But back to my question: "What is the benefit of Bonus Action spells restricting reaction spells and Action Surge spells, and does it make sense?" Everything else in a turn being the same, what is gained by restricting reaction spells and Action Surge spells when the only other spell cast has a casting time of a Bonus Action instead of an Action?
You asked ans so let me try and answer as best i can as to what my response would be, but i *MUST* put it in context.2
What is the benefit of thew rule in the rulebook that has Bonus Action spells restricting other spells at all?"
ANSWER: To the first part, it follows RAW.
Does the rule in the rulebook make sense? That is subjective. it was just a design decision that said "BA spells have this restriction that reaction spells dont and that 1A spells dont.
"What is the benefit of Bonus Action spells restricting reaction spells and Action Surge spells, and does it make sense."
ANSWER: To the first part, it follows RAW.
Does the rule in the rulebook make sense? That is subjective. it was just a design decision that said "BA spells have this restriction that reaction spells dont and that 1A spells dont.
So, the key thing is this AFAICT: The value in following RAW in a given game will vary from "nothing" to "major" depending on the various unique factors of that campaign. In a shared world or shared play type setting - it can be mandatory.
For *MY* games, for decades, I have not given much value at all to "follows RAW". it is worth nothing more than it being easier to get across to the players since it does not need me to add a house rule *sometimes* because sometimes the RAW may require more explantion and spawn more questions than a simpler house rule would. So basically, to my games "follows RAW" has been worth mostly nothing and provides no objective benefit for decades. That is irrespective of system - DND version abc, HERo version 2-6, WOD version I-V or whatever, Shadowruns, traverls aplenty, etc etc etc.
That is not because I necessarily think i know how to design games better than they do (OK not saying i do not think that either) but that simply put i make the system fit my campaign, not the other way around and have complete confidence in my ability to do that to both suit my player's preferences better than someone who does not know them.
HOWEVER: As far as answering a forum question about "what is the rule" or "what does this rule mean" "follows RAW" is to me vitally important - even if you also provide well-identified house rules alongside it.
Now we get into the subjective parts - Does it make sense? What non-objective benefits do the RAW rules provide vs the House rule for say "the BA rule applies to quicken only" or whatever you need to figure out a way to allow more spells to be cast than RAW would allow in some circumstances: Those will all be subjective determinations.
Someone has repeatedly posted here about how a BA spell is listed as quicker. Maybe for that poster there is *no benefit* (objectively or subjectively speaking) from having BA spells impose any limits. Maybe to someone else, the rule as is that restricts reactions, surge actions etc is the right amount of limit. maybe to someone else the middle ground of "only applies for quicken" or "does not apply to surge and reactions" are more "the right amount of restriction."
You might as well be asking how much hot pepper your jambalaya needs or which bed Goldilocks prefers?
One person may think none and all the way up to the nuclear option.
The benefit and sense for a given campaign really boils down to "how much of a limit do you feel is appropriate for BA spells in your games?"
It should be obvious that loosening the restriction will increase the spells that can be cast in some cases. That should be a boon to spellcasters... to various degrees depending on campaign. So, in my mind it would seem obvious that if your spellcasters are having trouble keeping up with the non-caster classes in terms of performance, that might lead one to see loosening the BA spell restrictions as a good idea - loosening the restrictions would then "make sense". In the opposite case, if spellcasters are seen as the top of the chain more often than not, you might not want to give them more spell casting options - loosening the restrictions on BA spells might not "make any sense".
But again, all of that assessment of "does it make sense" and "how much of a benefit" will be highly subjective and vary by campaign.
That is where the beauty of house rules plays out. There have been quite a few suggestions made for house rules here in this thread and likely a million others that can be used.
So for any given GM, if it makes sense to loosen the restriction for caster's in their game, they have a ton of things to choose between even if they don't have preferences of their own to choose from.
But really, for *any* published rule, beyond "follows RAW" there is no objective benefit to any given rule - only subjective benefits based on the particulars of a campaign. it could be subjectively beneficial and make sense to change every class HD to D12 in a given campaign and that change is likely even bigger than the bonus action limit per RAW is.