How to Play Combat

Combat is chaotic, fast-paced, and dangerous. Characters are in constant danger while fighting. A stray dagger can be the end of the line for your character.

The following rules take the chaos of combat, and breaks it down into a cycle of Rounds, Phases, and Turns. Many combats including the testing of Morale as well.

• Rounds - A round is a set of 10 Phases. A round represents roughly 6 seconds of in-game time.
• Phases - There are 9 Phases in 1 round, and they take place in a cycle. Once all 9 phases are done, the round is finished and the next round starts at Phase 1. A Phase has no time representation, but rather determines roughly how events fold out in a round.
  • Note that most action takes place between phases 2 and 8. Phase 1 and Phase 9 are often only accessed when a character is able to act sooner or later.
• Turns - When a character acts in a phase, it's called taking a turn (or taking "their" turn). All creatures who act in a phase can get to complete their turn before moving to the next phase, and all characters Turns in any given phase are Adjudicated at the same time.

They cycle of rounds, phases, and turns continue until one side has overcome the other.

Rounds

Tracking rounds is mostly important for understanding battlefield effects and time. Spell effects, and class features are often tracked by round.

For example, if you cast a spell which has a duration of 1 Minute, you know that the spell is only in effect for 10 rounds.

Phases

The meat and potatoes of combat. Things that you wish to do in combat must take place in certain phases.

All creatures who act in any given phase has their actions Adjudicated at the same time, and all actions should be completely resolved before moving onto the next phase.

Phases are always handled in order, from 1 to 9. Anything adjudicated in an earlier phase can affect a later phase, but not vise-versa. For example, if you kill a charging orc in Phase 2, it cannot act in Phase 3. However, if both you and the Orc fire your bows in Phase 2, both of you have the chance to hit and deal damage, even if you rolled first, and killed the orc with your roll.

Unless the action states otherwise, an action that requires you to act in a specific phase can always be done in a later phase instead, but never in an earlier phase. For example, if attacking with ranged weapons takes place in the Phase 2, that means you can fire it in any Phase AFTER Phase 2.

No Phase Listed

Some features may simply say they require an Action or Master Action without listing a phase. When this is the case, that activity can be performed in any phase.

<aside> <img src="/icons/exclamation-mark_gray.svg" alt="/icons/exclamation-mark_gray.svg" width="40px" /> A note from the designer:

Think of it as a shortcut for saying that an activity is an Action that takes place in Phase 1, since you can perform an activity in any Phase it was listed in or later.

I am going through to clean up this language, and until finished, you may see some spots that just say “as an Action” and other places where they say “as an Action starting in Phase 1”. However, they mean the same thing.

</aside>

Phase listed as “Weapon”

If an action has the phase it can start to be performed in listed as Weapon, then that action uses your wielded weapon’s Speed Factor to determine it’s starting phase. If you are using two-weapon fighting, use the Speed Factor of your Main Hand attack.