🪴 Quartz 4.0

Phases of Combat

3 min read

Turn

“It’s your Turn tell us what you intend to do”. A Turn is a specific period of time during which one Creature can take its Actions, within a larger sequence of events.

Round

After all Creatures in combat have performed their Turn, one Round has passed. (Usually one round lasts 6 seconds).

Combat

  1. Prepare to Act — At the start of each Round, all creatures involved in combat prepare up to 2 actions, representing your intentions for the round, what you plan to do. To Prepare an Action you set a card face-down.
    If you need, you can also pay 1 Energy to exchange one of your Prepared Actions, with another one.
    • You have an item in hand and want use it, set its card face down to indicate you intend to, for example a Weapon.
    • Choose one of your Spell and set it face-down to cast it.
    • “Seems this fella likes my fire spell, let’s give him an Ancore”.
  2. Initiative — The GM decides the turn order, whether enemies or players act first.
    The initiative may change after every round, or remain the same, depending on the situation.
  3. Enemy Turn — During the enemies’ turn:
  4. Player Turn — During the players’ turn:
    • Decide with your allies which one of you goes first.
    • Perform the actions you declared at the start of the round. Or not, I’m not a cop.
    • During your turn you can always exchange any of your Prepared Actions with a Movement or Skill or an Ancore.

Surprise Round

The party of adventurers cautiously approaches a narrow forest path. Thorny brambles obscure their vision, and the chirping of birds masks the sound of movement. Suddenly, the ranger halts and signals silence. Before the group can react, a band of goblins bursts from the underbrush, arrows nocked and ready. DM: “The goblins have successfully ambushed you. Everyone roll for initiative. Those of you who failed the Perception check are surprised and cannot act during this round.”

A Surprise Round occurs when one or more creatures are caught off guard at the start of combat. It represents a tactical advantage gained through stealth, deception, or ambush.

Usually it goes something like this:

  1. A creature or group must remain hidden or unnoticed by their targets. This often requires a successful Stealth check.
  2. The targets make Perception check to detect the ambush. If they fail to notice the threat, they are surprised.
  3. If one or more creature succeeds in being unnoticed, then they will act in an additional round before combat begins (the Surprise Round), afterwards combat goes as usual.

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