ive tried and tried to understand it watched numerous videos and read multiple articles but I’m still confused. Will some explain all the actions how you can use them. The things you can and can’t do with them. If possible for all types of combat— melee, ranged, and magic. Thank you
Assuming you have clear the concepts of Initiative, turn and round, here are the things you can do on your turn:
1) 1 action: with the action you Attack, [Tooltip Not Found], Ready an action, dodge, disengage. at the DM's discretion, you can do actions like open a door, roll a skill check, doff a shield and so on.
2) on your turn, you can spend your speed to move.
Particular spells and features grants a bonus action, but you get only 1 bonus action per turn. Bonus actions are actions but they are not interchangeable with the action.
So if you attack with a idk long sword with your action you can’t use the bonus action to attack again with said long sword ? Also what’s the ready action do
Depending on your class you might be able to attack again with a bonus action. For example, monks can make an open hand attack as a bonus action if they make an attack action. But a Druid can’t attack with a bonus action that way because they don’t have a class feature that lets them do that.
When you use your action to take a readied action, you prepare an action when something else happens. For example:
If you ready an action to shoot an arrow at the first person who walks through a door as soon as someone walks in the door you shoot an arrow at them before they can do anything else, including attack you.
They’re also used with ambushes. Everyone readies an action to attack as soon as the first creature in a group passes a certain point on a trail. Then everyone attacks at the same time instead of in the normal initiative order.
A simple way to look at it is you in most cases (there are exceptions) you get only one of each of these a round, but don't always use them.
Point of note: all of this isn't really subject to the time frame a round is in (roughly presumed to be 6 seconds), but it often helps visualise it.
An action is something you do on your turn: for example typing up a forum post (lets presume the post is a 'round' in this case, but obviously time is much shorter in game)
A bonus action is a quick conditional something: so think of it as drinking some of your coffee while typing the forum post, if you don't have a cup of coffee (an option) you don't get that bonus action even though a bonus action is something available to anyone
A reaction is a conditional response to other things occurring: so if your cat jumps on the desk, or gets in the way of the keyboard, you make the reaction to move them out of your way
Then you have movement, which lets you move a distance equal to your speed freely, if you want to move further it can then cost additional things (no real way to fit with the example above).
What you can do with each of those aspects is really dependent on your class, a few things anyone can do but most things are depend on your classes abilities (and typically covered by other posts).
ive tried and tried to understand it watched numerous videos and read multiple articles but I’m still confused. Will some explain all the actions how you can use them. The things you can and can’t do with them. If possible for all types of combat— melee, ranged, and magic. Thank you
Assuming you have clear the concepts of Initiative, turn and round, here are the things you can do on your turn:
1) 1 action: with the action you Attack, [Tooltip Not Found], Ready an action, dodge, disengage. at the DM's discretion, you can do actions like open a door, roll a skill check, doff a shield and so on.
2) on your turn, you can spend your speed to move.
Particular spells and features grants a bonus action, but you get only 1 bonus action per turn. Bonus actions are actions but they are not interchangeable with the action.
So if you attack with a idk long sword with your action you can’t use the bonus action to attack again with said long sword ? Also what’s the ready action do
Depending on your class you might be able to attack again with a bonus action. For example, monks can make an open hand attack as a bonus action if they make an attack action. But a Druid can’t attack with a bonus action that way because they don’t have a class feature that lets them do that.
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When you use your action to take a readied action, you prepare an action when something else happens. For example:
If you ready an action to shoot an arrow at the first person who walks through a door as soon as someone walks in the door you shoot an arrow at them before they can do anything else, including attack you.
They’re also used with ambushes. Everyone readies an action to attack as soon as the first creature in a group passes a certain point on a trail. Then everyone attacks at the same time instead of in the normal initiative order.
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D&D Beyond FoundersHere are a couple of reference guides that I found really valuable for helping new players understand what they can do in a turn.
https://www.scribd.com/document/259986654/D-D-5e-Quick-Reference
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/60b4qq/5e_action_economy_summary_v2_included_even_more/
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A simple way to look at it is you in most cases (there are exceptions) you get only one of each of these a round, but don't always use them.
Point of note: all of this isn't really subject to the time frame a round is in (roughly presumed to be 6 seconds), but it often helps visualise it.
An action is something you do on your turn: for example typing up a forum post (lets presume the post is a 'round' in this case, but obviously time is much shorter in game)
A bonus action is a quick conditional something: so think of it as drinking some of your coffee while typing the forum post, if you don't have a cup of coffee (an option) you don't get that bonus action even though a bonus action is something available to anyone
A reaction is a conditional response to other things occurring: so if your cat jumps on the desk, or gets in the way of the keyboard, you make the reaction to move them out of your way
Then you have movement, which lets you move a distance equal to your speed freely, if you want to move further it can then cost additional things (no real way to fit with the example above).
What you can do with each of those aspects is really dependent on your class, a few things anyone can do but most things are depend on your classes abilities (and typically covered by other posts).
I hope that makes it a bit more clear.
- Loswaith