Combat

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What is combat?

Combat is the process of getting into a fight with bad guys, and resolving how that fight turns out.

While we hesitate to say that combat is the main "fun" in Epic Path, in truth, getting into and winning fights is the source of a lot of fun in the game.

After all, who doesn't like slaying the dragon and rescuing the maiden? This is the stuff of epic songs, legends, and mythology world wide, and has been for thousands of years. So, fighting the bad guys is a big part of playing Epic Path. Yes, role playing encounters with the other elements in the game world can be huge fun, and every referee should strive to make all aspects of the game enjoyable, but combat is the place where many of the most 'white-knuckle' moments come from. Many of the player character classes and races have many elements which relate to combat as well.

So how does it work?


How Basic Combat Works

Combat in Epic Path, and indeed in all D20 system games, is taken one person at a time in a step-wise fashion. At the beginning of the combat, each person rolls an initiative number by rolling a D20 and adding their initiative modifier. The person (or monster) with the highest initiative number goes first, then the person with the next highest number goes next, etc. This process repeats until every person and monster and other creature in a given conflict has had a turn. (It is HIGHLY recommended to have a whiteboard, display monitor, or even a plain old sheet of paper where all the initiative numbers for each creature can be kept track of.

The Game Master may keep track of the initiative count, or, the players may keep track of it, depending upon the work load of the game master.

When all creatures involved in a combat have had one turn to take their actions, IE, all the initiative numbers have been counted off in order from highest to lowest, the first round of combat is finished.

At the bottom of the round the game master will announce that the first round is over and then reset the initiative count to the highest number again, and once more, each person and monster gets their turn to act.

In this step-wise fashion, each player, monster, and other creature acts, one at a time, moving around the battlefield, making attacks, casting spells, etc. Each character and creature accrues damage in this process. If any creature loses all their hit points, they are either unconscious or dead and are then skipped in the initiative order. This process continues until all the monsters are dead or defeated, or in the case of disaster, all of the players are dead or defeated.

And that's it! The basic process of combat in a D20 game is very simple and fast moving...in its basic form. Of course, as you gain experience with the game and the game master adds more complex challenges, things get much more complicated.


Combat Complications

Time Taken

The amount of time that passes in a combat doesn't really matter in most cases, but it can be of importance for things like burning fuses, ticking death machines, spell duration, and the like. As a rule of thumb, each round of a combat takes six seconds.

Wait, WHAT?? There's been five or six people take their actions in polite order, along with all the monsters, and all that stuff only takes six seconds?!

Yes, this is the way it's been done for decades, and believe it or not, it's actually pretty close to realistic. The reasoning is, ALL the people in a combat are acting at once in a big frantic mess. In the real world we resolve things in a nice, polite, one-at-a-time order, but it's all a big scrambling mess "in-game".

Fights are over FAST in Epic Path. And, if you've ever watched some videos on the internet of people competing with Historic European Martial Arts, this is accurate: The telling blow in most sword fights takes only a split second!

So, each round takes six seconds, and there are ten rounds per minute.


Surprise!

Before most combats begin, the game master will ask the players to roll a perception check. This is to check for surprise. Surprise happens when you do not realize a fight is about to start until the blades and claws start swinging.

Being surprised sucks, but it is not an instant death sentence, thankfully. Epic Path characters are heroes, every one, and can almost always endure getting a sucker punch to the face every now and then.

It still sucks, though.

The perception check each player character rolls is to see if they notice the bad guys are starting a fight before it actually starts. If you make the perception roll, then you have a split second to grab a sword and get ready to fight. If not, you get suckered. The Difficulty Class (DC) of this perception check is highly variable depending upon circumstances. In most cases, the DC is the result of a Stealth skill roll made by the bad guys, if they are laying in ambush. Depending on how well this ambush is prepared, there may be a circumstance bonus or penalty to the roll, as assigned by the Game Master. In other cases, the DC may be the result of a Bluff skill check, if the bad guys are 'sweet talking' their way to get close to the player characters and attack them. In still other cases, it will be an arbitrary number assigned by the game master, or set in a pre-written adventure he (or she!) is running for the players.

If you fail the surprise check, then in most cases, your entire side is surprised. This means that all members of the player characters have failed the check.


The Surprise Round

If one side or the other is surprised, then before the proper beginning of the first round of combat, the side that was not surprised gets a special round 0, called the Surprise Round.

In the Surprise round, each non-surprised creature gets to take one standard action. Note that this is NOT a full round! Often this standard action will be used to charge into combat, or move to an advantageous position, or use some especially nasty area of effect ability on the hapless losers of the surprise roll. Note that there are many, many complications and modifiers to all this, and such things are what Game Masters are paid so well to resolve.

In all cases, the Game Master's rulings hold sway, as they do in all other cases in the game. GM's are encouraged to be fair.