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

Zardnaar · May 30, 2017

Kor said:
Indeed he is wrong... in fact I would greatly disagree with everything he has suggested lately. His Initiative system is a ridiculous idea -- taking us back in time where we have to pre-declare actions. 6th Edition? No... 5th is working perfectly fine thanks (with a little room for tweaking here or there). Bonus actions are also working fine. Maybe its time for Mike to retire because he has clearly lost touch with what makes the game great again.

He likes 2E and its how initiative used to work. A large part of rocket tag in modern D&D comes from the initiative system.

Its one thing I noticed playing the retroclones and AD&D again. Modern D&D heavily rewards 1st strike/nova abilities.

Enendill · May 30, 2017

What Mearls implies that bonus actions economy is a huge thing in 5e, especially in bigger levels, where a PC has a plethora of class options, spells, whatevers available. And this in turn means that a PC must choose what and what not to do as a bonus action.

This contradicts with basic aspects of 5e; ease of use and speed.

For me personally, this is not a bad thing; action economy is one factor that can help players make strategy in the game and I like that. But on the other hand it is not that cool from a designer's level to prepare class options that you know will contest each other on what will happen within each round.

Baumi · May 30, 2017

I often see Decision Paralysis in my groups do to Bonus Action, so I'm all for eliminating these. Combat would be far faster if you you just have one Action to think about. But as he said, it would be a massive overhaul, which is hard to do in this Edition.

Zardnaar · May 30, 2017

Enendill said:
What Mearls implies that bonus actions economy is a huge thing in 5e, especially in bigger levels, where a PC has a plethora of class options, spells, whatevers available. And this in turn means that a PC must choose what and what not to do as a bonus action.

This contradicts with basic aspects of 5e; ease of use and speed.

For me personally, this is not a bad thing; action economy is one factor that can help players make strategy in the game and I like that. But on the other hand it is not that cool from a designer's level to prepare class options that you know will contest each other on what will happen within each round.

This. I have seen newbs for example doing trap options tripping over to many bonus action options. The Monk class is also not very newb friendly. I had to break the ice on that one before the other players got the class.

The_Gunslinger658 · May 30, 2017

Wotc is a publishing company, so it is only natural that they have plans to put out a 6th edition. So now lets further split the hobby apart, we will have 1E, 2E, 3.5/ pathfinder, 4e (worst edition ever), 5E and now 6E. Not to my liking at all.

Mouseferatu · May 30, 2017

Guys, you did see that he specified there are no plans for 6E anytime soon, right?

Jhaelen · May 30, 2017

Desh-Rae-Halra said:
I'm ready and formally asking for 6th Edition

Ditto!

Ideally without Mr. Mearls at the helm.

Sands999 · May 30, 2017

Please DO NOT come out with another edition of D&D!!!!!!! That would infuriate me to no end!

Li Shenron · May 30, 2017

I don't have problems with the current action economy, it's a lot better than the overly complicated action economy of 3e and 4e, but I do agree that it could be even simpler without bonus actions.

Jester David said:
They pretty much only exist because, late in the playtest, they wanted a way to limit extra attacks granted by various classes.
They snuck back into the edition that way and got used for a whole bunch of extra stuff in the process.

My own feeling during the playtest was that the main motivation was "attack and cast a healing spell" for Clerics. There have always been a lot of people complaining about nobody wanting to play healers because to waste your turn healing someone else is not fun. Personally I think this is more often an imagined problem than a real one.

Mouseferatu · May 30, 2017

Li Shenron said:
Personally I think this is more often an imagined problem than a real one.

Not in my experience. I know several people who 1) play clerics now, who wouldn't prior to 4E, or 2) have always loved clerics, but were ready to abandon them prior to 4E, precisely because they were sick of spending so much of their time in combat healing and doing nothing else.