D&D 5E House ruling away bonus actions?

[Quickleaf]

I know that they're interwoven into 5th edition, but I'd like to do away with bonus actions – or significantly reduce their restrictions – to allow for more creative play & intermixing of class features, spells, feats, etc. I have a rough draft house rule I'm considering, and was wondering if there are strong arguments against implementing it? I'll also include two related house rules, for context. Thanks!

The proposed house rule...

Unlimited Bonus Actions
Instead of being limited to one bonus action per turn, you can use any number of bonus actions so long as they have different sources and different effects. Here are the new guidelines:

• If the source of the Bonus Action presents multiple options (e.g. rogue’s Cunning Action or monk’s Ki), you can only use one of those per turn.
• You can only gain one extra Bonus Action attack per turn, regardless of the sources (also see Free Two-Weapon Fighting).
• You can only cast one Bonus Action spell per turn (but see Unlimited Spellcasting).

Additional/supplemental house rules...

Free Two-Weapon Fighting
When you take the Attack action with a Light melee weapon in one hand, as part of that Action you can attack with a Light melee that you're holding in your other hand. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative. If either weapon has the Thrown property, you can throw the weapon, instead of making a melee attack with it.

Unlimited Spellcasting
I’ve deleted the rule that “You can't cast another spell during the same turn you cast a spell as a bonus action, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action.” Instead, like in the D&D 2024 playtest, there are specific house-ruled limits built into the fighter’s Action Surge and sorcerer’s Quicken Spell.

 

[NotAYakk]

I have gone over the rules to do this once.

Martial Arts deserves a similar treatment to TWF: then downgrade flurry to 1 extra attack. As it stands, twf monk gets twf, attack, flurry x2 at level 2 for 4 attacks, or 3 attack twf ma at level 1.

Dual wielding spears with twf feat is 3 attacks at level 1 (pam bonus, attack, twf attack).

 

[ichabod]

I feel this could be abused. First of all, rogue/wizard with two weapon fighting could be pretty nasty. Second of all, most classes give a bonus action for something, as I learned in a campaign where you couldn't take more than six levels in any one class. Someone could multi-class a few times and build up a huge action economy.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Doable, and would probably make for a good variation, but it's gonna be a lot of work.

I have given this some thought in the past, and I came up with three categories of bonus actions (though some BAs might not fit any category):

1. Additional attacks. The obvious one are two-weapon fighting, martial arts, and polearm master, but stuff like the free attacks on a crit from greatweapon fighting or a berzerker's bonus attack would fall into this group.

My general answer is: always-on versions all fall under two-weapon fighting, which usually caps at one additional attack per action, but is part of the action. Polearm master just lets you dual-wield both ends of the weapon, martial arts lets you dual-wield fists (requires two hands) etc. Limited-use stuff is usually free within limits: the bonus attack for berzerkers just happens when they attack, etc.

2. Activations. Stuff like rage, hex, igniting a flame tongue... most of these are boring action taxes IMO so I'd just have them activate as free actions when the right action is taken (ie when you attack, you can enter a rage.)

3. Quick actions. This includes most bonus action spells, and they're tricky: they need to be adjusted to either a free action or a full action, and may require additional edits to make them work. Is Bardic Inspiration worth an action? If not, should it be free, should it be buffed (give dice to up to three allies) or should it be an action with a rider sub-action (give a die and cast a cantrip or make an attack depending on college)? But you gotta do this for every bonus action feature or spell.

Just covering the PHB will be many hours of design work.

 

[Quickleaf]

I feel this could be abused. First of all, rogue/wizard with two weapon fighting could be pretty nasty. Second of all, most classes give a bonus action for something, as I learned in a campaign where you couldn't take more than six levels in any one class. Someone could multi-class a few times and build up a huge action economy.

Yeah, this is one of my main reasons for hesitation. Unusual question, but do you think there's a good systemic/mechanical way to discourage this? For example, taxing 1 level per class multi-classed into, or restricting to max of 3 multi-classes? Or is it the kind of thing that would just be better handled as a table convo "hey, we're trying this thing, it has an exploit, don't go nuts on the multiclassing please"?

 

[Quickleaf]

Doable, and would probably make for a good variation, but it's gonna be a lot of work.

I have given this some thought in the past, and I came up with three categories of bonus actions (though some BAs might not fit any category):

1. Additional attacks. The obvious one are two-weapon fighting, martial arts, and polearm master, but stuff like the free attacks on a crit from greatweapon fighting or a berzerker's bonus attack would fall into this group.

My general answer is: always-on versions all fall under two-weapon fighting, which usually caps at one additional attack per action, but is part of the action. Polearm master just lets you dual-wield both ends of the weapon, martial arts lets you dual-wield fists (requires two hands) etc. Limited-use stuff is usually free within limits: the bonus attack for berzerkers just happens when they attack, etc.

Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines.

2. Activations. Stuff like rage, hex, igniting a flame tongue... most of these are boring action taxes IMO so I'd just have them activate as free actions when the right action is taken (ie when you attack, you can enter a rage.)

Yeah, there is a ton of this... for example in RAW a warlock cannot in the same turn cast Hex and then use the Maddening Hex invocation. This is the sort of needless bookkeeping I want to get rid of, and I've ended up in the same place as you.

3. Quick actions. This includes most bonus action spells, and they're tricky: they need to be adjusted to either a free action or a full action, and may require additional edits to make them work. Is Bardic Inspiration worth an action? If not, should it be free, should it be buffed (give dice to up to three allies) or should it be an action with a rider sub-action (give a die and cast a cantrip or make an attack depending on college)? But you gotta do this for every bonus action feature or spell.

Just covering the PHB will be many hours of design work.

Yeah, definitely. I won't be able to exhaustive review, but at this point I've scanned bonus action spells and I'm mostly confident that a blanket "only one bonus action spell per turn" covers any potential issues. Yeah, there may be a little more damage output on certain triggers (e.g. Holy Weapon, then Great Weapon Master felling a creature allowing an additional attack ...which benefits from Holy Weapon), but nothing I've seen so far is that egregious.

 

[FrogReaver]

My first thought is a Paladin can now blow all the slots on smite spells for an even greater nova than divine smite.

 

[Clint_L]

Seems like you're adding complexity and opening the door to some really unbalanced options. But as long as you're prepared, I hope it works out.

 

[ichabod]

Yeah, this is one of my main reasons for hesitation. Unusual question, but do you think there's a good systemic/mechanical way to discourage this? For example, taxing 1 level per class multi-classed into, or restricting to max of 3 multi-classes? Or is it the kind of thing that would just be better handled as a table convo "hey, we're trying this thing, it has an exploit, don't go nuts on the multiclassing please"?

I think you'd have to ban multi-classing. I mean, war domain cleric and rogue? Attack, twf attack, bonus action attack, healing word, disengage/dash? At 3rd level? And how would you treat spiritual weapon? Is that limited by the one bonus action attack rule?

 

[Distracted DM]

I recall Mike Mearls commenting once that he wasn't happy with bonus actions, that he thought they could've folded the stuff that you did with them into the action economy as part of actions etc. Something like "there's no reason that attacking with an off-hand weapon can't be something that you can do as part of your action."
So you're not alone in thinking about nixing them from 5e!