D&D (2024) Mike Mearls “…it’s now obvious how to live without Bonus Actions”' And 6th Edition When Players Ask

With all due respect to Mike Mearls, he is wrong. The action economy in 5th Edition is beautifully designed, and I wouldn't change a thing about it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sorlock quickening eldritch blast and combining bonus action attacks such as GWM cleave + PAM buttstrike ability.
The little I played of 4E and a lot more played of SWSE convinced me being able to swap actions is a bad idea. Bonus actions are not perfect but better than minor/swift actions imho.

A stationary monk using flurry of blow twice (6 aatacks a round at level 5) or flurry+dodge+standard action also seems good.

I must really be dense, because I don't see how some of those are possible or how they are different from what can already be done.


A sorlock can already quicken Eldritch blast and then cast eldritch blast again with their action. The only limit on bonus action spells is they can only be cast with cantrips, so a bonus action cantrip can be spammed.

The Great Weapon Cleave only works if you crit or kill an enemy. If you bonus action a strike with the 1d4 butt of a weapon, and then use your action to strike with the weapon itself using the cleave... how is that any different from using your action to attack and then bonus action strike



Looking through them again, you are talking about something that I am not.

You are talking about a turn that looks like Action+Bonus Action+Bonus Action. That has obvious problems.

I'm talking about a turn that looks like Bonus Action+Bonus Action. And I can't see a broken combo there, Flurrying Twice, even if you could, gives the same number of strikes as Attacking and Flurrying. Obviously Attacking and Flurrying Twice breaks things, but that is not what I'm looking at in any way.

 

[Dausuul]

I dont want move being turned into an action type again.

We like the "you have X movement, use it whenever you want" concept.

Agreed, abolishing the move action was one of 5E's big improvements.

 

[Salamandyr]

Interesting thought...

One could actually tie this in with a modified form of the initiative system Mearls debuted.

Each action has an initiative die associated with it, and you determine all the actions you want to take in a round, and then roll those dice. For extra complication, you could have each action take place on its initiative roll.

So someone who wanted to move, attack with his sword and again with his dagger, might roll d6 for the move, d8 for the sword and d6 for the dagger, attack on 9, lets say.

Or to get really complicated, someone rolls each die and acts on that number, moving on 3, attacking with the sword on 7 and attacking with the dagger on 9.

Wanna take more actions in a round? Just more initiative dice to roll. One would either need a hard cap for initiative (any actions above that line are lost), or some other way to limit number of actions (one can only attack one time with any weapon for instance).

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

At this point I'm not ready to agree with that mechanical analysis. Let's take your Bardic Inspiration example. Forcing Bards to expend a spell slot on every occasion that they want to inspire an ally profoundly reduces the number of times they can influence the narrative per day. And every time they do, it has to be two pronged: they either need to influence the narrative in two ways (the spell effect, the inspiration effect), or they throw away the spell.

I also wrote <<The ability could be written in such a way as to b compatible or not compatible with other actions like hiding, attacking, or extra object manipulation as desired.>> Key point: you shouldn't assume from what I wrote that there is a concrete proposal which makes spellcasting the ONLY way to inspire allies. Indeed, if you're going to assume anything, you should assume that the Bard has at least two choices: (1) cast a spell while inspiring others; (2) inspire others. There should not be any throwaway spells.

Mechanically, a structure like Bonus Actions that allows players to combine different effects in the same turn, flexibly, yields richer gameplay at lower design and learning cost. Once we start stitching effects together we pay a greater overhead for fewer usable cases. Where you say "lazy" design I would say "efficient" design. Also potentially more materially costly to players because the more each possible combination is separately cased, the more splatbooks you need to enumerate all the combinations.

That isn't really a statement about Bonus Actions: you're just saying you want extra actions to be orthogonal to each other, which is specifically the thing that I object to. 5E designers like to just slap "bonus action" on a thing to make them compatible from a gamist point of view (all consuming a shared resource though), without actually considering whether the actual actions are in fact compatible with each other. What you call "richer gameplay" I call "poorer gameplay." "Everything and the kitchen sink all plugged into the same power cord [bonus action]" isn't good design OR efficient design, it's just lazy design.

If combinations were considered separately you could have sensible combinations like Rogue/Shadow Monks who can Shadow Step and also Cunning Action (Hide) while they are doing so (try to tell me that doesn't make 100% logical sense), or Valor Bards who fight with two weapons while still inspiring their comrades, instead of being forced to use greatswords for the same effect. You're trying to paint that design work as pure waste, an unnecessary cost obviated by the existence of bonus actions--but I think the game would be better off if that design work had occurred.

Clearly you disagree.

 

[schnee]

This thread is fun, because I see my entire career as a designer flashing before me.

"Hey, I think we can make this thing simpler. I'll show a design later."

--

The replies - without even seeing the design:

"No, it's FINE as is!"

"I thought of the way I'd design it, and it's dumb, so your design is dumb too."

"Yeah, let's bring back the way we did it three versions ago. I'll conveniently forget all the reasoning and evidence we used to change away from that one, because I always liked it."

"Why wouldn't anyone use the one we have? It's the best possible. Don't bother."

"I'd totally make it simpler by (proceeds to spend half an hour explaining a way more complicated thing)."

--

 

[Chaosmancer]

I also wrote <<The ability could be written in such a way as to b compatible or not compatible with other actions like hiding, attacking, or extra object manipulation as desired.>> Key point: you shouldn't assume from what I wrote that there is a concrete proposal which makes spellcasting the ONLY way to inspire allies. Indeed, if you're going to assume anything, you should assume that the Bard has at least two choices: (1) cast a spell while inspiring others; (2) inspire others. There should not be any throwaway spells.



That isn't really a statement about Bonus Actions: you're just saying you want extra actions to be orthogonal to each other, which is specifically the thing that I object to. 5E designers like to just slap "bonus action" on a thing to make them compatible from a gamist point of view (all consuming a shared resource though), without actually considering whether the actual actions are in fact compatible with each other. What you call "richer gameplay" I call "poorer gameplay." "Everything and the kitchen sink all plugged into the same power cord [bonus action]" isn't good design OR efficient design, it's just lazy design.

If combinations were considered separately you could have sensible combinations like Rogue/Shadow Monks who can Shadow Step and also Cunning Action (Hide) while they are doing so (try to tell me that doesn't make 100% logical sense), or Valor Bards who fight with two weapons while still inspiring their comrades, instead of being forced to use greatswords for the same effect. You're trying to paint that design work as pure waste, an unnecessary cost obviated by the existence of bonus actions--but I think the game would be better off if that design work had occurred.

Clearly you disagree.

On Shadow Monk/Rogues: Away from my book, but they can already shadow step and hide. If shadow step is an action, they can cunning action hide, if it is a bonus action they can just use their action to hide.

What they cannot do is shadow step, attack and hide, or something similar that requires 3 separate actions.



And, just because you find that drinking a potion and inspiring someone is incompatible, doesn't mean the rest of us do. Taking only an action to drink, I imagine potions contain about as much liquid as a shot glass, actually, I'm cool with potions being a bonus action frankly, because that doesn't take that long to drink. So, hold the glass, shout "Fight on for Victory" and down the shot. Not incompatible for myself.

Now, TWF does seem to be a major problem in the action economy for a lot of people, but the more I see people talking about this issue, the more I wonder if it is really the only problem most people agree on, besides the "it's too much like a game" complaint which I... I just don't agree with.

We are playing a game, we have to make some concessions. And I think having things say "use a bonus action" is easier and flows better than having a lot of actions that are unique and break down to "do this thing and take a standard action". Also, a lot of things which are bonus actions are not powerful enough to make full actions as they are, like inspiration.

The design as it stands allows the player to make decisions on what actions are compatible for them, without the game designers writing it all out and then us saying "Why can't I shadow step and then pull the lever, shouldn't I be able to do that", "Well, I used my action to try and escape and failed, but that action wasn't tied to a special action like Inspire, so I guess my turn is over", and on and on. You can't write every possible interaction in, so leave it as a piece and let the players but them together.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I feel like the way 4E's action economy was broken down would fit 5E pretty well.

Instead of bonus actions, bring back Minor actions. Then allow trading actions down, but not up. For example, an action can be turned into either a move or a minor. A move can be turned into a minor. A minor cannot be turned into a move. A move cannot be turned into an action.

I think you may be letting some 4E conventions creep into your thinking about 5E if you assume you can't do this. In 4E, it wasn't an "action", it was a "standard action", which was a clearly separate category than "minor action". But in 5E, it's just an "action". By my reading, a "bonus action" is a type of "action", and can be performed whenever you could perform an "action". It simply has the the added property that it can be performed as a bonus on your turn on top of another action. There's no need for a rule explicitly allowing you to trade actions for bonus actions because the typology is different.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think you may be letting some 4E conventions creep into your thinking about 5E if you assume you can't do this. In 4E, it wasn't an "action", it was a "standard action", which was a clearly separate category than "minor action". But in 5E, it's just an "action". By my reading, a "bonus action" is a type of "action", and can be performed whenever you could perform an "action". It simply has the the added property that it can be performed as a bonus on your turn on top of another action. There's no need for a rule explicitly allowing you to trade actions for bonus actions because the typology is different.

Your reading is reasonable, but contrary to 5E rules, at least as expressed by the official WotC rules answerer, Jeremy Crawford, here on Twitter.

@JeremyECrawford hi! i have a question. can i use a bonus action as an actual action? like cast healing word as my action, or a barb rage?

@Lauciann No.

Yet another example of the kind of clunkiness Mearls apparently regrets in bonus actions.

 

[ad_hoc]

This thread is fun, because I see my entire career as a designer flashing before me.

"Hey, I think we can make this thing simpler. I'll show a design later."

Don't forget that he also announced that we're getting a new edition next month.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

That isn't really a statement about Bonus Actions: you're just saying you want extra actions to be orthogonal to each other, which is specifically the thing that I object to. 5E designers like to just slap "bonus action" on a thing to make them compatible from a gamist point of view (all consuming a shared resource though), without actually considering whether the actual actions are in fact compatible with each other. What you call "richer gameplay" I call "poorer gameplay." "Everything and the kitchen sink all plugged into the same power cord [bonus action]" isn't good design OR efficient design, it's just lazy design.

If combinations were considered separately you could have sensible combinations like Rogue/Shadow Monks who can Shadow Step and also Cunning Action (Hide) while they are doing so (try to tell me that doesn't make 100% logical sense), or Valor Bards who fight with two weapons while still inspiring their comrades, instead of being forced to use greatswords for the same effect. You're trying to paint that design work as pure waste, an unnecessary cost obviated by the existence of bonus actions--but I think the game would be better off if that design work had occurred.

Clearly you disagree.

The game would be worse off in at least two concrete ways.

First, it would shift a lot of the burden of figuring out whether a given action combination was legal to round-by-round rulings. Either the actions are described vaguely and the DM has to interpret them, or what's compatible with what is spelled out explicitly and the DM has to memorize them or look them up. Both ways, this slows down the game. This is not worth the price of verisimilitude in the same way that expansive weapon-vs-armor tables or hit location tables are not worth the price of verisimilitude. The bonus action is an acceptable abstraction which keeps the rules for what you can do on your turn clear and consistent.

Second, it would exacerbate the problem that Mearls perceived in the 4E action economy and seems to be trying very hard to avoid: players incentivized to get the most out of the action economy by cramming as many actions as they can into their turn, thus bogging down the game. With the bonus action, a player can do at most one extra thing. With what you propose, the player can do as many extra things as they can justify. If a valor bard can attack with his main hand, attack with his off hand, and inspire with his voice all at the same time, that tells other players, "You need to find something to be doing with your voice every turn or else you're missing out!" And what about the characters' feet? Surely they could find something to do with their feet as well. And so on.