Blog: Reacting to the Reaction

Guys... Not sure where this whole "4e doesn't limit reactions" thing is coming from.

DDI Compendium said:

You can take only one immediate action per round, either an immediate interrupt or an immediate reaction.

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Granted, there are a few cases where a free action can be used as a reaction, but it's pretty rare.

Edit:

I also agree that losing the codified minor action and regressing to baking the usage into every power (sorry, "spell") is a step in the wrong direction. Instead of reading "minor action" in the keyword block, we get to read through the spell description to find how to use it.

Neonchameleon said:

(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?

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It uses fewer words. In your breakdown, the "Move Action" should be 4e - 5e is just a "Move" - and "Reaction Action" is a kind of tautology, so for 5e we get:

- Action
- Move
- Reaction
- plus a bunch of stuff we ignore (NB: these words don't count as "words" because we ignore them, see? easy.)

Voila - fewer words.

I think it's the stop-motion initiative system that causes all these problems. "Say what your PC does in the next six seconds; roll dice to resolve it." If that were the case, you wouldn't need to worry about Kobold Karousels, OAs, Immeditate Actions, Reactions, etc. You do what you say you do and that's that.

LostSoul said:

I think it's the stop-motion initiative system that causes all these problems.

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Its a big part of it. Unfortunately its the simplest and most intuitive system right now, so I don't see it going anywhere.

D&D was a better game, when there was no minor action. Of course, there were some spells, that always used to be minor, or swift, but those were exceptions. Actually swift actions were still very exceptional. You didn´t use them for mundane things.

And as exceptions, something extra once per turn, they were fine. But in 4e, so much things were acked into minor actions, that often you did not have enough of them. I rather like to deduct 5ft from your total movement or free actions...
Or maybe, you could have the minor action type, but you should not use it for opening doors or drawing a weapon or something like that...

UngeheuerLich said:

D&D was a better game, when there was no minor action. Of course, there were some spells, that always used to be minor, or swift, but those were exceptions. Actually swift actions were still very exceptional. You didn´t use them for mundane things.

And as exceptions, something extra once per turn, they were fine. But in 4e, so much things were acked into minor actions, that often you did not have enough of them. I rather like to deduct 5ft from your total movement or free actions...
Or maybe, you could have the minor action type, but you should not use it for opening doors or drawing a weapon or something like that...

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Opening Doors and drawing weapons are exactly what minor actions should be used for. They take away the lameness of wasting a turn opening a door.

What they shouldn't be used for is attacks, and spells, except on a rare occasion. It is there that 4e got into trouble. Minor Actions should let you do MINOR things. Attacking should never be a minor thing

I too liked how 4e standardized the minor/swift action and brought it into the core of the game. I thought it was great to provide a mechanism for the "little things" that mattered enough to be worth tracking.

Since then, I have come to dislike minor actions. In theory, they are great. In practice, my games have really slowed down because everyone pauses during their turn to figure out how they can make the best use of a minor action. Except for healing, these actions rarely have a large enough impact to be worth the time spent thinking about them.

When I explain the game to a new player, they spend their time thinking about how to make use of their standard, move and minor actions. In D&DN, they just think about what they want to do -- focusing on the in-game fiction instead of hte rules mechanics. I have now taught both 4e and D&DN action rules to new players and it is my experience that new players find the D&DN action rules much easier to understand.

I agree that immediate actions aren't really that different from reactions, although I'm happy to get rid of the immediate vs reaction distinction. It's interesting rules design space, but it's too fiddly for me. Also, if we're really comparing 4e to D&DN, we need to include opportunity actions on the list of out-of-turn actions. We don't really know how D&DN is going to handle OAs, so it's hard to really form an educated opinion on the relative merits of the two games.

-KS

nightspaladin said:

Opening Doors and drawing weapons are exactly what minor actions should be used for. They take away the lameness of wasting a turn opening a door.

What they shouldn't be used for is attacks, and spells, except on a rare occasion. It is there that 4e got into trouble. Minor Actions should let you do MINOR things. Attacking should never be a minor thing

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I strongly disagree. I like the 5e approach: open a door deducts 5ft of movement better.
Or actions that are essentially free most of the time, like drawing a weapon.

I am really starting to think that they just can't accept that 4E brought good things into the game. The Reaction...action seems to be EXACTLY the same thing as the Immediate action from 4E. I really hate that they are getting rid of the Minor action. I could see leaving it in place, but limiting what actually can be done in that action. No more Minor Action attacks and whatnot.

CasvalRemDeikun said:

I am really starting to think that they just can't accept that 4E brought good things into the game. The Reaction...action seems to be EXACTLY the same thing as the Immediate action from 4E.

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It almost is. I'm pretty sure Tom's using Immediate Action when he means Opportunity Action.