Reacting to the Reaction
Tom LaPille has
posted a blog entry on the 5e action economy and I'm really not impressed.
He's trying to present it in opposition to the 4e action economy when it's nothing more than a thinly warmed over version of the 4e action economy.
He starts with a simple misunderstanding of the 4e action economy and from that makes a false comparison between the 4e action economy and the 5e action economy. He claims that the 4e action economy is Standard/Move/Minor, and the D&D Next one is Action/Move/Interrupt.
That's an apples to oranges comparison he's running. First he's comparing an on-turn 4e turn to a full round in 5e. Second he's ignoring free actions and actions that are part of your move. Third he's ignoring certain spells that take their own specific undefined action type in 5e (Healing Word, I'm looking at you).
The Reaction Action, his Great New Thing is neither more nor less than an Immediate Action in 4e. It's something you can do once per round as a response. The only difference is that he's cut off parts of the design space by cutting out interrupt actions.
So we have
(4e) Standard Action vs (5e) Action
(4e) Move vs (5e) Move Action
(4e) Free Action vs (5e) Free action
(4e) Minor Action vs (5e) ill-defined mishmash including 5ft actions, spells that allow other spells, and free actions that somehow don't count as actions
(4e) Immediate Action vs (5e) Reaction Action
(4e) Opportunity Action vs (5e) Goblin Conga Line, all running past and stabbing
Now the Opportunity Attack thing is a debate for another time. But would someone please explain how fuzzing up the minor actions, and reducing the design space by removing the possibility of interrupts is in any way simplifying the action economy?
As for his claim about people stressing how to use their minor actions, that's an easy problem to fix in game design. You add a minor 'aid' action that gives an ally a +1 bonus - and then make the player describe how the aid happens. This should not be hard.
