Hero Points / Action Points - Yay or Nay?

[kerleth]

I think they should be in a module. Something like a "Moment of Truth" that a player gets once every session. The once per session thing may seem wonky, but it gives players a cool ability to use every time they sit down to play. Let them use it to auto succeed on a task (but only if they could potentially have succeeded in the first place), to stabilize and return to 1hp/ take a single action before falling unconscious, or to make a single statement about the world, such as "My character finds a scrap of the dukes cloak at the crime scene" or "I distinctly remember there being a scholar who studies magical beasts like the one we are hunting in that city we just left". This third one can be ignored for DM's/Players who don't like that sort of improving while retaining the usefullness of the regular mechanic. It's something I've toyed with in the past and seemed fun.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I dislike cheat points. There's nothing heroic about them.

They don't necessarily make the game easy. One could arrange it so that failure is a near certainty if the players don't spend their cheat points, and merely less likely if they do. It's merely a matter of numbers.

I'm assuming action point style cheat points, here, rather than points that grant narrative authority a la James Bond 007.

 

[Tallifer]

I love Action Points as the Fourth Edition had them, and I will definitely use them. However I can hardly think of anything more modular or optional: they are incredibly easy to add to or take away from any system of rules.

To clarify, I mean Action Points which grant an extra action, not something which changes your fate.

 

[Ratskinner]

I said yes, as a module, but I really want modules with different varieties and ways of doing it.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Hate them. I wouldn't care as long as they are not core, though.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Don't know if it's been floated in this thread, but I'd like to see Action Points and Healing Surges merged into 'Heroic Surges,' that could be used to heal, or take extra actions, or power limited-use class abilities. It could be a flexible mechanic that'd unify 'Power'-based characters with Vancian and conventional approaches, giving everyone a significant resource to manage, but one that could be simple or deepen complexity depending on the character and how it's played.

 

[IronWolf]

I have no issue with action points. I like them as a way to let player's re-roll if they are having a string of bad luck. I would rather seeing things handled this way than trying to adapt core game mechanics to minimize the effect of a few unlucky rolls.

I would be fine if they were added as a module though. They are so easy to add in as a module I see no need to include in the core game. Better to layer on the complexity than to have to remove it. The core rules should be the simplest the rules can be with modules to ratchet things up.