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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 6231192" data-attributes="member: 6688937">I tend to agree with you here, but I don't think the action economy is necessarily the best place to attack the problem. Having Fate as a reference point, I see the problem not in terms of action economy, but as a lack of any tangible mechanical effect whatever. That is, most checks in traditional D&D only affect fictional positioning, but unless that happens to feed into the relevant list of combat modifiers for the edition played, it has no mechanical impact other than the DM's whim. I think it would be acceptable if (as in Fate) the battle captain (or anyone, really) could create an Emboldened by the Battle Captain aspect that could be used by anyone to yield a bonus. (detailed rules governing how much and how many times could be hashed out.) Fate and MHRP both demonstrate that this can be handled effectively in a freeform manner which, IMO, would greatly enhance the "squishy" side of play. Of course, the systems I know of that successfully handle such things also have a "metagame" economy (Fate points or something) that would have some folks screaming.One fairly common criticism of 4e's combat is that it bogs down, and I have often seen 4e's experts indicate that this is due to things like interrupts and extra actions. IME, systems that muck with action economies tend to either bog down or get very imbalanced in terms of player participation (as 2e and 3e's multiple attacks often did, IME.) Simple, stable, quick action economies seem to be necessary for fast play, AFAICT. To quibble, the player's rules for MHRP fit easily onto a page. The GM needs two. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Otherwise, I must wholeheartedly sound agreement. In my personal experiences with introducing Fate, MHRP, and D&D to new players, robust-but-simple mechanics really help people get involved in the creative aspect of the game. Recently I've even had the opportunity to show my OSR friends how that can work, and it met with a (surprising to me) very good response. D&DNext marks the third time that I've been disappointed that D&D will not take any sort of similar tack.</blockquote>

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