Action Points--How are they used?

[Primitive Screwhead]

Diaglo.. thems no 'frivoulous' uses!!!

IMC its a combo of Heroic safe my butt stuff. The most used is 2 AP for another per day class ability. My regular fighter type is a Shifter with the Healing feat, burning AP's has allowed him to be heroic while saving the party from certain doom three times now.

The other common use is to stabalize when down below 0hps... two if past -10.

Unfortunately I have to remind my players that they exist, I am thinking of using some token to keep the concept easy to see that they have points to spend.

Worst spending of an AP? Skill check to balance past a death-dealing trap. D20 rolled a '1', AP rolled a '2' !

 

[Glyfair]

My halfling wizard, in Eberron (using that varient of Action Points) burned almost an entire level's worth of action points firing his crossbow at the BBEG while most of his compatriots were fighting his minions (although one was occupying him, ineffectively attacking him, though). I almost single handedly dropped him, although I didn't get the "killing blow."

Initially most of the players had to get used to having them to use. For the first couple of levels we'd be getting to the last adventure before we leveled and someone would remind the group "we're going to lose this if we don't use them, don't forget you have them."

Between our campaigns and the Mark of Heroes game, I'd say the most common use has been to guarantee the stabilization roll. To date no one has taken any of the action point oriented feats, but it's only a matter of time. Eventually I want to take the feat that allows you to use action points to swap in a spell, but my feats are earmarked up to 9th level (and I'm only 4th now).

 

[Peter Gibbons]

I voted "Some other way!" because it's really "All of the above."

Our current campaign uses Action Points, and I (as a player) have used them to confirm a critical hit, ensure a smite didn't go to waste, improve my chance of making an important saving throw, succeed on a difficult (and very essential) skill check, etc.

My gripe with Action Points is that when you get close to leveling, there's no reason not to spend them, so you frequently wind up with "climactic final battles" being absolute cakewalks as all of the PCs start blowing through their Action Points as fast as they can. I have yet to spend all of my Action Points for any given level, and I frequently spend less than half of them. IMO, they should be much rarer and "carry over" between levels.