Combat

Combat typically involves a clash between two sides, a flurry of weapon swings, feints, parries, footwork, and spellcasting. These rules organize the chaos of combat into a cycle of rounds and turns.

Initiative

Before the first round of combat, you roll initiative to determine the order of turns for every combatant. To figure out what your initiative is, roll a D20 and add modifiers based on your speed.

• If your speed is Low, add +1 to your initiative roll
• If your speed is Medium, add +2 to your initiative roll
• If your speed is High, add +3 to your initiative roll

The DM rolls initiative for your enemies. Throughout a battle, combatants act in order, from highest initiative result to lowest. The order in which combatants take their turns is called the initiative order. The initiative order remains the same from round to round, although a combatant’s position in the order can change if they delay their turn.

Rounds

A combat round is made up of actions taken by every combatant. Firing an arrow, casting a spell, running across a room, opening a door—each of these activities, along with many others, is considered an action. Each round is approximately 6-10 seconds long in-game. In real time, a round could take a few minutes or more as you calculate attacks, defenses, and other actions.

When it is your turn, you have two action types available to you:

• Major Action: Use a combat ability
• Minor Action: Move, use an item, or do something utilitarian

You can use two Minor actions OR one Major and one Minor action on your turn.

Fleeing and Movement

Ilisara’s particular flavor of turn-based combat was designed to be used without a grid or miniatures in order to accommodate friends playing with each other long-distance. Despite this, there are rules regarding movement to help provide structure to combat.

All characters and monsters have a Low, Medium, or High movement speed which is tied to the Dexterity attribute. Although there is no grid system to track movement by feet/yards, there are approximations for how far you can travel with the different movement speeds to aid in RP.

Required Dexterity	Level of Movement Speed	Approximate Distance Traveled in One Move Action
0 Dexterity	Low	10 feet
4 Dexterity	Medium	15 feet
8 Dexterity	High	20 feet

Snaring, slowing, or crippling a character reduces their movement speed by one level. A character with High movement speed who is snared, for example, will move at Medium movement speed.

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Fleeing From a Slower Foe

To flee from a battle without contest, a character’s movement speed must be higher than the monster’s movement speed. DM discretion on when the character is able to get out of line of sight / range of ranged attacks / etc.

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Fleeing From a Foe Whose Speed Matches Yours

If a character is fleeing from a monster and their speed is equal to the monster’s, the monster and the fleeing character roll off with a d20 once per round to determine whether the monster catches up or not (assuming both of them are using their Major and Minor actions to run each turn). If the monster wins three contested rolls before the fleeing character does, they catch up. If the fleeing character wins three contested rolls before the monster, they can maintain a lead and outrun the monster.

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Fleeing From a Faster Foe

If a character’s movement speed is lower than the monster’s, the monster will catch up after 1 round spent pursuing the character. This allows all creatures to get a single round of immunity for fleeing, regardless of speed. For example, take a look at the following rounds:

1. Character uses her Major and Minor action to flee


2. Monster uses its Major and Minor action to pursue


3. Character uses her Major and Minor action to flee


4. Monster uses its Minor action to pursue, catches up, and can attack with its Major action


To prevent an enemy from fleeing, one can grapple their foe using a Strength check. The DC to successfully grapple a monster is set by the DM. Against other players, the Strength check is a contested roll-off. If the grapple is successful, a creature’s movement becomes none.

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Attacking and Defending

Combatants get a chance to parry or dodge every attack that is targeted at them in Ilisara. You roll an attack roll to use an offensive ability, and a defense roll to defend against someone else’s.

• On your turn, you roll a D20 to Attack. There are seldom any bonuses to Attack rolls, unless they are part of an ability.

• Your target rolls a D20 to Defend. Defense rolls are augmented by armor bonuses.

• Whoever wins either hits with their attack, or successfully dodges/parries.

If an attack is physical, the defender gets a bonus to their roll based on their armor type (for example, a plate-wearing warrior would gain +4 to their defense rolls against physical attacks). If an attack is magical, the defender should add a bonus to their roll based on their magical defense (for example, armor enchanted with minor magic defense might have a +1 bonus to defense rolls against magical attacks). In general, magical defense is rarer to find on monsters or player characters.

As a special note for area of effect or multi-target attacks: Roll to attack once, and all targets will roll separate Defense rolls against that attack.

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Mounted Combat

Characters may fight from the back of mounts, such as horses or bears. Trained mounts can be ridden by any character, and can be bought or rented in towns from stablemasters. Taming and riding a wild animal requires a series of skill checks revolving around the Animal Handling skill.

In combat, a character riding a mount should follow these rules:

• The mount will, by default, act on its rider’s turn and does not have a separate place in the Initiative order

• The mount has two Minor actions which it can use independently of the rider

• The mount can take actions before or after the rider’s actions

• The mount can attack if the rider spends a Major action commanding the mount to do so

• Mounts roll defense separately from their rider, and have their own HP, Defense, and other stats with which to perform skill checks or attacks

On your turn, you can direct your mount to use two Minor actions, and still use your own Minor action and Major actions. If the mount has an attack, the rider can use the mount’s attack in place of their Major action during their turn.

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Attacking

• Attacking from the back of a mount can only be done with one-handed weapons, with the exception of a bow or lance.

• You will receive a -2 penalty to your attack roll if your mount takes a single Minor action to move on the same turn.

• You will receive a -5 penalty to your attack roll if your mount takes two Minor actions to move on the same turn.

• If your mount is stationary, you do not take any penalties to attack rolls made from the back of your mount.

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Defending

• Attackers can choose to target a rider or their mount.

• If a ground-mount dies to the attacker’s strike, the rider falls from the mount and suffers d10 damage for a small or medium sized mount, and 2d10 damage for a large or giant mount.

• If the mount is moving, the attacker suffers a -5 penalty to attack rolls attempted against the rider.

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Large Scale Combat

Rules intended for army vs. army combat! Still a WIP