Playing cards

When your character has cards attached — spells, monster actions, magic items, features — you can play them straight from the VTT. The table rolls the dice, asks the right targets for saving throws, applies damage and conditions to tokens, spends the card’s uses, and posts the outcome to the game log.

Where you can play a card

There are two places to press Play:

The Cards panel on the VTT. Select a token that is linked to an actor, then open the Status tab in the scene sidebar. A Cards panel lists that character’s playable attached cards, each with a ▶ Play button.
The actor sheet. While a scene is live, attached cards on the character sheet show the same ▶ Play button. Playing from the sheet uses that actor’s token on the scene as the source.

Only cards with a usable, “on use” effect appear — always-on passives (like an Ioun Stone’s bonus) do not need a Play button; they apply automatically.

Choosing targets

Cards that affect other creatures need targets. There are two ways to provide them:

Select first, then play. If you already have tokens selected on the map when you press Play, those become the targets (a single-target card uses the first one).
Play first, then target. If nothing is selected, the VTT enters targeting mode automatically — the targeting panel appears with a prompt like “Select targets for Fireball”. Pick your targets and press Confirm. Cancelling (or letting the request sit too long) cancels the whole play; nothing is rolled or spent.

Self-targeting cards (a healing surge, a personal ward) automatically target your own token — no selection needed.

Reading the result card

After the effect resolves, a floating result card shows exactly what happened, step by step:

Attack rolls show the roll, bonus, and target armor class, with a HIT, CRIT, or MISS badge.
Saving throws show one line per target. Each creature rolls its own save and adds its own save bonus, for example:

WIS Save (Goblin): [11] + 1 = 12 vs DC 13 → FAILED

WIS Save (Orc): [12] + 3 = 15 vs DC 13 → SAVED
Damage shows the total rolled. For save-for-half effects, creatures that saved take half damage — the card notes each one (“Orc saved → half damage: 6”).
Conditions, healing, resources, and messages each get their own line.

The same summary is posted to the room’s game log, so the whole table sees the outcome.

Saves, damage, and conditions

Card play follows the rules written into the card’s effect:

Each target saves separately. A card that forces a saving throw rolls a d20 per target and adds that creature’s own save modifier from its linked actor sheet. One goblin can fail while the orc next to it saves.
Damage respects the save. Save-for-half effects halve the damage only for the creatures that saved. Everyone else takes the full roll. Hit points are adjusted on each token’s HP bar automatically.
Conditions land only on failures. If a card frightens, restrains, or slows on a failed save, only the targets that failed get the condition — it appears as a status chip on their token, with its duration tracked. If everyone saves, no condition is applied at all.
Conditions that are not tied to a save (an aura that slows everyone in it, a bite that grapples on a hit) apply to all targets as written.

Uses and charges

Cards with a limited-use economy — “2/long rest” features, wands with charges — spend automatically when played. The pips on the card row and the character sheet update immediately, and they never go below zero. The VTT does not currently stop you from playing a card that is out of uses — the result card still shows the spend step, so the table can see it and the GM can adjudicate.

Rests restore uses and charges according to each card’s recharge rule (short rest, long rest, dawn) — both when you rest from the character sheet and when you play a Short Rest or Long Rest card at the table. A long rest also covers dawn and per-day recharges; abilities that recharge on a dice roll (like a dragon’s “Recharge 5–6” breath) recover from their own recharge roll instead, not from resting.

Reactions

Some cards are reactions — Shield, a retaliatory strike, a defensive ward. When one of your tokens takes damage, the table checks that character’s attached cards for a reaction and, if it finds one, pops a prompt on your screen:

Use Shield? — Wizard took 8 damage → Confirm / Decline

Press Confirm to play the reaction (it resolves and posts to the game log like any other card) or Decline to pass. Only the player who controls the token sees the prompt.

Troubleshooting

I do not see a Play button

The selected token must be linked to an actor — unlinked scenery tokens have no cards.
The card needs a playable effect. Cards without authored effects (or with passive-only effects) do not list a Play button.
Card play may not be enabled for your table yet.

The card played but nothing happened to a target

Check the result card. Most often the target saved — save-gated conditions are skipped for creatures that succeed, and save-for-half damage may be small after halving.

A creature’s save bonus looks wrong

Save modifiers come from the target’s linked actor sheet. Tokens without a linked actor roll a flat d20 (no modifier). Update the actor’s abilities or proficiencies to fix the bonus.

Targeting started but I wanted different targets

Press Escape or the Cancel button in the targeting panel — the play is cancelled cleanly (no dice rolled, no uses spent), and you can select targets first and press Play again.

Reading a card before you play it

Cards in the Hand are small — big enough to recognise, too small to read. Hover one and a small toolbar appears above it:

Expand opens the card large.
Flip opens it showing the back.

From the expanded view you can Play card directly, so you never have to close it and go hunting for the right card again. F flips, Enter plays, Esc closes.

Clicking the card face itself still plays it, as before.

Right-click a card

Cards answer a right-click the same way tokens do — with the marking menu: a ring of actions around your pointer that you can throw a quick gesture at, or click normally.

Play card — top of the ring, where the most-used action lives.
Flip card — turns it over where it sits.
Expand — opens it large.

On touch, press and hold for the same actions as a list. If a card can’t be played right now, the menu still shows Play — greyed out, with the reason — so you don’t have to guess.