When casting a spell during combat you need to keep in mind the “Casting time of a spell”

Some spells use your action for the casting time whereas some spells can be cast using a reaction or a bonus action, the casting time of a spell will be explained in the spell description. Some spells also require “concentration” to be held on the spell between rounds to keep the effects of the spell active, if a Spellcaster’s concentration on a spell is broken, e.g. if attacked by an enemy creature, the spell will end.

Once you know the casting time of a spell you should read the range of the spell to see if the enemy or area you are targeting is in range.

Did my spell hit or not?

Some spells require you to make an attack roll against A targets “Armour Class”, with a successful hit being a role higher than the targets AC. On a successful hit you would then roll for damage (which listed in the spell description).

However, some spells flip the script and require your target or any creature in your spells “area of effect” to make a saving throw to avoid the harmful effects of your spell.

To do this the “Game Master” must make a roll for the enemy and they must roll higher than your “Spell Save DC” to avoid the attack. Your Spell Save DC is always 8 + 2 + your spellcasting modifier. Your Spellcasting modifier is based off what your character class, be it, Bard, Cleric, Paladin, Ranger, Sorcerer, Warlock or Wizard, uses for their spellcasting, for example a wizard uses their intelligence as his spellcasting modifier.

For example, a Wizard with a intelligence modifier of +2 would have a spell save DC of 8+2+2 =12. This would mean if the wizard casts a spell at an enemy they may have to make a roll against the wizard’s spell save DC, rolling lower than the Spell Save DC means the enemy failed the roll and takes the hit, but a roll of equal or higher means they succeeded on the role and avoid the worst of the spell.

There are many schools of magic in the D&D world, and thankfully, they all have confusing names. A school of magic is a group of spells that affect the world in similar ways.

Abjuration

The origin of the word Abjuration comes from the Latin “abjurare” which means to, forswear something, or to get rid of something. In D&D abjuration spells can range from banishing your enemy’s to another plane of existence, or simply blocking foes from allies, most abjuration spells involve getting rid of an enemy or stopping them from moving to a certain location.

Conjuration

Conjuration magic allows you to summon an animal or a monster to appear suddenly in front of you, or to create water seemingly out of nothing. Conjuration spells allow you to transport matter from one location to another spells like “call lightning” and “conjure animal” are in the conjuration school of magic.

Divination

The Latin origin of divination is “divinare” which means to predict. Divination spells are used to gather and reveal unknown information. Often Divination spells can show you glimpses of the future or give you previously unknown information. Spells like find traps and detect thoughts can be used to give you more knowledge during your adventures.

Enchantment

Enchantment in D&D doesn’t mean the enchantment of an object, enchantment in D&D means the manipulation of people, monsters or beast’s, minds, be it by calming down a wild animal or making an enemy see you as a friend .

Evocation

Evocation spells are good at killing things, with fire lightning or floating magical swords, most evocation spells are used offensively, although some can be used to heal allies. Evocation comes from the latin word “evocatio” which means to call forth, similar to the large amounts of energy projcted through evocation spells, especially when they make things go boom.

Illusion

Illusion spells are often used for trickery, be it deceiving another senses with artificial sounds or messing with their minds, to make them see, taste, smell or hear something that isn’t there, or so that they fail to see what is really there.

Necromancy

The word necromancy comes from the splicing together of two ancient Greek words, “Nekrós” which means dead body and “Manteia” which means seeking knowledge, this fits with spells in D&D like “Speak With Dead” which literally allows you to gain knowledge from the dead.

Necromancy spells in D&D are described as using the energy of life and death. In the Players handbook it states that spells such as “animate dead” which create the undead are a a big no-no and that mages that cast those spells regularly are evil characters.However It is up to the discretion of your Dungeon Master whether or not necromancy spells are inherently evil.

Transmutation

Transmutation spells are used to change the properties of a creature, object or environment. Spells like “Mold Earth” or “Enlarge” are classed as Transmutation spells as they alter the properties of physical matter.

If you’ve recently developed an appetite for D&D, and are excited to play again or play for the first time, your going to need a group to play with.

Personally, before I was able to play my fist game I watched hundreds of D&D videos on YouTube. Luckily for me, my friends group were interested in playing too. Make sure to ask your friends whether they would be interested in playing D&D, you never know.

This might not be an option for you, so I suggest that if you try and find people like you, most likely, nerdy people.

The way I suggest you do that is to look online on social media or websites like Meetup for tabletop role-playing groups or meetups. If their are none in your area, look for other activities you enjoy so you can find people like you, this actually could be anything from a Tabletop gaming meetup to a salsa dancing class, the more friends you make, especially over the nerdy hobbies, the more likely you are to find people who already play D&D or would be willing to play for the first time. Lets be real, it takes some real balls to join a new group for the first time, but, in all honesty you are not going to find a D&D group by sitting alone inside. (although with the coronavirus maybe that’s not such a bad idea)

It’s a long shot, but there may be somewhere in your area that runs adventurers league, I have no further comment on adventurers league since I don’t have it where I am so it might as well not exist.

In my previous post (D&D Combat Rules: Turn Based Combat) I mentioned some of the things a player character can do during combat, such as movement, melee or ranged attacks and Casting a Spell. In this post I will go into more detail about the previously mentioned actions (and more) that a character can take during combat.

Every player character gets to take at least 1 action on their turn, in certain circumstances, they will get to use a Reaction. A player character can’t use a reaction on their turn, they can however use a reaction during another creatures turn. The reaction of a player character can be triggered by an enemy actions or movement on their turn, for example an enemy moving into a player characters melee range could trigger a reaction from the character. Enemies in the game also have a chance to “react” during your turn, as a player for example, if you move out of an enemies attack range on your turn they could use their reaction to make an attack against you.

Movement – Movement does not cost an action in combat. A character can both move, and use an action in a turn. Most characters can move 30ft in each turn.

Actions in Combat

Attack – A character can use their action in order to make a melee or ranged attack against an enemy.

Spellcasting – A character can use their action to cast a spell in combat. Some spells target enemies and do damage, whereas other spells can target allies and give them various bonuses, specific to the individual spell.

Dash – Most characters can move 30ft in a round and still take an action on their turn. Taking the Dash action allows you to travel twice as far on your turn, in this case 60ft, whilst using up your action in the process.

Disengage – Usually if you move out of an enemies attack range during your turn, they have the option to use their Reaction to make an attack against you. This is called an Opportunity Attack. If you use the disengage action however, you can safely move out of the melee range of an enemy without the danger of being hit.

Dodge– The Dodge action allows a player character to prepare to avoid attacks from enemies from the end of their turn to the start of their next turn. When you take this action it imposes disadvantage on any attack roll an enemy makes against your character. (disadvantage means the enemy has to roll two 20 sided dice and take the lower of the two dice rolls. Remember that the attack roll must be higher than your characters Armour Class to hit successfully.)

Help – You use your action to give advantage to an ally during an ability check. An Ability Check occurs when you tell the Game Master how you want your player character to interact with the in game environment or an NPC. The GM will then call for a d20 dice roll and decide how high the player will have to roll to succeed for example the GM will decide that the player has to roll a 15 or higher. When you use the Help action you help that player by allowing them to roll the dice an additional time, giving them a higher chance of success.

Ready – The ready action is for when you want to take an action in between your turns when another character, friend or foe, does a specific set of actions. When you take the Ready action you need to decide what it is that will trigger your action, for example “when the goblin reaches the middle of the rope-bridge”. You also need to decide the action you will take when the previous trigger occurs, for examples “when the goblin reaches the middle of the rope-bridge, I cut the support ropes”. If the GM allows it then your character will take the action when the trigger occurs.

In my previous post I went into detail about the rules regarding Initiative, in D&D combat. (D&D Combat Rules: Initiative). I explained how to roll initiative, how to use it and how to determine the order in which players get to take their turns in combat. In this post I will explain how turn based combat works and why it is used.

How Turn Based Combat Works

Because D&D is only a game, there has to be a way of simulating combat using a variety of rules (mechanics) to make it work in the game. The system the creators came up with has a few key mechanics:

Combat Encounter – A combat encounter is the whole fight as it plays out from start to finish. Each combat encounter is made up of Rounds, and in each round there are multiple Turns. At the start of a combat encounter each character must roll to determine who goes first. This is called initiative.

Initiative – Determines the order in which characters get to take their turns. A character who rolls a higher number gets to take their turn first, and therefore gets to attack first. This is known as the “order of combat”.

Turns – Each character gets to take a turn. This turn represents what they do during the fight. A player could use their turn to stab, shoot, cast a spell or move a set distance. The order in which characters got to take their turn was determined by rolling initiative.

Rounds – A round encompasses every characters turn. Once all characters have taken their turn, the round ends and a new round begins in which the same order of combat repeats until the player’s character is defeated or the enemy is defeated. For reference a round of combat is supposed to be the equivalent of 6 seconds.

Summary

To sum it all up, before the imaginary fight can begin, you must first roll to see in what order each character gets to take their turn (Initiative). As an example lets say, Player One rolls a 7, Player Two rolls a 16 and Enemy One rolls a 12 the order of turns would be Player Two, Monster One and then Player One because Initiative is ordered highest to lowest. Once the last character in the order has taken their turn, a new round starts and the Character with the highest initiative gets to begin the next round. This cycle continues until one side of the combat is defeated.

Turn based combat is important to a tabletop RPG, as their is no other alternative to simulating fictional combat, that offers the same kind of structure that turn based does. Without some sort of structure to combat, players of the Game would just be screaming at the GM across the table, yelling what they want their character to do, whilst the GM frantically tries to work-out what his players are doing in the combat encounter. Turn based therefore lets everyone tell the GM what they intend to do during their turn without bombarding him/her with demands.

Turn Based Combat may be confusing But it’s better than the alternative.

There is No point creating a D&D campaign that no one wants to play. For this reason you should communicate with your players and tweak your campaign in certain ways to make sure your players are excited about playing in your game.

Getting feedback from your players

Get in touch with your players, either in person, if your old fashioned, or online over a messaging service or social media. Make sure to ask your Players:

• What type of setting they would like to play in, for example medieval or modern day?
• How mature they want the story to be, for instance, if the campaign where a movie what would it’s rating be?
• Are there any topics/ taboo themes that they would not want to explore?
• What part of playing D&D is the most important to them? is it, Role-play, combat, story?

Make sure you take your players answers to these questions into account when designing your campaign, in order to maximize your players enjoyment of the game.

Helping and guiding your players

As the Game Master you must be ready to provide help to your players, this also applies to helping them to create their characters, guiding them through character creation, especially if they are new to the game. After your players tell you their ideas for their characters see whether they will be a good fit for your campaign, if they aren’t offer them alternatives and discuss with them how they they could change their characters to fit better into your world.

Whoa, slow down.

Before you start to create your D&D campaign there are a few factors you need to think about. Including:

• Who your players are going to be?
• How many players there are going to be?
• What do your players want to play ?
• Are you playing Online or In person?

These Factors should be considered before you start to create your campaign as they have a huge effect on whether your campaign will be a success, or a complete flop.

The Point of playing D&D is to have fun, and as a Game Master your goal is to make sure that all your players have a great time. For that reason you should ask your players what type of campaign they would like to play, do they want a gritty or lighthearted game, do they want an epic story spanning thousands of sessions, or do they want episodic stand-alone adventures. Ask your players what they want and let their feedback inspire your decisions, about the campaign, because, after all if your players are not enjoying the game you are failing as a GM.

You should also consider how many players will be in your game, as you may need to make adjustments to your ideas to accommodate less or more players.

As a Noob GM your familiarity with the game may vary wildly. If you have been playing D&D for years you will be quite familiar with the rules. However if you are new to the Hobby, yet still want to be a GM, your knowledge of the rules may be lacking and this could make it very difficult when you eventually run your game. So how well do you need to understand the rules, well it depends on 2 major factors, whether you are playing online or in person and how experienced your players are at D&D.

If you are playing around a table, in real life, it will be much easier to adjudicate any arguments over the rules of the game, as all of the players will be able consult the rule-book (probably a copy of the Players Handbook), but, if you are playing online, squabbling over the rules could seriously slow the game down, it would also be harder for you to reign in your players and resume the actual game. If you are going to play online then, you must have an even stronger understanding of the rules.

Similarly, if you are running your game for inexperienced players, you have to be 100% confident in your knowledge of how the game works, so that you can provide help, when they eventually ask for it.

Conclusion

To sum it all up then, before you charge off to start writing your own D&D campaign, you need to know, Who you are playing with, what they like and, how you are going to play with them. Once you know this, grab a pen or get on a computer and prepare to write lots and lots of notes (a.k.a the fun part).