The first thing that occurs in combat is the enemies declare the actions they intend to take against the player characters. Enemies can only target player characters they are aware of. If the player characters catch all enemies unaware, skip this phase and Phase 3 during the first round of combat.

The GM tells the players what actions each enemy intends to take and which player characters the enemies are targeting. The enemies do not move or declare their movement. These actions do not resolve during this phase, instead the player characters have an opportunity to react to these actions in the next phase.

Example: The GM declares that a pirate captain is going to make a laser sword attack against Arlo, a player character. The GM then declares that a pirate grunt is going to shoot their laser pistol at another player character, Jalis. No attacks or movement occur at this time, but the actions have been declared. 

Once the GM has declared the actions for all of the enemies, the combat round continues into the next phase.

How Do Enemies Declare?

During Phase 1 the GM declares one action for each enemy. These declared actions do not resolve until Phase 3 of the combat round. Declared actions cannot be changed after they are declared unless the GM spends Collapse points (see below).

Enemies have their own unique attacks and actions as described in their statistics. Enemy attacks do not require dice rolls. Instead, it is up to the player characters to defend against incoming attacks by either moving out of the range of the attack or taking an action on their turn to make a skill roll to defend. Any attacks the GM declares that are still in range of the declared target and not dodged with a skill roll hit the player character and deal damage in Phase 3 of the round they were declared.

Use the Roll20 token markers (also called status indicator overlays) to track declared attacks. The GM should give each enemy token a unique marker then assign that same marker to a player character’s token when the enemy declares an attack to keep track of which enemy is attacking which player character. After the attack is resolved, remove the marker from the player character.