Combat & the run-session screen¶

Campfire's combat tracker turns a fight into a shared, live screen: initiative order, whose turn it is, HP, and conditions — with damage syncing back to character sheets when it's over.

Create the encounter¶

From a campaign, open Encounters → New encounter and name it. The moment it's created, every party character is added as a combatant automatically, with initiative modifiers derived from their DEX. The encounter starts in the Preparing state, so you can set it up before the table needs it.

Add monsters (and anyone else)¶

On the run-session screen, Add combatant offers three tabs:

• Compendium — search the installed rule pack (e.g. a Goblin); its HP and initiative modifier come straight from the statblock. A linked monster also has an expandable Statblock on its combat card. Open5e entries include traits, actions, reactions, legendary actions, and structured recharge/attack/save details alongside their complete source descriptions.
• Manual — type a name, HP, and init mod for a homebrew creature.
• Party — add a late-joining character.

Adding a monster, you can set a count to drop several identical creatures in at once — they come in auto-numbered (Goblin 1, Goblin 2…) so they stay distinct. A DM can rename any combatant or fix its max HP / init mod afterwards without deleting and re-adding it.

Run the round¶

1. Roll initiative — fills initiative for everyone who doesn't have one yet (d20 + modifier). You can also set values by hand. Some rule systems have no initiative roll at all — Ironsworn: Starforged is the one Campfire ships — and there this control isn't shown: turn order is the roster order, so drag a combatant (or use its move-up / move-down / "move after" menu) to arrange it, and Start doesn't wait on a roll.
2. Start — sorts by initiative and begins round 1, highlighting the current turn. On a system with no initiative roll it begins round 1 in the roster order you arranged.
3. Next turn — advances the highlight; wrapping around bumps the round counter.
4. Deal damage / heal — the ± buttons on each combatant adjust HP (clamped at 0 and max). Rule-aware controls appear only for adapters that support direct-damage rules (currently D&D 5e); other rule systems use plain HP adjustments. In a supported encounter, choose the rolled hit's damage type, whether the target saved for half, and whether it was a critical hit. Campfire applies resistance, vulnerability, and immunity from the target's statblock; criticals double dice only, never the flat modifier. The combat log shows the final adjusted damage (including zero damage from immunity). As DM you can edit anyone; a player can adjust only their own character's HP and conditions.
5. Temporary HP — a separate pool that soaks damage before real HP; it doesn't stack (you take the higher of the two) and isn't capped by max HP.
6. Death saves — when a player character drops to 0 HP they start dying; track their death-save successes and failures (0–3 each). Three successes → stable; three failures → dead. Healing above 0 clears the counters automatically. A single hit that overflows past 0 by the character's whole max HP is overkill — instant death, no saves. (Monsters just go down at 0.)
7. Conditions — add and remove condition tags on any combatant.

Rolls from the dice widget on the screen, and everyone's turn actions, keep the fight moving.

The battle map (VTT)¶

Attach a map image to an encounter and the run-session screen becomes a lightweight virtual tabletop: combatant tokens on a grid, distance measurement, area-of-effect templates, and fog of war — all shared live over SSE, so every player's device shows the same board.

Generate a map¶

Don't have an image? Beside the upload dropzone the Get a map panel offers a ✨ Generate a map button — Campfire's first-party procedural generator. It's offline, license-clean, and reproducible.

1. Pick a kind (dungeon, cave, wilderness), size, complexity, and theme. Under Advanced you can set (and copy) a seed — the same seed always produces the exact same map.
2. A large preview renders straightaway. This preview does not attach the map or reveal anything, and Regenerate rerolls to a new candidate — previewing and rerolling never leave stray maps behind or use your storage quota.
3. Use this map attaches the map to the encounter and aligns the VTT grid/scale in one step. Download saves the SVG; Copy seed keeps the recipe to reproduce it later.

The generated map is saved DM-only (hidden from the player Handouts card) with an aligned grid, then Campfire walks you through the next steps: check the grid, set fog, and place tokens.

Add a map & move tokens¶

As DM, drop an image on the Battle map panel (or click to choose one), or generate one (above). Attaching a map makes it visible to the whole party. Each combatant becomes a token; drag one to move it. The DM can move any token, a player only their own character's. Click an unplaced token to drop it at the centre, then position it. Token size (tiny → gargantuan) scales the footprint — set it from a combatant's controls; it's a display footprint only and doesn't touch combat math.

Grid, scale & snapping¶

Open Grid & fog to configure the overlay:

• Grid on/off and cell %w — the cell edge as a percent of the map's width.
• Scale + unit — the real-world size of one cell (e.g. 5 ft), which drives the measurement readout.
• Snap — drops a moved token to the nearest cell centre.
• Type — square (classic) or hex (a pointy-top hexagonal overlay for hex-crawl and wilderness maps).

Measure distance¶

Pick the Measure tool and click-drag on the map: it reads out the straight-line distance in squares and feet (using the grid scale). The ruler stays on screen after you release so you can read it. Measurement needs a grid scale set first.

Area-of-effect templates¶

With a grid scale set, the DM can add shared AoE templates from the toolbar:

• Circle — a radius burst (e.g. fireball).
• Cone — a 5e-style cone (e.g. burning hands).
• Line — a straight ray (e.g. lightning bolt).

Every template lives in the encounter, so all clients see the same shapes (they're not private to your screen). Drag a template's handle to reposition it; click it to edit its size (radius or length in feet) and, for cones and lines, its angle. Remove it when you're done.

Ping the map¶

Anyone at the table can pick the Ping tool and click a spot to flash a ping — a short pulse everyone sees at once. It's transient (nothing is saved); use it to say "here" without moving a token.

Fog of war¶

Toggle Fog on and the map goes dark for players; the DM sees through it dimmed for prep. Reveal the board as the party explores:

• Reveal tool — click-drag a rectangle to reveal that region to players.
• Reveal all / Hide all — light or re-hide the whole map at once.

Fog is information-safe at both layers. A combatant token sitting in an unrevealed area is withheld by the server, so a player's client never receives where the ambush is waiting. The map image is also rendered on the server for each fog revision: players receive an opaque image containing only revealed pixels, never the source attachment. Opening the attachment URL, requesting its thumbnail or a byte range, and stale offline caches cannot bypass the mask. (An AI DM can reveal regions too, via the reveal_map_region MCP tool.)

Cast to the table TV (/screen)¶

Open Player Display (/c/:campaignId/screen) on a TV, projector, or second monitor for a secret-free, table-facing broadcast. The DM cockpit can switch scenes (initiative, party, quests, map, intermission, blackout); the Map scene mirrors the player-safe VTT projection from the run-session page — revealed fog only, visible tokens at server-provided positions, and shared AoE templates filtered to what players are allowed to see. Combat updates stream over the same SSE channel as the run-session screen.

End the encounter — HP writes back¶

Click End. The encounter closes and each character combatant's current HP is written back to their sheet, so the party carries their wounds out of the fight. Ending is guarded — you can't end a fight that isn't running, or revive an ended one.

At the table on a phone¶

Players can pull the encounter up on their own devices; the run-session and player displays stream live over SSE, so damage, turns and conditions show up the moment you make them (with a refetch to catch up if the stream drops). The dice log is shared by the whole table — every member's rolls appear in the same feed, with the roller's name, on every device.