# Immediate and Free Actions - how many?



## Istar (Jan 17, 2011)

Whats the story with these types of actions, I know they have cut back in recent updates, how does it work now.

I know you can only do one Immediate action, and that is against a full turn of enemy attacks ?

And now free actions, are independant of that, how many of them can you do ?


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## thewok (Jan 17, 2011)

You are allowed one Immediate action per round.

You are allowed any number of free actions per round, within reason.  You can make only one free action attack per turn, though.


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## Istar (Jan 17, 2011)

thewok said:


> You are allowed one Immediate action per round.
> 
> You are allowed any number of free actions per round, within reason. You can make only one free action attack per turn, though.




What does "within reason" mean technically, 2 or 3 ?

Per turn, thats per everyone's turn, so if an attack on you creates a free action and 4 or 5 attacks on you spawn free actions you could have 4 or 5 free actions before your turn comes about ?


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## thewok (Jan 17, 2011)

"Within reason" means just that: you're just limited by what your DM will allow you to do.



> Free actions take almost no time or effort. You can take as many free actions as you want during your or another combatant’s turn. There is an exception to that rule: A creature can take a free action to use an attack power only once per turn.
> 
> ...
> 
> In certain circumstances, the DM might decide to limit the use of free actions further.  For instance, if an adventurer has already used free actions during a particular turn to talk, drop things, and use a class feature, the DM might rule that the adventurer can use no more free actions during that turn.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jan 17, 2011)

Istar said:


> What does "within reason" mean technically, 2 or 3 ?
> 
> Per turn, thats per everyone's turn, so if an attack on you creates a free action and 4 or 5 attacks on you spawn free actions you could have 4 or 5 free actions before your turn comes about ?



 What ever the DM thinks is reasonable.


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## Istar (Jan 18, 2011)

ardoughter said:


> What ever the DM thinks is reasonable.




What do people think is "Reasonable"?


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## Mad Hamish (Jan 18, 2011)

It's all dependent upon the situation and the actual free action.

A 10 minute speach sure doesn't fit in a round. 
a couple of pithy one liners would.


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## Grabuto138 (Jan 18, 2011)

Istar said:


> What does "within reason" mean technically, 2 or 3 ?
> 
> Per turn, thats per everyone's turn, so if an attack on you creates a free action and 4 or 5 attacks on you spawn free actions you could have 4 or 5 free actions before your turn comes about ?




Immediate actions are once per round (note the difference between "round" and "turn") and cannot be performed on your turn.

Your DM will decide how many free actions based on the specific actions and the context you are performing them in. You may only perform one free action that results in an attack though.


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## Aulirophile (Jan 18, 2011)

Grabuto138 said:


> You may only perform one free action that results in an attack though.



You may only use one Free Action Attack Power per turn. There are Free Action powers that result in No Action attacks, there are straight up No Action attacks, and any attack that is a Free Action but is not a _power _is also fine. All of those exist in 4e so the distinction is incredibly important, particularly if your leader is an enabler.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jan 18, 2011)

Istar said:


> What do people think is "Reasonable"?



First off you are going to get no single answer to that, I am not even sure as to the limits I would place on it myself. It really would depend on what you were trying to accomplish.

For example, you are grappled by an orc and he is much stronger, so free actions: Utter a quip, frantically search around for something,terrain feature or weapon that would help you break the grab, and drop an article of clothing to mark you presence to companions that will come looking for you.
Can't really come up with something better off the top of my head.


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## DracoSuave (Jan 18, 2011)

Aulirophile said:


> You may only use one Free Action Attack Power per turn. There are Free Action powers that result in No Action attacks, there are straight up No Action attacks, and any attack that is a Free Action but is not a _power _is also fine. All of those exist in 4e so the distinction is incredibly important, particularly if your leader is an enabler.




If I am not mistaken (I could be, my RC seems to have gone missing today) this is not quite what it says.

If you are granted an attack as a free action, that is what is limited.  Attack Powers that are themselves already free actions are not limited.  They also aren't generally at-will, so that's hardly a problem.

Commander's Strike, for instance, is limited.  It grants an attack as a free action, so if you spent an action point, you could not Commander's Strike using the same person twice.  As well, powers that affect multiple allies, then trigger an attack as a free action off the results of their attack (Ardents have a couple of these) can only give you one free action.  Attack powers like Power Strike, however, are not effected.  They are not granting you an attack as a free action.  They are simply an attack that IS a free action.


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## Aulirophile (Jan 18, 2011)

DracoSuave said:


> If I am not mistaken (I could be, my RC seems to have gone missing today) this is not quite what it says.
> 
> If you are granted an attack as a free action, that is what is limited.  Attack Powers that are themselves already free actions are not limited.  They also aren't generally at-will, so that's hardly a problem.
> 
> Commander's Strike, for instance, is limited.  It grants an attack as a free action, so if you spent an action point, you could not Commander's Strike using the same person twice.  As well, powers that affect multiple allies, then trigger an attack as a free action off the results of their attack (Ardents have a couple of these) can only give you one free action.  Attack powers like Power Strike, however, are not effected.  They are not granting you an attack as a free action.  They are simply an attack that IS a free action.



_A creature can take a free action to use an *attack power *only once per turn_.

It is pretty specific. 

Commander's Strike generates a No Action Attack.

Also Power Strike _is _limited, which also means it can't be used with Dual Weapon Attack. And there is an errata thread on that as well. The rule causes a _large _number of issues and simultaneously doesn't completely fix the the thing it was intended to, infinite recursive crit chains, because many of those are _also _No Action attacks. Thankfully they specifically labeled Furious-Assault as a Utility Power, or it'd also have the issue.


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## DracoSuave (Jan 18, 2011)

Aulirophile said:


> _A creature can take a free action to use an *attack power *only once per turn_.




Yeah, read relevant text, and am corrected.



> It is pretty specific.
> 
> Commander's Strike generates a No Action Attack.




This too.



> Also Power Strike _is _limited, which also means it can't be used with Dual Weapon Attack. And there is an errata thread on that as well. The rule causes a _large _number of issues and simultaneously doesn't completely fix the the thing it was intended to, infinite recursive crit chains, because many of those are _also _No Action attacks. Thankfully they specifically labeled Furious-Assault as a Utility Power, or it'd also have the issue.




Tho to be honest, they aren't No Action attacks.  They're simply not actions.  There's a slight difference, as No Action is a specific entry in a power's action usage, and not applicable to things that are not powers themselves.


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## Aulirophile (Jan 18, 2011)

That is true, but No Action and "Not An Action" are also equivalent according to the rules, No Action is just whey they call it in powers (also the phrase Non-Action has now started to show up in the RC). Still the same point: the change was intended to fix something it didn't, while it broke several other things.


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