Action Points

[Shellman]

Actually, I decided to get rid of them completely the next time I DM.

They feel a lot like cheating to me. You need to make the roll this time and are close, no problem. You can influence the dice.

I'd rather have in-game ways to increase your odds of success. For example:

Fred: "Barney, use the Wand of Fireballs."
Barney: "But it only has a few charges left."
Fred: "We are dying here, USE THE WAND!"

Much better than game mechanics ways to influence the outcome of the game.

I think action points are a great idea to add flavor to your game. I agree that if too many action points are aquired, they can be unbalancing. I think the key depends on what kind of game the DM is running (low fantasy or high fantasy). If you don't want the PC's abusing the action points then you can limit how many they get and how often they reset or add up. On the other hand, the DM could also give action points to the villains/ bad guys to even out the odds.

I personally think that they can be a interesting way for the PC's to actually create that Hero Persona (example: The fighter uses an action point to modify a save he would normally fail or a bad guy uses an action point to make an attack roll a critical hit).

Just a couple thoughts, take them for what you want.

 

[KarinsDad]

I personally think that they can be a interesting way for the PC's to actually create that Hero Persona (example: The fighter uses an action point to modify a save he would normally fail or a bad guy uses an action point to make an attack roll a critical hit).

Characters should be able to become heroes without having Get Out of Jail Free cards.

The risk of gaming is minimized. Might as well be playing Molopoly at that point.


For example, PC Fighters tend to have a good chance to hit now as is. If a PC Fighter with Action Points is fighting the BBEG and threatens and then rolls only so-so on his critical roll, he can pretty much ensure most of the time that he does a critical, especially (at least in Eberron) once he gets high enough level (8?) to roll two D6 instead of one and take the higher of the two.

Boring.

Save or die saving throw. No problem.

Granted, Action Points do not guarantee success, but they sure as heck decrease failure and take quite a bit of risk out of the game.

A game with little or no risk is a more boring game. At least to me. A BBEG with a high spell resistance and high AC is a real threat. But, not in a game where the players can decide to use action points when they roll reasonably well. Then, the BBEG becomes just another day at the office challenge. Ho hum.


The other problem, at least in Eberron, is that a group of PCs can have a LOT of Action Points. A 4 member party at low level: 20 points on the team. A 6 member party at higher level: 60 points of the team. Having a group modifiy their dice that many times within 3 to 6 gaming sessions (depending on campaign) from one level to the next makes it difficult for a DM to even challenge them without either adding Action Points to his bad guys or upping the power of each encounter (which has balance issues in and of itself).

It becomes an arms race between the DM and players, just to maintain balance.


Like I said, I'd rather give the players in-game ways to up their odds in crucial combats than make it purely a mechanical thing where the player has semi-control over the dice.