D&D 5E (2014) "You Can Do 3 Things" - My Nephew's D&D Houserule

[overgeeked]

Nice. Might have to steal that. Always cool to hear about people house ruling the games they play. Especially kids.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

As far as houseruling this into 5e, the problem is it severely nerfs any character that relies on Extra Attack, especially Fighters. Unless you allow them to get two (or three for level 11+ fighters) attacks for one “thing,” in which case it’s a huge buff to them.

EDIT: I suppose you could limit Extra Attack to only being useable once per turn. Something like once per turn, you can attack twice instead of once as a single “thing”

I would assume that anyone using this rule would limit it thus, for sure.

My game has 1 action and two quick actions, and phase based rounds, but I considered changing it to 3 actions.

But I like having Quick Actions for reacting and interrupting and doing something small and “extra” and then one main Action. It also lets me have the choice of spending an Attribute Point relevant to the action to do an Action thing as a Quick Action, such as doing a full on attack when intercepting an enemy’s movement to keep them away from an ally, instead of just trying to stop their movement.

 

[Stormonu]

Maybe make it so you can't attack more than once a round unless your a Fighter/Martial type? That'd give the fighting classes some interesting options. Under this, Action surge just might give one extra action per short rest?

Monk can spend a ki for an extra action?

Uncanny action lets you do a two-for-one action?

Not sure how to fit two-weapon fighting into this, but maybe like a cantrip/spell you can only use one action to attack with both?

 

[Parmandur]

The Cosmere RPG also does this, in a framework more similar to 5E than PF2E has.

 

[overgeeked]

Not sure how to fit two-weapon fighting into this, but maybe like a cantrip/spell you can only use one action to attack with both?

Two-weapon fighting always made more sense as advantage on attacks and/or advantage on damage.

 

[loverdrive]

Elder Scrolls RPG has a really cool three action point system, where any unused actions turn into reactions
Spent all of your actions during your turn? No attacks of opportunity (or, more importantly, defense) for you!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Just spitballing here...

Flurry of Blows: spend all remaining moves to make three unarmed strikes.
Action Surge: once per short rest, you can make 5 moves on your turn instead of 3.
Haste: while this spell is in effect, you can make 4 moves on your turn instead of 3.
Slow: while this spell is in effect, you make 2 moves on your turn instead of 3.
Expeditious Retreat: you can move once for free on your turn while this spell is in effect.

I can't get this house-rule out of my head. It's actually pretty clever.

The kids are alright.

If I might make an alternative suggestion for FoB?

FoB: If one of your Moves was used for a Monk action, you can make 2 Unarmed Strikes as a single Move. (Becomes 3 at level 11.)

 

[aiouh]

Is your Nephew's name John Paizo by any chance?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Elder Scrolls RPG has a really cool three action point system, where any unused actions turn into reactions
Spent all of your actions during your turn? No attacks of opportunity (or, more importantly, defense) for you!

While I can definitely see that having value, there's also the converse that if defense is truly super important...it functionally becomes a two-action game where one action is always reserved for defending yourself.

That's sort of the issue with a lot of ideas like this, you have to be super careful about balancing it. If defense is only kinda useful, or only useful to specific character types (e.g. squishy Wizards), then it's functionally no different from just having three actions, except for the few people "punished" by having to do it (unless the game is elsewhere balanced around such limits). If defense is super important, or only skipped by specific character types (e.g. heavy-armored paladins), then it's functionally locked-in as two actions, except for the people "rewarded" for not having to do it (unless, as stated, balanced around this notion). Threading that needle can be a challenge. It's not an insurmountable challenge, but given the difficulty, it's something any designer would need to think carefully about.

So like, maybe every squishy character is making the choice to Defend or not--and that's built into their design, where many of their truly powerful effects require two Moves, so they get to move or Defend or accept lesser effects kind of thing, as a trade-off for their powerful actions. Whereas a heavily-armored character might not need it, but they also don't bring as much damage to the table to begin with, and genuinely expect to get slapped a bit more--so choosing to Defend is a backstop, rather than where they prefer to be.

More or less, if you're gonna do this, either you have to balance it really carefully, or you have to build the whole structure to expect it so that, even if it isn't balanced by itself, the rest of the system compensates.

 

[Bolongo]

Nimble also does this, except reactions also have to come out of your 3 per round allotment of actions. Your actions refresh at the END of your turn, so in theory you could react 3 times and then not have anything to do on your own turn, but that's a choice.