If you read the following excerpt about combat and luck, you are now ready to play. Here are the basics of combat for zero level play:
You get one action per round, this means move and attack, or move then move again, or move and take an action, or take an action then move. Here are the specifics:
While moving you can draw or sheath a weapon or equip/drop a shield. You can drop a torch but it has a fifty percent chance of going out. Performing one of the following will use up your action:
open door
light torch
draw potion or scroll
Drink potion/read scroll
locate item in backpack
stand up from prone
mount/dismount steed
If you are on higher ground than your opponent you get +1 to your attack roll. If you are behind cover the opponent suffers -2 on their attack rolls to hit you.
Ranged:
Medium range missile fire suffers a -2 attack penalty.
Long range missile fire rolls 1d16 to hit, instead of 1d20.
Firing missiles into melee invokes -1 to the attack roll, if the attack misses the target there is a fifty percent chance it will strike a random ally, rolled against the ally’s armor class.
Grappling: Each party makes opposed attack rolls, adding the higher of their Agility or Strength modifier. An attacker twice the opponent’s size adds +4 to the opposed roll; an attacker triple the opponent’s size adds +8 to the opposed roll; an attacker quadruple the opponent’s size adds +16 to the opposed roll; and so on. If the attacker wins the op- posed roll, he has grappled and pinned his opponent. If the attacker loses the opposed roll, the grapple fails.
A pinned target cannot move or take any significant action until he frees himself from the pin. This is done by succeed- ing in another grapple check, as above.
Melee attacks against a grappled creature are treated similar to firing a missile into melee. Any failed melee attack against a grappled creature has a 50% chance of wounding the ally who is maintaining the pin.
Charge: A reckless character can use 1 action to declare a charge. In order to charge, he must move at least half his speed. A charging character gains +2 bonus to attack rolls but suffers a -2 penalty to AC until his next turn.
Morale and withdraw go hand and hand:
Not all monsters fight to the death. A morale check is made at these times:
• With a group of monsters: when the first creature is slain and when half the creatures have been killed or incapacitated.
With a single monster: when it has lost half its hit points.
Withdraw
Once a character is engaged in melee, he cannot back away without opening himself up to attack. If a character or monster withdraws from an active melee – whether to retreat, move to a new position, or attempt some action – his opponents immediately receive a single free attack.
Burning Luck
As noted earlier, a character can permanently burn Luck to give a one-time bonus to a roll. For example, a character could burn 6 points to get a +6 modifier on a roll, but his Luck score is now 6 points lower. The following rules gov- ern the burning of Luck:
A character can only burn Luck to affect his own die rolls (except for halflings as noted in their class de- scription). Luck cannot be burned to affect the die roll of other characters or monsters, even if they affect the character. (Note that the character’s Luck modifier does apply to enemy crits against him, but this Luck modifier is different from burning off Luck.)
Luck is typically used to affect a character’s attack rolls, damage rolls, spell checks, thief checks, and saving throws, but it can also be used for other purposes.
A character can declare his intent to burn Luck before or after his die roll. He then specifies how many points he will burn. But he can only burn Luck once per roll.
