final battle of the campaign

The worst part about being in a D&D game, as well as most games in general, is how you're not really given an incentive to pay attention once it's no longer your turn.

Like you can't spend a reaction to, say, brace a spear as a beast comes barreling towards you, or jump in front of an errant archer's arrow to save an ally whose low on health, or cast a spell defensively, unless you have a feat that explicitly says "you may spend a reaction to do X."

It's kinda hard to stay invested in what's happening in combat when a) HP bloat causes every enemy past CR5 to become damage sponges, b) the mage can pop a spell and immediately force the combat into their favor, and c) until your turn on the initiative track comes up again, you can't really do anything except, maybe, record how much HP you lose if an opponent managed to hit you.

>what is ready action

You pay attention to what's going on so you know what to do when it's your turn.

Why wouldn't you pay attention when it's not your turn? That's like watching just half of an action scene in a movie.

A nebulous term that doesn't really work because you have to declare both an action that you're planning on performing at an indeterminate time in the future and a specific trigger that the enemy has to fulfill in order for the ready action to go off.

You say "I ready an attack for when the enemy appears around the corner" and if the enemy appears around the corner, the attack goes off, otherwise it doesn't.

What I'm looking for is the ability to spend a reaction as I would a standard action in order to perform an action outside of turn order by default, I see a dude charging my buddy who is bloodied and before the DM rolls the damage dice, I spend a reaction and say "I'm going to bullrush him from the side so that he misses my buddy" and if I succeed, I bullrush the enemy, possibly knocking him prone.

At the very least, give me a reason to have a reaction beyond just making AoO if an opponent decides to run or some shit.

Sounds like your GM is kinda shit if he didn't think of a way to prevent this from happening

> not continuing the story after the party dies
> not having the various npcs show up at just the right moment and finish the fight, moved buy the party's resolve, and equipped by their assistance

>the GM should actively prevent the players from losing
Kill yourself my man or do you need the GM's help with that?

In most situations, you can get away with saying "so what's happening?" or "how many dudes are left?" and once the DM answers, you base your turn off of that.

If they're being tight-lipped for whatever reason, you can just pull out a melee weapon and go "I hit the closest enemy within range" and either the DM says "go ahead" or they'll ask "which one?" or they'll say that there's no enemies within melee so you pull out a ranged attack and shoot the closest enemy within range of your weapon.

Then after your turn is resolved, wash/rinse/repeat until combat is over.

It's a system that has served me well during many campaigns of D&D and I've been playing for about 5-6 years now with several different DM's who run vastly different play styles. It sounds shitty but honestly, you're just sitting there until your turn comes up anyways so you might as well spend your time doing something productive.

Every ending is also a beginning. I guess a situation like this means the responsibility of dealing with the big bad and/or bad situation falls to the under studies or next generation.

It's a basis for the next campaign, and also how a number of games start. Your parents/mentors/etc, go out like bosses ALMOST beating some evil wizard or overlord, and either hurt him bad enough to slow him down until you can have a go at him, seal him, or do none of these things, but leave you an obligation to finish what they started but could not themselves.

This would for instance, be the case in Tales and more than once, Dragon Quest. Your Dad fights the Dark Lord and his minions. You do too. You and your kids eventually kick his ass, although at various points someone is whipped permanently or for a long period. Like, your dad, they end him. Then you carry on and break the guy who did that in half.

Also kind of a theme in Tolkien in that the fight against the evil Morgoth created was the backdrop and motivation for everything that happened ever in his stories and got generations of heroes mixed up in it repeatedly, and also an Arthurian thing because sometimes multiple generations were required to attain the Grail, which was beyond some of the best and worthiest Knights. Often it was a near thing, or one critical mistake.

Like, Gawain and the Green Knight. While not specifically about the Grail, he ALMOST behaves exactly as he should, but fails in a small way in his conduct with the Green Knight's wife. He puts his money where his mouth is and his neck on the block at the appointed hour and only receives a small cut for his failure, although he is regarded as having failed. He was not pure enough, not perfect enough. It was a human failing, but he did fail.

It's good and all if it's in an epic legend that you're reading in your leisure time. If that's an ending to the game that you put a ton of your time and effort into, it just makes you wanna kill the GM, and your intentions are perfectly justified.

The only time I have a problem with paying attention during my off-turn is when I still played 3.PF and this one fucker refused to play anything but Summoner-type PCs, so his turns could take anywhere from 10-30 minutes at a time.

That being said, we mostly play 4e these days, and that has enough off-turn stuff that you can do to incentivize paying attention during other people's turns.

>Well that is awkward.
Doesn't have to be.

>Is there any way to salvage this?
Hell yeah.

>you could fudge the dice or just forgo rolls altogether.
But not that way.

>GM is kinda shit if he didn't think of a way to prevent this from happening
Or this way

>Sounds like a good hook for the next campaign. The heroes lost, the villain wins, and their evil plan succeeds. Now in a much darker world, a new set of heroes take up the call.
>> not continuing the story after the party dies
>> not having the various npcs show up at just the right moment and finish the fight, moved buy the party's resolve, and equipped by their assistance
>Every ending is also a beginning. I guess a situation like this means the responsibility of dealing with the big bad and/or bad situation falls to the under studies or next generation.
There chaps know the score.

Every action changes by how it is narrated.
So the party dies and they did not win the final battle.
They struck the enemy though, right?
They saved others along the way, right?
They went out like big damn heroes, right?

Perhaps the battle leaves the bbeg scarred, perhaps weakened, perhaps overconfident, perhaps he just is left without a lieutenant and must recruit another.
Perhaps this lieutenant was inspired by the actions of the party and also knows his evil master can be fought and maybe one day struck down.
Perhaps he contacts others, perhaps ones that were aided by the party.
Perhaps a rebellion forms.

Perhaps in failing to end something evil, the party started something good.
No martyr ever lived to see their victory and not every hero was a winning champion.
Every party dies, not every party truly lives.

>If that's an ending to the game that you put a ton of your time and effort into, it just makes you wanna kill the GM, and your intentions are perfectly justified.
This, again, depends entirely on how the actions are narrated.
There are options between holding your players' hands and letting the dice undo all their work.
The actual execution varies by group, of course.

Outside of deus ex machina, no

But I mean, deus ex machina doesn't *have* to be terrible. Could be a sequence wherein several NPCs who the party helped out over the course of the story arrive to assist the party or bail them out or something.

Last stand wins the day. Everyone is dead but then final blow cripple the bbeg just enough to halt destruction .... for now

Develop and start another campaign that is a sequel that takes place years later in the world after the bad guys won.