Mike Mearls and "Action Economy"

[Sunseeker]

These are...not the sort of comments I want to hear from people who design games.

 

[Tony Vargas]

When you take a look at what Mearls has said about BA and such, his suggestions and inklings were not to remove them, just repackage them. instead of Healing word being a BA that allows a cantrip there would have been a spell which had healing word healing and an attack.

Put another way, instead of giving you turns as "box of stuff you do" where you assemble/load the box up yourself from a lot of different parts - one action, one bonus action, one reaction - you would get a lot of (an awful awful lot of) pre-loaded boxes.

Want to healing word and stabilze? thats a new pre-loaded box.
Want to healing word and guidance? Thats another pre-loaded box.
etc etc etc

In other words, instead of selling you a kit you can make many many box-loads from... we will sell you a lot of boxes in a lot of different products.

Y'know, that's about what I got the impression bonus actions were meant to be. You take an action that entitles you to a bonus action. So you never have to 'decide what to do with you bonus action?' because it's, well, a bonus. They just didn't quite manage to phrase it that way.

Instead of Healing Word being a bonus action that limits what you can do with your action, it should have been an action that healed, and gave you a bonus action attack. That kinda thing.

Yeah, it's a bit limiting and unwieldy, but if you're going to address the complaint of too many action types and people dithering over what to do with their 'unused bonus action' every round, that's where you'd have to go...

 

[Kinematics]

Given some of the responses here, I think it's important to note that Mike was speaking in terms of design, not play. Players will often need to think of things in terms of action economy (though the less you need to think in that way, the better). However the designers should not fall into the trap of building the action economy. (Those who are in charge of balancing the game, like Jeremy Crawford, are likely to put more emphasis on that, but their job isn't the same as design.)

The designer should be focusing more on what the class/subclass/monster/whatever can do, not the action economy details of how it fits in with everything else. You can't always get away from it (eg: all the bonus action limitations on expanding Rogue), but it shouldn't be the focus of the design, because that leads to designing a bunch of mechanics rather than a class, where the most important point is making something that lets a player feel like they're their character.

So from the designer's perspective, yes, he's absolutely right. Based on the goals they've set for crafting 5E, the designers should be focused first and foremost on the "thematic" side of things, and should not be building for the sake of mechanics. That's not the same as saying that the action economy doesn't exist, or that it's not important in some aspects of gameplay, or that it's not important to other departments at WotC.

On the other hand, that's probably a bit of a weakness as well. Since the designers are trying to avoid the hard mechanics as much as possible when doing the design, they're likely to build stuff that's difficult to describe without something like, say, bonus actions. And then they have to justify it, and the mechanics section has to figure out how to fit it in, and then years down the line the designers realize that what they jury-rigged back in the day becomes something that trips them up now that so much more is hanging from those ropes.

So it's a double-edged sword. If they focus too much on the mechanics, the game becomes something that loses much of its flavor. If they don't truly consider the mechanics enough, though, they build something that doesn't quite fit right, and they have to work around from then on.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

I dislike Bonus Actions as well. I'd prefer a system where on your turn you just have one action and some movement.

I don't like the "act or move" idea that other systems use, because it generally means people never move their characters.

 

[5ekyu]

Y'know, that's about what I got the impression bonus actions were meant to be. You take an action that entitles you to a bonus action. So you never have to 'decide what to do with you bonus action?' because it's, well, a bonus. They just didn't quite manage to phrase it that way.

Instead of Healing Word being a bonus action that limits what you can do with your action, it should have been an action that healed, and gave you a bonus action attack. That kinda thing.

Yeah, it's a bit limiting and unwieldy, but if you're going to address the complaint of too many action types and people dithering over what to do with their 'unused bonus action' every round, that's where you'd have to go...

I disagree.

You have a light and a heavy.

The light version, has no bonus actions and lots fewer options and is specificalky intended for quick, fast play with new players or folks choosing to run fast and light.

You do not **need** CLW and healing word for a quick light fast game. You dont need lots of the different attack types etc.

But then you have the full monty heavy detail set of those who choose to want to run more complex tactical play **and** who can handle it.

Key is, a long list of a gazillion pre-loaded boxes does not end slow-choice-syndrome. It just chabges the scale of the choice.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Considering this and other statements, I think it's time that Mike steps down and Jeremy Crawford it promoted to head of D&D.

 

[Schmoe]

I don't get it. The notion of an action economy is fundamental in any turn-based system. What's wrong with that?

 

[5ekyu]

I don't get it. The notion of an action economy is fundamental in any turn-based system. What's wrong with that?

Agree... Honestly the design and play and mechanic and setting ***all*** need to be woven together at every stage of development... Like four tires of a car... Or else you likely wind up running your players off the road like the early Hudsons prototypes "design" did when they turned.

 

[MichaelSomething]

One of the reasons for bonus actions is so that healers can do something else besides heal during. Don't a lot of players find just healing during their turn boring?

 

[Schmoe]

Agree... Honestly the design and play and mechanic and setting ***all*** need to be woven together at every stage of development... Like four tires of a car... Or else you likely wind up running your players off the road like the early Hudsons prototypes "design" did when they turned.

Yeah. I mean, I could understand if he was saying that he didn't want the action economy to factor into explicit player choices, so maybe move away from things like Bonus Actions, Immediate Actions, Free Actions, Full round actions, etc. But that would be a conscious design decision for how the designers want the action economy to be reflected in the play of the game - you know, like the decisions and discussions that designers should be involved in.