D&D 3E/3.5 Action Points. (3.5)

[Alexander123]

Who are you to tell your players whether they should hoard their action points or not? It's their actions points, they can spend it however they like.

And I disagree as far as its not promoting "actiony" stuff, I think it does promote heroic actions on the part of the PCs.

I also don't think that it is a means of necessarily avoiding character deaths since the PCs still have to think strategically and optimize their characters to be able to survive.

I think action points reinforce the idea that the PCs are not ordinary and are heroes, that to a certain extent they are destined to succeed, although not in a deterministic way, meaning they can still fail if they behave stupidly, and I allow my PCs to fail if they behave stupidly. (I don't cheat on die rolls for instance.)

 

[Celebrim]

I don't use them as written, but I have a similar homebrew mechanic called 'destiny points'.

My main purpose in using them is to mitigate against bad luck. So the most common usage of destiny points is to allow rerolls of failed saving throws and the second most common usage is to transform a critical hit into a normal hit, and in turn destiny points are a very scarce resource compared to most action point mechanics. The idea is that people who overly rely on destiny points quickly run out, while the prudent and intelligent player should always be able to keep one in reserve.

I use them because I want to have a game with 1e feel which doesn't have high 1e body counts and disposable characters. I believe death due to bad luck should be very rare, but there should still be a real legitimate challenge and the ever present possibility of failure (especially when combined with bad decisions).

 

[Mistress_Eberron]

I have my players using AP in our Eberron game, but we use the rules out of the UA. I fine the versatility of the UA gives all my players a chance to use their AP in different ways.

Though, what I do with my players, to avoid them from going, and excuse my wording, crazy with the cheese wiz with them, is I force them to give me a description of what their character is doing at the time of the action point being spent.

They're called 'Action points' for a reason, right? And as such, they must, in my opinion, be used to go above-and-beyond the usual actions of a character.

 

[GuardianLurker]

I use them, and have since I first encountered them.

I use the UA variant, and allow the Eberron Feats, but none of my players use them.

I find my players use them for two reasons:
1) To improve/guarantee their chance of success when they think it's important.
2) To guard against failure.

As for hoarding, they do tend to be freespenders towards the end of a level, but this is not to say that the avoid using them earlier. I've also let players spend LARGE chunks of action points (at least half, frequently all) to do unusual/otherwise impossible things.

I've debated "heftier" action points, but the UA type is just so easy to implement and use, they're hard to beat.

 

[rhoaran]

Our group has used the Eberron rules for a long time, even outside of that realm.

I've found them extremely helpful in creating memorable moments throughout our campaigns. We utilize them liberally for important rolls which adds excitement regardless of the outcome because of the emphasis placed on the roll.

None of us really hoard action points, but we usually seem have 1-2 left by the end of the level.

We all agreed that the UA version was ludicrously over powered, especially the 'emulate feat' and free metamagic abilities. Some of the rules were okay, but we've just stuck to Eberron rules for simplicity's sake.

I'm also glad they don't have the same feeling as 'destiny points' found in the Star Wars rpg. Destiny points allowed for too much player control, plus players could behave in the dumbest manner possible in a given situation and still walk away from it.

As far as changes go, I like the suggestion about making the action points charisma based to encourage it to be less of a dump stat.

 

[Ashtagon]

I use 5 + 1/2 character level + Charisma modifier as a maximum total of action points for a character. They get replenished to this on levelling up.

I did some maths some time ago too. Based on the idea of 13 1/3 encounters per level-up and 4 encounters per day, in theory they should all replenish twice a week if the party is going for levels at full pelt. Since that was awfully fast, I decided on two house rule modifications to make long downtime less painful:

* One week of continuous downtime gives you one action point back.
* One month of continuous downtime gives you all your action points back.

This gain is GM-controlled, and can be withheld. The in-game justification is that the character's deity (or subordinates, or his guardian spirit, or inner conscience, or whatever) is watching him, and intentionally stalling for time generates bad karma that results in the Ap being withheld as a minor punishment.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I use Fate Points, which are refreshed per session, not per level, but cannot be used for as wide a variety of purposes. Plus, you won't have very many of them, typically.

Fairly similar to Hero Points in Mutants & Masterminds - though nowhere near as flexible! - and also somewhat reminiscent of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying's Fate Points.

But they are my own take on this popular concept, adapted and refined over a number of years of GMing d20/OGL games. Pretty happy with them now, and have been for a while.