Combat takes place over a series of combat rounds. During a combat round, each creature in the battle takes a turn. Once every creature has taken a turn, a new round begins.
When Does Combat Start?
Combat starts as soon as one creature intends to harm another, or when some environmental effect is in a position to deal damage to or impose other negative effects on one or more creatures. This means that even before the action happens, a hero can’t use a heroic ability without spending their Heroic Resource on it, because combat has already begun!
Determine Surprise
When battle starts, the Director determines which creatures, if any, are caught off guard. Any creature who isn’t ready for combat at the start of an encounter is surprised until the end of the first combat round. A surprised creature can’t take triggered actions or free triggered actions, and ability rolls made against them gain an edge.
For example, if the heroes sneak up unnoticed on a camp of marauders and attack, each marauder is surprised. Likewise, if the heroes fail to notice that all the cloaked figures in a tavern are actually brain-devouring zombies, then the heroes are surprised. If one of the heroes notices the disguised undead before the zombies attack but has no opportunity to warn their allies, that hero isn’t surprised but the rest of the characters are.
Determine Who Goes First
Sometimes figuring out who gets to take the first turn in combat is automatic. If all the creatures on one side are surprised, then a creature on the other side gets to act first. But if both sides have creatures who aren’t surprised, the Director or a player they choose rolls a d10. On a 6 or higher, the players determine who goes first—the heroes’ side or the other side. Otherwise, the Director decides which side goes first.
Creatures Take Turns
Whichever side goes first chooses a creature (or sometimes a group of creatures on the Director’s side) to act at the start of combat. Whenever the rules talk about a creature acting in combat, that creature gets to take their turn. When that turn is over, the other side chooses a creature to act. Play continues back and forth this way as each creature takes their turn.
Unless an ability or special rule allows them to do so, any creature who has taken a turn during a combat round can’t act again until a new round begins. To help track which creatures have already acted in the current round, each creature can have a coin, token, or card they flip over on the table, or some kind of flag they set on their virtual tabletop token, once they’ve taken a turn. That way, all the players know who has already acted and who hasn’t.
In many encounters, a point comes when one side has creatures who haven’t acted yet but all the creatures on the other side have. The creatures who have yet to act get to take their turns in any order they choose, without turns in between from the other side. For example, consider four heroes taking on six enemies. When all four heroes have taken their turns and four of the enemies have taken theirs, the two enemies who are left take their turns one after the other to end the round.
Determining Who Acts Next
When it comes to the heroes’ side, the choice of who should act next is intended to give players the opportunity to comment, strategize, and plan. Some tables, in some encounters, might find that the choice of who should act next isn’t obvious, leading to debate. That’s fine. Deliberating about what the group should do next is classic roleplaying.
In general, though, most groups find that it’s usually only one or two players in a given round who think it best if they act next. And as soon as those players explain why they want to act next and what they plan on doing, the issue is quickly resolved.
Argument Timer
If the players do end up arguing in circles about what to do next, the Director can place a timer on the discussion. Usually, giving the players a warning and 30 seconds to decide who goes next does the trick. If they can’t choose by the end of that time, the Director chooses a hero to act.
Alternative Turn Order
If planning everyone’s turn order isn’t fun for your group, you can leave it to the dice instead. At the start of combat, have each hero, enemy, and group of enemies make an Agility test, then record the totals. When it’s time for someone on the heroes’ side to act, the hero with the highest total goes first. On the next hero turn, the hero with the second-highest total takes their turn, and so on. The Director-controlled creatures act the same way. Creatures on the same side should reroll tied Agility tests to determine who among the tied creatures acts before the others.
At the Director’s discretion, a hero can swap their turn in the order with another willing hero at the start of a new combat round. This allows certain abilities that interact with the core turn order system, such as the shadow’s Hesitation Is Weakness ability, to better work with this alternative system.
Enemies Act In Groups
Director-controlled creatures act in groups, with information for building groups found in Draw Steel: Monsters. When a group of enemies acts, the Director chooses a single creature or minion squad to take a turn. Once that turn is over, the Director chooses another creature in that group to take a turn, continuing until all members of the group have taken their turn.
End of Round
Once all creatures on both sides of a battle have acted, the combat round ends and a new combat round begins. The side whose members acted first during the initial combat round goes first in all subsequent rounds.