Actions in Combat Guide for Dungeons and Dragons 5e

gnashing savagely on the Paladin the dragon bites down and the life drains from his body he throws it aside and turns to face the rest of your party Kelly it's calyx turn what do you do I'm gonna run up I'm gonna take the paladin's sword and shield and I'm gonna jump up and stab the sword into the mouth of the dragon and rip his eyeballs out and slide down his back off of his tail throw his eyeballs on the ground and give a healing potion to one of my comrades you know man I think we need to review exactly how many actions you can take in combat greetings heroes my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelly McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes on today's episode it's your turn and we're taking a look at the actions that you can perform in combat in Dungeons and Dragons now combat is one of the three pillars of Dungeons & Dragons next to exploration and role-playing interactions of course it's one of our favorite parts of the game people appreciate both the action-packed nature of combat and just all the awesome things that your characters can do yeah but it can be a little complex not just for new players but even experienced players have trouble remembering all the options that they have for running combat yeah fifth edition of course is one of the most streamlined versions of Dungeons & Dragons but we're going to give that really quick high-level overview for you so you know exactly what you can do when it's your turn in combat so that your game runs fast and furious so what all can we do in those six seconds well Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition breaks it down into five different categories of options for your turn and those are your movement your action your bonus action your reaction and your interaction and in general you get to do one of each of these things each turn so how do these five options you can actually run them in almost any order you want there are some certain requirements of of the actions but generally speaking you can break it up any way that benefits you and no more of these is more flexible and open-ended than your movement on your turn which is the first thing we're gonna discuss and movement is used as a key to combat because you want to put yourself into advantageous positions and get into the right place to do what you want to do on your turn yeah or get into a safe place as well on your turn your move your character's movement speed determines how far in feet you can move that might be 30 feet for your typical adventurer but wearing heavy armor or certain class features might increase or decrease your speed one of the interesting things about movement that a lot of people don't realize is that you can break this up with actions in between your movement even during actions this means that all the other things that you're going to be doing on your turn such as your action your bonus action and other interactions you can say move 10 feet forward make some attacks move away cross the room throw a switch you're really only limited by that overall movement speed which reflects the sum total of the distance that you can move on your turn if you're using miniatures and a grid typically the each square on the grid represents 5 feet allowing you to very quickly and easily see how far you can go if you have a typical movement speed of 30 feet that means that you can advance up to 6 squares on your turn um be aware that things like difficult terrain can slow you down usually wanting to do something like moving through difficult ground like rubble or underbrush or foliage is gonna cost twice as much movement but also moving through the squares of your allies which you can do cost double movement or things like climbing and swimming cost twice as much now what if you have two different movement speeds for example you have a flying speed and a movement speed that are both different how does that work out well and that's the interesting thing about movement is that you could have your walking speed you can have a climbing speed you could have a burrowing speed you can have a swimming speed flatten the flying speed but I think you put it really well in that the maximum distance you can move on your term is determined by the highest of all ball speeds so if you have a flying speed of burrowing speed and a walking speed of each 30 feet that doesn't mean you can move 90 feet you can only move as fast as the fastest speed you have you always subtract the amount that you have moved from the speed that you're currently taking if I have a movement speed of 30 feet and a flying speed of 60 feet I can move 30 and then fly another 30 but for a total of 60 only exactly and bear in mind that your movement is also the biggest thing that might trigger you running into dangers or obstacles which can act out of turn if you walk over a pit trap for instance or fall into a pit of fire or try to walk into or out of melee combat these can all be dangerous things that can trigger other things to interrupt your turn so just be careful with your positioning on that the final note about your movement is that you actually can move through the spaces of hostile enemies however they need to be at least two size categories larger than you or smaller than you what this means is that a giant can trample over the spaces of a human or a halfling can nimbly dodge under the legs of an ogre they still have to cost twice as much movement to do that and they don't get to damage anybody in the process unless they make an attack but it is possible another important part of your movement is taking advantage of cover in the field there's so many places to hide behind and even if you're not going to actually hide but you just want to protect yourself dropping prone is a great defensive advantage when you're facing ranged attackers and you can do so without costing any of your movement it's just standing up from prone costs half your movement half your movement to stand up but this means that if you're behind cover you can you can drop prone behind the cover pop up fire and drop prone again yeah and if it's like a good high wall I would even say is the DN if you drop prone behind a wall people just can't see you or shoot you at so this can be a great advantage if you need to like defend the crow's nest of a ship or a high tower the next thing on your turn and probably one of the most fun things that you're going to be doing on your turn is your action and you only get one action on your turn unless an ability says otherwise and you use like action surge or time stop or time stuff yeah but generally speaking one action on your turn and actions are really diverse there's probably the biggest list of options that you have both just for being a D&D character but also your class and your race may even give you more options for what you can do the most common action that I'm sure we've all used is the attack action which a lot of the fighting classes are going to be using and yeah it's generally what you're going to be doing to deal damage yeah now the attack action has some interesting permutations to it because many classes like fighters Rangers and paladin's eventually gain this ability called extra attack this means that when they make the attack action they can make more than one individual melee strike this means or ranged strike actually yeah and this means they can actually make those attacks at different targets so if I'm a fighter I can actually move 10 feet attack an orc move another 10 feet attack another orc and then if I have other ways of attacking if I'm a high-level fighter I could even continue doing that now the important thing there is that if you read the text specifically it says that in order to make those extra attacks you need to take the attack action this means you cannot take a different action on your turn and then use your extra attack as if you had another action there is an exception to this though on the grapple and shove actions can replace an extra attack or be used on their own grappling and shoving allow you to do things like grab other creatures push them out of the space or even knock them prone these are all really useful ways that you can use to gain a tactical advantage for example you could push someone over and then than with advantage I also really like using the push or knock prone at really fun times like if we're fighting on a bridge with no railing and just shove the person off DMS remember your monsters can do this too yes attack action is not the same as being able to make extra actions there's very specific abilities that give you the power to take it full-on extra action and the extra attack class feature is not the same what are some of the other actions that we have available to us other than pushing shoving knocking prone and attacking well the most ubiquitous for a lot of other classes that aren't interested in fighting with weapons or shooting things is going to be the cast a spell action now casting a spell also has some interesting little bits to it yeah now we've covered all that in this completely separate video so be sure to check that one out by following the links below but in general most combat useful spells take one action to cast and that is your whole turn so you're not gonna make any other attacks after you do that from here there's a huge subset of movement related actions the most common is probably the dash action which doubles your movement speed yeah if you have a base speed of 30 feet you take the dash action you can now move 60 but that's your entire action it means that you're foregoing the ability to attack with your main action you can move double the speed this would also be things like the disengage action which allows you to safely move away from enemy combatants as well as the hide action which allows you to find a place to all side via the dodge action is another one yeah dodging is a really simple one that simply you forfeit your attacks but all attacks for the rest of the turn had disadvantage this is a great go-to if you're in a tough spot you can't hide her get away and you're not really sure what to do on your turn just dodge the the most appropriate use I've ever seen of dodge was actually when we were in a trap and there was not really any attacking we could do yeah and we were in the middle of the trap so we took the dodge action to make the trap less likely to hit us another that people forget about a lot is the help action you can use the help action to give somebody else advantage on a skill check saving throw or even an attack role if you find yourself in a situation where you're fighting an iron golem but you can't hurt it because you don't have a magical weapon consider helping your fighter friend who does have that gleaming magic sword because now they're gonna have advantage on their attacks which are really gonna help against the iron golems high AC in general it's appropriate that if you can imagine accomplishing it in real life in six seconds that's a great thing to do with your action the important thing about improvising in action is you can't do more than you would with any of the other actions with the exception of if it was limited to only in that instance and I think you can elaborate it yeah a little the best rule of thumb I had when you're improvising actions is first of all is there another way that you can explain what you want to do using another action if you want to do something that's gonna knock somebody over you're taking the shove action even if you're just try to scribing it as getting down on your knees and drop kicking that right if you want to do something like throw a minecart and some in front of somebody to knock them over a Ledge that's great that's basically just the shove action but at range and anytime you want to deal damage if your improvisation is about the same damage as a regular melee or ranged attack that's a pretty great idea what you want to be on the lookout for though are ways that you could use the environment to make that action even something more special this improvisation might not be something that you can accomplish every single time on your turn but it could have big effects like cutting the rope that causes the bridge to fall apart or in my most recent game the party was being attacked by a bunch of nature spirits and the cleric made an offering at an altar and that was her action but by making the offering and properly incanting the nature spirits retreated peacefully so when you are thinking of improvising look at your surroundings or imagine your surroundings ask the DM to explain them and as much detail as possible so you get some really cool ideas on things that you might be able to do to manipulate the way combats going you might have noticed that between the improvisation and using the movement rules especially for moving across larger creatures you absolutely can run on the Dragons back that's super awesome it just costs twice as much movement speed and you might have to make some acrobatics or athletics checks so but DMS totally be permissive when it comes along to getting all Shadow of the Colossus on big giant creatures drinking a potion is a full action or giving it to somebody else this is something that's house ruled in a lot of campaigns where players are able to just quaff back potions willy-nilly to heal themselves but by the rules as written in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition drinking that healing potion takes your entire action so you might want to retreat before you do it other than taking the action to do things in combat you also have a bonus action you only get one per turn and this is really important because you can only take a bonus action when a spell ability or other class feature specifically allows you to do so if you don't have a power that lets you do this you can't take a bonus action and you can't use your bonus action to do anything else otherwise some classes are going to have a whole bunch of bonus actions and some may not have many at all but you have to pick and choose which bonus action is going to be the best for the turn that you are on now I will say it is fair for the DM to say that certain types of improvisations or interactions might be a bonus action but in general you can only expect to use these for class features the one bonus action that everybody does have access to is if you are wielding a light melee weapon in both hands and you take the attack action on your turn you can then use your bonus action to make one attack with that offhand weapon the restriction with this is that that offhand attack you don't add your ability modifier to the damage but you can use this to throw those weapons you just use this if you're somehow using two hand crossbows that you don't get to do the guns akimbo sort of thing not Indian d5e it makes me sad but yeah is what it is yeah so some of the classes that have a ton of bonus action options are things like the monk or robes which can actually take can transform main actions into bonus actions when they need to they can - disengage or hide as a bonus action instead of a main action another important thing is if you are a spellcaster some spells count as a bonus action this is another really important exception however because if you cast a spell using your bonus action you cannot cast a spell again that same turn using your action unless you plan to cast a can trip this prevents you from doing things like being a sorcerer and quickening two fireballs not possible but you could quicken your fireball and still throw a ray of frost so there's an interesting part of combat that can happen both on your turn or outside your turn and that is the reaction we've talked about this a little bit before because the most common reaction in the game is the opportunity attack this happens when a creature moves outside of the melee reach of a foam that foam can then spend their reaction and make a free attack against that creature of course this could only happen once per turn per creature because you only get one reaction on your turn there are also certain abilities of certain classes that will save reaction on them as well as some spells that save reaction on them yeah this Wizards can protect themselves with the shields you know yeah so look for the word reaction you only get one per turn but they can be really helpful yeah that reaction refreshes not at the start of the combat round but at the start of your next turn so um if you use your reaction on your turn you gotta wait the whole combat round again before you can use it again but you can use that reaction on your own turn I think the most famous example of this is counter spell because let's say you're a wizard and you cast lightning bolt but an enemy's spellcaster counter spells it you want to burn another third level spell slot you can counter spell that counter spell reactions do interrupt the action that's being taken but they don't end that other person's turn so if you're walking away from somebody and you get hit with an opportunity attack you can still continue moving and doing other things in your turn it's just that now you might be bleeding profusely and the last thing that we're going to talk about in terms of actions on your turn is interactions yeah this is one that the fifth edition rules are a little bit unclear about but it's a very flexible area to kind of cover all those would many many things that you might want to do to interact with the environment these are things that obviously are much smaller than either a bonus action or an action but you may want to do on your turn yeah they're usually things that are done as part of an action bonus action or movement a great example of this would be something as simple as drawing your weapon to attack with it or slamming a door closed or kicking it open or grabbing that potion that you're going to stuff down the monk's throat to save their life other interactions might be even just things like flicking a switch or pulling a lever yeah or picking up an object that you see on the ground or even dropping an object one instance that actually doesn't count against this is you can throw yourself prone and that's completely free standing up from prone is half your movement but dropping prone is free there is also the idea of speaking during your turn and I know that I usually consider this part of interaction but the big thing to keep in mind about your player talking during your turn first of all don't talk during other people's turns just to take away it kind of slows down combat unless you're yelling maybe a one-word answer to a question yeah and this is something for many new players that are playing with experienced players can often be a problem at the table when it's your turn don't take anything from anybody else and dms make sure that you protect your players from each other because if you have another player that's being like hey Kelly you should do this on your turn that's so fair give everyone the chance to make their own decisions about what they want to do in combat and if you really genuinely feel lost about what you want to do on your turn then it's okay if you ask somebody for those other people to give you advice but giving someone else unsolicited advice on your turn is something that we really discourage in our own games and if you really want to work on working together as a team make sure that you talk to each other before the battle begins so that you can make a really good plan and execute it on the flip side of that though if you do want to yell out a sentence to the enemy and say I'm going to kill you or things of that nature that is totally allowed I do let my players if they want to like try to reason with the bad guy with one cent and saying stop attacking us we surrender or things like that then I say that that is part of the interaction as well as long as what they say takes less than six seconds to say yeah and of course you can add whatever other flourishes you want you to describe your movements and actions and you really should be doing this when you're role-playing your character don't just say I attack no just arrived how you want to slash at your foes or shoot them where you might be aiming for even though the Dungeons & Dragons rules don't really support things like making a call shot to someone's body parts I usually let that happen when the foe is actually slain instead of describing any any kind of bodily damage beyond hit points but you can still go off and say like I in can't the dark words of my next spell or I draw forth my beautiful gleaming sword and strike true these are all great ways to make combat even more exciting and it really is all about those improvised actions I think that kind of drawing the battle line and being like yeah I mean you can get that from any miniatures game but what makes dandy really special is all that extra descriptive improvisation can happen in the middle about imagination so we hope that this clears up the actions that you can take in combat and we hope that on your next game you have a better idea of what you can and can't do on your turn remember improvisation results in some of the most interesting and intricate battles that you can imagine in Dungeons & Dragons and we would love to hear your stories about all the exciting combat encounters and the crazy things that your characters have done so share it with us in the comments below if you DM is out there looking for a handy reference for a lot of the things we discussed today we have a video review of the Dungeon Master screen reincarnated right over here and if your plenty of spellcaster I need a little bit more help understanding how that works we've got a whole video guide on spells in the spell casting right over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 402,073

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: Uwimxo__n-I

Length: 22min 55sec (1375 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 08 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Nithroc]

Good video overall, though there are a couple of things not quite right;

You said you get 1 reaction per turn. You can only take one reaction per round (with the round start being your turn - which is a big difference). You go on to sort-of clarify this, but still left it a bit ambiguous if you don't use the reaction on your turn. This is mainly an issue because you said many times you can use one reaction per turn, which really reinforces the idea.

A reaction doesn't necessarily interrupt the triggering action - some reactions occur after the triggering condition has finished resolving (such as mage slayer feat, or a readied action hitting when you see someone cast a spell)

Dashing doesn't double your movement speed, it lets you move an additional amount equal to your movement speed (it makes a big difference if you can dash as an action and a bonus action).

Using the help action to give advantage on an attack doesn't give advantage to a specific creature, it gives it to the next friendly creature who is attacking the creature you are helping to distract.

[u/bigvh]

I like your thoughts on the integrity of a players turn, this is an aspect of combat which I hadn't really considered but I think would really benefit my current group given the variety of experience at the table. Also love the cheesy editing style and presentation! look forward to the next

[u/CharlieBlix]

Great job. All the videos on the channel are nicely done.

Subscribed.

[u/spliffay666]

@critical role campgain 1

[u/KatieMLyn]

Thanks!

[u/intermedial]

We have a lot of new and first time players at our game tables who are still learning the ins and outs of combat (and get confused about the difference between an Action and an Attack!). Hope this video helps your new players too!