Actions are the number of times a character can do something in a certain nebulous period of time which we will call a round. A round is the amount of time it takes to go “around” the room and allow each friend or foe to take their turn. Each player and monster, on their turn, is allowed to make one combat actions, one non-combat action, one passive action, one defensive action, and an infinite number of free actions.

There’s a tier-system to actions that looks like the following:

1. Combat Actions
2. Non-Combat Actions
3. Defensive Actions
4. Passive Actions
5. Free Actions

Combat actions include activities like swinging a sword, shooting an arrow, or casting a spell or using a mental ability that causes damage or harms someone in some way.

Non-combat actions include activities like running to attack, swimming to someone drowning, casting a healing spell, or summoning a creature.

Passive actions include things like maintaining a spell, treading water, or other actions that someone would generally consider as something which takes some thought and effort but not as much as initiating something new. Switching weapons does as well.

Defensive actions can only be done by someone with a defensive skill such as parrying, evasion, defensive magic, use a shield, etc.

Free actions are free. They don’t cost anything to do and a player can perform as many of them as they want, within reason. Shouting commands to troops, taunting an opponent, walking, and generally anything which can be done in parallel with another action would be considered a free action. They cannot be magical or psychic skills — those require a bit more effort — but if someone had a natural taunting or inspirational skill, this could be used as a free action.

Higher tiered actions can be substituted for lower tiered actions if a player wants to help allies or defend more than attack, but lower tiered actions can never be substituted for one of a higher tier unless a character has a skill that allows such (e.g. berserking).

Combat and non-combat can be deferred until after all opponents have attacked. This might be worthwhile in cases where a player would rather use one of those actions for defensive purposes. Monsters and NPCs never defer actions, except under very rare circumstances such as ambushes or springing a trap. They don’t do so as part of normal combat.

Sometimes the effect of a skill causes something other than actual damage. Sometimes it restricts the ability for a character or opponent to initiate their standard number of actions. Nets, webbing, bolas, freezing attacks, and snares often include the effect of entrapment.

Generally entrapment removes the non-combat action. Generally each additional application of entrapment further reduces actions by one per application, starting with the non-combat actions, then the combat actions, and then the defensive actions. Free actions are never “entrapped” unless doing so makes sense (such as preventing someone from moving their mouth to speak).

It is possible that a single entrapment could effect all of the actions at once, such as the use of a mental attack to “hold person”. Physical applications of entrapment tend to do one at a time, but it is at the GMs discretion to do more.

Initiative, or the decision on who goes first, second, third, etc, in any given round, is rolled using the number of dice a player is allotted for initiative, but instead of choosing the highest number, the numbers are all added together. The default dice thrown for initiative is three, but based on other factors, such as items or skills, this could be increased. If a character or monster is surprised, prone, or affected by some magical or natural impediment (e.g. web, slow spell, unsteady or slippery ground), they roll two dice. If they are affected by more than one of the above factors, they only roll one die.