Combat

So for combat each round grants you an action, a bonus action, a move action, and a reaction which is triggered under specific circumstances. All the players taking their turn results in 1 round, no matter how many are in the party.

## Rounds

1 round consists of 6 seconds, and 10 rounds equals 1 minute.

## Actions

Now lets start with actions. Typically an action would be an attack. You attempt to swing a sword, throw an object, cast a spell or headbutt an opponent. Add your modifyers and roll to see if the hit connects. Now if you’re a melee fighter you can also use a dash action which gives you extra movement equal to your base speed. So if your movement is 30ft, you get 60ft in total. Got an enemy who’s breath stinks so bad you can barely hold your stomach? Use the disengage action to remove any attacks of opportunity that would usually occur if you use your movement to get the hell out of there. Taking the dodge action means your’re focused solely on avoiding attacks. If an enemy that you can see tries to swing at you they do it with disadvantage. You also have advantage on saving throws if, say, a fireball is thrown in your general direction. The hide action requires a stealth check, which gets you out of the line of sight of an enemy who would then have to roll a perception check to attempt to find you. Now say you want to wait for something very specific to occur in order to line up the perfect assault, like waiting for another players spell to connect. This requires the ready action. Decide what you’re waiting on and what your action will be once that circumstance has been triggered. This uses your reaction when triggered. But word of caution to spell casters. If it comes back to your turn after a full round and you didnt release the spell you readied, then it’s just gone, almost as if it never even happened. Then you’d have wasted a spell slot, and you probably have to try again. You can also use the help action. Any creature you aid gains advantage on any attack or task they’re trying to attempt. Now let’s say you’re in a locked room with a rampaging rhino and you need to search for a hidden lever or key to escape. You can search as an action which will usually require making a perception or investigation check. Finally there’s the Use an object action. This is used when you have something like say a level that’s stuck and requires your full action to pull it down. But these are only the most common 10 options, so dont feel you are limited to this.

## Bonus Actions

Now onto bonus actions. Bonus actions are typically used for 3 things: using an offhand weapon like a shield or dagger to attack, using a spell that requires a casting time of 1 bonus action, or using a class feature that require a bonus action to use. Movement is a bit different. You can move before, during, or after your turns action. You can run, crawl, climb, stand, swim, grapple, high jump, long jump, traverse difficult terrain, drop prone or even improvise. A few things to note is that climbing, difficult terrain, swimming, and crawling costs 10ft per 5ft moved, while grapple halves your speed.

## Reactions

Now finally for Reactions. These include opportunity attacks, are used in conjunction with readied attacks, or used for spells with a casting time of 1 reaction. Pretty straight forward.

## Homebrew

Homebrew combat conditions, abilities, etc. can be implemented to suit the needs of the campaign, the party as a whole, or even a specific player. Of course, run it by your DM before attempting to implement something into your current campaign. Below are some homebrew rules utilized by TPK either created originally or modified from the official source rules.

* Shields: If you ready a shield to block an attack, the player must pass a DC check of either 10, 15, or 17 depending on the size of the shield the player is weilding. For small shields with a DC check of 10, on a successful check 1/4 of the damage is removed from the damage total. For Medium shields with a DC check of 13 on a success it blocks 1/2 the damage of a normal attack and 1/4 from a magical attack. For Large shields with a DC check of 17 on a success it will block 3/4 the amount of damage from a normal attack and 1/2 damage from a magical attack.

-An attack will be considered either magical or non magical and will block damage accordingly should the ready action be used with a shield.