Post/Author/DateTime	Post
windowmaker 12-30-05, 10:53 PM	Sorry about putting this thread in this forum, but there is no "questions" or "help" forum =(. My friends and I have lately decided to start playing D&D, I'm the dungeon master and I own the books, but none of us understand how movement and rounds work. I'm supposed to revise the books and teach them how to play but I don't know how far somebody is supposed to move in one round, how long a round goes for, if you move as a group or by yourself, turn by turn. Could somebody please enlighten me on this topic? Thanks
AndrewW 12-30-05, 11:45 PM	My friends and I have lately decided to start playing D&D, I'm the dungeon master and I own the books, but none of us understand how movement and rounds work. I'm supposed to revise the books and teach them how to play but I don't know how far somebody is supposed to move in one round, how long a round goes for, if you move as a group or by yourself, turn by turn. Each character will move in their initiative order, with the monsters moving when it's their initiative. How far will depend on what they are doing. If it's a move action they can move up to their normal movement. Try reading: Player's Handbook 3.5 page 135, Movement. A better place for this would have been under the Dungeons & Dragons Sub-Forum D&D General: http://boards1.wizards.com/forumdisplay.php?f=42
windowmaker 01-01-06, 07:31 PM	that still didn't explain much, and neither did page135 (i've read the whole thing making note of the important bits, and i even reviewed that page again just in case. "move in their initiative order", does that mean that they have seperate rounds and such? or that they all move in a line depending on their initiative? is this movement for battles only? do the same movement rules apply to battles AND exploring. Some examples would really clear things up for me.
AndrewW 01-01-06, 08:52 PM	Ok, Initiative is just used for combat. In one round everyone moves, going by who has the highest initiative first. There's no need to use it just for exploring. Where they move (if anywhere) is entirely up to that individual, they don't have to move at all, or may move anywhere their movement and conditions allow (ie: they can't stay in a square occuppied by another unless the only other occupents are prone. They had a sample combat in the 3rd edtion Player's Handbook but it's been removed from the 3.5 version... From the 3rd edtion Player's Handbook: How Combat Works ---------------------------- This extended example of combat demonstrates the most commonly used combat rules. SETUP Tordek, the dwarven fighter; Mialee, the elven wizard; Jozan, the human cleric of Pelor; and Lidda, the halfling rogue, are in a 10-foot-wide dungeon corridor at a door. Tordek is making Strength checks to try to break it down. The DM asks the players to tell him where their characters are. Tordek is in front of the door. Lidda and Jozan are to either side of it, and Mialee is behind Jozan. The players are playing with miniatures, so they arrange their miniatures in line: Lidda, Todek; Jozan , and Mialee. The DM looks at his notes, rolls some dice, and determines that a gang of four orc marauders has arrived, having heard Tordek banging against the door. The orcs have come around the corner at a T-shaped intersection at the end of the corridor. They're 50 feet away from the door, so they're 40 feet away from Mialee, 45 feet away from Jozan, 50 feet away from Tordek, and 55 feet away from Lidda. The orcs know that the adventurers are there. The DM needs to know who among the adventurers is aware of the orcs. Those who are caught unaware will be suprised. The DM asks each player to make a Listen check (DC 9). Jozan and Lidda succeed. Trodek and Mialee fail. SUPRISE ROUND During the suprise round, only the characters who are aware of their enemies can act, and each takes only a partial action. The orcs, Jozan, and Lidda all act during the suprise round. The DM asks Jozan's and Lidda's players to make initiative checks. Jozan's initiative modifier is -1 (the same as his Dexterity penalty). Lidda's is a +7 (+3 for her Dexterity bonus and +4 for her Improved Initiative). They get 7 and 19 as their initiative results. The DM rolls for all four orcs (+0) and gets a result of 11. The order of battle during the suprise round is Lidda first, followed by the orcs; followed by Jozan. The DM calls on Lidda's player. Lidda recognizes the bloody eye symbols painted on the orcs' shields: The symbol identifies them as marauders. She steps to one side to get a clear line of sight past her friends and shoots a crossbow bolt at one of the orcs. Lidda's attack bonus with a crossbow is +4 (+4 base attack bonus, +3 Dexterity bonus, +1 size bonus). The orc is 55 feet away, well under the light crossbow's range increment of 80 feet. lidda therefore suffers no range penalty. Even though the orc is flat-footed, Lidda can't sneak attack it because it is more then 30 feet away. Lidda's player rolls a 17 for an attack result of 21, well over the orc's AC of 16. She rolls 1d8 for damage and gets a 3. The orcs have 4 hit points each, so the wounded orc has 1 hit point left. "He staggers" says the DM, "but he doesn't fall." Then it is the orcs' turn. Two orcs have javelins, and they throw them. The DM decides that the two javelins head toward Mialee, 40 feet away. Javelins have a range increment of 30 feet. The targets are located more thhan one range increment and less than two range increments away, for a range penalty of -2. So, the orcs have a -2 attack penalty with their javelins (+0 base attack bonus, +0 Dexterity bonus, +0 size bonus, -2 range penalty). Mialee's AC is usually 13 (due to a +3 Dexterity bonus), but she can't use her Dexterity bonus while she's flat-footed, so her AC right now is 10. Rolling for the orcs, the DM gets an 18 and a 13 for results of 16 and 11. That means both javelins aimed at her hit. The orcs deal 1d6+2 points of damage with their javelins (1d6 for the javelin, +2 Strength bonus), so the DM rolls 2d6+4 and gets a result of 12 points of damage. Mialee is knoked from 7 hit points to -5. She falls to the stone floor, unconscious and dying. Then Jozan takes his action. He is next to Mialee already. He reaches down and casts cure minor wounds on her. Her hit points rise to -4, and she is no longer dying. (If he had not cured her, she would probably have lost another hit point at the end of the round). With that the suprise round ends. FIRST REGULAR ROUND The DM asks Tordek's player to make an initiative check because he's the only conscious character who hasn't done so. He gets a 14, so he goes after Lidda and before the orcs. The order of battle is: Lidda, Tordek, orcs, Jozan. (Mialee is unconscious and can't take an action.) On her turn, Lidda fires another crossbow bolt, but she misses. She drops her crossbow and switches to her short sword (rather than reloading her crossbow). Then Tordek moves 15 feet to get between the orcs and Mialee. (The orcs are 50 feet away from him, too far ffor him to reach them attack, even with a charge.) The corridor is too wide (10 feet) for him to keep the orcs from getting past him, but he will at least get an attack of opportunity on any single orc that tries it. On their action, the orcs are 35 feet faway from Tordek. That's wihin charging range. (They can charge 40 feet.) The two orcs with battleaxes in hand charge and attack. In a 10-foot wide corridor, only two can fight side by side. The other two in the back ready their axes and wait to get in. One orc could try to move past Tordek so another orc could get at him, but then Tordek would get an attack of opportunity on the first orc. The orcs have a +4 attack bonus on their attack rolls with their battlexes (+0 base attack bonus, +2 Strength bonus, +2 charge bonus). Tordek's AC is 17 (+4 armor bonus, +2 shield bonus, +1 Dexterity bonus), and neither charging orc hits him. "THeir battleaxes clang against your shield and armor," says the DM, "and you can feel the strength behind their blows, but you're not hurt." Jozan casts cure light wounds (his 1st-level domain spell) on Mialee. That spell restores 1d8+2 hit points to Mialee, but Jozan's player rolls a 1 for a result of only 3 hit points cured. Mialee's hit points rise to -1, but that's not enough to get her back on her feet. SECOND REGULAR ROUND Lidda steps in next to Tordek and thrusts with her short sword at the orc she wounded with the crossbow bolt. Her attack bonus is +0 (+1 size, -1 Strength), and she misses even though the orc's AC is penalized by =2 because he charged in the previous round. Ok, hope that helps understand things better.
windowmaker 01-01-06, 09:29 PM	i understand it a bit better now, but when you're just exploring does the players speed count? or can they do as much as they want to? (the DM guide said something like not letting one player make a really long turn with heaps of actions and stuff)
AndrewW 01-01-06, 09:45 PM	Up to the DM, but if they are just exploring and time isn't a factor the movement rates aren't that important. Might be if say the Rogue is out scouting ahead and runs into some monsters, then the Rogue's movement could be important in how fast the Rogue can run back to the party versus how fast the monsters can run after the Rogue.
windowmaker 01-02-06, 12:59 AM	so unless they're in a battle, they can move as much as they like? and make as many actions as they like AS LONG as the DM (me) says it's okay?
AndrewW 01-02-06, 01:53 AM	If there isn't any time preassure for anything easier to not worry too much about it. It's always up to the DM though.
windowmaker 01-02-06, 02:37 AM	thanks alot ^^, i think i'm ready to start inviting friends over now =D
AndrewW 01-02-06, 02:46 AM	Not a problem. Have fun.
WizO_Mengde 01-10-06, 12:08 PM	This thread looks like a job for... What's a DM to do?? *thread moved*
anandak 01-14-06, 03:07 PM	Where are you based and would you be interested in adding an extra (very experienced) player to the group if I am close enough?
Nom 01-14-06, 08:00 PM	Firstly, "game time" vs "real time". Game time is how much time things take "in game". "Real time" is how long things take to play. Think about reading a book. The time it takes you to read part of the book can be very different from the time period covered in the book. A long period of "book time" can pass in moments ("three weeks later"), while something that takes only a moment of book time can take several pages (and thus minutes) of your time (a complex description). The same applies to game time vs real time. When the player characters (PCs) camp, you can simply say "you sleep for 8 hours". While travelling, you might have determined that an event will occur after they have travelled 40 miles. At 16 miles per day, this is roughly 2.5 days, so you just skip forward to the time in question: "About midday on your third day of travel, ...". Similarly, if a party of speed 20 travels 300 ft at a normal walk and need to know how long this took, you can figure it out as 1.5 minutes (20 ft. per round at 10 rounds per minute = 200 ft. per minute). See Player's Handbook (PH) pg 162 for movement times. Some events take roughly the same amount of game time and real time, such as active conversation. Usually, the PCs are not pressed for time, so you just let this run, but if you know that they have only limited time you may like to set a stopwatch running in the background. Don't forget that time spent asking you (the DM) for clarification shouldn't count against time available, since "in the game" they just glance at the painting (for example) rather than ask someone for a description of it. Some events take a lot longer to play (real time) than game time. Combat is the classic example. A combat round represents 6 seconds of game time (PH pg 138), in which each character (including monsters) has a chance to act. With alert players, it should take between 20 seconds and a minute of real time to resolve a single character's turn. With 4 PCs and 4 opponents, this means that 6 seconds of game time could easily take 8-10 minutes of real time. That's OK. What happens to time in combat? The big change is that rather than roughly tracking time you move to a system where each actor has a turn to act, corresponding to about 6 seconds of activity. When each actor has had their turn, the round is over and 6 seconds of game time have passed. Although real combat is simultaneous, D&D uses a six-second turn based system which works well enough. When using combat rounds, each character gets a turn to take either a move action + a standard action, 2 move actions, or a single full round action. See PH pg 141 for a summary. Once each character has acted once, you start again from the top of the list. The players control their PCs on their turns, and you control each monster on its turn. Whenever you need to measure time (eg how long a spell effect lasts), count based on the turns of the character who cast the spell. For example, daze last 1 round, counted from the caster's turn to the start of the caster's next turn.
Tuah 01-14-06, 08:38 PM	I'll sum up a few things on turns and rounds in simple format. :D First off, a round is each character involved in the battle taking a turn. As you probably already know, you only use these rounds when you're in a battle with someone. You figure what order each player's initiative, then commence in that order (try doing monsters' initative all together to save hassle). A single round represents 6 seconds in the game world, though a player's turn is only a part of that 6 seconds. (theoretically, they're all taking their turns together in that time, but that's what initiative is for; to keep turns and order) During a player's turn, they have a Standard action, and a Move action (taken in any order). In the move action, a character can move up to their maximum spaces, or take a 5-foot step (one square). A 5-foot step is used mainly to position oneself, but to get out of some attacks of opportunity. A standard action can consist of various things, such as attacking, climbing, using a skill, etc. You can only do one thing during your standard action. Full-round actions are quite handy. If you would like to move more than your normal speed, you can sacrifice your standard action to take more time to move. This is called a Double Move. A full-round action is, I believe, only applicable to attacks. A full-round-attack action uses your maximum number of attacks per turn (like three attacks if you have a Base Attack Bonus of +11/+6/+1). You are still allowed a 5-foot-step, but you are not allowed a full move action. Lastly, you can delay your turn in initiative without any penalties. Doing so, though, puts you at this point in initiative perminantly for the rest of the battle. One form of delaying is to ready another action. Readying basically interrupts action at the point that you plan for, delivers the action and afterward continues play as normal. Such as readying an attack against anyone who goes through a door: Someone stands by the door ready to attack, someone opens the door, and the attacker interrupts the door-opener by attacking. The opener then continues from the point they left off at. (in this case though, since they weren't immidiately in battle with the attacker, it would be a suprise round for the attacker, and the defender would be considered flat-footed)