Brainstorming: Action Point Cards

[eriktheguy]

I think its an interesting idea. THe cards prevent the confusion of forcing your players to remember a list of choices so I think it could work well.

And you get to HOLD them!

 

[Nytmare]

So here's the list we've started playing with. We haven't had much of an opportunity to see things in action yet, but what little we've seen so far we've liked.

The current deck is 90 cards. All of the cards grant an extra move action in addition to some secondary ability. 50% of the cards grant an extra standard action. 33% of the cards grant the use of an additional item daily.

The remaining 15 cards are:

• Take an additional Move Action this round. You can run this round without incurring any penalties to attack or defend.
• Regain an expended Encounter Power.
• Regain an expended Daily Power after a short rest.
• Use an At-Will or Encounter Power in place of a Basic Attack
• An area or close attack does not hit one of your allies.
• Your successful attack deals 1, 10, or 15 ongoing damage (save ends) Damage scales with tier.
• Reroll any one die and use the higher roll.
• Add 1d4 to a die roll, after it has been rolled. Add 1 to the result for every other Action Point the party has.
• Expend a healing surge on yourself or an an adjacent ally. That ally uses their own surge value.
• Treat an 18, or 19 on a d20 as a Natural 20.
• Target two adjacent creatures with an attack.
• Increase the area of an area of effect power by 1.
• Attempt a Stunt or use a Terrain Power with +5 to your d20 roll.
• Double the range of a non-melee attack.
• Make a successful opportunity attack against you miss.

I landed on a 90 card deck only because I was printing 9 cards to a page, and the layout fit nicely around one sheet of 3 single cards and 6 +item dailies paired against a sheet of all +standard actions.

The "add 1d4+x" card was one I've been bouncing back and forth with. I definitely wanted a single generic "add to any die roll" kind of card, but I wasn't sure how powerful it should be to make it worthwhile on both a d20 roll or a damage roll. I like the added incentive to hold on to it for later, and for the group as a whole to try and stockpile action points for cards like this. I definitely want to have more cards that are dependent upon how many cards the party have.

I threw the +5 to stunt/terrain powers card in there because I'm trying to coax them into using those more. I don't know why I thought that 1 card in a 90 card deck was going to miraculously train them to use more stunts and terrain powers. That'll probably be the first one to go.

The "miss an ally in an area of effect" card needs to have more oomph. I'm not sure what I want out of it.

The healing card needs more too, I'm also unsure of what direction I want that to go in.

Oh! Because I always do things ass-backwards, I started by making card backs: http://www.pmw.org/nytmare/dnd/powercards/acardbacks.bmp

 

[Stalker0]

Looks good so far.

The nice thing about this system is that the cards don't have to be that balanced with each other. As a player I don't get to choose what cards I receive, only when I spend them. So if I got a card I don't think is that good...well, that's my card I'm going to try and find a way to make it useful.

 

[Nytmare]

The latest revision:

• Take an additional Move Action this round. You can run this round without incurring any penalties to attack or defend.
• Regain an expended Encounter Power.
• Regain an expended Daily Power after a short rest.
• Use an At-Will or Encounter Power in place of a Basic Attack
• An area or close attack does not hit one of your allies.
• An area or close attack does not hit one of your allies. The attack also misses every ally with an Action Point.
• Your successful attack deals 5 (this was originally 1 and I think a typo), 10, or 15 ongoing damage (save ends) Damage scales with tier.
• Reroll any one die and use the higher roll.
• Add 1d4 to a die roll, after it has been rolled. Add 1 to the result for every other Action Point the party has.
• Add 1 to a die roll, after it has been rolled, for every other Action Point that you and your allies have.
• Expend a healing surge on yourself or an an adjacent ally. That ally uses their own surge value.
• Treat an 18, or 19 on a d20 as a Natural 20.
• Target two adjacent creatures with an attack.
• Increase the area of an area of effect power by 1.
• Attempt a Stunt or use a Terrain Power with +5 to your d20 roll.
• Each ally gains a number of temporary hit points equal to the total number of Action Points the party currently has.
• Double the range of a non-melee attack.
• Make a successful opportunity attack against you miss.
• Take an additional Move Action this round, and add 1 to all of your defenses till the start of your next turn for every other Action Point that you and your allies have.

 

[Zinovia]

It could be fun. I came up with something similar based on the official 'loot' cards that Wizards does for LFR (I think it's for that). They're enjoyed by the players.

These aren't exactly what you're thinking of I think but they might give you some ideas - Key Our Cars » Blog Archive » Player Bonus Cards

These are very nice, thanks for the link.

I certainly want to do something to encourage players to think beyond the power cards, and do interesting things. There are some good ideas here.

 

[aco175]

This idea sound realy cool. I like the ideas about giving others bonuses, or maybe larger bonuses than you could give yourself. It seems that some may warrant a second ability becuase they might be limited in role. There was something mentioned about a bonus to atk of opportunity, where that might not come up all day for some members of the party.

Any thoughts about letting characters swap these out? I can kind of see both ways on this. It would help players use them and get the most out of them, but it would not lead to better roleplaying when everyong tries to find ways to use what they have.

 

[Nytmare]

I haven't tried any "one bonus for yourself, or a bigger bonus for your friends" cards yet. I got swept up with the "cards in your hand are worthwhile when someone else plays an action card" mechanic. My thought had been to make a stack of them, and to keep on revising and adding cards to it as we saw them in action.

As for a second role, they all have "Gain an extra move action, or..." as a base ability.

The idea of handing the players a stack after each encounter and letting them divy them out themselves was something I had originally planned on doing, we just haven't tried that out yet.

 

[aco175]

After reading with more time having gone by, I' m in favor of the idea but wondering if it would slow down the game with having another mechanic added to everything else. If it can be DM passive in the way that there is a pile of cards and players know to grab one after each encounter leaving the DM not to worry about them, that would be best.

My other thought on sharing them would be no at this time. Swapping them would lead to the DM needing to step in at times, like during combat or at the start of each day. I would rather keep it simple between the players.

Would having more bonuses like this affect the overall challenge of the encounter? Having a minimum of an extra move each encounter may lead to an advantage for the party. It might not be a big advantage, but some things like the wizard running away would be easier.