The Combat Round

Combat takes place between two individuals or two groups. The first thing to do in any combat it to work out who is surprised by combat. This has a great impact on the way the battle turns out.

Check for Surprise

• The GM calls for everyone to make an appropriate skill check (Spot or Listen). This can be against a set DC or it can be an opposed roll.
• Those who succeed at this check realise that combat is upon them, and can act to the best of their abilities from the off.
• Alternatively, the GM may rule that everyone is aware that combat is about to begin and do away with the need for a skill check. It depends on circumstance.

The above actions determine the awareness of the combatants. The characters who failed their roll don't have a clue what is happening. They are surprised. Surprised characters are considered flat-footed. The official rules define flat-footed as follows:

This means that if anyone who isn't surprised attacks someone who is, the unfortunate victim doesn't get her Dex bonus to AC. This is quite logical when you think about it. They do not know danger is there, so they don't know to get out of the way. The combat round continues as follows:

The Surprise Round

• If some characters are surprised and some are not then combat enters a special round called the Surprise Round.
  Only characters who are not surprised can act.
• Those characters that can act roll Initiative.
• The GM may make one Initiative roll for a group of foes to make the book-keeping easier for him. Anything that keeps the GM happy is good for the players.
• In the surprise round characters can only take Standard actions. What's a standard action? Follow this link to find out.
• The character with the higher initiative goes first, then the character with the next highest initiative and so on.
• If two combatants have the same initiative the one with the highest Dexterity attribute goes first. If their Dex is the same, then the combatants act simultaneously.
• If characters are attacked before their Initiative comes up they are flat-footed (see above) even if they are not surprised. In this case, the character saw the danger coming, but just couldn't react quickly enough.
• Once everyone who can act has peformed a standard action, combat moves on to round one.

Remember that the surprise round may not happen. If everyone is aware of everyone else then combat leaps straight to round one. In my experience, most combat does not have a surprise round.

Once a character has taken his first action in any combat encounter, he is no longer flat-footed. That means that next round, even those characters who rolled higher on their Initiative, do not get any special advantage by attacking him.

Round One

• All charactes who have not yet done so now roll Initiative.
• Characters who have already rolled Initiative do not re-roll, they keep whatever they rolled last round.
• Combat begins again starting with the highest initiative and working down as before.
• Remember that characters who did not act in the surprise round may be flat-footed if they are attacked before it gets to their turn.
• All combat actions are now open to characters including standard, move and full-round actions. They are all explained here.
• All of a character's actions (even multiple actions) are resolved on the character's initiative roll. If Dirk the twentieth level fighter has four attacks per round, then he takes all four on them on his initiative, not spread over the round.

At the end of round one everyone has acted. Combat is now in full swing and (due to the nature of the system) isn't likely to last much longer. A character can delay their action in the round by voluntarily lowering their initiative and waiting for something to happen. The disadvantage is that whenever they act becomes their new initiative score. If they delay until the following round they lose their chance to take the delayed action, but they move to the top of the initiative order.

Round Two and Successive Rounds

• Everyone has already rolled initiative, so simply begin again with the highest initiative and work down the list of combatants.
• In this round no-one is flat-footed by their initiative regardless of when they act.
• Adjudicate all the characters' actions and move to the next combat round until combat is over.