Bonus Actions

The basics of your turn: movement, action, bonus action, reaction. It’s a small list, but I still get tripped up on bonus actions. Fitting them into the rotation seamlessly and leveraging them to create the best strategy has been easier said than done.

“Okay Fae, that’s your action, are you using any movement?”
“Hmm, no, I think I’ll be staying here for right now…”
“Bonus action? Anything else?”
“Is there anything else I can do?”
“Alice, you’re up, what are you doing?”

Thor is busy toggling from token and GM layers on Roll20, managing two young blue dragons, waiting to spring mama dragon on us, measuring cubes and cones and areas on the map for the upcoming lair action, preparing to bring in the purple worms. It’s my responsibility to handle Faelinthara Moonwalker.

SO much of my advice for new players boils down to this: be familiar with your character’s abilities. Read your spells. Know your class features. Know what you can do on your turn. This will keep combat running smoothly, make your DM’s life easier, and helps ensure that you don’t miss out on all the cool shit your character can do!

The concept of bonus actions and making the most of them has come up repeatedly in our games the past few weeks so it’s been on my mind.

The thing to know upfront is that it will be explicitly stated if it is a bonus action, and you only have one. Unless your DM has a different house rule, you cannot substitute your action with a bonus action. You can use your bonus action whenever you would like on your turn unless specified otherwise, for example, “at the end of your turn, you may use a bonus action to…”

Classes have certain bonus actions, feats can give you bonus actions, some spells can be cast as a bonus action or allow you to do something as a bonus action, which can be two different things: see Heat Metal at the end.

There’s a master list of bonus actions divided by class here!

I haven’t met a DM who expects you to have the entire rogue class detail section memorized straight out of the Player’s Handbook. My DMs want us to succeed, they don’t buy into the DM vs. the players mindset. Group members worth playing with aren’t just going to leave you stranded; my friends are going to do their best to make sure I don’t miss anything but they can’t be responsible for what’s on my character sheet.

So everything is on my character sheet. If it’s not in front of my face, it doesn’t happen. All of our games are on Roll20 for now so I’ve listed almost all my abilities in the Features and Traits section for easy reference.

That may be more than is useful for you in your game but for me, it’s a simple matter of clicking through the options as I prepare for my turn, so I can have the text right in front of me. It also makes it easy to show the DM in case there needs to be a ruling. Even the professional DMs we’ve seen have to look things up sometimes—I want to make their lives as easy as possible!

Not using Roll20? I can’t speak to other virtual tabletops but I can show you my other method of keeping things straight. Hopefully you’re already taking notes—I personally find it super easy to have a Google Doc open for game notes, with another tab set up for character notes (right next to my giphy tab for react gifs).

And if you’re at an actual real-life game… what is that like?! Although when we did that, I still had a Doc open on my phone.

Here’s what the character notes look like for Rhaena, my Circle of Sacrifice druid centaur in our Odyssey of the Dragonlords campaign.

Overall Rhaena’s bonus actions are a lot simpler than my rogue’s but they’re still critical to know. I’m constantly summoning the Flame Bound (the Wildfire Spirit from the Circle of Wildfire Druid seen in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything); it’s so useful and also adorable—

It is one of the great tragedies of my life that I will never have one of these irl.

—but I have to work managing the little guy into the rest of my strategy. Consider Wild Shape: it’s an action to take a beast form, and a bonus action to drop it.

Of course, just knowing these doesn’t mean a flawless strategy or guarantee victory. In our most recent Odyssey session, I spent a few minutes going back and forth on where I wanted to fit the flame spirit in around my other actions. Ultimately I made the wrong decision when I prioritized the flame spirit, thinking it would be useful in the long run, when I should have used my action to mulch the cultists with Wall of Thorns.

But at least you can make informed decisions and as I mentioned, not miss out on cool abilities. More options are going to open up at 6th level. Using mistletoe, the Circle of Sacrifice druid is able to cast detect magic, cure wounds, purify food and drink, and heroism as a bonus action.

For all of my experience as a caster, I’ve found D&D Beyond to be indispensable. It takes about fifteen seconds to pull up the Spells section, filter by Casting Time: 1 Bonus Action, and boom, a list of all of your options, because I keep forgetting if it’s Cure Wounds or Healing Word that’s a bonus action, and Fae is our only healer so it’s a little important…

A lot of this came from a discussion on Heat Metal in my D&D group and on the dungeons_and_doodles_ IG recently.

Casting Heat Metal is an action: you choose a metal item, and anyone in contact with that object takes 2d8 fire damage. There’s no rolling for it, it just happens. As a bonus action, you can choose to deal another 2d8 fire damage for the duration of the spell. It just… happens!

It’s a second level spell. As a druid, I’ve had it available for years! But only recently our bard picked the spell up and used it to incredible effect, and I realized I hadn’t been reading all of my spells closely enough. What else had I been missing out on? For one, at lower levels, I focused on Cure Wounds and never prepared Healing Word when as a ranged bonus action, that could have been so useful, and I would just like to apologize to our warlock.

I will not apologize to our barbarian, because I told you not to pick that fight and honestly I should be charging for these heals.

Getting Into Character!

Tabletop roleplaying game—it’s in the name!

It seems to come pretty naturally for some people, and I’ve always assumed it must be easier for trained actors. But what about the rest of us? In normal times I’m coming home straight from a long day at work and the subsequent fight through Los Angeles traffic, running through the door and grabbing a snack, logging into Roll20 just in time for the session start.

How can I turn my work brain off and get into the character’s headspace? Even on weekends, channeling a smooth-talking bard or a quick, snarky rogue is more of a stretch for me than playing as my animal-loving, awkward, speak first/think second druid. Roleplaying adds some irreplaceable depth and richness to the game, so I came up with some strategies.

Notes. I know some people get by without notes, but for me, the game changed entirely since I started taking good notes a few years ago. There is a lot to say on this matter but for today, reviewing my notes before a session is essential for getting into character. Where were we last we met? Were we getting a talking-to by Laeral Silverhand? Were we in a dance off against werebears (this is a thing that happened)? Were we surrounded by the kraken cult, facing likely death in the underwater cathedral? It sets the tone for the day and reminds me of my character’s immediate and long-term goals. Keeping the character’s motivation central guides my entire D&D philosophy.

Playlists. I’ve put a Spotify playlist together for each of my characters. I include songs that remind me of her backstory, experiences before and during the campaign, and some essential trait. This was also a huge breakthrough for me, because it’s pretty easy for me to fit into my day. If I’m coming straight from work, I can just blast it in my car.

Playlist for Isolde Satrinava, Aasimar Cult of Rakdos bardlock.

Closet cosplay. Every year, I plan to put together a real costume for the renaissance faire, with my character as inspiration. Inevitably the faire sneaks up on me and it still hasn’t happened but theoretically, I would love to do a scaled-down cosplay for every session. For now, I have one of these for every character.

Elf druid Fae’s antlers | Tabaxi swashbuckler rogue Clover’s ears | Centaur druid Rhaena’s flower crowns

It’s just a small visual reminder, something that sets the evening apart from the rest of life.

Mannerisms. Beyond my DMs bringing NPCs to life (which definitely deserves its own post), some of my friends speak with impeccable accents. I can’t maintain one through an entire session but my characters all have a different way of speaking. My centaur druid Rhaena takes a measured, thoughtful tone, choosing her words carefully, considering how centaurs are often regarded with suspicion in the world of Thylea. My Aasimar bardlock Isolde has the courtier background and has a dry sense of humor and aloof mannerisms, which completely melts when she encounters someone in need of help. Elf druid Fae is just excited to be here and wants to talk to everybody, often with unrestrained enthusiasm. If I can just start a session with those firmly in mind, it’s easier for me to keep those up for a while.

Everyone has different D&D styles. Our barbarian is really combat-focused and is happy to leave the talky bits to us, and that’s okay! (Depending on the group and campaign that is, but more on that later.) But for me, it was only once I put the effort into roleplaying that I saw everything ttrpgs had to offer and fell in love with the game.

Dice Collecting Dust

Do you remember actually playing D&D in person? The clatter of dice on the tabletop, the mad scramble for the dice that jumped during a really critical roll, slapping the person next to you—”Look, hey, it’s a 19, Riley can back me up on it!”

The last game we played in person was our Plane Shift campaign, and I miss the ritual of tossing my bag on the table, sitting down, and immediately comparing dice with our fighter and fellow dice goblin next to me. I always took two sets with me, appropriately themed for my Rakdos bard: a red with a hint of black shimmer, a black set from that same line. You always have to have at least two sets on hand, one ostensibly to offer someone who forgot theirs at home, but really so you can put one in time-out after one too many single-digit numbers.

I have almost two dozen sets stashed around my apartment which is ridiculous when you consider that out of the campaigns I’ve played in since I started my collection, only two have been in person, and our Star Wars Edge of the Empire/homebrew game didn’t even use traditional dice. My DM pokes fun but honestly, out of everything I could collect, dice are unobtrusive enough.

Our game nights switching exclusively to the virtual realm since March of 2020 has effectively curtailed my dice purchases, which is probably for the best. I did get my resident DM a nice set for the holidays and couldn’t resist picking one up for myself as well.

By Four Seas Treasures: Amber Ocean for him.

You’ll Find Him In The Forest for me.

How could I not? The green and gold were just perfect for my Circle of the Moon elf druid. Never mind that we’ve been playing that game for four and a half years entirely on Roll20 as 3/5 of the party live out of state. I actually did get a chance to use these recently when resident DM Thor ran a one-on-one session for me: Fae’s arc culminated in challenging the Lord of the Hunt, where they hunted the White Stag through a wildly shifting landscape. The 18 on the die sealed the deal—thanks Four Seas Treasures!

As I write this I can see the shelf below the coffee table in front of me, crammed (neatly so) with official D&D sourcebooks, other books from Kickstarters Thor has backed over the years, that big limited edition Chronicles of Exandria tome. The bookshelves to my right are similarly packed, holding novels I really am definitely going to read one day, a book on literary theory I never returned to my professor (I am so sorry!), and a few editions of Villainous.

These are the only shelves I can see right now! In the grand scheme of things, a few dozen extra sets of dice? Could be worse.