User talk:Luigifan18/Time Trap (3.5e Maneuver)

Ratings

	Eiji-kun opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	See below. Action economy is the most important thing to avoid breaking, but you broke it and won't change it even though its ease of abuse has been explained.

	Ghostwheel opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	Too powerful for a 3rd level maneuver, also easily cheesed.

Leziad opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.

As written this maneuver is much stronger than even 9th level maneuvers, possibly even without the loopholes. When I design something I try to read over the important bits first, readying an action is already a pretty shifty mechanic that allow some dirty shit. But this, this is too much. Make it a standard action and make you dazed for 1 round (bypassing immunities) after you complete the readied action THEN bump the level by at least 2. Then we probably have something workable.

Undead Knave opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.

This is incredibly broken for the reasons listed below. Even ignoring all of the easy infinite action stuff you can do (which are huge deals and really easy), this is still borked. Just as it's actually intended, this is way too powerful for its level. I will say I almost only rated this a Dislike because it is mercifully short and that's something you *really* need to work on, but it wouldn't matter and this is seriously unbalanced.

"Fair Trade"

Trade my move action for a full round action that I can take out of my turn? I can't see anything going wrong with that at all. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 09:59, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, it works like readying an action. You have to declare in advance what actions you'll take and what will cause you to take them. And then you have to follow through if and when your conditions are met; this can bite you in the ass (for instance, if you decide to charge the first creature to cast a spell — better hope that's not one of your friends!). --Luigifan18 (talk) 13:50, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

While that is true, it is easily abused.

"When my friend Gandalf takes his turn, I act." You are now acting on your initiative and Gandalf's initative. Really though the problem is that you are trading a lesser action for a greater one. While there are cases of that (such as a swift granting a move), it's generally a bad idea to give that much action economy benefits that easily. This would work if it was "spend a full round, take that action on whatever triggering clause without changing init" because then you've got an even trade, and the benefit of (probably) setting up a nice one-two combo where you go shortly after.

tl;dr Action economy is super valuable. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 00:31, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Except that this is a [Time] effect, like haste, slow, and time stop. You're supposed to get an advantage in terms of your actions. Also, this only lasts for 1 round; you can't go making yourself take two entire turns per round with it, that's just silly. (Okay, technically, giving you an extra turn is what it does, but only on that round. You don't get two turns per round for the entire rest of the encounter, that would be pants-on-head retarded at anything below 9th or epic level.) Also, it works like readying an action, which means that you have to actually react to something with it (and you have to declare in advance what sort of thing you'll be reacting to). The example you gave fits more with delaying an action, which is not the same thing.

What I'm getting at is, readying an action is a fair trade; you give up an action on your turn to take an equivalent action later. This is a better version of readying an action; it intentionally skews the action economy in your favor. And that's okay, because it's a 3rd-level maneuver; you need to have a few levels under your belt to use it, and, more importantly, once you've used it, it's expended, and you need to refresh it in order to use it again. You can't just go using this every round. Technically, you could use it every other round, but there would be basically no point in doing so, as refreshing maneuvers requires you to expend actions (unless you're a crusader, in which case your maneuvers are being refreshed on a time delay and you couldn't go around using the same maneuver once every two rounds even if you wanted to). A warblade technically could come out ahead since its action cost for expending maneuvers is a swift action and a standard action, recovering all maneuvers by doing so, but IIRC the maneuver-recovery mechanism has some sort of safeguard in place to prevent endless maneuver spam (and I mean an actual safeguard, not merely the fact that there are no maneuvers in the Tome of Battle that are initiated as a move action, except maybe in Desert Wind, which warblades don't get). As for swordsages, they can refresh a single maneuver with a full-round action. Refreshing this maneuver in that fashion actually puts you a little behind, considering that you need a move action to initiate it. (Yes, I know codex swordsages refresh with a move action instead. But even then, they're just breaking even. Expending two move actions – one to refresh this maneuver and one to initiate it – for an extra full-round action is literally pointless.)

Now, if this was an invocation – usable at will with no cooldown time and no need to refresh it – we would have a serious problem here. But as is, the very fact that this is a maneuver prevents it from raping the action economy. --Luigifan18 (talk) 02:03, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

This effectively lets you refresh all maneuvers freely if you're a warblade, or for a move action as a swordsage (along with an extra counter/boost). No bueno. --Ghostwheel (talk) 15:34, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I know that we're supposed to use some amount of placing stuff in a vacuum for discussing things, but I'll point out that there are some classes that can refresh a single maneuver as a Swift. This would allow you to say "when I refresh this maneuver, I do X and use this maneuver." Yay, potentially infinite loops! --Undead_Knave (talk) 16:20, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

P.S. "When I refresh this maneuver, I work on whittling this arrow and use this maneuver."

Can you think of a WotC maneuver that does this? --Ghostwheel (talk) 16:43, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

The thing here is that this maneuver is basically equivalent to "as a move action, take a full-round action" (with some extra power on top of it because you can ready as well). Is that power level appropriate for a level 3 maneuver? Personally I don't think so. Surgo (talk) 16:52, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Are you referencing White Raven Tactics? On one hand, I agree that it's powerful for its level. On the other, the crusader needs to wait turns before he gets it back, or if a warblade takes it, he needs to spend just about his full round doing no maneuvers in order to regain it, and is unable to activate counters or other boosts during either of the turns that it was used or when regaining the maneuver, so there were still weaknesses. I feel personally that the crusader version is a bit more powerful, since they don't have as many counters and such, but both could be used perhaps once a fight, two at most, and rarely did I find a game that had people chaining it together.

This, on the other hand, has no real weaknesses since it lets you regain maneuvers constantly as a warblade, letting you use WRT every round (as follows: Round 1, WRT, some standard action maneuver, activate Time Trap. Readied round: Regain maneuvers, Time Trap. Readied round: WRT, some standard action maneuver. Rinse and repeat each round.). --Ghostwheel (talk) 18:59, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

→Reverted indentation to one colon

I seriously don't get what the issue here is. Your extra round is the readied round. You have to declare in advance what you'll do and what will cause you to do it. And a warblade's maneuver-recovery mechanism specifically says he can't use a maneuver with the standard action he uses to follow his maneuver recovery; he can take an attack action, but not initiate a maneuver. --Luigifan18 (talk) 19:14, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I didn't say that the above took a standard action with a maneuver. His entire first readied turn is to regain maneuvers, then re-use Time Trap. It entirely removes the resource management aspect from the class... and on top of that, allows him to make infinite attacks each round. (Activate Time Trap, regain maneuvers, make a regular attack, repeat with readied action ad infinitum). --Ghostwheel (talk) 19:25, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Even if used sub-optimally this is extremely strong. It allow you to take an additional standard, move and swift action out of turn... for the cost of your move action. So while everyone has a Standard, a Move and Swift to play with in their turn you have Standard, Standard, Move, Swift, Swift. That make the swiftblade cry. So for the cost of a single 3rd level readied maneuver I could do a boost, make a strike then use this maneuver, then I immediately follow with a boost, a strike and a rush. The action economy is a fragile thing and this shatters it. --Leziad (talk) 21:07, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Thinking about it, even if nothing else, you could use this to get infinite movement that doesn't provoke AoOs and getting all your maneuvers back (by using the move to use this, standard and swift to recover, free 5' step ready and action to do the same, etc.). This is literally the least useful use for this I can think of and even that is really quite powerful. --Undead_Knave (talk) 21:56, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not referencing White Raven Tactics or anything else. Luigi, I think you're a little confused as to what I'm trying to say. You said the following:

“

You have to declare in advance what you'll do and what will cause you to do it.

”

But that is a very weak condition. "I breathe once" is a condition you can specify. That essentially turns your maneuver into spending a move action to take a full-round action. That might be an acceptable thing for the game but I personally don't think a third level maneuver is an appropriate level to place that at, especially in 3.5 which got rid of 3.0's Haste. Surgo (talk) 22:00, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Again, you have to declare in advance what you'll do and what will cause you to do it. And "what will cause you to do it" has to be something that another creature does, like, say, advancing towards you, opening a door, casting a spell, or drawing a weapon. It works just like readying an action, except that you're obligated to follow through once your conditions are met. This means that using this maneuver could easily backfire. For instance, if you ready an action as "I perform a full attack when someone enters my melee reach", that could cause you to end up slaughtering your party's cleric when he tries to cast cure serious wounds on you. And don't think you can get off scot-free by amending that to "I perform a full attack when an enemy enters my melee reach", because then you could still end up carving up one of your friends if the enemy is packing some means of confounding your ability to distinguish friend from foe. If you don't know what you're doing with this maneuver, you will shoot one of your buddies in the face. It's meant to be rather high-risk, so it makes sense that it's very powerful.

Also, I don't think any sane DM would let you get away with raping the game with infinite movement shenanigans. --Luigifan18 (talk) 22:05, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry but the RAW of readied actions does not say that it has to be something another creature does. In fact, that's never even mentioned. Your own breathing is a perfectly acceptable condition to ready on, which turns the maneuver into exactly what I said. Surgo (talk) 22:07, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Luigifan, the infinite movement is but one of the loophole. Also you gave an horrible horrible counterexample considering how bad you can abuse this maneuver. The condition you could specify is "When my turn end." Or "Whenever an opponent is about to act." and then you have a full-round action to play with. The risk here is about as shallow as a puppy piss puddle, any risk involved is only the one you willingly allow yourself to take. --Leziad (talk) 22:10, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

“	You can ready a standard action, a move action, or a free action. To do so, specify the action you will take and the conditions under which you will take it. Then, any time before your next action, you may take the readied action in response to that condition. The action occurs just before the action that triggers it. If the triggered action is part of another character’s activities, you interrupt the other character. Assuming he is still capable of doing so, he continues his actions once you complete your readied action. Your initiative result changes. For the rest of the encounter, your initiative result is the count on which you took the readied action, and you act immediately ahead of the character whose action triggered your readied action. You can take a 5-foot step as part of your readied action, but only if you don’t otherwise move any distance during the round.	”
—Special Initiative Actions, Emphasis Mine

So no, you don't need to slaughter your friend if he reach your before your enemy, you can't use the wording of a readied action against a PC, not in this way anyway. The biggest 'risk' this maneuver have is wasting a move action and a maneuver, which are essentially at-will. --Leziad (talk) 22:20, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

→Reverted indentation to one colon

Except with this maneuver, no, you have to take the actions when the conditions are met. And I think the only reason they don't specify the conditions as something another creature does is that they don't have to. Because if your readied action is in response to something you did on your turn, you didn't actually ready an action, you delayed. --Luigifan18 (talk) 02:41, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

My bad on that front. However my criticism still stand, the risk is extremely shallow. --Leziad (talk) 03:19, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Plus even if the maneuvers specifies that it has to be an action from an opponent, it's easy to turn it to "when the enemy takes a breath". When you're working with readying, your working with extreme subjectivity. And if you have no particular urge to time it right you just set the trigger to something so common as to be instant. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 03:22, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Think of Time Stand Still, a 9th level maneuver. It considered one of the best 9th level maneuver and it trade a full-round action for two. While not quite the same, Time Trap offer an extremely efficient trade, arguably even more so since it allow you to use multiple maneuvers. --Leziad (talk) 22:04, 3 December 2015 (UTC)