D&D Combat: Actual Example | The First Arcadian's D&D Tutorial 04

welcome to arcadia in my last video i explained some of the basic concepts for combat in dnd but i talked for a really long time and sometimes people just really need a visual example so let's do that if you didn't see my previous video i highly encourage you to do so just to make sure that you understand all the game terms that i will be talking about in here since i may not be re-explaining them all look for the video in the eye up there or down below in the underdark that being said i'm not your boss so do whatever you want to help us out in here let's use two characters of mine gorick the dwarven cleric and eldar the half elf rogue let's imagine these two adventurers are exploring an ancient crypt when they see a lot of bones and skulls scattered through the fore they start levitating and reassembling into skeletons that attack them this is now a combat so let's bring the miniatures [Music] first things first let's roll initiative to determine the battle order gorix player rolls a 16 on the dice but we need to have his dexterity modifier to have the total initiative number gorick has a -1 dexterity modifier so his initiative is 15. 16-1 eldar does the same he rolls a 10 but his plus 3 dexterity modifier raises his initiative to 13. then the dm rolls the skeletons initiative behind a dm screen and announces that the skeletons rolled 11 on their initiative so we have gorick going first with 15 then elvar with 13 and finally the skeletons with 11. on his turn gorick has a movement and action and if applicable a bonus action he decides to start by moving towards one of the skeletons if you look into gorick's character sheet right here you will see that his speed is 25 feet in the grid every square has five feet by five feet so a movement of 25 feet basically means five squares gorick actually only needs 20 feet meaning four squares to get to the skeleton but that's fine you don't have to spend all your movement in a single go then for his action gorick decides to attack this means that he will use a weapon in his case a warhammer to try and hit the opponent to see if he actually hits he rolls to attack this means rolling a d20 and then adding his strength ability modifier and also his proficiency bonus because gorick is proficient with warhammers and by the way if you're wondering uh how can you know which weapons your character is proficient with relax that is all taken care of in character creation coric rolls an eight his strength modifier is plus two and his proficiency bonus is plus 2 as well so he rolls a total of 12. that means that gorick player only needs to announce the gm i rolled a 12 to attack you only need the total number the dm must then check the ac of the skeleton to see if gorick hit normally the dm just answers if the attack hits or not but just so you see what happens and why it happens that way let's pull the curtain a bit this is the skeleton stat block it's a condensed block of information that tells the dm all they need to know about how to run that monster and this is the skeleton's armor class or ac to hit gorick must roll equal or higher than the target's ac gorick also has an ac determined by the armor he wears and if the monsters try to attack him then that's the number that they will try to beat in this case gorick rolled a 12 to attack but the skeleton's ac is 13 which means that gorick's attack doesn't land the dm doesn't tell the players what the ac is or at least they don't need to what they do though is describe narratively how gorick swings his warhammer towards the skeleton but the skeleton jumps back avoiding it with this gorick doesn't have anything else to do and his turn ends now it's eldar's turn he uses his action to shoot an arrow from his short bow at the other skeleton he rolls a 15 but since he is using a ranged weapon instead of a melee one he doesn't add his strength modifier he has his dexterity one which is plus three since he is proficient with the bow he also has plus two from the proficiency bonus so it is a total roll of 20. 20 to hit beats the skeleton's ac of 13 so the attack actually lands now eldar needs to know how much damage he did to the skeleton and he rolls for damage according to the player's handbook a short bow deals 1v6 of damage plus your dexterity modifier eldar rolls a 4 on the dice plus 3 from his modifier equals a total of 7 so this means that the skeleton suffers 7 points of piercing damage now finally it's the skeleton's turn and since they are monsters the dm runs everything they do this means that you don't need to worry about this part just answer the dm's questions and do what they tell you to do they will normally tell you what the total number of the monsters roll to hit with no math ever being explained but again let's pull back the curtain a little bit the dm decides that the skeletons will both use their movement to close the distance and attack gorick because he's closer so the dm rolls to attack for both skeletons and then have the bonus specified in the stat block just like you do with your own bonuses the first rolled a total of 6 and the second rolls a total of 16 so the dm asks to coric what his ac is to which gorix player responds it's 15. this means that the first skeleton missed but the second one hit so the dm rolls damage behind the screen which ends up being a total of 7 and describes how one of the skeletons lunges forward with his rusty sword in one hand but gorick bravely deflects the attack however he is unable to avoid the second attack suffering 7 points of slashing damage so gorick's player reduces his hp by 7. he had a total of 11 but now he's down to 4. if he loses all hp he will go unconscious and maybe even die but with this everyone had a turn which means that the first round of combat has passed nothing too complicated until now right each individual had a movement and an action which they used to attack first they rolled to see if they hit and only then they rolled how badly the enemy was injured now a new round begins with us going back to the first one on the initiative order gorick gorick decides that he can't risk being hit like that again so he uses his movement to retreat however he is adjacent to two enemies and he knows that when he leaves their vicinity they will get attacks of opportunity as he's trying to escape so he uses his action to disengage and only afterwards he moves away that way he won't provoke any attacks now gorick has already used his action for the turn disengaging but he has a spell prepared called healing world which has a casting time of one bonus action this means that he can use his bonus action the one that you can only use if you have a feature that allows you to use it to cast healing word even though he already used his regular action on this turn and so he casts the spell which according to the spell description heals 1 d4 plus the wisdom modifier of the caster he rolls a 1 mad luck plus 2 which means he regains 3 hit points now it's eldar's turn again and he shoots another arrow he rolls to attack and it is a natural 20 a critical hit this means that not only the attack will automatically hit but also you roll twice the dice to determine the damage normally a short bow would deal 1 d6 damage plus the dexterity modifier but since this was a critical hit lr instead rolls to the six plus three for his dexterity modifier the total ends up being nine points of piercing damage and the dm who has been keeping track of the skeleton hp declares that eldar strike kills the skeleton one enemy down however now it's the skeleton's turn again and the remaining monster identifies eldar as a threat it moves towards him and attacks the dm rolls a total of 13 which happens to be exactly eldar's ac this means that the skeleton's attack barely hits so elvar still suffers damage the dm rolls a total of 8 points of damage which means that eldar is down from 9 hp to just one so the second round has passed and now we have eldar badly injured and one monster still up we begin the third round of combat with gorick again this time he decides to use his action to cast a spell and he chooses to cast sacred flame as explained in the spell's description which you can find in the player's handbook or in the player's basic rules free pdf when you cast sacred flame you don't really roll to attack instead the target rolls a saving throw which in the case of this spell is a dexterity saving throw to see if they can escape the effect of your spell and if they roll below the dc or difficulty class of the spell they don't evade it and are hit so the dm makes the saving throw he rolls a total of four and tells this to gorix player now when gorick's player created his character he had to calculate the dc for this spell that's explained in the book in the character creation part so there is no need for us to discuss that but if you want to learn more about this i can recommend you to my video on character creation look for it also in the eye up there or down below in the underdark for now you can just believe me when i tell you that gorix dc is 12 as calculated during character creation which means that the skeleton rolled below it it fails as such the skeleton suffers 1d8 points of radiant damage like the spell description tells us and gorick rolls seven on the damage roll now it's eldar's turn and he's rather desperate he only has one hp left and if he fails this attack he might die so he decides to think outside the box elder's player turns to the dm and says um i want i want to i want to try to intimidate the skeleton so he doesn't attack me can i shout something like run away while you can or you will face a fate worse than death i will burn your bones so you may never again inhabit anything and you are permanently killed as you should have been in the first time there is no action in dnd for what lr is trying to do but it's perfectly possible to do something like this in actual games if you have an idea that doesn't fit what the game is prepared to handle or doesn't seem covered by what the rules say you can announce your intentions to the dm and let them make the ruling on the fly for you and tell you what you should do it could happen that the dm just says i don't think that's really possible or that's not within your character's possibilities but there's always the chance that he might go with it and after considering for a few seconds the dm asks eldar's player for an intimidation check and he decides that the skeleton will also roll he will roll an inside check to contest elvar's intimidation this means that if eldor rolls higher than what the skeleton will roll in inside he will have his way so lr rolls 10 and since the intimidation skill uses charisma like it says on the character sheet he had his charisma modifier of plus two but since ellar also happens to be proficient in intimidation he also has his proficiency bonus which is plus two his total role is fourteen and the skeleton happens to roll seven elvar wins the contest now the dm improvises the solution and ends up telling how the skeleton seems to have been afflicted by an unnatural fear and it seems ready to run and since now it's the skeleton turn the dm can just say well the skeleton tries to run away because he was really really scared about what you said but he's so focused on running away that it doesn't disengage this means that as soon as a skeleton abandons eldor's surrounding space eldar is going to use his reaction to attempt an attack he quickly pulls a dagger from his belt and rolls to attack the dagger is being used as a melee weapon which is normally means that you would use your strength modifier but as you can see in the book the dagger is considered a finesse weapon and finance weapons are a little bit special because it means that you can use your dexterity modifier with them instead of your strength just as if it was another range attack lr rolls in 8 his modifiers sum up to plus 5 so aldr rolls a total of 13 to attack he just hits the dagger damage is 1d4 in which elba rolls a 3 summed up with the dexterity modifier that gives a total of six points of piercing damage and just like that the dm says that eldar reduced the skeleton's hp to zero the skeleton dies the dm may describe how lr lunges forward dagger in hand making use of the sudden disorientation that the skeleton had to strike him down or may even invite eldar's player to describe how he kills the monster whatever you say it will become intertwined with the story in a way that only dnd can really pull off and the battle is over just like that this was a very simple example of a dnd battle just for you to get a feel of what you can do what you need to do what are attack and damage rules actions versus bonus actions and reactions etc obviously i can't talk about every single peculiarity that may happen in nd combat otherwise we'd be here forever so i'm sorry if i didn't touch on the topic that you wanted to know more about but as with the previous video i promised that i will try to go through all comments to assure that i answer all the questions that you might have so shoot your questions down below in the underdark even so i hope that this gave you a more realistic perspective on how battles take place in dnd maybe we'll do a video about advanced combat rules in the future who knows but for now i think we have been using a certain word a lot that many people may be wondering what it is and how it is calculated which is proficiency so let's talk about that next for now though thank you so much for watching i hope i helped you to better understand how combat works if you like this video go check the rest of them every new view is another bit of xp i can use to level up in this crazy environment called youtube follow me on social media too at the first arcadian on twitter and at the first arcadian on basically anywhere else for now i beat you for well and i hope to see you in the next video

Channel: The First Arcadian

Views: 12,075

Keywords: dnd, D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeons and dragons, rpg, rpgs, arcadia, the first arcadian, geek, 5e, tutorial, how to play, how to play d&d, how to play dnd, 5th edition, dnd5e, combat, battle, fight, d20, attack roll, damage roll, profficiency, profficiency bonus

Id: sbITL24nP1g

Length: 15min 4sec (904 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 04 2021