Do You Want Multiple Actions Per Turn or Not?

[GX.Sigma]

In my opinion, the most needlessly annoying part of 4e was that they were absolutely terrified of giving players additional actions. There were no extra attacks, no H&H, no summon spells (they later added summon spells, but you could only summon one creature at a time, and you had to spend your actions to make it do stuff). It was, in my opinion, dumb.

Can we please just not worry about extra actions in 5e? Especially on the monster side, for christ's sakes--an owlbear gets three attacks. That's just what owlbears do. What's wrong with that?

 

[Rune]

Extra attacks? I don't really care.

Extra actions, though? Oh yeah! Those are the engine that will help the Fighter be a stunt machine. And I want the fighter to be a stunt machine (almost as much as the monk should be).

I'd love to see the swashbuckling-style fighter dash up the stairs, leap onto the chandelier, swing across, and strike down a foe or two along the way.

I'd really like for the stalwart defender-type fighter to be able to get a last blow in on an enemy before running over to the cliff edge to help his ally climb back up.

It would be awesome if the alchoholic-berserker-fighter quaffed a bottle of liquor before charging a horde of goblins.

And if the leader-style fighter could bust a few heads while rallying the troops, that'd be nice, too.

As I see, it, the action surge mechanic and the ability-check mechanic go hand-in-hand.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

My preference (which I don't recommend for the core rules) is to breakdown the possible actions of a character in a single round into:

*** The Major Action: The main thing a character is trying to do in a round.
*** The Minor Action: The minor or secondary thing a character is trying to do in a round.
*** Swift Actions(one or more): The peripheral thing(s) that a character can do in a round. [Characters start with one swift action and as they become more skilful, accrue further swift actions.]
*** Free Actions: Minimal actions, a free action may be performed as part of any other action.

The player uses different d20 dice to represent each action, with the dice used up as the actions are expended.

Actions are broke down into:

* Actions: what the character does on their "turn" in terms of initiative.
* Reactions: what the character reacts to, and thus reactions are typically not performed on a character's "turn".

In this way, a character acts and interacts across a round in a more free-form manner. I think this would support a more advanced set of combat rules utilizing facing, active defenses and a more intense/believable set of combat decisions.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Yes. Multiple actions. Move and act. Interrupts. Held actions. All of it.

 

[Oni]

All I'm asking for is that characters don't immediately get a lot of standard actions per level-up. I'm saying that they are o.k. as long as both monsters and characters get 1 additional standard action every 5 levels.

To repeat, that would be 2 main weapon attacks and 3 off-hand weapon attacks per turn for the 20th level fighter max.

Or 2 claws, 2 bites and 1 tail slap for a 20th level dragon per turn.

If damage dice stayed at 1[w] then character nor dragon would do more than 5[w] damage in a single turn.

First of all this sounds like boring and needless symmetry. Why is a dragon held to the same standard as a fighter, or a ghost, or a hydra, they're all different and they should be treated differently. Secondly not every classes actions are worth the same thing, for instance fighters in past editions have tended to get more attacks whereas wizards have tended to get more powerful attacks as they go up in level. The wizard doesn't need more attacks, because he's coming at the action economy from a different direction, and as far as I'm concerned that's how it should be.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, and I'll keep saying it.

Classes should be different!

 

[Slander]

At the highest levels, I wouldn't want more than 6 sets of dice being routinely rolled by any one player in a full round (e.g. 3 attack & 3 damage rolls). Especially now that we have dis/advantage (which I like), you can't just roll a few d20s for attack all at once, you have to roll them in pairs.

I'm less concerned with how they end up organizing any other actions (move, minor, free, etc).

 

[1of3]

I'm in two threads arguing for the same thing but getting resistance. I don't know why since more than 1 standard action is already in the 5th edition play-test.

Maybe I can clear up, why you encounter disagreements about the term "action". That is because the term conflates two aspects of the matter. Those aspects are decision points and handling time.

How many decisions should a player make during his or her term? How complex should these decisions be? How long does it take to resolve them? You could say that an element of the rules is action-y, if most of these questions are answered high and positive.

Therefore Cleave is less action-y then Fighter's Surge, as one cannot just decide to cleave. Healing Word - as presented in the playtest - is less action-y than its predecessor in 4e, as it only combines with attacks and decision points are therefore reduced.

The only way to really get another action in the sense of having your full spectrum of decisions again, is as of now, Fighter's Surge. And Fighter's Surge is limited to a few times per intime day.


You are, it seems to me, focussing on "attack rolls" when you talk about actions. Several rolls obviously increase handling time of a rules element. It will be interesting to see how the team will keep this down on higher levels.

As for Two-Weapon fighting a simple solution might be to just roll another weapon damage die.

 

[ren1999]

Wow. O.k. in this thread many of you aren't completely disagreeing with me but want something more specific than just 5 maximum standard actions at 20th level.

Trigger/Reactions, Free Actions, Minor Actions and Standard Actions actually worked very well in our previous games. I would hate to see that go away.

Some of you are saying exactly what I want. I want a high level thief to be able to run up the side of a wall, jam a knife in the cap of a fool and flip over while throwing another knife in the fat belly of another fool. All this in the time duration of one turn. Players are going to be thinking about these actions before their turns. They're going to be ready and it isn't going to take a lot of time. Now low level characters are going to have to think about it longer and that is why they should start out with fewer actions.

If this thief can beat both his opponent's initiatives why can't he have the chance to kill both before they even draw their weapons?

Whatever you call it, we've got to allow for some acrobatics then an attack or 2. And if higher level characters are energetic, why not let them parry once in awhile.

We can have a good action economy. But we've got to think about this and come up with a simple to understand system that the majority can agree upon.

5 actions per turn is a little much, but remember that only a 20th level character or a monster with a challenge rating of 20 would be able to do this.

Solo monsters should be higher level than a single party member. They should get more actions because they are a higher level challenge.

Let's keep triggers. They're fun. I also enjoyed triggered actions when becoming bloodied. I hope 5th addition decides to include bloodied.

There are many things about the previous editions that I didn't like. But this action economy in both Pathfinder and 4th edition, I liked a lot. Either off-hand weapon or combined feats like Cleave were fun and they worked well. The reason I feel that a lot of these feats failed is that there were too many similar feats. They were confusing.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I´d rather have two standard actions later on than standard, minor, move....

minor actions in 4e are annoying. They seemed like a good idea, but they first were underused and later overused.
The game started with some classes, that had no minor action things. Which was good. Essential classes, though designed more flavourful, used minor actions to switch between stances etc.
The problem arised, that to get your character going, you needed minor actions to:
draw a weapon, activate an aura, activate a stance which resulted in characters, that needed a full round of minor actions to buff himself.

There may be room for minor actions... but I like a reasonable nuumber of free actions better. The 5e platest variant seems very good right now.

But two standard attacks later for the fighter? Why not.

 

[Li Shenron]

Generally speaking, I want 1 action per turn, except on very special abilities (e.g. fighter surge, haste spell...).

But I want to point out that multiple attacks is not exactly the same as multiple actions. Multiple attacks are less of an issue, so they can easily be in the game for me.

Maybe it can be discussed whether special attacks (trip, disarm, etc.) should still be replacing each attack, or should require their own action instead.