Battles in the FFd20 game are won through cleverly chosen attacks, able defenses, and luck. On a typical turn, you’ll use your standard action to make an attack, whether you’re a stalwart fighter, a wily thief, or a raging beastmaster. And your defenses will be frequently tested by your foes’ attacks. When you attack, you make an attack roll to determine whether your attack hits your target. You roll a d20, add a bonus for whatever attack you’re using, and compare the result to one of the target’s four defenses: Armor Class, Fortitude, Reflex, or Will. Each character has a number of attacks to choose from, including a basic attack. The exact attacks you have available depend on which powers you select for your character.
Making an Attack
All attacks follow the same basic process:
1. Choose the attack you’ll use. Each attack has an attack type.
2. Choose targets for the attack. Each target must be within range. Check whether you can see and target your enemies.
3. Make an attack roll.
4. Compare your attack roll to the target’s defense to determine whether you hit or miss.
5. Deal damage and apply other effects.
Attack Roll
To determine whether an attack succeeds, you make an attack roll. You roll a d20 and add your base attack bonus for that power. A power’s base attack bonus measures your accuracy with that attack and is the total of all modifiers that normally apply to it.
Roll 1d20 and add the following:
✦ The attack power’s base attack bonus
✦ Situational attack modifiers that apply
✦ Bonuses and penalties from powers affecting you
The power you use dictates which ability modifier adds to your base attack bonus and which of your target’s defenses you compare the result against. Your base attack bonus can change temporarily in certain circumstances, such as when you’re affected by a power that gives you an attack bonus or penalty, when a feat or a magic item gives you a bonus in certain circumstances, or when attack modifiers apply.
Attack Bonuses
When you create your character, you should determine your base attack bonus for each power you know, including your basic attacks. Your base attack bonus for a power includes the following:
✦ One-half your level
✦ The ability score modifier used for the attack (the power you use specifies which ability) In addition, any of the following factors might apply to an attack’s base attack bonus:
✦ Your weapon’s proficiency bonus (if you’re using a weapon you’re proficient with)
✦ Racial or feat bonuses
✦ An enhancement bonus (usually from a magic weapon or an implement)
✦ An item bonus
✦ A power bonus
✦ Untyped bonuses
Your ability to avoid injury and other ill effects is measured by four defenses: Armor Class, Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. Your defense scores rate how hard it is for an enemy to affect you with attacks.
Armor Class (AC) measures how hard it is for your enemies to land a significant blow on you with a weapon or a magical effect that works like a weapon. Some characters have a high AC because they are extremely quick or intelligent and able to dodge well, while other characters have a high AC because they wear heavy protective armor that is difficult to penetrate.
Fortitude measures the inherent toughness, mass, strength, and resilience of your physique. It is the key defense against attacks that include effects such as disease, poison, and forced movement.
Reflex measures your ability to predict attacks or to deflect or dodge an attack. It’s useful against areas of effect such as dragon breath or a fireball spell.
Will is your defense against effects that daze, disorient, confuse, or overpower your mind. It measures your strength of will, self-discipline, and devotion.
Defense Scores
You determine your defense scores as follows.
✦ Base Defense: All defenses start with 10 + one-half your level.
✦ Armor Class: Add the armor bonus of the armor you wear and the shield bonus of the shield you carry. If you’re wearing light armor or no armor, also add your Dexterity modifier or Intelligence modifier, whichever is higher.
✦ Fortitude: Add your Strength modifier or Constitution modifier, whichever is higher.
✦ Reflex: Add your Dexterity modifier or Intelligence modifier, whichever is higher. If you’re using a shield, add its shield bonus.
✦ Will: Add your Wisdom modifier or Charisma modifier, whichever is higher.
Also add any of the following that apply:
✦ Racial or feat bonuses
✦ An enhancement bonus (usually from a neck slot magic item)
✦ An item bonus
✦ A power bonus
✦ Untyped bonuses
Your defenses can change temporarily in certain circumstances—for instance, if you’re affected by a power or condition that increases or lowers your defense scores, or if a feat or a magic item gives you a bonus under certain circumstances.
Attack Results
You resolve an attack by comparing the total of your attack roll (1d20 + base attack bonus + attack modifiers) to the appropriate defense score. If your roll is higher than or equal to the defense score, you hit. Otherwise, you miss. When you hit, you usually deal damage and sometimes produce some other effect. When you’re using a power, the power description tells you what happens
when you hit. Some descriptions also say what happens when you miss or when you score a critical hit.
When you make an attack, compare your attack roll to the appropriate defense score of the target.
✦ Hit: If the attack roll is higher than or equal to the defense score, the attack hits and deals damage, has a special effect, or both.
Automatic Hit: If you roll a natural 20 (the die shows a 20), your attack automatically hits.
Critical Hit: If you roll a natural 20 (the die shows a 20), your attack might be a critical hit. A critical hit deals maximum damage, and some powers and magic items have an extra effect on a critical hit.
✦ Miss: If your attack roll is lower than the defense score, the attack misses. Usually, there’s no effect. Some powers have an effect on a miss, such as dealing half damage.
Automatic Miss: If you roll a natural 1 (the die shows a 1), your attack automatically misses.
Damage
When you hit with an attack, you normally deal damage to your target, reducing the target’s hit points. The damage you deal depends on the power you use for the attack. Most powers deal more damage than basic attacks do, and high-level powers generally deal more damage than low-level ones. If you use a weapon to make the attack, your weapon also affects your damage. If you use a greataxe to deliver a power, you deal more damage than if you use a dagger with the same power.
✦ Roll the damage indicated in the power description. If you’re using a weapon for the attack, the damage is some multiple of your weapon damage dice.
✦ Add the ability modifier specified in the power description. Usually, this is the same ability modifier you used to determine your base attack bonus for the attack.
In addition, any of the following factors might apply to a damage roll:
✦ Racial or feat bonuses
✦ An enhancement bonus (usually from a magic weapon or an implement)
✦ An item bonus
✦ A power bonus
✦ Untyped bonuses
Weapon Damage Dice: A [W] in a damage expression stands for your weapon’s damage dice. (The weapon tables show damage dice for all weapons.) The number before the [W] indicates
the number of times you roll your weapon dice. If a power’s damage is “2[W] + Strength modifier” and you use a dagger (1d4 damage), roll 2d4, then add your Strength modifier. If you use a heavy flail (2d6 damage) with the same power, roll 4d6, then add your Strength modifier.
Damage Types: In addition to normal damage, such as the damage a weapon or a monster’s claws deal, powers and other effects can deal specific types of damage. For example, a hell hound’s breath deals fire damage, a scorpion’s sting deals poison damage, a mind flayer’s telepathic blast deals psychic damage, and a wraith’s touch deals necrotic damage. When a power deals a specific type of damage, the power description specifies the type before the word “damage.” A fira deals 3d6 + Intelligence modifier fire damage, for example. All the damage it deals is fire damage. If a power doesn’t specify a damage type, the damage has no type.
Resistance and Vulnerability: Some creatures are resistant or vulnerable to certain types of damage. Some powers can grant you a similar resistance, or impose vulnerability on an enemy. Resist: Resistance means you take less damage from a specific damage type. If you have resist 5 fire, then any time you take fire damage, you reduce that damage by 5. (An attack can’t do less than 0 damage to you.)
Vulnerable: Being vulnerable to a damage type means you take extra damage from that damage type.If you have vulnerable 5 fire, then any time you take fire damage, you take an additional 5 fire damage. Some creatures have additional weaknesses tied to damage types. For example, if you use cold against an elemental made of magma, you might slow it or otherwise hinder its moves or attacks.
Insubstantial: Some creatures, such as wailing ghosts, are insubstantial, and some powers can make you insubstantial. When you are insubstantial, you take half damage from any attack that deals damage to you. Ongoing damage is also halved.
Ongoing Damage: Some powers deal extra damage on consecutive turns after the initial attack. An efreet might hit you with a burst of fire that sets you alight, dealing ongoing fire damage. When a snake’s venom courses through your blood, it deals ongoing poison damage. A mummy’s rotting touch deals ongoing necrotic damage, and a kruthik’s corrosive spittle deals ongoing acid damage.
✦ Start of Your Turn: You take the specified damage at the start of your turn. Example: If you’re taking ongoing 5 fire damage, you take 5 points of fire damage at the start of your turn.
✦ Saving Throw: Each round at the end of your turn, make a saving throw against ongoing damage. If you succeed, you stop taking the ongoing damage.
✦ Different Types of Ongoing Damage: If effects deal ongoing damage of different types, you take damage from each effect every round. You make a separate saving throw against each damage type.
✦ The Same Type of Ongoing Damage: If effects deal ongoing damage of the same type, or if the damage has no type, only the higher number applies. Example: You’re taking ongoing 5 damage (no type) when a power causes you to take ongoing 10 damage. You’re now taking ongoing 10 damage, not 15.
Critical Hits: When you roll a natural 20 and your total attack roll is high enough to hit your target’s defense, you score a critical hit, also known as a crit.
✦ Natural 20: If you roll a 20 on the die when making an attack roll, you score a critical hit if your total attack roll is high enough to hit your target’s defense. If your attack roll is too low to score a critical hit, you still hit automatically.
✦ Precision: Some class features and powers allow you to score a critical hit when you roll numbers other than 20 (only a natural 20 is an automatic hit).
✦ Maximum Damage: Rather than roll damage, determine the maximum damage you can roll with your attack. This is your critical damage. (Attacks that don’t deal damage still don’t deal damage on a critical hit.)
✦ Extra Damage: Magic weapons and implements, as well as high crit weapons, can increase the damage you deal when you score a critical hit. If this extra damage is a die roll, it’s not automatically maximum damage; you add the result of the roll. You automatically score a critical hit when you deal a coup de grace.
Forcing Movement: Some powers allow you to force your target to move in specific ways. Depending on the power, you can pull, push, or slide your target.
Durations
Many powers take effect and then end; their effects are instantaneous, perhaps as brief as a single swing of your sword. Some powers last beyond your turn, however. Unless otherwise noted, a power is instantaneous and has no lasting effect. The two types of durations are conditional and sustained.
✦ Conditional Durations: These effects last until a specified event occurs.
Until the Start of Your Next Turn: The effect ends when your next turn starts.
Until the End of Your Next Turn: The effect ends when your next turn ends.
Until the End of the Encounter: The effect ends when you take a rest (short or extended) or after 5 minutes.
Save Ends: The effect ends when the target makes a successful saving throw against it.
✦ Sustained Durations: An effect that has a “sustain standard,” a “sustain move,” or a “sustain minor” duration lasts as long as you sustain it. Starting on the turn after you create an effect, you sustain the effect by taking the indicated action: a standard action, a move action, or a minor action. (You can sustain an effect once per turn.) Some effects do something, such as attack, when you sustain them. A power’s description indicates what happens when you sustain it or let it lapse. At the end of your turn, if you haven’t spent the required action to sustain the effect, the effect ends.
✦ Overlapping Durations: If a target is affected by multiple powers that have the same effect but end at different times, the effect with the most time remaining applies.
Unless a description says otherwise, you can sustain a power with a sustained duration for as long as 5 minutes. However, you can’t rest while sustaining a power, so you can’t regain the use of your encounter powers or second wind until you stop sustaining a power. Rituals can create effects that last for hours, days, or years.
Saving Throws
When you’re under a persistent effect or condition that can be ended by a save (“save ends”), you have a chance to escape the effect each round at the end of your turn. You do that by making a saving throw, which is a d20 roll unmodified by your level or ability modifiers. A successful saving throw is called a save.
✦ End of Turn: At the end of your turn, you make a saving throw against each effect on you that a save can end. Roll a d20, with one of the following results:
Lower than 10: Failure. The effect continues.
10 or higher: Success. The effect ends.
✦ Choose Order: Whenever you make a saving throw, you choose which effect to roll against first, which effect to roll against second, and so on.
✦ Modifiers: A saving throw normally doesn’t include modifiers; it’s just a d20 roll. Some powers, feats, or racial traits might modify a saving throw.
A saving throw gives you slightly better than even odds to shake off an effect. Most of the time, you can’t improve the odds, and your chance of success doesn’t have anything to do with an effect’s severity. What makes a giant snake’s poison worse than a normal snake’s is not how hard it is to shake off the poison’s effects, but how easily it affects you in the first place (its attack bonus) and what it does to you while it remains in your system (its ongoing damage or other effect). Each round, at the end of your turn, you roll a saving throw against each effect on you. Sometimes an effect is a single condition or one type of ongoing damage. Another kind of effect is like an imp’s hellish poison, which includes both ongoing poison damage and a –2 penalty to Will defense. You don’t make separate saving throws against the ongoing poison damage and the Will defense penalty; you make a single saving throw each round against the hellish poison itself.
Some powers create effects that require multiple saving throws to fully escape. These powers include aftereffects that apply after you save against the initial effect. For example, a power might knock you unconscious until you save but have an aftereffect that slows you. Once you save against the unconscious condition, you need to save against the slowed condition before you’ve fully escaped the power’s effects. An after-effect doesn’t begin until after you’ve rolled all your saving throws at the end of your turn. This means you can’t make a saving throw against an after-effect at the end of the same turn when you saved against the initial effect.
Attack Modifiers
Combat rarely consists of foes standing toe to toe and bashing each other. Movement and position are key; if one archer can fire from behind a tree at an enemy archer out in the open, the one using the tree for cover enjoys an advantage. Similarly, the use of magic or special abilities often creates opportunities you can exploit. If your wizard ally turns you invisible, you can easily evade your enemies, but if an enemy black mage stuns you with a spell, you drop your guard, and your enemies can easily gang up on you. Temporary advantages and disadvantages in combat
are reflected in a set of common attack modifiers. An attack modifier is a bonus or a penalty that applies to your attack roll. Add the modifier to your base attack bonus when you make an attack.
table
Combat Advantage
One of the most common attack modifiers is combat advantage. Combat advantage represents a situation in which the defender can’t give full attention to defense. The defender is pressed by multiple enemies at the same time, stunned, distracted, or otherwise caught off guard. When you have combat advantage against a target, you gain a +2 bonus to your attack rolls against that target.
Some powers require you to have combat advantage in order to use them against a target, and other powers have a better effect against a target you have combat advantage against. If a feat, power, or other ability grants you a benefit when you have combat advantage, that benefit applies only against a target you have combat advantage against.
✦ +2 Bonus to Attack Rolls: You gain a +2 bonus to your attack roll when you have combat advantage against the target of your attack.
✦ Able to See Target: You must be able to see a target to gain combat advantage against it.
Once per encounter, you can try to gain combat advantage against a target by making a Bluff check
Combat advantage is relative. In any given pair of combatants, either, both, or neither might have combat advantage against the other. It’s possible for a single creature to be adjacent to one enemy that has combat advantage against it and a second enemy that does not.
Cover and Concealment
Many types of terrain offer you places to hide or obstructions you can duck behind in order to avoid attacks. Solid obstructions that can physically deflect or stop objects are considered cover. Objects or effects that don’t physically impede an attack but instead hide you from an enemy’s view are considered concealment.
Cover: Enemies behind a low wall, around a corner, or behind a tree enjoy some amount of cover; you can’t hit them as easily as you normally could.
✦ Cover (–2 Penalty to Attack Rolls): The target is around a corner or protected by terrain. For example, the target might be in the same square as a small tree, obscured by a small pillar or a large piece of furniture, or behind a low wall.
✦ Superior Cover (–5 Penalty to Attack Rolls): The target is protected by a significant terrain advantage, such as when fighting from behind a window, a portcullis, a grate, or an arrow slit.
✦ Area Attacks and Close Attacks: When you make an area attack or a close attack, a target has cover if there is an obstruction between the origin square and the target, not between you and the target.
✦ Reach: If a creature that has reach attacks through terrain that would grant cover if the target were in it, the target has cover. For example, even if you’re not in the same square as a small pillar, it gives you cover from the attack of an ogre on the other side of the pillar.
✦ Creatures and Cover: When you make a ranged attack against an enemy and other enemies are in the way, your target has cover. Your allies never grant cover to your enemies, and neither allies nor enemies give cover against melee, close, or area attacks.
✦ Determining Cover: To determine if a target has cover, choose a corner of a square you occupy (or a corner of your attack’s origin square) and trace imaginary lines from that corner to every corner of any one square the target occupies. If one or two of those lines are blocked by an obstacle or an enemy, the target has cover. (A line isn’t blocked if it runs along the edge of an obstacle’s or an enemy’s square.) If three or four of those lines are blocked but you have line of effect, the target has superior cover.
Concealment: If you can’t get a good look at your target, it has concealment from you, which means your attack rolls take a penalty against that target. You might be fighting in an area of dim light, in an area filled with smoke or mist, or among terrain features that get in the way of your vision, such as foliage.
Obscured Squares
✦ Lightly Obscured: Squares of dim light, foliage, fog, smoke, heavy falling snow, or rain are lightly obscured.
✦ Heavily Obscured: Squares of heavy fog, heavy smoke, or heavy foliage are heavily obscured.
✦ Totally Obscured: Squares of darkness are totally obscured.
Effects that cause concealment obscure vision without preventing attacks.
Concealment
✦ Concealment (–2 Penalty to Attack Rolls): The target is in a lightly obscured square or in a heavily obscured square but adjacent to you.
✦ Total Concealment (–5 Penalty to Attack Rolls): You can’t see the target. The target is invisible, in a totally obscured square, or in a heavily obscured square and not adjacent to you.
✦ Melee Attacks and Ranged Attacks Only: Attack penalties from concealment apply only to the targets of melee or ranged attacks.
Part of the challenge of attacking a target you can’t see is knowing where to direct your attack. You have to choose a square to attack, and the target might not even be in that square (see “Targeting What You Can’t See,” below).
A variety of powers and other effects can render you invisible, effectively giving you total concealment.
Invisible
✦ You can’t be seen by normal forms of vision.
✦ You have combat advantage against any enemy that can’t see you.
✦ You don’t provoke opportunity attacks from enemies that can’t see you.
Targeting What You Can’t See
If you’re fighting a creature you can’t see—when a creature is invisible, you’re blinded, or you’re fighting in darkness you can’t see through—you have to target a square rather than the creature. You also have to figure out which square to attack. Here’s how it works.
Invisible Creature Uses Stealth: If an invisible enemy is hidden from you, you can neither hear nor see it, and you have to guess what space it occupies. If an invisible creature is not hidden from you, you can hear it or sense some other sign of its presence and therefore know what space it occupies, although you still cannot see it.
Make a Perception Check: On your turn, you can make a Perception check as a minor action to try to determine the location of a creature hidden from you. Pick a Square and Attack: Choose a square to attack, using whatever information you’ve gleaned so far about the target’s location. Roll the attack normally (taking the –5 penalty for attacking a creature that has total concealment). If you pick the wrong square, your attack automatically misses, but only the DM knows whether you guessed the wrong square or your attack just missed.
Close or Area Attacks: You can make a close attack or an area attack that includes the square you think (or know) the concealed creature is in. Your attack roll doesn’t take a penalty from the target’s concealment.