@mrfuji3 delaying actions would NOT serve the same tactical purpose of Ready Actions.
A RA melee attack for instance is something you’d spare for when your melee fighter is dealing with a flying creature that needs to come down at you to be hit. Or when a phase spider (a genuine one, not the ranged spitters we currently have in the game) would attempt to stalk you.
A delayed turn here wouldn’t really cover the same function.
HA! You think BG3 will have truly flying creatures!? Or genuine phase spiders?! Good one XD
My worry is that even Solasta (super-faithful D&D) implemented readied actions as: base attack, base ranged attack, base *cantrip*, that procs on the first thing that moves within range. A simple but kind-of poor system, that also wouldn't necessarily help in your examples. A melee enemy could enter said melee fighter's range before said flying creature or phase spider and the automatic readied action would go off then.
My bet is that few enough things in BG3 will have specific movesets and be important enough enemies that readied actions as opposed to delays will be needed. E.g., this:
Imagine an enemy mage is in the next room (low HP and AC, powerful spells). You can:
- Walk in the next room and end your turn because he is too far away. He will kill or CC you on his next turn.
- Delay your turn. The enemy will enter the room and kill or CC you on his next turn.
- Move to the door so you can only be seen from within the room and ready your attack. When the enemy enters the room you attack him before he can act.
is unlikely. That the enemy will be in a situation where your one attack *will* kill him, and your entire party will be in a situation where one attack from the mage *will* TPK or CC all of them, and the turn order and environment is as you described such that you can't reach the enemy in your move but they will come within your attackable range in order to AoE your party.
Again, I'm not against readied actions in general. But if I had to choose between a generic Delay and a Solasta-esqe Ready, I'd probably choose the former for the greater control over character actions. Or my explained-above Ready system where you choose a latter initiative spot and get to take a single action there, but your initiative spot goes back to the original spot next round. If you have a better implementation, please explain; I'd be happy to hear it.