D&D General Redesigning DnD 5e with no Bonus Actions

[Weiley31]

You guys need to follow Mearls patreon so you can see the actual design instead of speculating about things he is actively trying to solve.

Let's look at @mearls new designs.

Each Class has a class aciton, like a Fighter Action or a Cleric Action. These actions are actually menus.

The Fighter action may look something like

• Make an attack
• Make an ability check
• Use an item

And you pick two of these options.

If something were to modify this, say a Paladin's smite, it joins the menu.

+ Paladin's Smite. When you take your Paladin action, you can spend a spell slot to gain the following option: Make a special attack. Hit: Deal a bonus number of d8 radiant damage dice equal to the level of the spell slot you spent on the smite.

Note Mearls doesn't have this exact option, I created one so as to keep his Patreon content on his Patreon.

The idea is that your Menu expands, you gain different Menus, and sometimes you gain a rider to Menu options instead of a brand new Menu option. So Dual Wielding would be either an option under a menu or a special Dual Wielding Action: Make an attack with a weapon in your mainhand and a weapon in your offhand. The offhand attack doesn't add your Ability Score modifier to the damage roll.

The idea is to have easy buttons and then buttons that access action pools for combat. It would, ideally, make things easier for a player to navigate and easier to design new features in this system.

As somebody whose played his fair share of Final Fantasy and other turned based RPGs back in the day, this visual in my head/brain pleases me.

 

[Steampunkette]

Specifically, he doesn't want people who are multiclassed to do things from both classes in the same turn.

Which is certainly a valid opinion to have... but I think it's bad design.

Playing half your character every other turn just doesn't feel very interesting to me. The Eldritch Knight gets to use a cantrip -and- make a melee attack as a bonus action so that you can do both. So you can "Be" both a spellcaster and a warrior at the same time.

I think that's an important class fantasy to enable, rather than trying to slap people in a "One or the other this turn!" box.

I guess the big difference is that Mearls sees issues and problems that I don't. That might be because I'm not as experienced a designer as he is... or it might just be different preferences for character design and balance.

 

[Shardstone]

Specifically, he doesn't want people who are multiclassed to do things from both classes in the same turn.

Which is certainly a valid opinion to have... but I think it's bad design.

View attachment 391017

Playing half your character every other turn just doesn't feel very interesting to me. The Eldritch Knight gets to use a cantrip -and- make a melee attack as a bonus action so that you can do both. So you can "Be" both a spellcaster and a warrior at the same time.

I think that's an important class fantasy to enable, rather than trying to slap people in a "One or the other this turn!" box.

I guess the big difference is that Mearls sees issues and problems that I don't. That might be because I'm not as experienced a designer as he is... or it might just be different preferences for character design and balance.

E Knight would be a Fighter action to attack and cast an E knight cantrip. Easy.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Eh... Mike Mearls is entitled to his opinion.

I like bonus actions as a designer because it's another very simple lever to play with when designing character classes, feats, spells, etc.

Move and Swing is... y'know. Fine, I guess. Gives everyone very little options on how to spend their turn but it would certainly be faster. But with things to do that are a -third- kind of thing? Well now you can have a dual-wielding Bladelock that has to choose whether to Misty Step or go for an off-hand attack to finish off a low HP enemy or try to avoid the retaliation that might kill them.

It's such a -little- thing and it makes a lot of impact.

I suppose I wouldn't mind a 3-action system where moving is just another action you can take and each melee attack is just another action. But with it being fully interchangeable some granularity is lost, to me.

Anyway... I disagree with the assertion.

I think there's a strong bias in most design that favors complexity. More decision points, more granularity, more control, more options. 3e and 4e D&D probably show the apex of this, and it's probably not a coincidence that this is when bonus action (and reaction) options were at their highest. So, I'm in favor of the instinct to resist the complexity that I see in Mearls's thoughts here. It's a good instinct, I think (for D&D, anyway). I'm not convinced there's something inherently valuable about doing a third thing in a turn where you're already doing two things, in having an additional decision point.

It's also why I'm a little skeptical of his fix being "bigger actions." Though I kind of like his specific examples, there's a real risk of actions being spell-ified too strictly ("I use my Sneak Attack" is different from "I cast Magic Missile" how, exactly?). Bonus actions help break up the flow of a turn a little bit, and give some dynamism that bigger actions don't do.

I'd be more in favor of just...not replacing them with anything.

And I've come to believe that multiclassing is one of the biggest bugbears of d20 fantasy. So much of the design of the game is around preventing exploitative multiclassing combos. The benefit of multiclassing is that designer-y bias of more decision points, more granularity, more control, more options. But it'd be better to give the Fighter 12 subclasses that all represent flavors of multiclass (Fighter + Artificer = "Forgemaster: I make magical weapons," Fighter + Barbarian = "Primal Knight: I don't wear armor, and have more HP, and can survive shirtless in a blizzard.", etc.) then to deal with trying to somehow control the interaction between Rage and Extra Attack in every case.

 

[Horwath]

But it'd be better to give the Fighter 12 subclasses that all represent flavors of multiclass (Fighter + Artificer = "Forgemaster: I make magical weapons," Fighter + Barbarian = "Primal Knight: I don't wear armor, and have more HP, and can survive shirtless in a blizzard.", etc.) then to deal with trying to somehow control the interaction between Rage and Extra Attack in every case.

no thanks, if we need 12+ subclasses for each class then we better get rid of class system.

just have:

Warrior: no spells
Gish: 1/2 caster
Adept: 2/3rd caster
Mage: full caster

then just add a feat or two per level and let everyone have their own idea what that class should looks like.

PHB can come with dozen of so pre-selected feats a guidebook for n00bs.

 

[Horwath]

You guys need to follow Mearls patreon so you can see the actual design instead of speculating about things he is actively trying to solve.

Let's look at @mearls new designs.

Each Class has a class aciton, like a Fighter Action or a Cleric Action. These actions are actually menus.

The Fighter action may look something like

• Make an attack
• Make an ability check
• Use an item

And you pick two of these options.

If something were to modify this, say a Paladin's smite, it joins the menu.

+ Paladin's Smite. When you take your Paladin action, you can spend a spell slot to gain the following option: Make a special attack. Hit: Deal a bonus number of d8 radiant damage dice equal to the level of the spell slot you spent on the smite.

Note Mearls doesn't have this exact option, I created one so as to keep his Patreon content on his Patreon.

The idea is that your Menu expands, you gain different Menus, and sometimes you gain a rider to Menu options instead of a brand new Menu option. So Dual Wielding would be either an option under a menu or a special Dual Wielding Action: Make an attack with a weapon in your mainhand and a weapon in your offhand. The offhand attack doesn't add your Ability Score modifier to the damage roll.

The idea is to have easy buttons and then buttons that access action pools for combat. It would, ideally, make things easier for a player to navigate and easier to design new features in this system.

reading this, I now understand how and why Twilight cleric, new CME and Ranger's "capstone" ended up in the final products.

 

[Horwath]

This means the "Used to be Bonus Action spells abilities" always have to be used before another action. That might be ok for effects that are intended to boost your next attack, that is quite restrictive and limits tactics for any other Bonus Action-style actions. For example:

So you can't attack someone and then Misty Step? Not interested.

sure, spells can be written that you can combine them with certain actions and perform them either before or after casting the spell.

But, I do agree that Bonus action are a good idea, they may need to be refined more.

this was just and example how to work without them in D&D game.

 

[Shardstone]

reading this, I now understand how and why Twilight cleric, new CME and Ranger's "capstone" ended up in the final products.

Elaborate por favor.

 

[Steampunkette]

E Knight would be a Fighter action to attack and cast an E knight cantrip. Easy.

So if Spell+Attack on the same turn isn't a problem, why is it a problem for a Fighter-Wizard that they need their actions split to "Fighter Action" and "Wizard Action" with no overlap?

 

[I'm A Banana]

no thanks, if we need 12+ subclasses for each class then we better get rid of class system.

just have:

Warrior: no spells
Gish: 1/2 caster
Adept: 2/3rd caster
Mage: full caster

then just add a feat or two per level and let everyone have their own idea what that class should looks like.

PHB can come with dozen of so pre-selected feats a guidebook for n00bs.

I don't think it's really a need. You could probably get away with combining the Big 4 with each other, and even that has some work that's already done for you (EK = Fighter + Wizard, Ranger = Fighter + Druid, Paladin = Fighter + Cleric, Bard or Arcane Trickster = Rogue + Wizard, etc.)

Having a subclass that evokes another class's vibe isn't a great reason to abandon class entirely. Conclusion don't really follow from the evidence, there.