Action Economy

When engaged in combat or other similar turn based encounters, the number of actions a player may take are defined by the Action Economy.

Types of Actions

There are five kinds of actions a player may make in a Round (as well as Full Round Actions).

Immediate Actions

You may make an Immediate Action at any point in time during turn based encounters, and you can make as many of them as you want. There are very few Immediate Actions available that aren't passive effects, and very few in general. You may NOT use Quicker Cast or Quick Cast feats to lower casting times to an Immediate Action. Nocking an arrow is an immediate Action

Free Actions

Your number of Free Actions per turn is equal to your DEX, WIS, or INT mod, minimum 1. Free Actions are things like taking a 5 ft step, grabbing something within reach, changing your grip on a weapon, or drawing a weapon if you have the Quick Draw feat.

Move Action

Everyone has one Move Action per round. This action is for opening doors and objects, reloading some weapons, using some spells and abilities, drawing a weapon, and moving 30 ft. For the purposes of casting a spell with a casting time exceeding a single Action, the Additional Attack feat or Weapons Special Attacks, a Move Action may be treated as an additional Action

Actions

Each player has...
1 Action per round CL 1-6
2 Actions per round CL 7-13 and
3 Actions per round CL 14-20.
These may be used to make an attack, make another Move Action, use a Combat Maneuver, cast some spells, and other Skill Checks defined by the DM. Without feats a player that is armed and only fighting with a single weapon may only attack with one Action per Turn.

Reactions

Each player gets one Reaction per round, but any Free Actions not used during their previous turn may also be used as Reactions. Reactions are primarily used for triggering saved Actions from the previous turn or making an Attack of Opportunity (AoO) which may onlybe made once a round without feats. An AoO is triggered when a hostile character passes within another character’s Threat Range with a melee weapon they are wielding. This is usually just adjacent to the character, but if wielding a polearm, using a feat, or ability this range is extended.

Full Round Actions

These mostly come into play with spellcasters. If you take a Full Round Action, you may not take Free Actions or Actions until your next turn.

Initiative

Combat takes place over multiple Rounds in which each character takes a Turn. To determine the order in which the characters take their turns, each will roll a d20 and add their DEX or WIS mod (whichever is highest). Highest total goes before the next, but if two characters have the same total the character with the higher Stat mod will go first.

Attacks, Two-Weapon Fighting, and Additional Attack

• While wielding a single weapon, without feats, a character may only make one attack per round (though they may still cast a spell or do a Combat Maneuver as an Action).

• If they are wielding a melee weapon in each hand they make a single attack, and combine the damage dice of the two weapons (do NOT double Stat Mod to damage).

• Each weapon has a Special Attack (counts towards the character's total number of attacks) which requires 2 Actions or a Move Action to use, if fighting with two weapons you may only use a single Special Attack rather than combining them.

When fighting with two weapons, you suffer a penalty to attack rolls. If fighting with normal one-handed weapons you suffer a -6 penalty, if fighting with a light weapon in your off-hand you suffer a -4 penalty, if fighting with two light weapons you suffer a -2 penalty, and if unarmed you suffer no penalty to attacks. The Ambidextrous feat lowers this penalty by 2 and may be taken multiple times, but cannot lower the pentalty below zero.
The Additional Attack feat allows you to use another Action (or Move Action) to attack. This feat may be taken multiple times (at CL 5, 10 and 15), has a -3 to penalty to the subsequent attacks, and each attack’s penalty doubles.