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.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I fundamentally don't understand this complaint. Like, at all. You're doing one thing on your turn, plus a discrete bonus thing. What more elegant way is there to frame that? Smashing together the two things into one "action" seems a lot more hacky and clunky to me.

I guess neither alternative exactly displays crystalline perfection. ;(

5e's action economy kinda shakes out to sorting actions into three buckets - OK, 6: move, action, bonus, object-interaction, just no action-economy 'cost' (Second Wind, for instance), and the off-turn Reaction (Ok and concentration is sorta another action type all by itself). What ends up critically important is not so much how many of each action you get in a round (1), but what all is in each bucket. So if two completely different and un-related things both use a bonus action, you can't do both of them in the same turn, but if one is an object-interaction and the other an action, you can do them simultaneously (for instance). Thus you have issues like 'needing too many reactions' because you have several things to do that all consume that action-economy resource, while maybe having nothing much to do with you bonus action, say.

It's not terribly intuitive what the critical resource is, and it will vary with the build - you can even optimize around getting the most of each available action if you want, I suppose.

The complexity is ultimately similar to what was in 4e (Standard, Move, Minor, Free, OA, Immediate, not-an-action) or even 3e (Full, Standard, Partial, Move, 5'-step, Swift, Free, Immediate, AoO, not an action), just some of it's brushed into corners where you may not notice it at first. Even so, it's at least a defined, not entirely inconsistent sort of complexity.

But, ultimately, it shakes out to the important question not being 'which action takes longer/is more important' but 'do two things take the same action or not.' If you have two option that take an action, you can't do them both, if you have two options that take a bonus action you can't do them both - but you can do one from column A and one from column B. 'Opportunity' cost, I suppose, is more important than 'action economy' cost. In contrast to 3e/4e where you could generally trade actions up and down the scale, or even start an action in one round and finish it in the next, making the 'economic cost' more critical.
FWIW.

Anyway, going to the defined-combo-action instead of Action + Bonus model would just further limit options. Instead of being able to take a bonus action with one of several Actions or an action with one of several bonus actions, you take a specific special Action that does a typical action thing, plus the bonus action thing. It moves the complexity around, because you probably end up with a lot of such defined actions. Instead of one Cunning Action class ability, you have an Attack-and-Disengage-Cunningly Ability, and an Attack-and-Hide-Cunningly Ability, abd a Dash-and-Dash-again-Cunningly Ability, etc...

 

[Sunseeker]

I think the main reason for the bonus action is that it helps to limit what extra things you can do. If you had a bunch of different freebies that triggered off the same thing (like making an attack), you might end up with people trying to use all of them at once. Making them bonus actions, and specifying that you can only take one bonus action per turn, stops that sort of thing from happening.

I enjoyed them too, but I can also see why they removed them as default.

I suppose but I would think a lot of that could be handled with mutually-exclusive conditionals. IE: you can't Fury of Blows unless you strike unarmed (or with a Monk weapon). Great Weapon Master on the other hand wouldn't give you the extra attack unless you hit with a two-handed martial weapon.

 

[SkidAce]

Currently you can preform any standard action and perform a Cunning Action as a bonus action. Your method would exclude everything but an attack. Your bonus action spell would exclude everything but an attack or cantrip. If you don't want to reduce the players options you still need standard actions.

So something like "When you use Cunning Action you may use the Hide, Disengage or Use an Object action in addition to a second standard action." Or something like that.

But really why bother? This will just lead to a thousand and one "special actions" when bonus actions already account for all of those one thousand and one cases.

And are bonus actions really that hard? Or is it all the limitations that are stacked on top of them. Really it is stupid simple. You get one bonus action. Can you use Cunning Action and Second Wind on the same turn? No, they are both bonus actions.

You get a bonus attack from two weapon fighting and a bonus attack from flurry of blows. They are both bonus actions. You can only use one. Second Wind is also a bonus action. You only have one bonus action per turn. So you can not use Second Wind and get a bonus attack from either two weapon fighting or flurry of blows. Or use any other bonus action. Because you can only use one per turn. Honestly I just don't comprehend how it could get any simpler.

You cast a bonus action spell and still have your regular action. So go head and take any standard action in addition to it... Except another standard spell, you can only cast a cantrip if you use a bonus action spell. Okay this is a corner case and can be hard to remember and I get that. But the problem is not the bonus action. It is the limit on additional spell casting.

This sums up my thoughts as well.

 

[happyhermit]

...
My prediction is that 5th will hit a point where that is deemed necessary earlier in its life cycle than the previous two editions. ...

I think your prediction has already been proven wrong though, or will be very shortly. Give or take a few months depending on when editions were officially deemed released we are already at or past the point in the life cycle that 3.5 and essentials were released let alone announced. It could possibly be close I suppose but I don't see how it could be earlier.

Now, I suppose it's possible that the upcoming book could qualify as something along the line of a .5. If that happens it will probably be time for me and mine to check out of D&D mainstream at least for awhile.

 

[Mercurius]

I really wouldn't worry about a new edition coming out anytime soon, and I don't think anything's "in the air" (naught [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]). BUT...while I haven't worked in game design, I imagine that as soon as you publish a new edition, you start a new folder called "Ideas for the Next Edition," and that over three plus years, things start adding up. So if you're Mearls, of course you're thinking about the next edition, at least on the back burner. But there are a lot of steps between here and there, like the alleged Unearthed Arcana book, for one.

I could see something like:
2014: 5E core rules
2017/18: first expansion - planes/psionics/odds and ends
2021/22: second expansion - epic play
2024: 50th Anniversary Edition

 

[Dausuul]

*duplicate post*

 

[Dausuul]

I fundamentally don't understand this complaint. Like, at all. You're doing one thing on your turn, plus a discrete bonus thing. What more elegant way is there to frame that? Smashing together the two things into one "action" seems a lot more hacky and clunky to me. Cunning Action would need to read something like, "As an action, you can attack, dodge, disengage, dash, cast a spell, or use an item, and then also dodge, disengage, or dash as part of the same action". And I'm probably forgetting a couple of standard actions rogues like to do in combination with Cunning Action, all of which are cleanly allowed when you just make Cunning Action a bonus action.

I'm not going to try to defend the specifics of Mearls's idea, because he's hardly given us any; that's why I noted Cunning Action and bonus action spells as examples of where I would like to see his proposal fleshed out. I do think that the change would have to go farther than just "mash bonus actions into regular actions"--some things, like Cunning Action, would probably have to be rethought from the ground up.

But when I say bonus actions are hacky and clunky, that's not in comparison to some theoretical alternative. That's looking at them on their own merits. Bonus actions are hacky and clunky because they create complexity, confuse new/casual players, and cause unexpected breakage in all sorts of places. Berserker barbarian who wields an axe in each hand? Sorry, your 3rd-level berserker path feature is now 100% useless. If you cast a bonus action spell, and Saruvoldeminster counterspells it, you can't counterspell back... but when Saruvoldeminster casts a spell on his turn, you can counterspell that. Try explaining that one to a casual player. You can stack a bonus action with a regular action, but not another bonus action. It's an endless accumulation of these little wonky bits, none of which is a deal-breaker in itself, but collectively they're a headache.

So, to reiterate: Bonus actions are hacky and clunky and should be tolerated only so long as no one has a better idea. The question now is whether Mearls's idea can be fleshed out into something better, or whether it's a dead end. It may turn out to be the latter, but people are way too quick to throw up their hands and say it'll never work. I for one want to see where it can lead.

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

Whereas I'm on the verge of going back to AD&D (2nd ed).

I'm torn between playing 5E with a bunch of stuff from prior editions (except 4th, which I don't own) or playing PF/3x and importing what I want from 5E and pre-3E.

I really think 5E is winning the fight, in my mind at this moment.

6E would have to be practically perfect for me to consider it. I tend to favor odd editions, so 7E probably has a greater chance of acceptance from me... though I do own quite a bit of 2E books.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I suppose but I would think a lot of that could be handled with mutually-exclusive conditionals. IE: you can't Fury of Blows unless you strike unarmed (or with a Monk weapon). Great Weapon Master on the other hand wouldn't give you the extra attack unless you hit with a two-handed martial weapon.

And then the Kensei can use both because he can wield two-handed martial weapons (longswords) and make them monk weapons.

No matter how mutually exclusive you try and make things, it's going to run into problems, until you end up with class abilities that read "Do this thing and a standard action" which then new players are going to ask what a standard action is and you're going to need a list of them handy because half the time they do something the ability is "Do this and a standard action"

One of the more common things that I forget when running the game? The fact that my players don't know they can take the Dodge action. After a few years most people have gotten dash and disengage figured out, but monk's are the only ones who generally even know the dodge action is present in the game.

That's because people read their class abilities, not the section in the back that lists the standard actions that anyone can take. So, I think we'd end up with a bigger problem than we have now if the main concern is player confusion.

 

[guachi]

If you cast a bonus action spell, and Saruvoldeminster counterspells it, you can't counterspell back... but when Saruvoldeminster casts a spell on his turn, you can counterspell that. Try explaining that one to a casual player.

I would never explain that to a casual player because it's wrong.

I get my reaction back on my turn. If I cast a spell and it gets countered I can use my reaction to cast counter spell.