D&D 5E (2024) Bonus Action Conversion

aco175 said:

This is what Mike Mearls said about them on YTube.

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CreamCloud0 said:

yeah, i think if there was just, a basic selection of simple BA actions available to everyone i think it would fill in the urge to be using your BA for something without being optimization bait.

maybe convert some of the basic actions like the disengage and help actions, or make variants, a shorter dash, a minor defend that gives you a few extra AC.

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doctorbadwolf said:

I...to put it nicely, i think it is anomolous that he headed 5e and 5e turned out so well.

Because the game he seems to have wanted, i truly believe would have ended up actually being dnd's swan song.

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Sword of Spirit said:

I think he did a superb job of managing the design of the edition. He intentionally suppressed his own personal preferences to try to get at a shared D&D game essence that appealed to most people. (It doesn't work for the die hards of any previous edition, but it at least works for most fans of most editions, and excels for some.) There are plenty of different things he would have done with the game, if he were making it for himself, and it would have probably been a worse game for it for most people other than himself.

And that's a skill in and of itself, being able to distinguish between what is going to work best for the vision, and what you personally want, and having the self-control to choose the former when you have the power to enforce the latter. While I respect the contributions of the other leading 5e design and development figures, I think Mike's commitment to that goal is what really brought everything together, and it hasn't been the same since he ceased being the guiding hand.

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Mustrum_Ridcully said:

It should be noted that Swift Action came very late in the 3rd Edition life-cycle, and I think it was mostly relegated to spells, that cost precious spell slots, so the impact wasn't as strongly felt as if it had started at first level.

I agree with EzekielRaiden that having a standard bonus action every character can take would be a good thing.
One might want to be careful though with handing out bonuses like +1 AC or so. That can get fiddly fast. (No offense, but I was reminded of 3E Dodge feat here).

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doctorbadwolf said:

Right, it has been even better. Under him we got Volos and MToF, which are absolute garbage. The further we have gotten from that low point the betger the products have gotten.

But you are right that he did a good job of prioritizing feedback over his own preferences.

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Sword of Spirit said:

I couldn't disagree more about VGtM and MToF. Volos is probably my favorite 5e product.

But, after decades of internet debates across multiple games and editions, and becoming very familiar with extreme differences in preferences (such as strong opinions about 4e), I think having the complete opposite view about Volo's Guide to Monsters is the most extreme difference of preference I've experienced.

My awareness has just been expanded. (Glad you got more out of later products than me!)

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CreamCloud0 said:

i might not of played 4e but this is something i still find hard to believe, as people have said, the structure might of been the same but it was the powers themselves that differentiated the classes.

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EzekielRaiden said:

I mean, that one is simple enough. They want greater flexibility in how you can make use of those ride-along actions.

Consider something like healing word. In order to circumlocute around the bonus action cast time, you would have to do something like this: "You can cast this spell any time you take an Action or use your movement, so long as you are not silenced, but if you cast this spell during your turn, you cannot cast any spell that uses a spell slot with your Action, nor can you cast this spell if you have already cast any spell that requires a spell slot." You might be able to trim that down with careful editing, but there's only so far you'll be able to take it....

And now every spell that was a Bonus Action cast time has to be written with that extra text. In other words, you've just ballooned the length of the spells chapter by easily another 5-10 pages just from having to keep repeating this over and over...not to mention all of the spells that don't initially require a Bonus Action, but use one for continuing the spell's benefits (e.g. witch bolt; basic casting is Action, but getting the d12 lightning damage on subsequent turns is a Bonus Action).

All that, instead of just having the teensy bit of "complexity" of the Bonus Action, and saying that that's the category for ride-along stuff that you can only do a bit of, but you can do it while you do any other proper Action-y things that tickle your fancy.

Or if you want something pithy:

There are lots of things where it makes sense that doing X takes up all of your attention/time.

There are lots of things where it makes sense you can do them basically anytime.

But there are a fair number of things where neither of those make sense: it shouldn't eat up your whole attention, but it also shouldn't be free-use-whenever.

Turns out, having a clean, straightforward box to put category-3 things into is actually really, really useful as a design tool.

<snip>

If every character JUST has one singular Action they can use, you're always going to be bumping into things that would be really really nice as ride-along actions, but utterly terrible/worthless as "this is all you do during your turn".

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pemerton said:

I've always found it a bit strange that the differentiation between classes would be found in the mechanics of action economy and resource recovery, rather than in what a character of that class can actually do.

When I read someone saying that they'd rather be rid of bonus actions, I don't think that they're wanting to keep bonus actions but drop the jargon in the way that you set out for Healing Word. I assume that they're talking about getting rid of the technicality of action economy that bonus actions are one part of.

I don't accept the idea that something technical like bonus actions has a simulationist rationale, of being one of "a fair number of things where . . . it shouldn't eat up your whole attention, but it also shouldn't be free-use-whenever." Given that the whole action economy framework is all about imposing a gameplay structure over imaginary events, that structure can be whatever we want it to be. Building it in such a way that it incudes "things where . . . it shouldn't eat up your whole attention, but it also shouldn't be free-use-whenever" is a design choice, not something forced upon the game design by the inherent nature of the imagined actions.

And this is doubly the case when it comes to spells, which can be whatever a designer wants them to be.

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