jeremy Crawford (D&D’s principal rules designer) in May of 2015 also noted that, when you ready an attack action, you can only make one attack — even if you’re character can usually use the extra attack feature.
@JeremyECrawford Still confused. Fighter w Extra Attack(1) readies an attack action. Does he get 1 attack or 2 with the readied reaction?
— Lex Starwalker (@LexStarwalker) May 30, 2015
@JeremyECrawford Ok thank you. I completely misinterpreted your original answer. 🙂 Re-read the rules, & see “on your turn” distinction now.
— Lex Starwalker (@LexStarwalker) May 30, 2015
Crawford also explained the reasoning behind not allowing the delaying of a full turn in initiative order in an August 2015 article.
He wrote that delaying a turn would slow in-game decision-making, potentially bringing combat to a crawl. He also said that being able to delay initiative order could become “an unwelcome chore,” for DMs who would have to constantly be updating the turn order.
Most importantly, though, is the effect it would have on certain spells:
“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,” Crawford wrote.
“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.”
All in all, the decision was made to ensure for faster combat 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.”
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