[RPG] Can you keep a readied action even through incapacitation

conditionsdnd-5ereadied-action

The following scenario occurs:

  1. Alice takes the Ready action to do something at a later time (the specifics don't matter).
  2. An enemy casts Hold Person on her, she fails the save and is now Paralyzed, and thus incapacitated and therefore she cannot take actions, or reactions.
  3. By some means the enemy concentrating on Hold Person loses concentration.
  4. Whatever Alice wanted to react to, occurs.

Disclaimer: Alice's turn has not come up again, and so she has not lost her readied action.

Can Alice still use her reaction to take the action she had readied, even though she was incapacitated after she had readied it?

Best Answer

Condition changes have no effect on a Readied Action unless it is a spell

The Ready action just says that you are able to take an action using your reaction at some point before the start of your next turn.

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. (PHB 193)

There is nothing about it that would be canceled by becoming incapacitated.

However, you must become free from your incapacitation before the start of your next turn, otherwise you lose your Readied action anyways since you can only Ready an action until that point.

The only exception would be if you Readied a spell since being incapacitated forces you to lose concentration which also means you would lose the Readied spell.

To be readied, a spell must have a casting time of 1 action, and holding onto the spell's magic requires concentration (explained in chapter 10). If your concentration is broken, the spell dissipates without taking effect.

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