Combat!
Your characters will be exploring ancient dungeons and travelling through dangerous forests. Sooner or later, your characters will encou
nter enemies which will be willing to fight. The combat sequence is where there is the most probability to suffer damage and/or death. Combat is not necessary in a campaign, but it helps to add some action and thrill to players, since they'll be watching over their characters and make sure they survive.
It's not that every encounter with enemies must be combat. Whenever you meet enemies or would-be-enemies, you decide what to do. If they look suspicious you might want to run or be otherwise very alert at their actions. Of course, so do the other! Sometimes you might be ambushed by a group of thieves trying to kill and pillage your camp, so it's clear that sometimes combat is inevitable.
If indeed there is going to be a fight, there are rules that must apply. First of all, combat is carried out in combat rounds and combat turns. The realtime duration of a round varies, but it is supposed to be enough time to allow at least one action. A combat turn lasts 10 combat rounds. Each side, players and enemies, get to act in alternated rounds. To determine the order, each has to roll for initiative. How to roll for initiative varies in each version of the game.
After determining who acts after who, each begin to make their actions. The possible actions to undertake during a round can be, but are not limited to:
_ Make an attack
_ Cast a spell
_ Drink a potion
_ Light a torch
_ Use a magical item
_ Move
_ Attempt to open a stuck or secret door
_ Bind a character's wounds
_ Search a body
_ Recover a dropped weapon
To make an attack, your character must make an attack roll, which is made by rolling 1d20. Determining hit or miss varies between versions. In AD&D, your character has a number called THAC0 (To Hit Armor Class 0). The thaco is the minimum number needed to roll in the attack roll to be able to hit a target with armor class 0. Armor class (AC) is a number that rates the amount of protection a certain being posesses, the lower the number the better the protection (an AC of 5 is worse than an AC of 1, values rate from 10 to -10 aprox.). To determine a hit, you substract your attack roll from your THAC0, and the result is the AC succesfully hit (or any other worse than it). For example, a fighter with THAC0 15 rolls a 12 in his attack roll, to determine the AC hit, you substract the attack roll from his THAC0: 15 - 12 = 3, which means that in this attack the fighter would hit an AC of 3 or worse (4, 5, 6, etc).
In D&D the things change. Instead of THAC0, you have an attack bonus. The AC changes: the higher the better. To be able to hit, the attack roll plus the attack bonus must be equal to or exceed the AC of the target. The attack roll is still made by rolling 1d20. Let's suppose the fighter (having an attack bonus of +2) rolls an attack roll of 14, adds a +2 to that, resulting in a final 16. This number determines that in that attack the fighter would hit a target with AC 16, or worse (15, 14, 13, 12, etc)
On a succesful hit, the target will take damage. The amount of damage taken depends on the type of weapon, magical properties and on the attacker's strengh. Each weapon inflicts a certain amount of damage (a short sword inflicts 1d8 points of damage, so you roll 1d8, and that is the amount of damage the target takes).
Certain creatures, mostly the most powerful, have inmunities against weapons. Some can only be damaged by magical weapons, so even if you roll a hit, the creature will be unaffected by it. Also, some creatures have resistance to damage, which means they might not be damaged also. Obiously, the more inmunities and resistances, the creature has, the more difficult it'll be to defeat.
Both sides take their turns to act, determined by initiave. After everyone has made their actions, the round ends and a new round begins. Again you must roll for initiative, etc.
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