Saravena's arrows flies the short distance at the goblin. Her aim is great and the arrow embeds itself in the goblin's eye, instantly killing it.

"You will pay for that!" snarls the other goblin. He moves closer to Saravena and takes a swing with his scimitar.

The other two goblins release an arrow at Rashana and Damian.

OOC: Miss (Rashana)

Lifting his shield in time blocks one of the arrows "Ha! Your shitty arrows can penetrate my shield!" Looking around the field of view see Saravena getting attacked will rush closer to her side and bring down his mace on the goblin.

Attack: Unable to parse dice roll.

Attack:12

Damage: 5

[Sorry I tried using the combat dice roll for the fist time I did something wrong.]

A couple of the DM's that I play with create and maintain an initiative, AC, HP and state/active spells tracker at the start of each round, and then party characters can act until the first enemy, then DM resolves the first attacks via a summary and takes the enemy action, then passes back to the players next in initiative order.  For example, once initiative is known they would have provided a simple tracker (probably maintained in Word doc or spreadsheet), that states the initiative order, HP status, and any conditions or active spells and any round counter.  And then if players don't act within 24 hours (agreed minimum post per day) then they get botted by the DM for that round to keep it flowing.

• Round 1
• 22           Saravena             15   11/11
• 22           Goblins                        1, 2, 3 (archer), 4 (archer) 
• 18           Damian                18   10/10         Dodge
• 17           Rashana              15   9/9
• 9             Eniwin                  10   8/8
• 4             Tagret                  14   15/15         Prone

• Saravena's arrows flies the short distance at the goblin. Her aim is great and the arrow embeds itself in the goblin's eye, instantly killing it.

  "You will pay for that!" snarls the other goblin. He moves closer to Saravena and takes a swing with his scimitar, which is clumsy and goes wide of the intended strike

  The other two goblins release an arrow at Rashana and Damian which are poorly aimed and fall ridiculously short of their targets

   
• Round 1 update
• 22           Saravena             15   11/11
• 22           Goblins                        1, 2, 3 (archer), 4 (archer) 
• 18           Damian                18   10/10         
• 17           Rashana              15   9/9
• 9             Eniwin                  10   8/8
• 4             Tagret                  14   15/15         Prone

Damian, you are up next....

.....and it would also be helpful to understand the relative positions of the party and the attackers, so that we can gauge distances to move.  If you have any of the free virtual desktop tools then you can quickly generate a grid referenced image and embed that shows location of each of the characters....just food for thought

Do you know of any easy to use free virtual desktop tools?

Quote from TheBritGeek >>

Do you know of any easy to use free virtual desktop tools?

 I've played around with Roll20 - and you can just YouTube how to use or use the help in Roll20 itself - you can also source plenty of ready made background maps and player/monster tokens from pinterest or imgur https://imgur.com/gallery/9uWi2Eg  or 2minutetabletop https://2minutetabletop.com/gallery/page/2/...****y issue is getting the image loaded into PBP....we use a Discord group to keep all the maps and other artefacts, which works well.

Others VTT's include DonJon, DungeonFog

Let me see what one of the DM's uses for map making and I will get that link as well...

Round1 - Update

Just mocked this up in Roll20 and loaded it to imgur - scale of trees and road might be a bit on the small side (eg path being on 10 ft wide - 5ft grid) but it contains two layers....background is one and the tokens are another.  Can move the tokens in line with max speed per round etc and consider attack of opportunities.  Haven;t figured out how to put grid references on this but it took about 20 minutes to find and build this from scratch....

 OOC: I think Damien already took his turn. So it's mine I guess.

Rashana run up to the goblin next to Damien with her bo drawn. She whacks the goblins' head with her bo then follow up with a punch at its gut.

Bo:
Attack: 19   Damage: 7

Unarmed Strike
Attack: 5  Damager: 6

Quote from MuggsHill >>

Round1 - Update

Just mocked this up in Roll20 and loaded it to imgur - scale of trees and road might be a bit on the small side (eg path being on 10 ft wide - 5ft grid) but it contains two layers....background is one and the tokens are another.  Can move the tokens in line with max speed per round etc and consider attack of opportunities.  Haven;t figured out how to put grid references on this but it took about 20 minutes to find and build this from scratch....

 That looks good but would also take a lot of time to keep updating every movement.

Quote from Kimvilla111 >>

 OOC: I think Damien already took his turn. So it's mine I guess.

Rashana run up to the goblin next to Damien with her bo drawn. She whacks the goblins' head with her bo then follow up with a punch at its gut.

Bo:
Attack: 19   Damage: 7

Unarmed Strike
Attack: 5  Damager: 6

 Rashana is quick with her strikes and the goblin crumples under her efforts. It falls to the floor dead.

Quote from TheBritGeek >>

Quote from MuggsHill >>

Round1 - Update

Just mocked this up in Roll20 and loaded it to imgur - scale of trees and road might be a bit on the small side (eg path being on 10 ft wide - 5ft grid) but it contains two layers....background is one and the tokens are another.  Can move the tokens in line with max speed per round etc and consider attack of opportunities.  Haven;t figured out how to put grid references on this but it took about 20 minutes to find and build this from scratch....

 

 That looks good but would also take a lot of time to keep updating every movement.

 Updates would only be once per completed round and only if needed and literally take seconds to move the tokens around as you resolve the impact of the posts and then post an image to Imgur and share.  More than happy to help out with this side of the campaign if you would like but certainly not trying to impose anything on you.

Not having an idea of distances and locations etc when you get into combat takes away a lot of strategy around how encounters are approached, particularly in relation to using the environment to your advantage (cover, pushing opponents off things etc). Describing that fully, or responding to questions around it means that there is a need to have a pretty good view of such things in your mind and retain that. For a basic encounter such as this it is not a consideration but as they get more difficult and involve spellcasters the party will want to consider locations and relative distances to each other and the enemy.  Having a map really does add depth to this part of the game but it is an investment of time which I fully understand might add too much of a time commitment.

OOC: This is for when my turn comes up.

Eniwin focuses her energies and unleashes Ice Knife at the closest goblin.

Attack: 18 Damage: 1

Dex Save for all creatures in a 5ft radius where the knife lands: 12

Additional Cold damage on explosion: 7 / none on sucess

With both of the sword wielding Goblins down Tagret runs toward the nearest archer, pulling out his hand axes and striking twice (bonus action dual wield) with the butt of the handles in an attempt to knock the goblin out (non-lethal damage to subdue) figuring that the critters must have been involved in the carnage here.

Handaxe 1 Attack: 20 Damage: 6 => if reduced damage use 1 (should be +3 strength so damage would be 5)

Handaxe 2 (Bonus Action dual wield) Attack: 7 Damage: 4 => if reduced damage use 3 

OOC: Do you allow lethal weapons to be used non-lethally?  If not then he switch the first attack to attempt to grapple to incapacitate it, strength check assuming attack roll one above hits is 4

((Are there any goblins left besides the one Tagret is engaged with?))

OOC: I think that Eniwin did enough damage to kill one of the archers....so I think that only 1 remains....and we should see if we can question if possible...I would imagine it would fail a  morale check when faced with opponents who rook out its companions so quickly...but need DM to resolve round 1.

(Sorry I have been missing)

You make quick of the goblins that have ambushed you. You practically mow through the goblins with ease. The only goblin left, is the one that Tagret has managed to subdue.

Saravena looks around at the field and nods, "Well that was exciting. Good on you for catching that one Tagret, maybe it knows what happened here." Saravena then takes a look at the parchment she and Damian had uncovered before the battle began.

Damian will lower his guard and start to check the goblins for any loot. "Aye that was easy let's ask it if it knows anything/"

Investigation: 10

Eniwin peeks over the cart and sees that  Tagret has caught one of these goblins. She cautiously strides over and readies a notebook to take down any information she can gather from Damian's inquisition.

OOC: Let's assume that Tagret grappled it for the sake of continuity - I hope it speaks something that one of us can understand.....

Tagret grunts as he continues to bear down on the goblin "These critters aren't strong enough to do much damage, thought it would be good to keep one alive.  Someone grab its weapons, and armor, and then bind its arms and legs if you have some spare rope, best get it nice and docile before you question it".