D&D 5E The Economy of Actions in 5e

[variant]

I didn't mind the 3.5e standard, move, swift and free actions. I see no reason to move away from them. Swift actions were relatively rare, while most people simply used the standard and move.

 

[AeroDm]

I think 'standard-move-minor' is a good baseline but my issue is with implying a hierarchy of value to each of those actions. Pretty quick, designers get itchy and start developing neat tricks for 'lesser' actions. A few books later, and the economy of actions became the arbitrage of actions in an escalating arms race.

Right now, the action economy is in actuality a standard (3 units of action), move (2 units of action), and minor (1 unit of action). Designers let you spend those units of actions in different ways. I'd prefer to see them move towards three distinct actions that actually do different things and are not interchangeable.

 

[kevtar]

I think 'standard-move-minor' is a good baseline but my issue is with implying a hierarchy of value to each of those actions. Pretty quick, designers get itchy and start developing neat tricks for 'lesser' actions. A few books later, and the economy of actions became the arbitrage of actions in an escalating arms race.

Right now, the action economy is in actuality a standard (3 units of action), move (2 units of action), and minor (1 unit of action). Designers let you spend those units of actions in different ways. I'd prefer to see them move towards three distinct actions that actually do different things and are not interchangeable.

I'd like to know more of what you mean by "units of action."

 

[Tony Vargas]

Actions are much less defined. In our 1st edition game experience, our game play is "fast and light" - combat happens quickly, players cycle through their turns easily and there isn't a lot of tactical thinking going on (yes, we do use minis). This has it's pros and cons.

In a sense, you're already playing 5e. What little we got to hear about the 5e demos paints it as a very DM-driven system. Not a lot of system, with the DM filling things in with his best judgement.

1e AD&D did not have a 'fast and light' combat system, unless you ignored a lot of rules - which almost everyone did. 5e sounds like it's going to default to not having many rules and letting the DM handle adjudicating things. Which'll be fine for experienced DMs, but might discourage newer players from getting behind the screen.

Another side of this is player dependent. In 4e, a player who is unfamiliar with the rules can ask how something works and get a codified answer straight from the rules. Can I move up to the door, draw my sword, open the door, and charge? No, because that's 4 actions. Cut and dried. Ask a 1e DM that and some might say yes and others no. Some players don't feel the need to ask how something works, they just say they do it.

In 1e, that was encouraged. The DM and player were both told that the player tells the DM what he'll do, and the DM tells him how long it'll take, even if it's more than one round. So a player might say, "I jump over the table, up end it to use as cover, take the two flasks of oil out of my pack, make molotovs out of them, take one each in hand, stand up, shout "burn baby burn!" and throw them at the orcs!" That's legit. It might take 3 or 4 rounds, but it's a legitimate action declaration.

How should actions be handled in 5e?

I'm very leery of pushing things to 'optional' status. You rarely see games with lots of optional rules played in anything other than two ways: all options used or 'default.' Default will see a lot of play, if it closes too many doors it'll put off more experienced players. Anything-goes will see a lot of use. If a character that doesn't avail itself of every option isn't viable along side those that do, those games will be for elite 'system masters,' only, and will tend to put off more casual players.

Whatever actions the game uses, they all need to be useable in the default game. They may not all need to be spelled out, but they should all be useable.

For instance, in the basic games actions might be:

Standard: You can attack with a weapon, cast a spell, or CHARGE!

Move: You can stand up or move your speed or stand up if prone.

Minor: You can open a door, draw a weapon, or pick up, stow or retrieve an item.

Other: Your DM will let you know other things your character may be able to do on his turn or between his turns. For instance, when an enemy runs away on his turn, your DM may give you an opportunity to attack him as he flees.

A player who's accustomed to that could play at a table with other players who use OAs and interrupts and not be entirely confused or ineffectual.


In other words, the complete 'action economy' needs to be present in the basic game, it just doesn't need to be detailed or meticulously developed.

 

[kevtar]

1e AD&D did not have a 'fast and light' combat system, unless you ignored a lot of rules - which almost everyone did.

EDIT: That's certainly the case. The game I'm running now is very similar to the game I played in the early 80s. Our combats ignore morale and some of the more, minute aspects of the combat process. So our D&D experience certainly may not be a universal experience. We simply do the following:

1.) Determine surprise (when appropriate)
2.) Declare actions
3.) Roll initiative
4.) Resolve actions (and, admittedly, I've used a more 3.5/4e approach in adjudicating certain actions rather than using the 1st edition AD&D rules, e.g. grappling, pummeling, etc.)
5.) Roll initiative, etc...

We leave out things like determining distance (it's self evident with the minis etc...), morale checks (I'll determine when the monsters cut-out), and other details (like pummeling, parrying, etc...). Apart from those, I'm not sure what other rules we're ignoring, lol. I'll have to break out the DMG again. This campaign is my first non-4e campaign since 2008, so although I really enjoyed about 90% of 4e, the feel of this kind of combat (and just play in general) is very "fast and light." After returning to 1e AD&D and thinking about the 4e gameplay, things like "immediate interrupts and reactions" really stilted combat. Things flow much more smoothly with our current interpretation of 1e AD&D.

I enjoy this style of play, but I've gotten comfortable with the systemized "Standard, Move, and Minor" - so it's a little weird at first. If 5e is truly "going back to basic(s)" (sorry, couldn't pass up the pun), then I'm ok with that as long as they unify and simplify it conceptually. For example, in 3.5, the D20 was the unifying element - everything was determined by the D20 (well, not everything, but you get the idea). Something like that is appealing to me. No crazy "pummeling tables" and a laundry list of procedures. Keep it simple with ability checks and player/DM cooperation.

On a side note, we do use "Weapon speed factors" and "Armor class adjustments," but not for any allusion to "realism" or anything like that. I don't know if they'll last, but for now it's working and everyone seems to be having a good time - and that's the bottom line. The rules need to be coherent enough to provide a common system while being flexible enough to allow diverse groups to play the game they want to play and to have a good time doing it.

 

[Tallifer]

I vote for the Fourth Edition's standard/move/minor actions plus the occasional action point.

It is cleaner than what I have encountered in Pathfinder. Pathfinder has too many special actions which are not standard actions or move actions. A five-foot step is not a "move action" but it precludes any movement but it allows you to use your move action to draw a weapon et cetera. Withdraw is not just two move actions, it is an especially convenient move action which allows you to escape opportunity attacks and also move twice your speed. Standing up provokes opportunity attacks, but a five-foot step does not. A charge is a special move which allows you not only to attack but also to draw your weapon. These are some of the many exceptions which I am struggling to learn.

At the same time, Pathfinder is better than my old days playing AD&D. Everything was an exception and subject to mother's permission unless you only wanted to move and swing.

 

[Sunseeker]

Each player should have the following options each round.
Full Round: you do really big things here, complex maneuvers, really big spells, etc...
Standard: you do normal things here. Hit, medium spells, etc..
Move: duh, you move.
Minor: small things, draw a weapon, drink a potion, etc..
Free(limited use, mostly triggered).

This setup IMO gives players the best control over their actions. However, I want to note that full-round actions are not always better options than standards. This I felt was a big flaw in the action economy of 3.x. For martial classes, full-round actions were your everything. You got lots of attacks, you did lots of damage, here you kept up with the casters. However, casters got to do almost all of their awesome stuff as standard actions. They could still move and use minors(which included some quickened spells for more output). A 16th level fighter who only uses their standard to attack isn't going to be a credible force.

This is one thing 4e got right, all standard actions of the same type(at-will, daily, encounter) did roughly the same damage, so anyone who took the same type of action and used the same type of power would have roughly equal output. +/-10 is an acceptable variance between output-per-round abilities(roughly 1W in most 4e powers cases). But basically two people who take the same type of action should have roughly equal output.

 

[steeldragons]

Personally, for the base game, I would like to see the "Economy of Actions" greatly simplified, if not done away with. I have only the most cursory understanding of how they are used in current iterations, so take what I say below with so many grains of salt. I don't use them, so I don't really need to be collected.

For those that want to use the Full/Standard/Move/Minor/Free hullabaloo, that's in/should go in the optional Tacitcal Play Module. Add as desired. But no reason it has to be in the simple base game.

Full v. Standard Actions is just so much fiddly bits to me. If the standard unit of combat is the Round, then why is the Standard Action not the Full Round action? This is what you can normally do...but these things over here (Full Rounds) are things that you can do that take longer?

"Minor Actions" being added to Standard Actions...I don't really know. I'm sure, in the tactical game of Mini's & Mats these are important or useful. In the TotM, not so much. You want to attack and then swig a potion (assuming you kill what you attacked) fine. Go ahead.

Free Actions...fine set up a little list of things (a LITTLE list) that you can do within the round and still be able to attack/that take next to no time.

Move action...again, in a tactical game, I'm sure this is really important. In the base game, something like this should suffice:

Movement in Combat: You can move up to your full movement rate per round. If you are attacking, you may move up to half your normal distance. The other half being used up in your motions/movements of attacking/trading blows/casting/etc. Any attempts at Stealth movement during a combat round are limited to half their normal distance -as you are are trying to be careful to go unnoticed (see Stealth skill/Rogue Abilities/what have you).
​

Move then attack, attack and then move (so you're in position to attack the next guy in your following turn/round), move-attack-move s'more/the rest of your allowed distance...that's really all you need in D&D combat. A whole separate "Move Action" to keep track of on your turn or to interrupt the combat when all you want to do is "cast X and move Z feet" or "charge Y feet, swing, then move your Z remaining feet to swing at this other guy next round" really isn't, to my mind, necessary.

So, yeah. For my two coppers, no "Economy of Actions" for the basic game. Add-on module for as many/much detail and fiddly action bits as you want? No problem.

--Steel "hoh-ha-ha, thwing, dodge, parry, repothte, turn, thrust, twitht, *sproing!* Dragons

 

[AeroDm]

I'd like to know more of what you mean by "units of action."

Sure. The gist is that designers seem to have said, 'This is what a standard action at level 5 should do' and set that as a power level for a level 5 power that requires a standard action. But then they had neat ideas for powers that might be a bit weaker or might only work as a supplemental move or minor action. As a result, they started developing actions that still did damage but took move or minor actions.

Every power fluxuates in actual power. You can't make two things identical. So, as the number of powers increases, players can mix and match the most powerful of powers. Once they started allowing moves or minor to deal things like damage, that makes optimizing the action economy more important because it was no longer a trade-off of a single action dealing damage, but now two or three.

 

[BobTheNob]

One of the items on our "what would have made 4e faster" items was action economy. Loved it, but when you had players micro-managing what they could do in a round, it was a slowing factor (amongst many, fully acknowledged).

I would have actually preferred one less action per turn, that being the minor and move being merged into a single action definition. Couldnt do it to 4e of course as so many powers were cool because they were minor, but as a future design consideration its more to my liking.

The other thing was immediate interrupts/reactions. Just not needed. I am all for OpActions and would have preferred that was selected as the "off turn action" (i.e. you can make one every creature turn off your turn) then abilities get balanced against that.

Anyway, thats my take = 3 action types
1. Standard (on your turn, "major" action)
2. Minor (on your turn, includes a moves)
3. Opportunity (on another creatures turn)