Combat
Murder. Chaos. The clash of might, will and steel. Possibly the only reason you are partaking in role play in the first place. Considered to not be the pinnacle of humanity by some, the complete opposite by others, this section will walk you through all you need to know before unsheathing your sword and charging into the fray like a madman.
A typical combat encounter is a clash between two or more groups of combatants, with a flurry of attacks, spells, abilities and other crazy stuff happening. To bring a bit of order into this, a combat encounter is split into rounds – roughly six seconds long segments of time. During each round, every participant gets to take at least one turn. The order in which they take turns and amount of turns is determined by initiative, which is rolled at the start of each round. Once everyone has taken their turn(s), the fight continues to the next round if no side is defeated.
Initiative
Initiative determines the order of combatants during a fight. When a round starts, every participant makes a Dexterity check to determine their place. The rolls are then ranked in order from highest to lowest. This is the order (called the initiative order) in which combatants will act this round. If a tie occurs, all combatants in the tie situation make a plain d20 roll – highest going first.
The round is split into several initiative passes. During each pass, a player gets one turn. At the end of an initiative pass, players will subtract a given number from their initiative score. If their score is greater than zero, they move on to the next pass, if it is at or below zero, they do not get a turn on the next initiative pass (they may still do reactions, if they have them, but reactions themselves are not regained). Players subtract 20 at the end of the first initiative pass and 10 at the end of every subsequent pass.
Your turn
On your turn, you can move and take one action. You can decide in which order you do these. You can forgo both moving and taking an action. Additionally, various abilities, spells and other things enable you to take an additional action called a bonus action. You can only take a bonus action when the feature in the game specifically notes that you can do something as a bonus action. Otherwise, you cannot take it. You choose when you take a bonus action in the same way you choose to do movement and your regular action.
Other activity on your turn can also include communicating with your surroundings, or a simple interaction with one object of the environment, such as opening a door, drawing a weapon, or picking up an item. More complex interactions require an action to perform.
Extremely specific abilities and spells can allow you to take a special action called a reaction. A reaction is an instant response to some outside trigger, which can occur at any point in the round, not just your turn. The most common by far is the opportunity attack. When you take a reaction, you cannot take another one until the start of your next turn. A creature cannot take a reaction if it has yet to take a turn in this combat encounter. If the reaction interrupts the turn of a different creature, that creature continues its turn right after as normal.
Movement
Each round, you can move a distance up to your speed (base is 30 ft.). You may move on each of your turns, but the movements are added up across the round. Your movement can include climbing, swimming, crawling, flying and other methods besides walking. These different modes can be combined together however you want. You can also break up your move and take actions, bonus actions and reactions in between. However you mix your movement up, the total can never exceed your speed – when you reach your maximum, that is how far you’re going to go this turn.
Special types of movement take more effort to do. If you want to climb or swim and do not have a speed of that type, each foot of movement costs you 1 extra foot or 2 extra feet in difficult terrain. Extremely hard climbing surfaces of very rough water may even require an Ability check. Crawling also takes one extra foot of movement. You can fly only if you have a flying speed – however if a flying creature is ever knocked prone, has its speed reduced to 0 or is otherwise unable to move, it starts falling and may take damage, unless it can hover or is being held up by magic.
Actions
When you take an action in combat, you can take one of the actions listed here, an action you gained through an ability or a spell cast on you, or an action you improvise. When making an improvised action, make sure that the action is possible within the time frame and check if any rolls need to be made.
Attack – the most common by far, with this action you make one melee or ranged attack. Certain features can enable you to make more than one attack with a single use of this action. The action is more detailed below.
Cast a spell – also very common, spells do not necessarily have to take an action to perform. Most do, but many can take a bonus action, a reaction, minutes or even hours to cast. You may cast as many spells per round as your actions allow you, however you cannot cast a spell of the same name more than once per round, even if the spell is of a different level.
Dash – the dash action may only be taken in the first initiative pass of a round. When you take this action, you double your movement for the turn. You automatically do not move on to the next pass, but you may regain your reaction and you may move if they have any movement left on your turn if you would have been able to move on to the next pass.
Disengage – when you take this action, your movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.
Dodge – when you take this action, until the start of your next turn, any Attack roll against you has disadvantage if you can see the attacker, and you have advantage on Saving (Dexterity) throws against damaging effects. You lose these benefits if you are incapacitated of your speed is reduced to 0.
Help – when you take this action, you give aid to another creature in a task. The creature you aid gains advantage on the next Ability check it makes to perform the task you are helping with, as long as it makes the roll before the start of your next turn. Alternatively, you can aid a friendly creature attacking a creature within Close range of you. If your ally attacks the target before your next turn, the first Attack roll is made with advantage.
Hide – when you take this action, make a Dexterity (Stealth) check. You cannot hide from a creature that can see you, and if you make noise you give your position away. You remain hidden and can gain the advantages of an unseen attack (detailed below). Other creatures can spot you if they make a successful Intelligence (Perception) check with the DC of your Dexterity check.
Ready – when you take this action, you choose to postpone whatever you want to do toll later in the round using your reaction. First, decide what thing will trigger the action. Next, decide what you want to do if that happens. When the trigger happens, you can either take your reaction right after the trigger or ignore. You can ready a spell, but the spell has to have a casting time of 1 action and holding on it requires concentration. If your concentration is broken, the spell fades without taking effect.
Search – when you take this action, you devote your time to searching for something. Make a Intelligence (Search) check. The outcome depends on what is around and how much you rolled.
Use an Object – you take this action when an object requires an action to use. You also take this action when you interact with more than one object on your turn.
Attacking
When you attack another creature, you make an Attack roll. If the roll is successful, you then roll the Damage roll. The damage roll is the roll of the dice given by your weapon, adding on top your Attack roll modifier. That does sometimes mean you have two modifiers present, one from weapon and one from your Attack roll modifier. They do stack, use them both. You apply the damage dealt to the target (taking into account the different damage types) and move on.
Unseen combat
Some combatants try to hide from sight in combat, whether by the use of the invisibility spell or the hide action. When you attack a target you cannot see, you have disadvantage on the roll. This applies when you are guessing the location or you are targeting a creature you can hear but not see. When a creature cannot see you, you have advantage on Attack rolls against it. If you are hidden – both unseen and unheard – when you make your attack you give away your position.
Opportunity attacks
You can make an attack when a creature leaves your Close range. This attack is called an opportunity attack. You use your reaction for this. The opportunity attack interrupts movement. Treat this as a normal attack. You do not provoke attacks of opportunity if you take the Disengage action, if you teleport, or if something else moves you that does not use your movement, action or reaction. For example, an explosion pushing you out of reach or falling due to gravity does not provoke opportunity attacks.
Dual Wielding
Some weapons are light enough to be dual-wielded (they have the light property). If you acquire two of them, you can attack with both of them in the same turn, using both your action (taking an attack with the main hand) and a bonus action (for the off hand attack). The target is either the same person, or two different targets. Make one extra Attack roll without your modifier, treating it as an attack with your off-hand weapon. Beware, your role gives you only 1 of each weapon, not multiple.
Grappling
A grapple is another form of attack. Therefore, the same Attack roll is used.
A grappled opponent gains the grappled condition and he can only attempt to break free, making an Ability check with the DC of the original roll.
Throwing
The attacker also has the option to attack with a close range weapon at long range. If he chooses so, he makes an Attack roll against the target’s AC+2. If the weapon has the light property, the AC stays the same. The target myst be no farther than 30 ft., and no farther than 15 ft. if the weapon has the Heavy property. If the attack is successful, the Damage roll stays the same. The weapon used for the attack can thereafter be grabbed by any combatant, not just the attacker.
Ranges
While fighting, there are two states of how far apart you are from your opponent – Close range, and Long range.
Close range (roughly 5 feet) can be imagined as melee range. All weapons, unless noted otherwise, are considered to be Close ranged by default.
Long range is anything beyond melee reach. All weapons that can normally operate at long ranges are marked in their descriptions.
Battle on a grid
For easier management in fights, the playing field is usually displayed atop a square grid, where each square is 5 feet by 5 feet. It allows for easier calculation of distance you can move, ranges of attacks and spells, as well as AoE effects.
For example, your base speed of 30 feet would allow you to move 6 squares. The major image spell would have an AoE of 4×4 squares.
Moving on the grid – you can move horizontally and vertically, but not diagonally. You can combine both types of movement.
Determining ranges – for Close range, you can reach anyone in the 8 squares horizontally, vertically and diagonally adjacent to you. For Long range, you can reach anyone that would be inside a sphere with the radius equal to your range range.
Determining sight lines – you can see the wanted space if you can draw a straight, non-interrupted line from any point of your square to the center of theirs.
AoE effects and placements – when determining the placement of AoE on a grid, always try to “align” the effects to the grid as much as possible.
For example, for a 20×20 ft. cube, place it’s edges on the lines of the grid.
For a 30 ft. sphere, it’s center will be in the corner of a square.
But for a 25 ft. sphere, the center will be in the middle of a square.
The effect of an AoE applies to the square if more than half of it is covering it. In very close cases where you are not certain, it is still affected.
Sizes – if you take up more than one square, you can only be/move to a place where all of the squares you occupy are empty for you. You suffer the effects of a AoE if any of the spaces you occupy are under the effect.