D&D 5E [Ro3 4/24/2012] The Action Economy of D&D Next

[vagabundo]

Would you care to give some examples? I'm not familiar enough with Star Wars Saga to imagine what were the interesting uses for minor actions they have.

As a general rule, I'd rather see Minor Actions as part of the system right from the start. It should be trivially easy to convert them to free actions.

The two that spring to mind are Aim and Recover. You'll have to bare with me as I don't have my books in front of me but Aim is two minor actions, and allows you to avoid Cover when firing a ranged weapon, and Recover is three minor actions, and allows you to move up one state on the condition track.

In Saga if you are damaged more than your Damage Threshold value you move down the condition track. The track gives penalties to pretty much everything; defences, attacks, skill rolls, etc. There are four states of worsening condition until you are unconscious (-1,-2,-5,-10).

You can spend them across multiple rounds. So I could get hit hard and go down one on the condition track. On my turn I could Move to another location - maybe with cover - fire my blaster, with the CT penalty, and spend one minor starting the Recover action. Maybe the enemies miss me next round. On my go I can finish the Recover action by spending two minors, I've no penalty now, and fire my blaster.

Many of the talents/feats in Saga changed how these systems worked and generally made the whole thing very interesting as it gives players multiple ways of doing things and building characters.