Playing Your Turn

This chapter is for players. When your DM starts a fight, nothing new opens. Combat happens on the Play tab you were already looking at: the same live map, with a combat tracker panel floating over its top-right corner. There is no separate battle-map screen for players. If you have wandered off, the Session tab grows a "Combat Active" card with an Open Combat button that brings you back.

Collapsed, the tracker is a small shield pill. Tap it and the panel opens over the map, listing everyone in initiative order. Whoever is up now sits pinned at the top with an "On turn" label. Anyone who has already gone this round drops below an "ALREADY ACTED" divider and goes dim. Tap the dimmed map behind the panel to put it away again.

The three kinds of action

Worth learning once, because the rest of the chapter depends on it. What happens when you act comes in three flavors:

• Moving your token waits for your DM to say yes. Every move you make is a request. Nothing moves on your screen, or anyone else's, until your DM taps Accept.
• Marking a target and ending your turn are checked automatically. Your DM's phone confirms it really is your turn and the target is really visible, then broadcasts it. Your DM is not asked anything and sees no prompt.
• Dice photos go straight to the table. No approval, no gate, no waiting. You photograph your dice and everyone sees them.

Chapter 25, What the DM Approves, is the same story from your DM's side of the screen.

Marking a target

Two ways, and both do the same thing:

• Tap the target's card in the combat tracker.
• Or arm the crosshair tool on the map toolbar, whose tooltip reads Select Many, then tap the token on the map. The map's hint line tells you to tap tokens to select them.

The mark shows up as a small crosshair on that combatant's tracker card and a ring around its token on the map, both in your color. Only the player whose turn it is can mark anything, and marks clear on their own when the turn moves on. A request that arrives out of turn is dropped quietly, which is why a stray tap sometimes does nothing.

Moving

Tap the running-figure Move button on the map toolbar. A short menu offers two choices:

• Move, at your normal speed.
• Dash, which reads "Double speed this turn. Your DM sees the request." The Move button turns orange while Dash is on.

With Move armed, drag anywhere on the map. A movement string snaps to your token and follows your finger. The part you can still afford draws solid in your color; anything past your remaining speed draws faded. There is no number on the string, just the split.

Let go and a Submit move? dialog asks Yes or No. Yes sends the request and a message reads "Move request sent. Waiting for DM approval." Your token sits still until your DM accepts. If your DM has not put your token on the map yet, you get told so instead.

Tapping Move again while it is armed turns it off so you can pan and zoom normally. Moving outside a fight also goes by request, except that Move is a plain tap on the destination rather than a drag. Not moving needs no button; just do the rest of your turn and tap End Turn.

Rolling

Tap the twenty-sided die button at the end of the map toolbar. During a fight it offers To Hit, Damage, and Check. The camera opens, you photograph your real dice, and the photo lands on the table labeled with your character's name in your color. Nobody approves it. Chapter 20, Dice Are Photos, covers the whole flow.

Ending your turn

The End Turn chip sits in the tracker panel's header row, beside the title. Tap it and your turn passes. That is a request too, but an automatic one: your DM's device applies it without being asked.

Ending your turn also puts you back to acting as your own character if you had switched to a familiar or a spell effect, clears your target marks, and clears your dice photos as combat moves on.

On a Mac or Windows machine

Desktop keeps a permanent initiative panel down the right side of the map instead of the floating pill, collapsible with the chevron in the map's top-right corner. Everything else works the same, with one exception: dice need a camera. Pair a phone first, or the roll buttons do not appear at all. Chapter 34 covers pairing.