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.
Moving around in Combat
When it is your turn in the fight, it is very common to want to move around. Almost all characters have a base speed, modified by your armor and how much stuff you're carrying, written down in feet. A very common starting number is thirty feet. Since the game is played (if you're using figures) on a square grid. each square is assumed to be five feet across. So, thirty feet is six squares.
This may not seem like a lot, but you'd be surprised how well you can maneuver around with that much movement.
There is also a special 'miscellaneous' movement type that happens a lot, and that is called a Five Foot Step. If you have not used a Move action this round to actually move your figure, you may move your figure one square 'in between' the other actions you take. This indicates the natural footwork you're character is using in the battle. You may not be an expert melee combatant, but your character sure is!
Attacks of Opportunity
Now, moving around in a furious melee is not easy or safe. To represent the fact that moving in a combat is more than a little dangerous, there is the attack of opportunity.
If you use your standard move to leave any threatened square, ie a square in which one or more enemies can reach you with a proficiently wielded weapon, that enemy gets a free shot at you. Yikes!
Attacks of opportunity are interrupts: They happen the instant they are triggered, and are resolved before you can finish your own action. If you are the one attacking, hooray you! But it's not nearly as much fun when you're the one getting attacked.
Now, one of the really nice things about the Five Foot Step is that it does NOT count as standard movement, and so does NOT provoke an attack of opportunity! Yes, five foot steps are very handy indeed.
Note that there is a limit to the number of Attacks of Opportunity any figure, player or enemy,can make. Most of the time you can only make one attack of opportunity per creature per round. So choose who you swing on carefully.
However, it is not uncommon for an enemy or a player to have taken monstrous powers or feats, that allow you to make more than one attack of opportunity.
This leads to a second limit on Attacks of Opportunity: A given creature can only make one attack of opportunity per round against a specific foe. This means that if you walk past a bad guy in a combat, you may leave three or four threatened squares. Under the basic rules, he can attack you every time, but come on, that's really not fair. So, he can attack you once, and only once, with an attack of opportunity this round.
Now, that said, having lots of attacks of opportunity is still very good: If you have a reach weapon in a crowded combat, you will have lots of opportunities to swing on bad guys as they move around. So the more the merrier!
How to Hit Things
When it is your turn in a combat, you have to be able to reach an enemy. Most melee weapons (like a sword) can only attack figures your are right next to, or maybe one square away from if you have a weapon with reach. Most ranged weapons, either thrown weapons (like a spear) or projectile weapons (like a bow) have a range number listed. You can attack enemies far away with a ranged weapon, but the further you are, the harder it is to hit. Every time you count out a number of squares equal to the range number listed, you take a cumulative minus 2 to your to-hit roll. Melee weapons never take this minus to-hit for range, even if they have a lot of reach.
(About range: Each square on the combat board is considered to be five feet across. it is pretty much interchangeable to talk about distance in terms of feet or squares, at five to one. So a thirty foot range is the exact same as a six square range.)
Once you have determined you are next to something, or moved to get next to something, you may use a standard action to make a single attack, or you may use a standard action plus a move action to make a 'full' attack. IE, you stand there and just go nuts on the guy. The higher level you are, the more attacks you get in a full attack action, so this is a good way to do more damage, assuming you can get your target to stand still for you.
The way you attack is you roll a D20, add in ALL your modifiers both positive and negative, and get an attack roll. That attack roll must EQUAL or BE LARGER THAN the Armor Class of the enemy you are attacking in order to successfully hit them.
Note that there are many, many modifiers to this roll, such as flanking bonuses, bonuses and penalties due to spells and other buffs, bonuses and penalties due to status conditions, bonuses and penalties due to terrain, etc, etc, etc. Do not worry, you will get the hang of it soon. The important thing is to add it all up, both positive and negative, then roll the die to see what your final number is. Bigger is always better!
If your attack roll is equal to or higher than the armor class you are attacking, you have scored a hit, and it's time to resolve your damage.
Resolving Damage
All attacks do some random amount of damage. The amount is the weapon damage dice, plus any bonuses and penalties. This is all added together, then applied to the monster. Players and enemies alike can have resistance to this damage, either physical damage reduction or energy damage reduction. Each type of damage reduction is applied to damage in its own way.
Once you hit your enemy, calculate your damage, and subtract from it any applicable resistance, the remaining damage is subtracted from the enemies hit points. When the total reaches zero or less, the enemy is defeated.
Yay you!
Now on to the next enemy, an adventurer's job is never finished!
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.
Resolving Ties
It is inevitable that eventually two creatures will get a tie on their D20 + initiative modifier roll. Resolve ties as follows:
The creature with the highest initiative modifier goes first. Since this means they have the same initiative number, their modifier is recorded as a decimal, to indicate the tiebreaker.
If they both have the same initiative modifier, then the creature with the highest Dexterity score goes first. This is recorded as their initiative roll with their Dexterity score as a decimal behind it.
If they both have the same initiative modifier and the same Dexterity score, then the one with the higher Intelligence score goes first. This is recorded as a decimal with the Int score.
If they are STILL tied, then they roll a D6 until one of them gets a higher number than the other one. This usually only takes a roll or two. It is recorded as their initiative score with the wining d6 roll as a decimal.
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.
To make being Surprised even worse, all Surprised people are considered to be 'caught off guard', which in the game mechanics is represented by being Flat Footed. See the next section for more info!
Being Flat Footed
There IS an advantage to having a high initiative roll, or not being surprised. In all combats, even if you are not surprised, you are in a flat footed state until you get your first action. Obviously, this means the surprised side of the conflict in a surprise round is also flat footed. Flat footed means you're just not ready for it, and so you are denied the use of your Dexterity stat until you can get yourself together and get busy. This flat footed state applies to ALL creatures in ALL combats, and ends at the beginning of each creature's first turn. This is a big reason why Surprise and a high initiative are, respectively, very bad and very good.
For details of flat footed, see the flat footed description. In a nutshell, you lose your Dexterity mod to Armor Class, plus any feats that depend on that are lost as well.
Holding Your Action
Just because you have rolled a number on the initiative order does not mean that you HAVE to act when it is your turn.
If a player character or a monster wishes too, they may declare that they are 'holding their action.' This means, simply, that they are waiting before they act. When a creature declares that they are holding their action, they are marked on the initiative list, they do nothing, and the Game Master moves to the next creature on the initiative order.
From that point forward, the holding creature may declare, after any creature has finished their action, that they wish to act then. This interrupts the normal progression of the initiative order. The person who was holding their action takes their turn immediately after the person or monster who just finished their action, and before the next person or creature who was scheduled to act. Even more importantly, this resets their initiative number for the rest of the combat! If they had initiative twenty-five, and wait until right after a monster with initiative seventeen to act, then their initiative changes to become sixteen. (See Initiative Tiebreakers for how to resolve ties.)
There is no limit to how long you may hold your action, with the very important caveat that you can only ever take one action per round. If you hold your action 'all the way around' to your old initiative number, then the action you were holding is lost and you may now use your new action instead.
Note that the use of action points and their effects are based upon the round of combat, not the number of rounds your character has taken. It is possible (although possibly foolish) to hold your action all the way until the third round and use your action point for the third round benefit, even though it is your personally first action.
Readying an Action
When it is your initiative, you may want to do something that depends upon what another creature is going to do. Of course, you can do that! It is called readying an action.
To ready an action, you declare to the Game Master that you are spending a standard action getting ready to do something. You can ready any action that can be completed as a standard action. Since you can reduce a standard action to a move action or a swift action, you can also ready any action that require move actions and swift actions.
At the time you Ready, you state to the Game Master the conditions that will cause you to take your Readied action. This condition must be something clear and unambiguous, and that your character can sense, having line of sight or line of effect to undertake. If the condition you declare is met, you take your Readied action immediately, resolving it as an interrupt even in the middle of another creatures turn.
Readied actions must be used with caution! If you Ready an action, aiming your bow at a doorway, and set the condition that you will shoot the next creature to move through the door, then you will shoot the next creature who moves through the door, even if it is an ally or an innocent! It is much better to tightly define all Readied actions, such as stating you will fire on the next ENEMY to move through the door, or better yet, that you will shoot a specific creature if they move at all. The details are left to the players and referees to define.
If you have Readied an Action and the initiative count reaches your turn in the order again without the trigger condition being satisfied, then you have lost your Readied action. Note that Readying an Action does NOT change your initiative number, and thus is very different than Holding your action. Note further that you can meet your trigger conditions even in a different round than when you Readied, and still take you normal action that turn. This is not a violation of the 'only one action per round' rule, because technically, when you Ready and Action, you are taking your entire turn immediately to set up the triggered action. The only time yo lose the readied action is if your initiative comes up again before the trigger is met.