There are three elements to a person’s combat round: movement, an action, and a possible bonus action. These are three separate elements and generally do not interact with each other, unlike in some previous D&D systems, where if you took extra attacks, it would limit your movement. Below we’ll go over each of these elements in depth.
Movement
You can move up to your “speed” every round. If you are able to, and you wish to fly/swim/climb or move in other ways you can do that as well, up to your speed number.
If you have more than one “speed”, such as your walking speed and a flying speed, you can switch back and forth between your speeds during your move. Whenever you switch, subtract the distance you’ve already moved from the new speed. The result determines how much farther you can move. If the result is 0 or less, you can’t use the new speed during the current move.
- For example, if you have a speed of 30 and a flying speed of 60 because a wizard cast the fly spell on you, you could fly 20 feet, then walk 10 feet, and then leap into the air to fly 30 feet more.
You can move at any time, before or after your action (and possible bonus action). Or even move, take your action, then finish your move. If you can take more than one attack as part of the attack action you could even do: move, action (attack), move, action (second attack), move, bonus action, move.
Action
There are several different action types. Here is another post which goes over all of those a bit more in depth.
For some clarity:
- The Attack action – if you take this, you attack once, unless something (usually a class ability) gives you more than one attack. If so, you can attack the same target, or any two targets which you can reach with your speed.
- The Cast A Spell action – you can use the spell action to cast any spells with a casting time of “1 action”. Some spells may require more time, or use a bonus action instead, in which case, your action can be used for other purposes. If a spell is a bonus action to cast, then you can cast another spell as an action, BUT one of the two spells must be a cantrip.
- The Dash action – this allows you to take your movement and move up to your speed a second time. So with a speed of 30, you can move 30 as your movement and “dash” for up to an additional 30. The rogue’s “cunning action” allows them to “dash” as a bonus action. If they were to take “dash” as an action and bonus action, then they could potentially move up to 3 times their speed that round, but do nothing else.
- The Disengage action – you focus your action on getting away from your enemy carefully. This is your entire action and after this, you can move and still take a bonus action if possible.
- The Use An Object action – you can interact with one object for free every round. If you want to interact with two different objects, then you’d need to take the “use object” action for one of them. Some magic items also require you to take the “use object” action to interact with them.
Bonus Action
You always have the potential for a bonus action on every turn, but you may not always be able to take one.
Various class features, spells, and other abilities let you take an additional action on your turn called a bonus action. You can take a bonus action only when a special ability, spell, or other feature of the game states that you can do something as a bonus action. You otherwise don’t have a bonus action to take.For example, the Cunning Action feature, allows a rogue to take a bonus action.
You can take only one bonus action on your turn, so you must choose which bonus action to use when you have more than one available.
You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action’s timing is specified, and anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action.