Bonus action is just a terrible name. It's basically the same thing as a 3.5e swift action or a 4e minor action, but because they use the word "bonus" people think it's an extra action. 4e also had a useful distinction between "immediate interrupt" (triggered, is resolved before the triggering event is resolved) and "immediate reaction" (triggered, is resolved after the triggering event is resolved), both of which 5e calls a reaction and you have to guess from context which is which.
It really is “only if something explicitly says you get one, and then you can only do exactly these things with it”.
Reactions are less bound, but only somewhat.
The point stands. And how do you know you just can't soft through the multiple books the documentation online or anything else to FIND that rule. It's just as important as action in the steps of your combat turn but....
Or the games I have played, it took 3 players and a DM thumbing through various books we had to try and figure out tool proficiencies, which you know, you get that at character creation, so you'd think it'd be pretty specific, but.....
Apparently it just means proficiency bonus on something.yiu attempt, which with thieves tools means you shouldn't bother with sleight of hand because picking a lock is a straight dex roll and thieves tools proficiency let's you get a PB to it, but honestly, anyone has equal chance at just picking a lock with even a full spoon if they want and have only 1-2 points less of a chance of success.
But then again, if you thumb through Xanathar's, it's been changed so that tool proficiencies give advantage, and you can do that sleight of hand check if you want ,(which is how we ruled it but still).
And yes there are other setups that are just as clunky, but again.... after so many years we haven't learned from those editions? We're STILL making the same mistakes as we had in 3.5 or earlier?
And again... how the hell do you know you didn't just miss the rule when it's a damned part of your combat steps????
It really is “only if something explicitly says you get one, and then you can only do exactly these things with it”.
Reactions are less bound, but only somewhat.
The point stands. And how do you know you just can't soft through the multiple books the documentation online or anything else to FIND that rule. It's just as important as action in the steps of your combat turn but....
Or the games I have played, it took 3 players and a DM thumbing through various books we had to try and figure out tool proficiencies, which you know, you get that at character creation, so you'd think it'd be pretty specific, but.....
Apparently it just means proficiency bonus on something.yiu attempt, which with thieves tools means you shouldn't bother with sleight of hand because picking a lock is a straight dex roll and thieves tools proficiency let's you get a PB to it, but honestly, anyone has equal chance at just picking a lock with even a full spoon if they want and have only 1-2 points less of a chance of success.
But then again, if you thumb through Xanathar's, it's been changed so that tool proficiencies give advantage, and you can do that sleight of hand check if you want ,(which is how we ruled it but still).
And yes there are other setups that are just as clunky, but again.... after so many years we haven't learned from those editions? We're STILL making the same mistakes as we had in 3.5 or earlier?
And again... how the hell do you know you didn't just miss the rule when it's a damned part of your combat steps????
Yes, that is the way proficiency in 5e works. And it specifically does mean a lot of stuff I disagree with personally (knowledge and learning of a skill should count for more) but they apply that Proficiency bonus based on level instead.
And yes — it does gut the old rogue stuff, but they moved away from that being the basis for rogue last edition, so that’s nigh on 20 years that hasn’t been a thing (incorrectly, imo, but I didn’t make that call).
Note as well that you get tool proficiency by *buying the tools*. Which Rogues do get automatically (I think, I need to check to be sure… one sec… Yes, they get them automatically.) So, all Rogues have advantage as well as their proficiency bonus, and all that means is roll 2d20 and take the higher number, add your proficiency bonus to it, and then see if that beats the DC of the task.
I admit I loved the 2e proficiency set (adapted from the original game introduction of them in Oriental Adventures), but it was “more complicated” and had individual modifiers instead of the simplified “one modifier for all of them”. It became a “record keeping” issue and they leaned to making life easier for players (also, the number of proficiencies was way out of hand in 3/3.5, so they just overcorrected).
Your point though, is that it is hard at this point to find all those bits, and if you don’t have everything you can’t find it — which I acknowledge in my comment about picking up bits and pieces to make a whole.
The One D&D initiative, however, is taking all those scattered rules and putting them into the new PHB — so all that Xanathar and Tasha stuff is going into he PHB, and they are making it work with the other changes. SO yeah, they are acknowledging that spread of base rules.
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Bonus action is just a terrible name. It's basically the same thing as a 3.5e swift action or a 4e minor action, but because they use the word "bonus" people think it's an extra action. 4e also had a useful distinction between "immediate interrupt" (triggered, is resolved before the triggering event is resolved) and "immediate reaction" (triggered, is resolved after the triggering event is resolved), both of which 5e calls a reaction and you have to guess from context which is which.
I think that's a fair point.
I think that an unarmed strike should be one that anyone can take provided they aren't welding a weapon with 2 hands and they aren't holding a shield.
If this and taking a potion were standardized bonus actions available across all classes, it would warrant enough to create a bonus action subheading under combat which in turn would clarify it to everyone who plays, both giving an example and making it easier to find.
I'm actually more anxious for the new books to see just how they redo this sort of info
Well, unless things have changed since I looked at it, a reaction can be an unarmed strike. I could be confusing it with an “opportunity attack”, though.
They even make that more clear in the UAs.
Drink a potion is an action right now — not a reaction.
I do agree that not having everything you can do in an Action, a Reaction, and a Move in one place is just poor book design. That’s like having a section on Exploring the Wilderness and not including the random tables, effects of the environment, hazards and…
Oh, wait…
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Well, unless things have changed since I looked at it, a reaction can be an unarmed strike. I could be confusing it with an “opportunity attack”, though.
Reactions occur when triggered, and allow you to do whatever is specified by the reaction. An opportunity attack is a reaction that is triggered by someone moving out of reach, that permits making a single melee weapon or unarmed attack against that target.
Well, unless things have changed since I looked at it, a reaction can be an unarmed strike. I could be confusing it with an “opportunity attack”, though.
They even make that more clear in the UAs.
Drink a potion is an action right now — not a reaction.
I do agree that not having everything you can do in an Action, a Reaction, and a Move in one place is just poor book design. That’s like having a section on Exploring the Wilderness and not including the random tables, effects of the environment, hazards and…
Oh, wait…
Neither of those are a bonus action though. A reaction needs a trigger, (and what's a trigger and who gets the reaction is incredibly weird too), and a bonus actions typically a quick little action after your main action.
Two weapon fighting bot to be confused with dual weapon fighting or two handed weapon fighting (yeah, now I'm just doing it to be an a**) allows the use of two simple weapons but unarmed strikes don't count as simple weapons so....
this is all stuff that's been codified since the game came out. (The rule for "Can I do X as a bonus action?" is just "Not unless you have something that says you can.")
I know that, but bonus action doesn't even have a heading. Like you know "action" does.
PHB Chapter 9, under "Your Turn", right after it explains that you get a move and an action, it explains bonus actions, under its own heading. It is, in my opinion, quite clear. (And game rules and the explanation thereof is something I have quite a lot of experience with.)
As for what constitutes it, yeah, I know, but then you have all sorts of rules to sort through to do this, and...
That's because there are no default bonus actions. They are all provided by abilities/spells/items/stuff. Your bonus actions are placed with the thing that grants them.
again. It's all about trying to rationalize some very blatant and very reasonable.revisons or things that should have been done 10 years ago with "it's the DM's responsibility/fault" but "the game is perfect the DM can just run it out of the box"
Neither is true. It's apologetics and in particular really bad ones for something is just the basics. Basic f***ing steps through combat aren't clear.
Chapter 9 is pretty good, with a few exceptions. This isn't a statement on the mechanics themselves, but they are explained clearly and concisely, in a sensible order.
I wonder why they don't just scrap the various "types" of actions and simply go to a 3 action system like Pathfinder 2e. I mean, say what you want about PF2e, but you can't get any simpler than a rule that says, everything is an action, you have 3.. good luck!
I don't know how pathfinder does it, but without significantly rewriting large chunks of the mechanics, that would be a terrible design choice. You'd have to rebuild the game to handle the fact that people would sit there and cast three spells, or attack three times. If you think monsters are dull bags of hit points now, they'd be way more so after.
It also would make combat much duller. As it is now, everyone has the option to move, and it's wasted if you don't use it.(I think opportunity attacks are overly-feared, especially at mid-high levels.) If you have a bonus action, you can use it. In neither case do you have to consider whether moving or using your bonus action is better than straightforward attacking or casting. It's the generic resource problem.
In order to avoid that without rewriting how all the basic mechanics work, you'd have to add a bunch of special-cased restrictions, and you're probably going to end up reinventing the move-action-bonus economy, but way more confusingly.
Bonus action is just a terrible name. It's basically the same thing as a 3.5e swift action or a 4e minor action, but because they use the word "bonus" people think it's an extra action.
I've never run into that interpretation, but I don't doubt it exists. I think the intent is "bonus", as in something given to you. Is it the best name? Perhaps not. Were the others? Possibly not, since they changed them. More importantly, were they the same thing, as opposed to just similar? A name change to avoid confusion with older editions makes sense, even if the new name causes confusion to some.
As the joke goes: "There are two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation and naming things"
And if I were to force them to rename one thing, it'd be either "attack action" or "attack". That was just asking for confusion.
4e also had a useful distinction between "immediate interrupt" (triggered, is resolved before the triggering event is resolved) and "immediate reaction" (triggered, is resolved after the triggering event is resolved), both of which 5e calls a reaction and you have to guess from context which is which.
I agree that'd be useful, but I see why they got rid of it, and there are reasons to beyond wanting to memory-hole 4th, though that was probably their reason.
It really is “only if something explicitly says you get one, and then you can only do exactly these things with it”.
Reactions are less bound, but only somewhat.
No, reactions are still pretty much the same; RAW outside of your turn you can only act by taking a reaction if a rule or feature says you can; there's just more common instances of reaction speed actions. Probably the biggest issue is Talking is a Free Action stuff, particularly if a DM lets people roll off their turns, but that's more just a case of a DM letting players get away with bending the rules, for better or worse.
So, an interesting thing happened with my group. I run games at a local hobby store, which i have been doing for about 6 years now. Recently, my group wanted to run a Dark Sun game, so I dusted off my old ADnD 2e books and ran the starting adventure for them. Then i decided to run the Audio adventure, Light in the Belfry for Ravenloft (they seriously need to bring back audio adventures), also using 2e rules.
So now I plan to return to some old Ravenloft modules and I asked my group if they wanted to use 5e characters and all 5 of them said, no. I believe the reason why is because they are truly invested in their 2e characters like they have never been in 5e and I feel a lot of satisfaction being there with them in their journey.
5e characters are basically Avengers. Every level comes with new super powers, no one really earns anything. Very little comes with questing. The result is that my players in 5e are constantly switching characters when they get bored. In my 2e game, they earn every power, every ability and every level. When a character dies in 1e or 2e, it usually takes few hours of counselling to get over it. I have had 5e players go out of their way to kill their character just to play something else. In 2e, when they level, they get better at what they do. Fighters are hitting more, rogues get better at thief skills, and Wizards and Priests get better at casting their spells. In 5e the skills are all shared, including thief skills, all classes have the same combat bonuses, spells are locked in at their level, unless you spend a higher spell slot, and they are limited to 3 magic items, which means getting loot is typically meaningless by level 6.
As a DM, i can't reward them with magic items, if its not better than the 3 they have. They just want to level, and only quest for the purpose of the level to get a new super power, which comes automatically. Not only that, concentration on spells prevents my casters from being creative with spells and spell combinations. Every combat, they cast fireball, and why not, its more effective than casting a buff that will be lost when they take damage.
I was wondering if any DMs have dealt with similar issues, and how they deal with it?
I am sincerely hoping with the new edition, we see some advanced rules in the DMG that brings more earned advancement, and raises the stakes, but I have a feeling the game will remain on easy mode. I like 5e a lot. Its simpler system, that is easy to follow, but I really want my players to get that feeling of ownership we had in 1e and 2e. I want to see real tears of joy when they get that magic item, or tears of sorrow when their characters die.
Thoughts?
I played 2e for years. While it's better than 3e, I wouldn't take it over 5e.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I have noticed that the edition affects the kinds of stories one can tell. Early published adventures often focused on episodic tales of dungeon delving and treasure seeking. While things were already changing even in that edition, over the decades, the focus has shifted more to pulp action. I think if you're trying to tell stories that are more focused on the former in 5E than the latter, you're going to find the experience is not as fulfilling.
FYI, the Combat chapter of the PHB does explain bonus actions under the "Your Turn" heading that sums up what you can do on your turn.
Bonus Actions
Various class features, spells, and other abilities let you take an additional action on your turn called a bonus action. The Cunning Action feature, for example, allows a rogue to take a bonus action. You can take a bonus action only when a special ability, spell, or other feature of the game states that you can do something as a bonus action. You otherwise don’t have a bonus action to take.
You can take only one bonus action on your turn, so you must choose which bonus action to use when you have more than one available.
You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action’s timing is specified, and anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action.
And the Combat chapter does have a list of basic actions as well. So honestly, it's a solid case of "actually read the rules" because the PHB does sum up bonus actions well.
I DID finally find what you're talking about, but it's NOT under combat, it's on the section BEFORE combat, called "your turn".
My point is, it's in no way or shape a quick reference nor a clear one, and definitely not a reader friendly manual. (nor really has it ever been to be honest...)
I have noticed that the edition affects the kinds of stories one can tell. Early published adventures often focused on episodic tales of dungeon delving and treasure seeking. While things were already changing even in that edition, over the decades, the focus has shifted more to pulp action. I think if you're trying to tell stories that are more focused on the former in 5E than the latter, you're going to find the experience is not as fulfilling.
That would be extremely early years of D&D like an original box set early. D&D adventures by the time 1st edition was middle-aged varied wildly from classic dungeon crawls, hex crawls, campaign adventures, dominion management adventures, even crazy stuff like linear railroads stuff where you would literally play through the Dragonlance novels using the Dragonlance novel characters and essentially following alone a pre-determined story. I don't think I could think of anything that wasn't tried during the 1e era, they did everything twice over.
It wasn't all good mind you, I would say in the 1e days for every 1 good published adventure you would have half a dozen that were... let's just say, poorly executed and leave it at that.
The thing that was true about 1e, mainly because it was a very light system and very modular, was that you could pretty easily add modular rules to focus on whatever aspect of the game you wanted the adventure to focus on. So like, you could do fast travel to avoid wilderness stuff, but if you wanted to make an adventure out of it, you had detailed wilderness adventure rules that you could deploy. If you wanted to do stronghold building and dominion running a narrative story thing, no problem, or you had a system you could add to turn it into a mini game.
I feel a need to point out that Arneson's game was very much Pulp Style action, that Cook's game was more a blend of the crawl and pulp, and that as near as I can tell, we are living in the kind of approach that generated MtG, which probably could be described as "serious whimsy".
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FYI, the Combat chapter of the PHB does explain bonus actions under the "Your Turn" heading that sums up what you can do on your turn.
Bonus Actions
Various class features, spells, and other abilities let you take an additional action on your turn called a bonus action. The Cunning Action feature, for example, allows a rogue to take a bonus action. You can take a bonus action only when a special ability, spell, or other feature of the game states that you can do something as a bonus action. You otherwise don’t have a bonus action to take.
You can take only one bonus action on your turn, so you must choose which bonus action to use when you have more than one available.
You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action’s timing is specified, and anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action.
And the Combat chapter does have a list of basic actions as well. So honestly, it's a solid case of "actually read the rules" because the PHB does sum up bonus actions well.
I DID finally find what you're talking about, but it's NOT under combat, it's on the section BEFORE combat, called "your turn".
My point is, it's in no way or shape a quick reference nor a clear one, and definitely not a reader friendly manual. (nor really has it ever been to be honest...)
You want a set of rules that you do not actually have to read but just learn on the fly searching things as needed, despite the high risk of that getting out of context answers?
Not meant as criticism, just clarifying...
No, what I'm getting at is even if you read all the rules, front to back cover, you're still going to forget little bits and pieces or need clarification, and that finding them isn't easy
Are you expecting everyone who picks up the game to have perfect recollection of every subset of rules that they read?
It is an easy enough rule to remember.... And at most a complaint over editing, rather than over the actual rules.
I feel like the original complaint wasn't about Bonus Actions themselves being unclear (the wording is crystal clear), but rather that with hundreds of abilities out there it gets difficult to remember offhand which things are Actions, Bonus Actions, etc. That's definitely true but also kind of trivial to complain about when everyone has a cellphone and can look things up rather quickly. I could see someone trying to play 5e without a cellphone to look up rules being very overwhelmed easily, because there's just too much to remember
If using DDB, that is shown right on the character sheet. If not using DDB, it is likewise easy enough to note it manually on the character sheet.
How is that any different from remembering the effects of any given spell or ability, something which has been as aspect of the game since its first existence back in 0e?
All editions have had rules to remember, but I'm pretty sure that 5e has by far the largest ever-growing list of books with new rules to remember. There's just no way that anyone can actually know all the abilities nowadays. Fortunately that doesn't really matter because Google exists and any unknown ruling can be found in 5 seconds (whether you own the book or not), but yeah there definitely is much more to look up nowadays than there ever was before
If using DDB, that is shown right on the character sheet. If not using DDB, it is likewise easy enough to note it manually on the character sheet.
How is that any different from remembering the effects of any given spell or ability, something which has been as aspect of the game since its first existence back in 0e?
All editions have had rules to remember, but I'm pretty sure that 5e has by far the largest ever-growing list of books with new rules to remember. There's just no way that anyone can actually know all the abilities nowadays. Fortunately that doesn't really matter because Google exists and any unknown ruling can be found in 5 seconds (whether you own the book or not), but yeah there definitely is much more to look up nowadays than there ever was before
Both 2e and even moreso 3.5e had supplements galore. 5e has very little in comparison. And in 1e, there was arguably just as much as for 2e, just all 3rd party or homebrewed.
In fact, one of the biggest complaints against the newer 5e books has been the relative lack of new rules.
(Massive sampling bias) but if you go by the UAs that are trying to make 5e "more", the complaint seems, well, empty.
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All editions have had rules to remember, but I'm pretty sure that 5e has by far the largest ever-growing list of books with new rules to remember.
You clearly haven't played other editions very much. 2e and 3e got completely out of control on book count, with things like the 'complete X handbook' that was a set of rulebooks, one for for each class. 5e is comparable to 1e, which had basically four (PHB, DMG, PHB2, UA) plus rules randomly scattered through adventures.
It is an easy enough rule to remember.... And at most a complaint over editing, rather than over the actual rules.
I feel like the original complaint wasn't about Bonus Actions themselves being unclear (the wording is crystal clear), but rather that with hundreds of abilities out there it gets difficult to remember offhand which things are Actions, Bonus Actions, etc. That's definitely true but also kind of trivial to complain about when everyone has a cellphone and can look things up rather quickly. I could see someone trying to play 5e without a cellphone to look up rules being very overwhelmed easily, because there's just too much to remember
If using DDB, that is shown right on the character sheet. If not using DDB, it is likewise easy enough to note it manually on the character sheet.
How is that any different from remembering the effects of any given spell or ability, something which has been as aspect of the game since its first existence back in 0e?
Did you not read yourself? Shall I quote myself above for you to read?
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Bonus action is just a terrible name. It's basically the same thing as a 3.5e swift action or a 4e minor action, but because they use the word "bonus" people think it's an extra action. 4e also had a useful distinction between "immediate interrupt" (triggered, is resolved before the triggering event is resolved) and "immediate reaction" (triggered, is resolved after the triggering event is resolved), both of which 5e calls a reaction and you have to guess from context which is which.
The point stands. And how do you know you just can't soft through the multiple books the documentation online or anything else to FIND that rule. It's just as important as action in the steps of your combat turn but....
Or the games I have played, it took 3 players and a DM thumbing through various books we had to try and figure out tool proficiencies, which you know, you get that at character creation, so you'd think it'd be pretty specific, but.....
Apparently it just means proficiency bonus on something.yiu attempt, which with thieves tools means you shouldn't bother with sleight of hand because picking a lock is a straight dex roll and thieves tools proficiency let's you get a PB to it, but honestly, anyone has equal chance at just picking a lock with even a full spoon if they want and have only 1-2 points less of a chance of success.
But then again, if you thumb through Xanathar's, it's been changed so that tool proficiencies give advantage, and you can do that sleight of hand check if you want ,(which is how we ruled it but still).
And yes there are other setups that are just as clunky, but again.... after so many years we haven't learned from those editions? We're STILL making the same mistakes as we had in 3.5 or earlier?
And again... how the hell do you know you didn't just miss the rule when it's a damned part of your combat steps????
Yes, that is the way proficiency in 5e works. And it specifically does mean a lot of stuff I disagree with personally (knowledge and learning of a skill should count for more) but they apply that Proficiency bonus based on level instead.
And yes — it does gut the old rogue stuff, but they moved away from that being the basis for rogue last edition, so that’s nigh on 20 years that hasn’t been a thing (incorrectly, imo, but I didn’t make that call).
Note as well that you get tool proficiency by *buying the tools*. Which Rogues do get automatically (I think, I need to check to be sure… one sec… Yes, they get them automatically.) So, all Rogues have advantage as well as their proficiency bonus, and all that means is roll 2d20 and take the higher number, add your proficiency bonus to it, and then see if that beats the DC of the task.
I admit I loved the 2e proficiency set (adapted from the original game introduction of them in Oriental Adventures), but it was “more complicated” and had individual modifiers instead of the simplified “one modifier for all of them”. It became a “record keeping” issue and they leaned to making life easier for players (also, the number of proficiencies was way out of hand in 3/3.5, so they just overcorrected).
Your point though, is that it is hard at this point to find all those bits, and if you don’t have everything you can’t find it — which I acknowledge in my comment about picking up bits and pieces to make a whole.
The One D&D initiative, however, is taking all those scattered rules and putting them into the new PHB — so all that Xanathar and Tasha stuff is going into he PHB, and they are making it work with the other changes. SO yeah, they are acknowledging that spread of base rules.
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I think that's a fair point.
I think that an unarmed strike should be one that anyone can take provided they aren't welding a weapon with 2 hands and they aren't holding a shield.
If this and taking a potion were standardized bonus actions available across all classes, it would warrant enough to create a bonus action subheading under combat which in turn would clarify it to everyone who plays, both giving an example and making it easier to find.
I'm actually more anxious for the new books to see just how they redo this sort of info
Well, unless things have changed since I looked at it, a reaction can be an unarmed strike. I could be confusing it with an “opportunity attack”, though.
They even make that more clear in the UAs.
Drink a potion is an action right now — not a reaction.
I do agree that not having everything you can do in an Action, a Reaction, and a Move in one place is just poor book design. That’s like having a section on Exploring the Wilderness and not including the random tables, effects of the environment, hazards and…
Oh, wait…
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Reactions occur when triggered, and allow you to do whatever is specified by the reaction. An opportunity attack is a reaction that is triggered by someone moving out of reach, that permits making a single melee weapon or unarmed attack against that target.
Neither of those are a bonus action though. A reaction needs a trigger, (and what's a trigger and who gets the reaction is incredibly weird too), and a bonus actions typically a quick little action after your main action.
Two weapon fighting bot to be confused with dual weapon fighting or two handed weapon fighting (yeah, now I'm just doing it to be an a**) allows the use of two simple weapons but unarmed strikes don't count as simple weapons so....
PHB Chapter 9, under "Your Turn", right after it explains that you get a move and an action, it explains bonus actions, under its own heading. It is, in my opinion, quite clear. (And game rules and the explanation thereof is something I have quite a lot of experience with.)
That's because there are no default bonus actions. They are all provided by abilities/spells/items/stuff. Your bonus actions are placed with the thing that grants them.
Chapter 9 is pretty good, with a few exceptions. This isn't a statement on the mechanics themselves, but they are explained clearly and concisely, in a sensible order.
I don't know how pathfinder does it, but without significantly rewriting large chunks of the mechanics, that would be a terrible design choice. You'd have to rebuild the game to handle the fact that people would sit there and cast three spells, or attack three times. If you think monsters are dull bags of hit points now, they'd be way more so after.
It also would make combat much duller. As it is now, everyone has the option to move, and it's wasted if you don't use it.(I think opportunity attacks are overly-feared, especially at mid-high levels.) If you have a bonus action, you can use it. In neither case do you have to consider whether moving or using your bonus action is better than straightforward attacking or casting. It's the generic resource problem.
In order to avoid that without rewriting how all the basic mechanics work, you'd have to add a bunch of special-cased restrictions, and you're probably going to end up reinventing the move-action-bonus economy, but way more confusingly.
I've never run into that interpretation, but I don't doubt it exists. I think the intent is "bonus", as in something given to you. Is it the best name? Perhaps not. Were the others? Possibly not, since they changed them. More importantly, were they the same thing, as opposed to just similar? A name change to avoid confusion with older editions makes sense, even if the new name causes confusion to some.
As the joke goes: "There are two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation and naming things"
And if I were to force them to rename one thing, it'd be either "attack action" or "attack". That was just asking for confusion.
I agree that'd be useful, but I see why they got rid of it, and there are reasons to beyond wanting to memory-hole 4th, though that was probably their reason.
No, reactions are still pretty much the same; RAW outside of your turn you can only act by taking a reaction if a rule or feature says you can; there's just more common instances of reaction speed actions. Probably the biggest issue is Talking is a Free Action stuff, particularly if a DM lets people roll off their turns, but that's more just a case of a DM letting players get away with bending the rules, for better or worse.
I played 2e for years. While it's better than 3e, I wouldn't take it over 5e.
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Tasha
I have noticed that the edition affects the kinds of stories one can tell. Early published adventures often focused on episodic tales of dungeon delving and treasure seeking. While things were already changing even in that edition, over the decades, the focus has shifted more to pulp action. I think if you're trying to tell stories that are more focused on the former in 5E than the latter, you're going to find the experience is not as fulfilling.
Hey! So you found what 3 DM's weren't clear on.
So despite the fact that when it came up, it was in the middle of combat and I was rushed, and that in referencing it, I tried using the search function on DDB to get a LOT or results, none of which were that heading at the top, and flipping through the book and especially at the combat section, AND then trying to use this stupid list on the forums for quick reference, https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/rules-game-mechanics/35037-page-references-d-d-beyond-to-core-rules
I DID finally find what you're talking about, but it's NOT under combat, it's on the section BEFORE combat, called "your turn".
My point is, it's in no way or shape a quick reference nor a clear one, and definitely not a reader friendly manual. (nor really has it ever been to be honest...)
That would be extremely early years of D&D like an original box set early. D&D adventures by the time 1st edition was middle-aged varied wildly from classic dungeon crawls, hex crawls, campaign adventures, dominion management adventures, even crazy stuff like linear railroads stuff where you would literally play through the Dragonlance novels using the Dragonlance novel characters and essentially following alone a pre-determined story. I don't think I could think of anything that wasn't tried during the 1e era, they did everything twice over.
It wasn't all good mind you, I would say in the 1e days for every 1 good published adventure you would have half a dozen that were... let's just say, poorly executed and leave it at that.
The thing that was true about 1e, mainly because it was a very light system and very modular, was that you could pretty easily add modular rules to focus on whatever aspect of the game you wanted the adventure to focus on. So like, you could do fast travel to avoid wilderness stuff, but if you wanted to make an adventure out of it, you had detailed wilderness adventure rules that you could deploy. If you wanted to do stronghold building and dominion running a narrative story thing, no problem, or you had a system you could add to turn it into a mini game.
I feel a need to point out that Arneson's game was very much Pulp Style action, that Cook's game was more a blend of the crawl and pulp, and that as near as I can tell, we are living in the kind of approach that generated MtG, which probably could be described as "serious whimsy".
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
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No, what I'm getting at is even if you read all the rules, front to back cover, you're still going to forget little bits and pieces or need clarification, and that finding them isn't easy
Are you expecting everyone who picks up the game to have perfect recollection of every subset of rules that they read?
I feel like the original complaint wasn't about Bonus Actions themselves being unclear (the wording is crystal clear), but rather that with hundreds of abilities out there it gets difficult to remember offhand which things are Actions, Bonus Actions, etc. That's definitely true but also kind of trivial to complain about when everyone has a cellphone and can look things up rather quickly. I could see someone trying to play 5e without a cellphone to look up rules being very overwhelmed easily, because there's just too much to remember
All editions have had rules to remember, but I'm pretty sure that 5e has by far the largest ever-growing list of books with new rules to remember. There's just no way that anyone can actually know all the abilities nowadays. Fortunately that doesn't really matter because Google exists and any unknown ruling can be found in 5 seconds (whether you own the book or not), but yeah there definitely is much more to look up nowadays than there ever was before
(Massive sampling bias) but if you go by the UAs that are trying to make 5e "more", the complaint seems, well, empty.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
You clearly haven't played other editions very much. 2e and 3e got completely out of control on book count, with things like the 'complete X handbook' that was a set of rulebooks, one for for each class. 5e is comparable to 1e, which had basically four (PHB, DMG, PHB2, UA) plus rules randomly scattered through adventures.
Did you not read yourself? Shall I quote myself above for you to read?