Gnasher’s Grimoire

The muster, and the fight

Everything a fight needs is in one panel: who is in it, what order they act in, what every attack rolls, what is wrong with each of them, and a log of the whole thing afterwards. This page walks it in the order a fight actually happens.

Muster the fight

Who is in it, before anything is rolled.

Press Everything on the bar and choose Combat.
Press + Add in the turn bar and pick your party and whatever monsters you own.
Every mustered monster arrives with its armour class, its hit points and its attacks already read out of its own block.
Next turn walks the order forward; the small arrow beside it walks back.

Honest limitsA monster you muster twice is numbered, so the second wolf is its own row with its own hit points. Everything here is read off the block you own: where a block has nothing to read, the app says so at the point where it matters rather than quietly inventing a number.

Initiative, in one press

The thing that used to mean going round the table asking. It is one control now.

Press Roll initiative in the turn bar.
Every monster rolls a d20 and adds the bonus written on its own block: the Initiative line first, its DEX second, and when the block has neither, a flat d20 with a line saying that it is flat.
A player who already rolled on their Satchel keeps the number they rolled, under their own name.
A player whose roll never arrived is rolled for, and the log line says the DM rolled it.
The order sorts itself from the top down and the first round begins.

Re-roll one combatant from its own row without restarting anything.
Type a number straight into the box on a row, for when somebody at the table just tells you theirs.
Undo order puts the previous order back exactly as it was, with the same round and the same turn active.

Honest limitsTies break on the initiative bonus and then on the name, so the same fight sorts the same way twice. A lair acts on 20 by the rule rather than on a roll, and it loses every tie on purpose.

To hit, and damage

Both halves of an attack, from one press, in the words you would use out loud.

Press an attack on a block and you get both halves at once: the d20 with the block's own bonus on it, and the damage behind it.
It reads the way you would say it: 18 to hit (d20 13 + 5).
The small hit and dmg controls beside an attack roll each half alone, for when the table has already agreed the blow landed.
Straight in the turn bar becomes Advantage, then Disadvantage, and rolls two dice for you until you turn it back.

A natural 20 is called out and rolls double the damage dice, never double the modifier.
A natural 1 is called out too.
An attack with no to-hit bonus written on its block says so and rolls no d20, rather than quietly rolling a plus nothing.

Honest limitsEvery one of these rolls lands in the fight log and in your session dice log, so a disagreement five minutes later is settled by reading rather than by arguing. The small dice printed inside a block's own prose still roll damage only: those are the numbers in the sentence, not an attack.

Conditions, and the dots on a token

What is wrong with each of them, in front of you, and on the board when you want it there.

Put a condition on a row from its own list: seventeen names, Blinded through to Dead, with Concentrating, Dodging and Hidden among them.
Give it a count of rounds when it has one.
Press the eye beside a condition to decide whether your players see it. Hidden from them, it stays on your screen alone.
On the board, a token wears its conditions as small dots, so one glance tells you who is in trouble.

Honest limitsAn older free copy of the Satchel does not get the condition dots or a turned grid, and the seat says so beside that player's name rather than leaving you wondering. A condition here is a label and a count: it does not enforce itself, because a rule the app applied behind your back is worse than one you forgot.

Monsters they have not worked out yet

They can see the thing. Knowing what it is called is a different matter.

Press the mask on a monster's row and its name is hidden from your players; their token shows its number instead.
Press the mask in the panel's own bar to do that to every monster at once, and again to put the names back.
Nothing changes on your side: you keep reading the name while they read a number.

Honest limitsThis hides the name plate, not the monster. A token they can see is a token they can see, and working out what it is remains the point of the encounter.

The fight log, and the one undo

For the moment somebody asks what that thing rolled two turns ago.

The chip under the turn bar reads No blows traded yet. until somebody swings.
Press it to open the fight so far, blow by blow, in the order it happened.
Clear empties that log when you want a clean sheet.
Undo order in the turn bar is the undo that matters mid-fight: it restores the previous order, the round, and whose turn it was.

Honest limitsThere is one undo and it is for the order. Hit points and conditions are typed in, so they are corrected the way they were set: by typing.

Put them on the map

The muster and the board are the same fight seen twice.

Open the War Board on the map you want.
In the Tokens section, press Place mustered.
Every mustered combatant lands on that map as a token.

From there the fight belongs to the board: the War Board, step by step walks the grid, the fog, the light and the push to your players' phones.

Honest limitsCapturing a scene in the Saga saves the map, the grid, the fog, every token where it stands and the order of battle together, which is the cheapest way to have a fight ready before the night starts.

Roll one fight with it

Muster three monsters and your party, press the one control, and see whether the order and the to-hit rolls save you the reaching for a die and the squinting at a page. That is the whole test.

Download Gnasher’s Grimoire, free Everything else it does

Still stuck? Write to grimoire@longislanddungeonmaster.com or say so in the LIDM Discord. It goes to me, and bad news is the useful kind.
The companion line: Gnasher’s Grimoire™ (DM app) · Gnasher’s Satchel™ (player app) · Gnasher’s Quill™ (session recorder).