Some Action Point Stuff.

[BrooklynKnight]

A friend of mine mentioned a new use for action points he made for his game. His original explination confused me untill i had him clarify. Then I took the liberty to try and word it better for him. This is the Action Point Usage he originally made.

"You may spend an action point to interupt an action preformed by someone else (at any time) and preform a move action of your own. By using this ability you lose your next full round action. You may still preform one free action on your initiative, but nothing greater. The use of this ability must be declared before any dice are rolled."

I was inspired to tweak his original idea and perhaps make it more balanced.
This is what I came up with.

"You may spend an action point during someone elses action to gain a move action of your own. To see who's action goes first you immediatly roll an "opposed" initiative check between everyone that acts on that initiave count. This ability may only be used once per round. You must declare this before any dice are rolled."

Then we started discussing action points as story awards in addition to gaining them per level.

Here is my "criteria" for giving someone an action point as an award.

Basically i require that they preform some heroic action without spending an action point. For example, they can do something that requires a series of skills, such as running up a wall to do a backflip to land behind someone so they can shoot them. (Climb and Jump and Tumble or any of those two followed by an attack.) Perhaps they dive in front of a bullet to take damage for someone else, or ride a motorcycle up a building stairwell and jump it across an alleyway. The action does not have to be in the span of one round but a series of actions. Typcally its up to the DM to decide when they've done something heroic enough to gain an action point.

And finally, it led me to thinking. Sometimes there are games that really are high octane action where players use many action points in a single session, and even in a single battle. So, in order to provide them with more points. (Lots more) I decided to write this feat.

High Octane Action (Initial)
Benefit: When taking this feat you receive 10 + 1/2 your level action points at each level. You receive 10 action points at 1'st level.
Normal: You receive 5 + 1/2 your level action points at each level. You receive 5 action points at 1'st level.
Special: This feat can only be taken at 1st level.

So, opinions? Comments?

 

[Basin?]

I think this is an interesting train of thought. Personally, I would keep XP as the sole reward for doing things "in game", but I might give out action points as rewards to people for bringing soda that night or writing a character background etc.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

I like to give awards that inspire creative roleplay and action rollplay. If you give out too much XP then they level to fast, and that becomes a problem. Thus action points are a great alternate reward.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

nobody else has anything to say?

 

[King of Old School]

Nothing substantive to add, but I really like this. I also like to bump up the AP allotment a bit. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the new AP feats and uses in Eberron.

KoOS

 

[BrooklynKnight]

Glad ya like my ideas. Its good to get comments like that too! :-D

 

[nobodez]

Unearthed Action Point Ideas

Well, i like the interuption idea, as well as the "High Octane" idea, and would like to suggest a few of the Unearthed Arcana AP ideas.

1) Activate Class Ability: You may spend an AP to gain an additional use of a class ability that can be used a specific number of times per day. For example, you can spend an AP to gain an additional use of the Dedicated talent Intuition.

2) Boost Defense: You may spend an AP to double the bonus granted by fighting defensively for one round (to +4 or +6 with 5 or more ranks in Tumble).

3) Stable: You may spend an AP to become stable at your current hit point total while dying.

These are just a few of the examples, with the rest of them being on pages 123 and 124 of Unearthed Arcana

 

[BrooklynKnight]

Already using those :-D

 

[Pierce]

At the beginning of each game session, everyone gets 2 poker chips. Whenever another player (or even the DM, for that matter) does something extraordinary, funny, dangerous or just plain cool, you can reward him with a chip. Once a player collects 5 chips, they can trade them in for an AP. This usually ends up granting one or two players with an extra AP each session.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

heh, cute method.