[RPG] Does a character taking the Ready action perceive time

dnd-5ereadied-actiontime

The Ready action lets you react to a "perceivable circumstance." Trying to ready an action based on the initiative order is apparently possible, if you Ready based on a creature moving or attacking, rather than based on "their turn".

But what about real (in-world) seconds or milliseconds? Can a character say "I Ready the attack action against this hostage, preparing to bring my axe down on them in three seconds"? What if they count out loud and ready their action to trigger when they say the word "three"? What about five and nine-tenths seconds? What do any of these situations mean as far as turn order goes?

Best Answer

The rules lack the granularity required to definitively adjudicate such a trigger.

Time is weird in combat. A whole round is six seconds, but your turn is also six seconds, but five turns in a round is 5 times 6 equals 6. The idea is that while we go in initiative order, there is some sense in which narratively, all the turns in a round are happening at the same time.

So for a reaction trigger to be ready “3 seconds from now”, it would be entirely consistent with the rules for that to be on your turn, or any turn after your turn during the same round, because the rules don’t tell us how to handle time like that.

If I’m the DM, I’m just going to ask you to choose another trigger, because I want to be able to say exactly when you may take your reaction.

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