New Action Point rules (help me create)

[Chronic Alcoholic]

I was thinking I could remake action points totally. I wanted to make it more relevant to the group.

The issue has been brought up before that it was more useful taking an extended rest after each encounter to regain the action point and dailies. I always felt action points were made to encourage players to keep on going.

Another problem is with giving away AP's for good roleplaying and such as I feel that might unbalance the amount of AP's.

I thought maybe I could split action points up. Maybe divide them by 3 so buying an extra action would cost 3 points. I might then also add other actions that cost less or more action points. I would have to remove the 1 action point per encounter rule and change the rate of gaining them.

I could say you start with 1 (maybe 2) after an extended rest and gain 1 after an encounter and 2 at milestones. This would make keep going instead of resting more interesting and also room for the DM to give away points as rewards.

Any ideas as to actions I could have and how many action points they should cost?

These are actions talked about in another thread

- The default: spend an action point for an extra action (once per encounter).
- Spend an Action Point to allow a re-roll of a d20 for any purpose.
- Spend an Action Point to allow to re-activate a daily power. This is pretty powerful so if allowed it should probably be something that can only be done once.
- Spend an Action Point to get a healing surge back.

 

[Sadrik]

An interesting notion but AP are written into a lot of different sections of the rule set and messing with them can cause a lot of unforseen ripples. Chiefly feats, should be looked at. There are several that key off of action point usage. Increasing the number you have increses the effectiveness of the feats maybe too much so, I dont know. Figuring out those ramifications would be a good thing to know, because I would like to mess with them in my own way as well...

"You gain certain benefits when you reach a milestone - when you complete two encounters without stopping for an extended rest. When you spend an action point, it’s gone, but you can gain more in two ways: by reaching a milestone or by taking an extended rest. Each time you reach a milestone, you gain an action point. After you take an extended rest, you lose any action points you haven’t spent, but you start fresh with 1 action point."

I could say you start with 1 (maybe 2) after an extended rest and gain 1 after an encounter and 2 at milestones. This would make keep going instead of resting more interesting and also room for the DM to give away points as rewards.

This is not too different from the standard rules. What you propose works well though. Alternatively, give two back after an encounter and 1 back after an extended rest. That would sure put the emphasis back on encounters!

 

[Alisair Longreach]

If you want to give your PCs more Action Points a simple house rule is to let the AP refresh at the start of every encounter.

PCs can use their AP once per encounter. It is simple, it is easy to remember and you can ignore Milestone accounting altogether if you also let your PCs use one Magic Item Daily Power once per encounter.

One disadvantage of this house is that it depowers Magic Rings and certain magic items from Adventurer's Vault and the 30th level ability of the Warmaster Epic Destiny in Martial Power.

I have two hacks for the Magic Ring problem. 1. Spend a healing surge instead of a milestone to increase the ring's power. 2. Spend an Action Point.

 

[Wraith Form]

If you want to give your PCs more Action Points a simple house rule is to let the AP refresh at the start of every encounter.

PCs can use their AP once per encounter. It is simple, it is easy to remember and you can ignore Milestone accounting altogether if you also let your PCs use one Magic Item Daily Power once per encounter.

One disadvantage of this house is that it depowers Magic Rings and certain magic items from Adventurer's Vault and the 30th level ability of the Warmaster Epic Destiny in Martial Power.

I have two hacks for the Magic Ring problem. 1. Spend a healing surge instead of a milestone to increase the ring's power. 2. Spend an Action Point.

^ This. A buddy of mine and I (co-DMing a game) thought this was the way to go.

 

[Nytmare]

I forget which thread we grabbed it out of, but we use:

• If you don't have any action points, you get 1 action point at the end of an encounter.
• Magic items that have an "after milestone" effect or recharge kick in after the third encounter in a day.

 

[Aramax]

As part of my "Don't change anything ,but add to it philosophy I added the following.
I give out action cards that have Different effects on them. You may spend 1 or 2 action points to get the listed effect and then turn the card back into the DM.you may activate it at anytime(based on the card effect)Normal action points are unchanged

 

[Nytmare]

I give out action cards that have Different effects on them.

I've always enjoyed that kind of dimension. Would you mind listing what your action cards do?