Standard and Full Actions, really necessary?

[Immortal Sun]

To cut right to the chase, I'm wondering what the impacts of removing "full actions" on the game actually are? Effectively treating movement like its treated in 5E as just "this thing you can do" that isn't it's own thing it's just part of your turn.

The background: I took over running a campaign from another DM and he had some crazy ideas about attacks.
A "Standard" Action looked much like a Full Action, you got a number of attacks equal to your BAB/5, maximum 5. The terrifying part was that he also applied this to spells. You could cast a number of spells equal to your BAB/5, maximum 5.
A "Full" Action was worse. You got a number of "Standard" attacks, which we generally referred to as an "attack rotation" equal to your BAB/5. So....if you were a fighter 15, taking a full attack, you got 3 attacks at each tier of BAB, 15/10/5. Don't even get me started on how badly clerics broke this system, I played one in it. I regularly took 10-minute turns and it wasn't due to slowness, I could just do that much.

So I've been weaning the other players off of this insanity slowly and despite the grunts and grumbles of not being walking nuclear submarines with first-strike capabilities they have generally accepted the results. Largely because I built bad-guys who played by the same rules. The bad guys went first. Once. Two party members died before his turn was over. The party then generally agreed we needed less MAD and more START treaties.

But I've reached a point where I've effectively gotten them back down to standard 3.5 turn setup and immediately ran into the "movement is it's own move action" issue. And I don't like it. So I'm considering making it like 5E. Movement is just something you have available to you. You can make all the attacks allowed by your class BAB on a Standard. Spells still take the full requisite action they list. Everyone gets 1 minor and 1 free.

Thoughts? Experiences?

 

[Celebrim]

But I've reached a point where I've effectively gotten them back down to standard 3.5 turn setup and immediately ran into the "movement is it's own move action" issue. And I don't like it. So I'm considering making it like 5E. Movement is just something you have available to you. You can make all the attacks allowed by your class BAB on a Standard. Spells still take the full requisite action they list. Everyone gets 1 minor and 1 free.

Thoughts? Experiences?

Glad to hear you are restoring sanity to your game. Yes, often the way to restore sanity is for players to play by the rules they claim that they want. One problem D&D has always had was that offense tends to great excel defense, to the point you can get into situations where the average combat lasts less than one round.

As for your experiment, you are going to be trading off good and bad things. I don't know of a good way to handle the problem. Fundamentally, the 3.X system is turn based while trying to simulate a non-turn based event. There is no perfect solution to that problem. You could break the turns down into very small pieces ('segments' or 'impulses') and force players to trade off bursts of action over the course of the turn, but that attempt to adhere to realism results in a game that is too complex to really enjoy playing. (But coming from the situation that they actually seemed to like, with players taking 10 minute actions during their turn, that might not be true.)

At low levels, the 3.5 movement system works just fine. Most of the time, a player isn't giving up very much to move and take a standard action compared to a full attack action. It's only at high levels of play - say 11th level or higher - that this is an issue. Combat tends to be reasonably fluid in my experience through the first 10 levels. It's only as you lose more and more iterative attacks at higher levels that the game tends to punish you for moving.

I have never played 3.5 at high level. I play a game that levels up fairly slowly, so that leveling up every six months is eventually the norm. This keeps things in a sweet spot before the problems of 6th level spells and the like really take over the game. In that, I'm not really able to tell you whether I'm good with high level play by the RAW. I had my own particular problems I considered more pressing - the 5' step.

The intention of the 5' step was to keep movement going during melee combat, with players repositioning themselves strategically as the fight went on. In practice, it rarely gets used for that and instead gets used to abuse the turn based representation of the action, specifically to step out of melee to allow you to make all of your actions unmolested. That was the biggest problem I had with RAW. By the RAW, archers and spellcasters tended to be more powerful than melee characters, certainly once tactics were put into the equation, but in theory the rules seemed to propose balance in that if you tried such actions when it melee you'd be subject to additional attacks. In practice, the 5' step allows archers and spellcasters to step out of melee to do whatever action they like without drawing attacks of opportunity. In my opinion, this is the biggest movement related balance/theme issue you'll run into, and my solutions to keep people stuck to a melee foe were fairly extreme:

1) No 'partial' withdraw action. Withdraw only as a full round action.
2) Five foot steps only did not draw an attack of opportunity if, after you stepped into the new square you were threatening any target that had originally threatened you. While this does mean that a wizard with a staff can do this sort of withdraw from melee, I was OK with that thematically. What it does prevent is an archer doing a 5' step and then doing a full attack action with a bow against a target he'd just been fighting.
3) Increased numbers of feats for martial classes. For example, my variant fighter got not 11 bonus feats, but 17 - plus a handful of class abilities.

The idea behind #3 in part was that a fighter that wanted mobility could take feats that provided for mobility. For example, I had a lot of feats that allowed additional movement between or after attacks, or which compensated a fighter for not getting a full attack (extra attacks during a charge, extra damage from a charge, bonus damage to an attack if you'd moved through a square the opponent threatened, ect.) when it wasn't open to him, or which allowed a fighter to respond to movement as an immediate action with movement of his own. For example, homebrew feats like 'press the attack' lets you move 5' towards anyone that just moved away from you, 'tornado attack' let you move up to your movement rate before making an attack on every foe in reach, and 'avalanche attack' lets you move 5' after each successful attack provided you continue in a straight line.

It's not perfect. While I've evolved the number of combat maneuvers available to a class, I really would like at some point to develop a system that gives characters with above a certain number of BAB automatic access to improved combat maneuvers (the ones that let you for example, bull rush without always drawing an attack of opportunity) to encourage characters in combat to use battlefield control as it is available to them instead of just making straight attacks, without having to spend a feat to make such actions regularly worthwhile. And I'd like to unify my own system with the Pathfinder system, which has cleaner combat maneuver language and some good ideas of its own.

One minor and one free that appears in later editions offers a really clean action economy, but it will take a lot of reworking because the 3.X system never was built to support minor actions. I think you'd be better off avoiding that language if your goal is a simple tweak of the system, and instead look into universal combat maneuver options. What do you intend to have them do with those minor actions anyway?

Before I try to offer further advice, can I ask you what it is that you don't like above movement being its own action? What specific circumstances annoy you? What level are you playing at currently that its a problem, and can you fix it by giving them more combat options for different sorts of full attack actions, either by feats or just making them freely available?

 

[Greenfield]

Hmm.

On the general theme of turn-based action v realism, reality is continuous motion, with no synchronization even implied. But I don't know of any RPG system that can emulate that. They're all turn based.

The best way to emulate reality would be wit, let's call them micro-turns. It takes one micro-turn to move five feet. Spells have a casting time expressed in micro-turns. It takes a micro-turn to draw an arrow, and another to fire it. Drawing a light blade is a micro-turn. A long sword takes two, a great sword or other two-handed weapon takes three.

Pick how many micro-turns you have in a round, and see how it works. Twelve would seem to match standard D&D, at least in terms of movement. Increase the number, on a per-character basis, as they advance in levels.

What you'll get is pretty much what you have now, but twelve times slower, and a hundred times more frustrating for the caster who has to sit on his hands for six times around the table because his spell takes that long to cast. In theory this finer granularity will allow a more flexible use of time, and emulate the complexity of real world, non-synchronous action. In practice people will take just as long on a micro-turn as they do now, and complain at how little they can accomplish.

Right now D&D 3.5 has two micro-turns per round, with the limit that you can only cast a spell or attack once. If we expressed that as saying that an attack action/sequence took four seconds and movement took two, it would enforce that within the proposed mechanics. Movement could be tripled with a full round move, but other than that it ends up working the same.

Withdrawal isn't bad the way it is. I might limit the distance for a "partial withdrawal" to half normal, since in theory you're at least starting the move as backing away, ready to dodge or parry an attack.

As for the old Archer v Swordsman debate: In 3.0 Archers were more powerful than melee fighters: You could stack magic bows and magic ammunition. Wouldn't be bad if the magic on a bow gave accuracy only and the magic on arrows gave damage only. Right now there's almost no reason for magic arrows to exist: I can spend a lot of money to get 50 magic arrows, good for 50 shots, or spend the same money to get a magic bow, good for an unlimited number of shots.

In 3.5, things were better balanced. Magic bow and magic arrows don't stack, and finding a magic bow not only with the abilities you like but also with your particular strength bonus is tough.

Melee fighters add one stat, Strength, to their attack and damage rolls. Archers need good numbers in two stats, Dexterity *and* Strength. Dex lets them hit, and Strength (with the right weapon) adds to damage.

Archer's only advantage is that they don't have to move up to an opponent, so they get full attack actions more often. But the situation you described, the archer stepping back and unloading, doesn't have that advantage. And if the melee fighter has any brains, the first thing he does is Sunder the bow. You don't need the Improved Sunder feat to do that either: Sunder attempts normally draw an Attack of Opportunity from the defender, unless the attacker has the feat. But Bows (and other ranged weapons) don't get any Attacks of Opportunity.

So melee character closes, and archer is unarmed, and potentially out a huge amount of wealth. Also, they're now unarmed against a heavy hitter.

Also, bows only Crit' on a natural 20. Longswords have twice as many chances to crit', and Rapiers have three times as much. Advantage clearly to the swordsman.

On the balance per level thing: As levels increase fighter types in general become less and less important. Additionally, contests between Wizard types become "Rocket Tag": Whoever shoots first wins. A high level Wiz' can throw some damage spells that don't allow a Save, and/or do enough damage to drop a comparable character (with D4 per level of hit points) whether they Save or not. Empowered Fireball, for example.

Two 9th level Wiz types. That's 9D4 of hit points, plus CON. Average 33 hit points (Max the first level and roll 2.5 fr the rest, presuming a 12 or 13 CON.) 42 points if they have a 14 CON.

Wizard throws a 9 D6 Fireball, averaging 31.5 of damage. Empowered, add another 16. That's 47.5, which is one dead WIZ, if he fails the throw. If the caster has a Rod of Maximize, Lesser, the damage is 54, which is even more over the top.

Rocket tag: I win initiative, I win the battle.

The game balance is off at 9th, and gets even more off as the levels ascend. Attempts to "fix" this in games like Pathfinder actually made it worse. Everyone gets more Feats and more hit points, but the classes and spells still advance at the same rate. That is, the higher level spells are still just as proportionally more powerful with levels. To actually deal with the balance issue you need to either write less effective spells at high levels, or raise the spell levels for damage causing spells. If Empowered Fireball isn't available for another level or two, the defender will have more hit points and a better chance of surviving long enough to return fire.

And fighter types still get left behind, but not as much.

D&D 3.0 and 3.5 weren't properly play tested at levels over ten, and Pathfinder's authors have acknowledged that they never play tested for game balance at all.

One way I've found to keep fighter types relevant longer was to change iterative attack progression to BAB over four, instead of BAB over five. They get their second attack a level earlier, and their third attack two levels earlier. That tips their power curve upward slightly and lets them stay in the game a bit longer.

Adding bonus feats for fighters might help, but they get 17 feats or so over 20 levels now. And combat classes other than Fighter get left in the dirt even faster.

Paladins get some neat magic, but not much and not very powerful stuff. In a straight up fight the Fighter out classes him all the way. Ranger the same.

Rangers get some neat combat abilities with levels, and they do happen to match some of the available Fighter bonus feats. That means that a Fighter could match most of the Ranger class abilities by dedicating the right feats to it. What they can't match is the skills, the Favored Enemy and the Animal Companion. Magic for the Ranger is minor, and comes late. Two good Saves is nice as well, so Ranger is a viable alternative to Fighter. Almost.

Monks are a MAD class (Multi Attribute Dependent) The key to being happy with a Monk is to realize and accept that, barring nuclear stats, you won't be able to fully realize all of the class potential. You have to either select areas of strength, or be mediocre at everything. So some Monks will exploit class features that are Strength dependent, others might specialize in Dex or Wisdom based class features.

Looked at in a positive light, it means that no two Monks need have the same style. Seen through an average player's eyes, they have to accept and choose where their Monk is going to suck.

I've seen some who pushed Wisdom and Dex, so they were AC monsters. Others pushed Strength and Con, so they could dish out and take heavy damage. Other combinations give different advantages, but nobody's going to have it all. Barring nuclear stats, that is.

Back on topic though, I find the 3.*/Pathfinder editions to be my own favorites (D&D more than Pathfinder). The skills systems allow for a good, comfortable granularity in areas of non-combat specialty that 4 and 5 are missing, and cross-classing and prestige classes give opportunities to fine tune their career development.

An important and often overlooked rule however is that Prestige classes are always at the DM's discretion. A good DM will head off efforts to tweak out a combat god.

 

[Immortal Sun]

Before I try to offer further advice, can I ask you what it is that you don't like above movement being its own action? What specific circumstances annoy you? What level are you playing at currently that its a problem, and can you fix it by giving them more combat options for different sorts of full attack actions, either by feats or just making them freely available?

That, generally speaking, it exacerbates the martial/magical discrepancy by forcing martial to sacrifice attacks (a potent class feature) in exchange for movement (something not particularly special). We're currently at 15th level, that point where "hit it with a stick" becomes an increasingly less useful option and magic becomes a more a universal answer to everything.

People aren't really taking advantage of the movement options available to them, so I don't know if this would truly help, but I noticed several times I had to stop a player and say "no, you moved, you only get 1 attack" which made me feel dirty. When I went back and looked at 5E and my experiences there I often said "Wait a sec, people can move around freely in this edition and it has no apparent impact on the power or lack of power of multiple attacks, why not do that in 3.5 too?"

I don't have a problem giving out feats, I usually prefer to give out feats in place of magical treasure.

I would like players to generally feel more mobile than they currently are. I'm not sure if it's actually bothering them at all though, so I plan to go over it all with them before next session, make sure everyone is on the same track.

The only thing that really comes to mind are charge effects, which are "full actions" but I don't see that as a complicated problem to solve, a charge now just lets you move an additional distance equal to your speed and then you can use whatever amount of your normal movement before or after it.

I'm trying to find some happy medium between freeing players up and also locking them down.

 

[Celebrim]

That, generally speaking, it exacerbates the martial/magical discrepancy by forcing martial to sacrifice attacks (a potent class feature) in exchange for movement (something not particularly special). We're currently at 15th level, that point where "hit it with a stick" becomes an increasingly less useful option and magic becomes a more a universal answer to everything.

Oh that. Yeah, you aren't even going to touch that with this change. You need to make a much bigger set of changes.

The most effective one that has worked for me is no longer increasing the DC of the spell's saving throw with the level of the spell. That in and of itself does so much to bring balance to things, because it brings spellcaster's back to the problem they faced in 1e where eventually most things reliably made their saving throw. It does wonders to reduce save or suck problems, and it balances direct damage reasonably well as well.

There are a lot of other changes you need make to bring that under control, including rewriting a lot of spells to have less absolute pass/fail effects and more quantifiable effects, increasing the tier of the martial classes like rogue and fighter and decreasing the tier of cleric and druid, but those are complex changes. If you are just looking for one, nerf spellcaster DC.

I don't have a problem giving out feats, I usually prefer to give out feats in place of magical treasure.

That's an interesting approach. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but it does deal with the Christmas tree problem.

I'm trying to find some happy medium between freeing players up and also locking them down.

If your problem is spellcaster/non-spellcaster balance rather than simply wanting fights to be more tactical, I'd attack the problem from completely different directions. For the purposes of balancing spellcaster/non-spellcaster, it's actually as I indicated above more important to lock spellcasters down.

One thing to keep in mind in comparing your 3.X experiences to your 5e experiences is that monsters in 5e have far more hit points, and save or suck is far less effective. So 5e monsters have to be whittled down, something not generally true of 3.X. I can give you rules for bumping up the 3.X hit points to a more reasonable level but unless you also nerf save or suck that won't help your problems.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

On the general theme of turn-based action v realism, reality is continuous motion, with no synchronization even implied. But I don't know of any RPG system that can emulate that. They're all turn based.

Hackmaster and Aces & Eights are less turn based. In these games, combat time starts counting up from zero, and each action takes a set amount if time. Characters start their action at time X and resolve it when it finishes at time Y. Movement doesn't take up an action, but applies difficulty modifiers to actions and position is tracked continuously. It is pretty complex.

 

[Greenfield]

Interesting. I thought Hackmaster was a spoof/rehash of 1st Ed. D&D

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I think it was originally conceptualized that way, and it is pretty clear that it takes a lot of its inspiration from AD&D, and that it doesn't take itself too seriously, but there is a lot of game in it.

 

[Celebrim]

Hackmaster and Aces & Eights are less turn based. In these games, combat time starts counting up from zero, and each action takes a set amount if time. Characters start their action at time X and resolve it when it finishes at time Y. Movement doesn't take up an action, but applies difficulty modifiers to actions and position is tracked continuously. It is pretty complex.

If I was going with real time simulation of movement within a turn, I'd use something like the 'impulse' system in Star Fleet Battles, where your movement was evenly distributed across a turn. You'd have to make a completely new method of determining what drew an attack of opportunity from movement though to apply this to melee combat, otherwise faster creatures could always evade without penalty.

Exalted is a hybrid 'segment' system and 'round' system, not as turn based as D&D but not as segment based as Hackmaster or A&8's. For that matter, AD&D 1e is slightly more segment based (in that they exist and actions can start in one segment and in a different one) than 3.X is.

 

[Water Bob]

@the OP

A 3E Combat round is only 6 seconds long. You've only got time to do so much within that period.

The default is attack once and move. That's your Standard Action plus Move Action.



Now, there are VARIANTS to the standard combat round.

You want to attack more than once? Fine. Give up the Move and use all of your allotted time attacking. Full Action.

You want to move farther than normal? You want to run? Fine. Give up the Standard Action and use two Move actions.





To me, the rules as written are very straightforward and playable. I don't really see what the issue is with movement that you allude to in the OP.





To break it all down...

You've got 6 seconds to act.

You can...


Standard Action + Move Action (or the reverse)

Move Action + Move Action (all movement during the round)

Full Action (no movement* during the round as the character does something else)




Notes:
*A character can always take his 5' Step.

The three action labels (Standard, Move, Full) are important because they tell you how much time they take up during the round. And, sometimes, there are restrictions or variants. A low level character who pulls his weapon from its sheath is using a Move Action. This tells the DM that the character can give up moving but still attack. He can pull the weapon and attack in the same round, but in doing so, he can't move. If his weapon was readied, he could move because he wouldn't have to pull and ready it.

More experienced characters with BAB +1 or better no longer have that restriction. Pulling the weapon is a Free Action, not taking any more time. Thus, a character with BAB +1 or better can pull his weapon, attack, and still move.