D&D 5E Deleting Bonus Actions

[NotAYakk]

Each player has 3-4 bonus actions as options probably. A few more if a spell caster maybe. You write them on your character sheet with a B next to them and pick one. This is not rocket science.

As has been said in other threads. 12 year olds successfully play this game. Suggesting that bonus actions are complicated is exaggeration. 3e Pathfinder lasted 15 years with swift actions. They’re the same thing - except every class has them in some form.

So, you don't experience the problem this thread is addressing? Or do you not care?

Do you believe that other people do?

Because I see it happening in games I play. Bonus action economy is not worth it.

I am sure they could spend more timenlearnjng D&D. Hell I did as a kid.

But I want to play with these people even if they don't study the PHB in their spare time.

 

[ECMO3]

Can't cast somatic spells while dual-wielding,

What do you mean by daul wielding? Are you talking about TWF or just wielding a weapon in each hand? RAW Nothing prevents a character from wielding a weapon in each hand on the same turn he uses a BA spell. RAW - A character that starts a turn with a weapon in each hand can attack (with one weapon or with both if he has extra attack) and then drop (or sheath) one of them and cast a BA spell. If he starts with only one weapon in a hand he can cast the spell and then draw a weapon into his free hand and attack with either or both weapons. So RAW there is nothing in the rules to prevent this. The only thing it prevents is TWF and casting a BA spell and that is based entirely on action economy and has nothing to do with ths somatic components (TWF uses the BA).

If you house rule this essentially you are bringing back bonus actions but just call them something else. You are ruling if you use a TWF "non-bonus action" you can not cast an "instantaneous non-bonus action" spell .... but at the same time you can still use cunning action, rage, bladesong or martial arts, which makes no sense.

Finally, I want to clarify that any character with extra attack can already "dual wield" for free, they just don't get a third attack through TWF. RAW a 5th-level fighter (any 5th level fighter) can attack with a longsword in one hand and a battle axe in another, nothing in the rules prevents that. The only thing the rules address is the extra attack you can get through TWF (if you meet the other limitations). It is the extra attack on top of the normal attacks that uses the bonus action and this is the reason it is a bonus action.

Advantages of TWF:

1. You can go DEX-based, and DEX is the god stat. IMO, if TWF can hit as hard as GW, there's almost no point for STR fighters to even exist.
2. If STR-based, you can open combat with an extra handaxe attack.

TWF can already hit as hard as a a two handed attacker.

levels 1-4: 2d6+8 (15 average) > 2d6+4 (12ave)
levels 5+: 3d6+15 (26 ave) = 4d6+10 (26 ave)
These numbers include the GWF fighting style rerolling 1s and 2s. They do not include criticals.

If he is a Barbarian in rage he actually does more with TWF (after the first turn). Discounting racial abilities and feats, you have to be 11th level fighter, and fighter only before someone with a greatsword will beat someone with 2 shortswords in terms of at-will damage.

I disagree that this is a balance issue. If Blade Song hadn't been a bonus action from publication time, and Shadow Blade popped up in round 1

People on this board already complain that a bladesinger is OP, with it written as is, and said so before shadowblade was even published, so I am pretty certain many would be agaisnt anything making them more powerful.

 

[jmartkdr2]

So, you don't experience the problem this thread is addressing? Or do you not care?

Do you believe that other people do?

Because I see it happening in games I play. Bonus action economy is not worth it.

I am sure they could spend more timenlearnjng D&D. Hell I did as a kid.

But I want to play with these people even if they don't study the PHB in their spare time.

I'm sorry to say: I don't think you could remove bonus actions from 5e as it is now without making the game more complicated and less balanced. They're baked in. Plus that means your players would need to read twice as many rules: the printed and the house.

You could get away with ignoring the janky interactions (ie bonus action spells and other spells in the same turn) - most of the 'worst' offenders are not, in fact, big deals unless you run really short days, and if those are problematic excessive bonus actions aren't your biggest problem anyways.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Each player has 3-4 bonus actions as options probably. A few more if a spell caster maybe. You write them on your character sheet with a B next to them and pick one. This is not rocket science.

As has been said in other threads. 12 year olds successfully play this game. Suggesting that bonus actions are complicated is exaggeration. 3e Pathfinder lasted 15 years with swift actions. They’re the same thing - except every class has them in some form.

Suggesting that what I'm saying is that people can't successfully play 5e due to bonus actions goes well beyond exaggeration. I can see this isn't going to be a productive discussion.

 

[fearsomepirate]

If you house rule this essentially you are bringing back bonus actions but just call them something else. You are ruling if you use a TWF "non-bonus action" you can not cast an "instantaneous non-bonus action" spell .... but at the same time you can still use cunning action, rage, bladesong or martial arts, which makes no sense.

My point is you described a sequence of events that is objectively worse than using a greatsword. You got +0 damage in exchange for having to track your 1 free Interact With Object (oops, there's something else that isn't a bonus action or action) and your dropped weapon. Not to mention that you need two magic weapons instead of one. I guess you could take the DW feat...but greatsword + GWM is still better.

I made note of this, because so far, all objection that letting dual-wielding warriors always make all their attacks breaks the game really is long on claims and short on evidence.

Your math is all wrong precisely because you ignore critical hits, and the average of 4d6+10 rerolled is 26.68, not 26. Fix the math, an GW >= TWF except for the very, very end of a barbarian's career, where it's ahead by about 1%. And for a barbarian, missing that bonus attack in round 1 is a big deal...that's 25% of the total combat. Also, might want to think about what the GWM feat does vs DW.

People on this board already complain that a bladesinger is OP, with it written as is, and said so before shadowblade was even published, so I am pretty certain many would be agaisnt anything making them more powerful.

I'm cool with deleting the bladesinger from existence.

 

[Undrave]

The worst part of bonus actions, aside from Two-weapon fighting, was the fiddly "you don't have a bonus action unless an ability gives you one" language. They were trying so hard to avoid the standard, move, minor economy from 3/4 that they confused a ton of my players.

Agreed, that language was just dumb. they also wanted to avoid being able to downgrade your standard action into a bonus action, despite keeping the Dash action essentially trading your Standard for a Move. An Action is just a type of ressource you spend to do a thing. It's like having different colors of mana in Magic with each 'thing' you can do a card with different colored costs.

Pretending its not like that is just trying to be different without actually putting in the design work to be different. It's basically impossible to avoid the concept of 'action ecomony', and if you limit everybody to ONE thing then certain things just won't ever happen. It's why healing on a bonus action even exist: so people would actually heal others and still get to DO something.

Such a hack sounds nice, but I'd worry that with the current rules for attack accuracy, weapon-users would have too many turns where they make one roll, nothing happen, and then they have to wait ten minutes to go again.

(Spellcaster turns just take longer and are more likely to do something, so I don't see this rule speeding up play all that much by itself.)

You'd need to add degrees of success to the basic attack roll.

Good ol' 'On a miss' effects I could see stuff like "on a miss you don't provoke opportunity attacks from the target until the end of the turn" or "the target moves 5 feet away from you" or "the target has disadvantage attacking other creatures within 5 feet of you until your next turn" and you pick ONE of those when you get your extra attack feature. Roll 1 attack roll for your attack action and compare to the AC of all the targets, but you roll dmg separately.

Yeah but that's been a thing since 3e and feats, builds and powers are something we are stuck with now for D&D going forward even if Feats are called out as optional rules so simplifying the action economy to two actions is about the best option because it eliminates the need to hunt for "bonus action" specifically.

Why are you blaming feats for something that exists in the game even without feats? Almost every class has a bonus action they can take, with spellcasters getting multiple choices. That's before we get to feat.

What's with all the "BOOH I hate 'builds'!" thing going around recently?! What even IS a 'build' according to you? What would you prefer people do? Just not have choice at level up? Or just pick random non-synergetic option just to make you feel better??

 

[teitan]

Why are you blaming feats for something that exists in the game even without feats? Almost every class has a bonus action they can take, with spellcasters getting multiple choices. That's before we get to feat.

What's with all the "BOOH I hate 'builds'!" thing going around recently?! What even IS a 'build' according to you? What would you prefer people do? Just not have choice at level up? Or just pick random non-synergetic option just to make you feel better??

Why you implying motivation to me when I was being constructive? Pinpointing me out because you got a hair in your butt isn't cool. All I was saying is it's been a thing since 3e, analysis paralysis, learn to understand context and work from there mmkay?

 

[Undrave]

Why you implying motivation to me when I was being constructive? Pinpointing me out because you got a hair in your butt isn't cool. All I was saying is it's been a thing since 3e, analysis paralysis, learn to understand context and work from there mmkay?

You could have just said "since 3e", you didn't need to bring up the 'feat' part... Oh wait... no... I get it, you meant to group "feats, builds and power" together right? as in "Feats, power and builds are a thing we are stuck with since 3e"? Oooh I totally misread the placement of those commas! Well that's on me...

Sorry for coming off too agressive or snarky... For what it's worth I'd actually like to know your definition of 'builds'.

And I also agree with you on the way to simplify the action economy being to just be 'two actions' and not have different classifications. Tryinganything else would just require way more work than a simple homebrew fix should cover.

 

[teitan]

Depends on the person how builds is defined honestly. Personally I don't like having to plot out a character level by level to get to a point where I can do that ONE thing really well (ala 3e) or to avoid "feat taxes" ala 4e. It also depends on the game, Mutants & Mastermind? Champions? All about how you build the character but usually when people talk about "builds", they are talking about optimization that usually results in non-optimal characters in 3e and 5e (not PF1 though, they found a pretty good workaround with Archetypes). What I like is for my players to be able to create the character they want whether they want feats or not and to have fun. Choose a class and race at 1st level, choose that subclass at 3rd and then if they want feats at those levels they can choose a feat or the take the ability boost and it not impact how they play their character. As a DM I actually prefer lighter games because in my experience lighter games allow for the character to breathe more and encourage players to try more things because games with "builds" as their emphasis tend to be very narrow in what a character can do without feats etc. so that each player can shine in their chosen "thing". For me it's more about character than numbers on a piece of paper. 5E is the perfect inbetween for me when it comes to characters and what my players want to play from simple to complex with feat progression planned out though I frown on multiclassing because usually in higher levels multiclass characters fall behind.

My go to game though is rapidly become Dungeon Crawl Classics for the D&D experience.

 

[ECMO3]

So, you don't experience the problem this thread is addressing? Or do you not care?

Do you believe that other people do?

Because I see it happening in games I play. Bonus action economy is not worth it.

I am sure they could spend more timenlearnjng D&D. Hell I did as a kid.

But I want to play with these people even if they don't study the PHB in their spare time.

The solution to this is to play characters without a lot of BA options. be a barbarian that uses a greatsword and only takes ASIs. He has one bonus action - Rage, which will never compete with another. Play a wizard and take no bonus action spells.

This is hardly a good reason because things like spell casting, slots, battlemaster maneuvers etc are far more complicated. Further if you build a character with a lot of BA options and take away the bonus action economy, there will be a heck of a lot more confusion about how it all works together because the rules in the player handbook will nto be applicable.

Unless you throw up your hands and say you can do every single bonus action - yes you can attack, attack with TWF, use martial arts, take another BA attack as a war cleric, use PAM for an attack, use cunning action, control your mage hand, go into bladesong, go into rage and cast healing word - The only way this will not be confusing is if you open up the game and say "yes you can do all this in one turn" any other answer and you will have to make a whole slew of house rules that will be more complicated.