Various abilities and conditions, such as a Reactive Strike, can disrupt an action. When an action is disrupted, you still use the Actions or reactions you committed and you still expend any costs, but the action’s Effects don’t occur. In the case of an activity, you usually lose all Actions spent for the activity up through the end of that turn. For instance, if you began to Cast a Spell requiring 3 Actions and the first action was disrupted, you lose all 3 Actions that you committed to that activity.

The GM decides what Effects a disruption causes beyond simply negating the Effects that would have occurred from the disrupted action. For instance, a Leap disrupted midway wouldn’t transport you back to the start of your jump, and a disrupted item hand off might cause the item to fall to the ground instead of staying in the hand of the creature who was trying to give it away.

In-Depth action Rules

These rules clarify some of the specifics of using Actions.

Simultaneous Actions

You can use only one single action, activity, or free action that doesn’t have a trigger at a time. You must complete one before beginning another. For example, the Sudden Charge activity states you must Stride twice and then Strike, so you couldn’t use an Interact action to open a door in the middle of the Movement, nor could you perform part of the move, make your Attack, and then finish the move.

Free Actions with triggers and reactions work differently. You can use these whenever the trigger occurs, even if the trigger occurs in the middle of another action.

Subordinate Actions

An action might allow you to use a simpler action—usually one of the Basic Actions—in a different circumstance or with different Effects. This subordinate action still has its normal traits and Effects, but it’s modified in any ways listed in the larger action. For example, an activity that tells you to Stride up to half your Speed alters the normal distance you can move in a Stride. The Stride would still have the move trait, would still trigger reactions that occur based on Movement, and so on. The subordinate action doesn’t gain any of the traits of the larger action unless specified. The action that allows you to use a subordinate action doesn’t require you to spend more Actions or reactions to do so; that cost is already factored in.

Using an activity is not the same as using any of its subordinate Actions. For example, the quickened Condition you get from the haste spell lets you spend an extra action each turn to Stride or Strike, but you couldn’t use the extra action for an activity that includes a Stride or Strike. As another example, if you used an action that specified, “If the next action you use is a Strike,” an activity that includes a Strike wouldn’t count, because the next thing you are doing is starting an activity, not using the Strike basic action.