"You see this."

This will be short. I mainly didn’t want to lose the thought. (Also this largely assumes side initiative.)

There’s no codified phase in BX/OSE for taking non-attack actions during a combat round. By this, I refer to drinking potions, pulling levers or ropes, pushing over a brazier, and so on.

Most DMs I’ve spoken with roll it into the melee phase. Rationales vary, all reasonable.

But I have some food for thought on this: Let it happen with movement, or let the player decide which phase it goes with.

Because at your table, you might have 6 players all moving to cover or attack, firing arrows, wands, or spells, swinging swords, all the usual suspects. But maybe one of them is doing something creative, not just reaching for their d20.

Trust me when I say, “Reward that sh*t.”

Because in my experience, enabling that action is often the most interesting thing that’s going to happen in the entire turn of combat, and it might be completely invalidated by the time their side gets around to melee. Everyone will have moved around, missiles loosed, fireballs detonated… and by that point, their idea to create a distraction, or open a means of escape, or introduce a new dynamic element to the combat scene (by burning the curtains, flooding the room, extinguishing the light, or whatever) might be moot. Or at very least, that action might have shaped all the other players’ decisions for the rest of the phases.

So for the sake of keeping things interesting and exciting, let it happen first, or whenever the player deems their PC would do it. It doesn’t break RAW to do this, since it’s not addressed at all, but frankly, I’d even suggest table-ruling a +1 on individual initiative if someone is doing something other than a standard attack.

So that’s it. Consider it for your table, or don’t 🙂

[Incidentally, I would suggest the same for clerics Turning undead… it’s not a spell or magic item… no rules dictate when that action is intended to happen, and it could change all the decisions the rest of the players make for the round, if the Turning is permitted to happen first.]