Combat and the Hand

When a fight starts, the table becomes a stage. Initiative is rolled for everyone, the battle map appears in the Map tab, a banner calls each turn, and on your turn your options arrive as a fan of cards. The rules are run by the app: the model narrates and decides what the monsters do, but every attack roll, saving throw, hit point and condition is computed and clamped by the engines. Nobody has to check.

Initiative and turns

Initiative runs along a ribbon of portraits in the header; the spotlight follows whoever is acting. A turn HUD shows your action, bonus action, reaction and movement from the engine's own budget, so a spent bonus action is greyed rather than guessed at. Each turn brings its own movement; standing up from prone costs half of it. Large creatures occupy their squares and reach is measured to a creature's nearest square, fliers and burrowers move as they should, and a token shows its health in words, its conditions as glyphs, and any aura at its radius. Enemies of one kind are numbered in one run, summons included.

A turn waits for its player. If your turn opens while you are away, the AI sets the scene but takes no action and ends no turn for you; the fight holds until you act, press End turn, or the lead skips you. AI companions still act on their own.

The Hand

Your cards are drawn from your sheet: each weapon, each prepared spell, your class features and the basic actions (dash, disengage, dodge, help, hide, ready, shove, grapple, use an item), with Stand up while you are prone and Escape while you are held. Every card has its own painted icon. Pick a card, pick who it lands on, read the outcome preview (to-hit odds, damage, save DC), then commit. A spent card dims and says why. Off your turn the rest of the hand stays readable, with each card's range, rules and preview. Typing your move in the message box works exactly as before, and a typed move walks your token on the board; the Hand is a faster way to say the same thing.

If you field several characters, the Hand belongs to the one whose turn it is. See Characters.

On a phone, the Hand is a rail of cards under the message box that snaps card to card. On a short window, the Hand is what scrolls, never the box.

Rolls

Every roll the server makes reaches the table as a card naming who rolled against whom ("Goblin 1 · Attack roll (Club vs Aria)"), or as a DM-only record for rolls that would give a hidden enemy away. Damage told in prose with no roll behind it is sent back to the dice. Attack rolls, saves and checks land as roll cards with a landing animation, tumbling as 3D dice if you have them on. Each damage type arrives in its own shape and plays a painted effect over the target: fire, cold, lightning, acid, poison, necrotic, radiant, force, psychic and thunder, plus healing, death and critical hits. Reduced motion or low effects skips the paintings and keeps the numbers. Rolls the Dungeon Master asks for outside your turn (a saving throw against a breath weapon, say) appear as requests; the app rolls unless you chose typed or Pixels dice for that shape, in which case the turn waits for you. See Dice.

Enemy intent

With the setting on, the table can see what a foe is likely to do next, or what a human Dungeon Master has declared, as a small card beside the token. A party lead turns it off in the Setup tab for a table that prefers surprise.

Conditions, cover and light

Conditions have real durations and end on their own. Terrain walls give half cover; the light model knows darkvision, blindsight, tremorsense, truesight and magical darkness, and fog on the map is drawn per character from what they can see. Doors open, close, lock and sound. Weather has rules riders on Perception, ranged attacks and travel. Hazards, teleports and mounted combat are all engine-resolved.

Legendary and lair actions

Monsters with legendary actions and legendary resistance use them from the stat block; lair actions fire on initiative 20. Bosses built in the workshop's bestiary carry the same.

Going down

At zero hit points a character is unconscious and rolls death saves on their turn; three successes stabilise, three failures kill, a natural 20 stands you up with one hit point, and healing of any amount does the same. Damage at zero adds a failure. With the voice rule on, a downed character is deafened in voice chat until they are up.

After the fight

A fight summary card closes every combat: rounds, damage dealt and taken, kills, healing, and the loot revealed in three tiers. The defeated enemies' experience is shared among the party as the fight ends, and chapters add milestone experience when they close. The chronicle keeps the whole exchange for the Story tab.

For the Dungeon Master

A fight opens at the distance the story gave, not always at opposite edges of the board. A human Dungeon Master runs the same fight from the console: the table is asked for initiative, the monsters' turns arrive as cards, and the DM edits initiative, moves tokens, declares intent, applies conditions and adjudicates anything the cards do not cover. See The DM console.