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.
I guess neither alternative exactly displays crystalline perfection. ;(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 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.
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.
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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 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 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.Whereas I'm on the verge of going back to AD&D (2nd ed).
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.
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.