The basic rules of 13th Age combat should be familiar to anyone who’s fought a dragon in a dungeon in the last forty years. Roll initiative at the start of a battle to determine who acts first. Roll a d20 to attack, adding your attack bonus. If the total equals or exceeds your target’s Armor Class, you hit and inflict your attack’s listed damage dice, which gets subtracted from their hit points. Player characters even do a small amount of damage when they miss; so do really dangerous monsters. When a combatant reaches 0 hit points, they’re down and out of the fight (bad guys are generally slain; player characters are unconscious and risk dying unless healed).

A natural 20 inflicts a critical hit for double damage. A natural 1 misses completely and has no effect, even if it would normally have some effect on a miss.

Combat spells work the same way—roll a d20 and add the attack bonus listed for that spell. However, most spells target a foe’s Physical Defense (PD) or Mental Defense (MD).

When the player characters hit with attacks, they usually get to roll dice for the damage. Monsters and NPCs are different, they usually have flat damage numbers listed by their attacks—less die-rolling for the GM.

Resisting damage: When creatures resist damage, they take half damage from a specified type of attack unless the attack’s natural attack roll equals or exceeds a specified number. It’s a bit different than in other d20-rolling games because we want some damage to get through.

Vulnerability: Creatures that are vulnerable to a type of attack have the crit range of those attacks against them expanded by 2, usually to 18+ instead of being critted only on a natural 20.

Actions

On your turn, you can take one standard action, move action, and quick action, and a handful of free actions, in any order.

Standard actions: Usually these actions are attacks, or else spells so good that they’re worth casting in place of an attack.

Move actions: Usually these actions involve moving from one part of the battle to another, or maybe just moving a couple steps to a new opponent. Occasionally, a move action might involve some other type of activity like opening a difficult door.

Quick actions: These actions are quick acts like drawing weapons, opening unlocked doors, picking something light off the ground, and reloading a light crossbow.

Free actions: These actions take almost no time, like dropping something, speaking a few words or commands, taking an extra action as part of a power, or activating most magic item powers. It’s up to the GM how many free actions a character can take, as well as how much a creature can say with a free action.

Substitute downward: You can use a standard action to take a move action, and you can use a standard or move action to take a quick action.

Interrupt actions: You can use one interrupt action when it’s not your turn. You can’t use another one until the end of your next turn. These types of actions are limited to certain classes and class powers. (At the moment, only the rogue uses interrupt actions—no one else needs to worry about it.)

Other actions when it’s not your turn: In certain circumstances (see below), characters can intercept foes moving past them, make opportunity attacks, or otherwise act out of turn. These actions are usually free actions.

Saves

Some attacks cause ongoing effects, like being stunned, stuck, dazed, or suffering from ongoing damage. These effects are normally ended by a successful save. To make a “normal” save, roll a d20. If you get 11 or more, you pass. Usually, a save is a straight d20 roll, there aren’t many modifiers to saves. You make saves at the end of your turn unless otherwise noted.

Easy saves and hard saves: Most saves require an 11+ on a d20. A save called out as an easy save only requires a 6+. A save called out as a hard save requires a 16+.

Ongoing damage: When a creature is affected by ongoing damage, deal the ongoing damage at the end of the creature’s turn, then roll a normal save (11+) to try and end the ongoing damage. A creature that is going to drop to zero because of ongoing damage gets one last turn to try and do something about it!

Movement and maps: You don’t need to use a battle map or miniatures on a grid, though many people still play with miniatures. Enemies are either nearby or far away.

A foe that is nearby can be reached with one move, meaning you could move to that enemy and attack. A foe that’s far away is at least two moves away, meaning you’d have to spend your standard action moving to reach them instead of using your standard action to attack.

If you’re fighting a foe in melee, you’re considered to be engaged with that enemy, and must use a move action to attempt a normal save (11+) to disengage from that foe and move somewhere nearby. If you fail, you lose the move action and stay where you are; you could skip attacking and use your standard action to make another attempt to disengage or just move away. If you move away without successfully disengaging, the enemy gets to take a swing at you as you go.

The Escalation Die

The escalation die is a six-sided die—specifically, the biggest, most impressive six-sider the GM can find! It measures the tempo of a combat, so as the fight progresses and gets more dramatic and the heroes grit their teeth and fight harder, the escalation die increases.

The escalation die starts at 0 on round one of a battle, and increases by 1 at the start of each subsequent round. The player characters (and a few select monsters) get to add the current value of the escalation die to their attack rolls. So, in the first round of a fight, the players get no benefit from the escalation die, but a few rounds later, when the escalation die hits 3, they’ll all get a +3 bonus to all attack rolls. Some PC class powers are affected by the escalation die.

Healing & Damage

Player characters heal using recoveries. Most PCs have 8 recoveries, a few PCs have more. Each recovery heals a certain amount of hit points depending on class and Constitution. Out of combat, you can spend recoveries freely. In combat, you can skip your attack and use a standard action to rally and spend a recovery, but you can only count on rallying like this once per fight. When you try to rally the second or subsequent times in a fight, you have to succeed with a save (11+ on a d20). Otherwise, you’ll need to rely on healing potions, spells, or special abilities to trigger your recoveries.

If you’re dying (at negative hit points) and you spend a recovery, you go back up to 0 hit points and then add on any hit points gained from the recovery.

If you’ve spent all your recoveries, you can still heal, but every recovery used when you don’t actually have any left is only worth half healing and gives you a cumulative -1 penalty on all your attacks and defenses.

Temporary hit points: A few PCs and monsters have ways of gaining temporary hit points, bonus hit points that don’t add to your regular hit points but are the first hit points to be removed by damage. Temporary hit points don’t stack with each other and go away at the end of a fight if you’ve been lucky enough not to use them up.

Full heal-ups and the adventuring ‘day’: There’s a twist to how 13th Age handles resources like daily spells and daily resources like recoveries. Player characters must make careful use of their daily resources through four battles. After the fourth battle, they get all their daily spells and powers and recoveries back. Until that fourth battle, it doesn’t matter how many times the sun has risen and set, the PCs don’t get a full heal-up (and a reset of their daily spells) until they deserve it! Fighting really tough battles can count as two fights, so it doesn’t always take four entire battles to get a full heal-up.

Death Saves & Dying

Start making death saves when you’re at negative hit points. To pass a death save, roll 16+ on a d20. Succeed, and you can spend a recovery—go back to 0 hit points, and then add on any hit points gained from the recovery. If you succeed with a 20, you can even jump up and act this turn!

Fail four death saves in the same battle, or drop to negative hit points equal to half your normal hit points, and you’re dead. Alas! But there may be an alternative—13th Age has a special rule for fleeing from battle when it looks like too many player characters are going to die. So long as one player character is still conscious, the group can decide to flee. The GM or players make up a story for how the fight ended or the PCs got away, everyone who was still alive survives, and the PCs take a campaign loss. Something Very Bad happens that the PCs seriously wanted to avoid, but at least some of them survived.