D&D 5E (2014) 5e actions economy VS other editions and systems

[schnee]

I think it's learned good lessons from other editions.

The super common actions have clear rules.

A huge number of small edge cases that would otherwise create a ton of rule bloat is covered by Advantage/Disadvantage.

It's by no means perfect, but my table is happy with it.

 

[wedgeski]

I'm happy with it. For players from older editions, the Bonus action has often tripped them up (i.e. they're looking for Swift and Minor action equivalency and not finding it), but in general, it seems to work well.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I love that they got rid off the 5ft step/shift action.

 

[Oofta]

I'm a bit on the fence when it comes to action economy in 5E myself.

In 3.5, it seemed like the devs just kept adding in things especially for casters. Anyone else remember the high level wizard casting minor, swift and standard action spells? What a mess.

In 4E, many people would sit and think about what they were going to do because they didn't want to "waste" their minor actions.

Along came 5E and, for the most part it's cleaner. Being able to move, do something, and keep moving after doing another action makes so much sense I don't know why I didn't do it as a house rule years ago.

If I had to change anything, I'd change Bonus Actions to Minor Actions and tweak how they work a little bit. Have object interactions be a minor action, allow people to downgrade standard action to move or minor (but don't downgrade move to minor to avoid things like casting a third spell in a round).

I think that would be a cleaner system and allow more flexibility. The name change doesn't really matter much, but to me it's more logical.

I understand why they did it, I just think it's more confusing than necessary.

Overall I still prefer 5E action economy to previous editions, but all systems can be improved.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If I had to change anything, I'd change Bonus Actions to Minor Actions and tweak how they work a little bit. Have object interactions be a minor action, allow people to downgrade standard action to move or minor (but don't downgrade move to minor to avoid things like casting a third spell in a round).

Consolidating object-interaction & bonus into minor seems reasonable & in keeping with 5e which did a lot of consolidating. And the downgrade path is a good idea in that it gives greater flexibility, and avoids making unrelated options incompatible as a mechanical artifact. Both more sensible, and returns to a more intuitive action-economy, rather than arbitrary opportunity-cost economy.

I think that would be a cleaner system and allow more flexibility. The name change doesn't really matter much, but to me it's more logical.
I understand why they did it, I just think it's more confusing than necessary.

A fair amount of that was inevitable, I suppose.

 

[RangerWickett]

In Scion, you basically draw a pie chart with 8 slices, each of which is a 'tick.' Your starting initiative determines which tick you act on first, and then whenever you take an action, you move your marker around the chart a certain number of ticks, then don't act until the turn cycles around to you. Some quick movement might just be one tick, sprinting might be 3, aiming could be 1 to 3, and most attacks were 4 or 5 ticks. That was perhaps a realistic model, but it didn't feel cinematic, because you never got a good 'establishing shot and scene' for a character like you do in turn-based games.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You know, I came into this liking 5e's action economy, but when I broke it down I find it inferior to 4e in many ways, with the only exception allowing movement at any time including broken up.

I'm not a fan of breaking up movement, with the way it allows someone to come out from around cover to cast a spell and then return to that cover before anyone can do anything about it, so I'll just say that I prefer the 4E action economy in every way. Of the problems with 4E, action economy wasn't one of them.

 

[Bitbrain]

5e Action economy is much easier to understand than 3.5/Pathfinder

There's a guy in my group who compares 3.5 and 5e to each other constantly, and 5e's action economy can be much more easily explained to a totally new player than can 3.5.

 

[discosoc]

I like 5e, it's certainly cleaner than 4e or 3.x. You could say older editions were even cleaner - move and make an attack - but the trade-off there was you generally needed a lot of discussion and/or house-rules and/or DM rulings to work out exactly what people could and could not do on their turn.

Not for stuff before 3e. You didn't actually have a "move" action. Movement was simply something that was implied as part of your action. So like, if you wanted charge into the lead orc, you didn't have to move first, then attack. You just attacked (assuming the distance wasn't greater than your speed) and it made sense that you moved up to facilitate it.

I also don't recall there being too much confusion about what you could and couldn't do during your turn, although it's a common source of confusion for players to grapple with these days. This was mostly because everyone sort of takes for granted the role of grid-based combat with d&d, and the representations of turns and rounds as being much faster-paced. With 2e, for example, a round of combat was a minute long, so your action(s) weren't nearly as restricted as with a 6 second round. A turn was simply 10 rounds, or 10 minutes, although it wasn't usually referenced outside of spells that might have durations that span one or more turns.

All told it added up to a much more creative style of narration, both for players and the DM. Of course, it was a pain in the ass to translate into video games, which ended up being a huge factor when 3.0 was being developed.

 

[Blue]

I'm not a fan of breaking up movement, with the way it allows someone to come out from around cover to cast a spell and then return to that cover before anyone can do anything about it, so I'll just say that I prefer the 4E action economy in every way. Of the problems with 4E, action economy wasn't one of them.

Different strokes for different folks - I'm perfectly happy with that. It's somewhat realistic without bogging down play - people duck out, fire from cover, and duck back all the time in movies and novels. Ready Action lets you hit them if you are waiting for it, so no issues there. And it has them leaving your site already having used up a bunch of movement so you know where they likely are, either for area of effect or just running up to them - fragile casters using their movement to hide aren't always fond of a front-liner in their face.

And it stops the whole "I needed to move a few feet but my first attack killed the opponent so I lose all the rest of my attacks because the rest of the foes are 5' from me".