Chapter 1: Menace Under Otari

Alright guys, it's time to get going on this! At the moment, you stand at the top of the stairs leading down into Tamily's basement, getting ready to investigate. Go ahead and introduce yourselves

You have full control over the map, so you can move your tokens as you wish. Decide what you wish to do and then move your token to where that action would take you.

We are in what's known as "Exploration Mode". The linked page explains a little bit about it and lists some common actions to take during exploration mode. You aren't limited to those actions, however. What you are doing during exploration mode will affect how you interact with combat should it come up. It will affect what type of roll you make for initiative as well as your location in the area and what you may have in hands when a fight breaks out.

Please let me know if my explanations get a little bit verbose, just trying to explain not only the mechanics, but some of the reasoning or my thoughts on it

The "Investigate" action allows a Recall Knowledge check to try to discover information about your area. Recall Knowledge is what's called a 'Secret' check, which means that the GM rolls it for the player so that they don't know what the result is. Other common example of 'Secret' checks are Perception and Stealth. Basically it comes down to "Would knowing the result of this immediately affect my next steps?"

If the answer is yes, then chances are that it's a secret roll. If you look at the skill actions, such as those under Stealth, you'll see that several of them have a tag above them that says 'Secret'

It's time to roll initiative! As I mentioned earlier, initiative can be rolled in more than one way, but the standard is for everyone who will be engaging in combat to roll a Perception check to determine their place in the initiative order.

What you're doing during Exploration Mode can change this. An example would be if you were sneaking through a dungeon, you might get to use Stealth as your initiative roll.

Since no one was doing any of that, though, everyone will roll Perception for their place in initiative.

During a turn, each creature gets 3 actions that they can take. Gone are the days of standard, swift, move, etc actions. Everything you do simply takes a number of generic actions. There is a list of basic actions you can take on your turn. In addition to these, there are skill actions you can take. On top of all of that, your class likely provides a number of specialized actions you can take! These will be listed in your character sheet as well as the class entry in the rulebooks.

The most common basic actions are Stride (move up to your speed) and Strike (make an attack), which each take one action. Yes, this means that you can Strike three times in one round if you so choose! To balance this, there is a thing called a Multiple Attack Penalty, which is basically a stacking penalty to your roll if you attack more than once in a round.

Spellcasting is its own thing and most spells take more than one action to cast, though there are exceptions. See the spell entry (linked in your character sheets) to find out how many actions a spell takes.

There are also Reactions that you can take in response to triggers during the turn. You only get one Reaction per round, so use it well.

With all of that out of the way, Merisiel is up and can act :)