@Kotath and others. I already stated a solution earlier today.
As of today, players have the following "potential activities": Movement, Attack, Object Interaction, Free Action (don't get me started on how this is abused), and Bonus Action.
It can be simplified. Free Action is subsumed into Bonus Action, which is renamed as has been suggested "Secondary Action". So now there are only 4 options for a player:
Movement, Attack, Object Interaction, and Secondary Action. Player chooses 3 every turn. No more. Someone wants to fool around and decide what goes under Object Interaction and what goes under Secondary Action? OK, a discussion can be had about that.
Does this mean a re-work of may class features? Yes. Too bad, WOTC, do your job.
You want all free actions to become bonus actions? So, talking to your fellow party mate can’t be done in any round that you are using another bonus action?
Works for me.
Last week I ran a 1e game and 5e game. In both games, under heavy combat, at least one player decided that they would have a conversation about tactics, and I am not talking about "You go there on your turn". Combat is 6 seconds, which includes sidling around for a decent hit, or setting yourself up for defence, or whatever. But it is NOT designed to be for a Bard to recite some soliloquy, or the spellcasters to freeze time and discuss who will cast what. That is done OUT OF COMBAT.
You seriously think some Rogue when trying to crack a lock on a door while the Orcs bear down on the party is going to be riffing with another player? Watch Aliens. The most pithy thing you hear anyone say is "whatever you are going to do, make it fast".
So yes, you could Attack, Object Interaction, AND Secondary Action aka talk to another player. But you are still limited to only 3 items on the 4 item menu. I am well aware that most people that want their chars to be gods capable of everything in a single round will hate this. They are playing a different game than I am.
Nothing you said is even distantly related to the question I asked.
I asked if you want a player to be unable to say anything if they are performing some other bonus action.
Now, because what you said isn’t related to what I said, we have four options
1.) A player can say anything, but no more than x seconds AND perform another bonus action
2.) A player can say anything, but no more than x seconds and can’t perform another bonus action
3.) A player can say anything he wants as long as he wants and perform another bonus action
4.) A player can say anything he wants as long as he wants and can’t perform another bonus action
Which do you want, 1 or 2?
A character has a six second limit for verbalizing or what have you in a combat round. Forcing a player to a six second limit is misguided simulationism. A PC is a character played by a player. Your thinking isn't recognizing a distinction. Combat's a stew, marinate on that.
I don’t know why you directed that at me. I never argued for any of these positions and I think you know that. I was simply asking Baron von Cart which of those options he favored.
Golly, this has gone somewhere while I was away. All I'm gonna say is that if we're talking about whether someone is being a good DM, maybe we've lost the point of the thread.
The jank around free actions is difficult to manage because the game is so open-ended. Like, if you made the rule "you can use any object as part of your movement if it's needed for your movement, and use any object as part of your action if it's needed for your action," that sounds reasonable, except now a character can draw his sword, attack with it, sheathe it, use his second attack to draw another sword, attack with that, sheathe it, then use his movement to grab a rope, swing across a gap, open a door, go through it, and pull a lever to drop the elevator on the other side, descend to the bottom, and step out all in one turn. Is that too much? That feels like too much. Limit it to just one object per activity, though, and you end up with a character not being able to get his potion out of his bag and drink it in the same turn. It's tricky.
That said, there's a lot of people on the D&D design team. I'm sure they can figure it out if they put their minds to it.
There’s a big difference between have multiple decision points and having multiple options. There’s also a big difference between differences of kind and differences of degree.
And if you feel so strongly in your argument that you prefer to ignore the science of how to build a good game so that you can have what you want, it raises certain questions.
Do not cite the deep magic to me, Wren. I was there when it was written.
Paradox of Choice is not a fixed, unchanging law of physics. Every single human being has different thresholds for what counts as 'Paradox of Choice'. Magic: the Gathering has billions of possible deck combinations and choices even just within whatever current horseshit passes as Modern, and it's been enormously more financially successful than D&D for thirty years. World-changingly popular games such as Minecraft embed a dizzying profusion of choices into their basic make-up, and those games are expanded exponentially by a legion of third-party mods. There are millions and millions of people for whom 5e's ruleset is basic, straightforward, and easy to keep in mind as they play. Any halfway competitive TCG gamer who's memorized thousands of cards and thousands more interactions between those cards can keep 5e in their brain without any effort at all.
Is everyone able to do so? No. But pretending no one is able to do so is disingenuous and overly dismissive. And frankly, eliminating any complexity in action economy won't last. 5e's action economy started off simple too, and then eight years of game development happened. Classes, subclasses, and feats were introduced to allow a broader diversity of options because there was unused design space for those things to take up. This thread exists because people are unsatisfied with 5e as it currently stands, and a comfortable majority of suggestions throughout the thread are seeking greater granularity and depth. There certainly exists a strong undercurrent asking for simplification, but even in that instance many of those requests are to clean up poorly designed game elements rather than to eliminate choice in a choice-driven role-playing game. Things like "make unarmed combat and grappling less infuriatingly weirdly written and bad", as opposed to "eliminate bonus actions and make players have to choose between a Move or an Action on their turn."
Unused design space will eventually be filled, should a game be given the chance to grow. The more space is filled, the bigger a game gets. Simply how the whole thing works. And frankly, if a DM relentlessly told me I was too stupid to handle being able to make choices in my choice-driven tabletop RPG and tried to spoon-feed me a single fixed on-rails path instead, that would be a table I would leave as swiftly as I could.
That's simply not what this game is meant to be. And I don't think anybody here would truly argue otherwise.
And if you feel so strongly in your argument that you prefer to ignore the science of how to build a good game so that you can have what you want, it raises certain questions.
The paradox of choice isn't about building a good game, it's about shopping. To the extent it's relevant to game design, it's in the observation that having a larger number of choices means decision making is slower and confidence that you made the right choice is lower. This is true but... so what? We don't play games to be efficient, and you're not supposed to be confident that you made the right move. The normal goal of a conventional game is complexity high enough that the best choice is not immediately obvious, but low enough that it's possible to be better or worse at the game.
The problem for RPGs is that there's an enormous range in how much complexity people want, and not everyone cares about the 'game' aspects at all. And in any case, good presentation will smooth the process of choice no matter how many choices are available.
@Kotath and others. I already stated a solution earlier today.
As of today, players have the following "potential activities": Movement, Attack, Object Interaction, Free Action (don't get me started on how this is abused), and Bonus Action.
It can be simplified. Free Action is subsumed into Bonus Action, which is renamed as has been suggested "Secondary Action". So now there are only 4 options for a player:
Movement, Attack, Object Interaction, and Secondary Action. Player chooses 3 every turn. No more. Someone wants to fool around and decide what goes under Object Interaction and what goes under Secondary Action? OK, a discussion can be had about that.
Does this mean a re-work of may class features? Yes. Too bad, WOTC, do your job.
You want all free actions to become bonus actions? So, talking to your fellow party mate can’t be done in any round that you are using another bonus action?
Works for me.
Last week I ran a 1e game and 5e game. In both games, under heavy combat, at least one player decided that they would have a conversation about tactics, and I am not talking about "You go there on your turn". Combat is 6 seconds, which includes sidling around for a decent hit, or setting yourself up for defence, or whatever. But it is NOT designed to be for a Bard to recite some soliloquy, or the spellcasters to freeze time and discuss who will cast what. That is done OUT OF COMBAT.
You seriously think some Rogue when trying to crack a lock on a door while the Orcs bear down on the party is going to be riffing with another player? Watch Aliens. The most pithy thing you hear anyone say is "whatever you are going to do, make it fast".
So yes, you could Attack, Object Interaction, AND Secondary Action aka talk to another player. But you are still limited to only 3 items on the 4 item menu. I am well aware that most people that want their chars to be gods capable of everything in a single round will hate this. They are playing a different game than I am.
Nothing you said is even distantly related to the question I asked.
I asked if you want a player to be unable to say anything if they are performing some other bonus action.
Now, because what you said isn’t related to what I said, we have four options
1.) A player can say anything, but no more than x seconds AND perform another bonus action
2.) A player can say anything, but no more than x seconds and can’t perform another bonus action
3.) A player can say anything he wants as long as he wants and perform another bonus action
4.) A player can say anything he wants as long as he wants and can’t perform another bonus action
Which do you want, 1 or 2?
Huh...sorry, you have utterly lost me.
Movement, Attack (V components exempt), Object Interaction all have zero opportunity for a conversation. Let's assume that "conversation" is a Secondary Action. (I am trying to avoid the confusion of a Bonus Action). So yes, a Wizard could Move, cast a spell with a Verbal Component AND have a quick conversation. But on the same turn as that the Wizard could not also try to pick up some fancy looking stick he saw on the floor.
Look, frankly, 5e, in fact, almost any edition has done a terrible job with conversation when under Initiative. It is utterly ludicrous for a Wizard to be casting some spell AND having a conversation in the same combat round. But certain concessions have to be made. So a Wizard can cast a "bonus action" leveled spell and a Cantrip on the same round, both with V components. But to suggest that same Wizard can ADDITIONALLY have a convo with a char...just no. If "conversation" is a Secondary Action and the Wizard has already burned an Attack (guess it can should be renamed Action) for a V based Cantrip, and a Secondary Action for leveled V based "Bonus Action" spell, then yeah, the Wizard is left with only Movement or Object Interaction.
I mean, what, a Wizard is casting Tiny Hut, and the group asks him midway through the spell his opinion on if they should attack the orcs that are passing by but have not noticed the group, and the Wizard gets to answer????
I think he's asking you whether you count talking as a bonus action or a free action (assuming I'm not misunderstanding him). But yeah, this thread has gotten kind of confusing.
Extensive research has been done on this. It is called “The Paradox of Choice” and is pretty much settled in psychology. More choice MOST DEFINITELY increases complexity and anxiety.
Interresting, I will do some reading on that. It will also trigger some interresting question at my virtual table as all 5 players are psychologists. :)
That is an interesting idea, it does limit a lot of free actions though. Maybe you could just say "You can do one thing that classifies as a free action per a round."
Frankly, conversation in combat isn't any more unreasonable than a lot of other people can do in combat time; it's an inherent artifact of turn-based combat that people have an unreasonable amount of time to figure out what's going on and choose an optimal action. It's why real-time games that emulate D&D (e.g. Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights) play much differently from tabletop D&D, despite using nominally similar rules.
One thing I'd really have liked if I got the chance would be maybe to buff the humans a bit more? a +1 to every ability score doesn't really make up for a lack of, well, anything else-
@Kotath and others. I already stated a solution earlier today.
As of today, players have the following "potential activities": Movement, Attack, Object Interaction, Free Action (don't get me started on how this is abused), and Bonus Action.
It can be simplified. Free Action is subsumed into Bonus Action, which is renamed as has been suggested "Secondary Action". So now there are only 4 options for a player:
Movement, Attack, Object Interaction, and Secondary Action. Player chooses 3 every turn. No more. Someone wants to fool around and decide what goes under Object Interaction and what goes under Secondary Action? OK, a discussion can be had about that.
Does this mean a re-work of may class features? Yes. Too bad, WOTC, do your job.
You want all free actions to become bonus actions? So, talking to your fellow party mate can’t be done in any round that you are using another bonus action?
Works for me.
Last week I ran a 1e game and 5e game. In both games, under heavy combat, at least one player decided that they would have a conversation about tactics, and I am not talking about "You go there on your turn". Combat is 6 seconds, which includes sidling around for a decent hit, or setting yourself up for defence, or whatever. But it is NOT designed to be for a Bard to recite some soliloquy, or the spellcasters to freeze time and discuss who will cast what. That is done OUT OF COMBAT.
You seriously think some Rogue when trying to crack a lock on a door while the Orcs bear down on the party is going to be riffing with another player? Watch Aliens. The most pithy thing you hear anyone say is "whatever you are going to do, make it fast".
So yes, you could Attack, Object Interaction, AND Secondary Action aka talk to another player. But you are still limited to only 3 items on the 4 item menu. I am well aware that most people that want their chars to be gods capable of everything in a single round will hate this. They are playing a different game than I am.
Nothing you said is even distantly related to the question I asked.
I asked if you want a player to be unable to say anything if they are performing some other bonus action.
Now, because what you said isn’t related to what I said, we have four options
1.) A player can say anything, but no more than x seconds AND perform another bonus action
2.) A player can say anything, but no more than x seconds and can’t perform another bonus action
3.) A player can say anything he wants as long as he wants and perform another bonus action
4.) A player can say anything he wants as long as he wants and can’t perform another bonus action
Which do you want, 1 or 2?
Huh...sorry, you have utterly lost me.
Movement, Attack (V components exempt), Object Interaction all have zero opportunity for a conversation. Let's assume that "conversation" is a Secondary Action. (I am trying to avoid the confusion of a Bonus Action). So yes, a Wizard could Move, cast a spell with a Verbal Component AND have a quick conversation. But on the same turn as that the Wizard could not also try to pick up some fancy looking stick he saw on the floor.
Look, frankly, 5e, in fact, almost any edition has done a terrible job with conversation when under Initiative. It is utterly ludicrous for a Wizard to be casting some spell AND having a conversation in the same combat round. But certain concessions have to be made. So a Wizard can cast a "bonus action" leveled spell and a Cantrip on the same round, both with V components. But to suggest that same Wizard can ADDITIONALLY have a convo with a char...just no. If "conversation" is a Secondary Action and the Wizard has already burned an Attack (guess it can should be renamed Action) for a V based Cantrip, and a Secondary Action for leveled V based "Bonus Action" spell, then yeah, the Wizard is left with only Movement or Object Interaction.
I mean, what, a Wizard is casting Tiny Hut, and the group asks him midway through the spell his opinion on if they should attack the orcs that are passing by but have not noticed the group, and the Wizard gets to answer????
I think he's asking you whether you count talking as a bonus action or a free action (assuming I'm not misunderstanding him). But yeah, this thread has gotten kind of confusing.
Close. The Baron doesn’t want free actions. He wants them turned into Bonus actions. I’m asking if he really wants PCs to be unable to talk and drop an item or talk and cease concentration on a spell in the same round.
@Kotath and others. I already stated a solution earlier today.
As of today, players have the following "potential activities": Movement, Attack, Object Interaction, Free Action (don't get me started on how this is abused), and Bonus Action.
It can be simplified. Free Action is subsumed into Bonus Action, which is renamed as has been suggested "Secondary Action". So now there are only 4 options for a player:
Movement, Attack, Object Interaction, and Secondary Action. Player chooses 3 every turn. No more. Someone wants to fool around and decide what goes under Object Interaction and what goes under Secondary Action? OK, a discussion can be had about that.
Does this mean a re-work of may class features? Yes. Too bad, WOTC, do your job.
You want all free actions to become bonus actions? So, talking to your fellow party mate can’t be done in any round that you are using another bonus action?
Works for me.
Last week I ran a 1e game and 5e game. In both games, under heavy combat, at least one player decided that they would have a conversation about tactics, and I am not talking about "You go there on your turn". Combat is 6 seconds, which includes sidling around for a decent hit, or setting yourself up for defence, or whatever. But it is NOT designed to be for a Bard to recite some soliloquy, or the spellcasters to freeze time and discuss who will cast what. That is done OUT OF COMBAT.
You seriously think some Rogue when trying to crack a lock on a door while the Orcs bear down on the party is going to be riffing with another player? Watch Aliens. The most pithy thing you hear anyone say is "whatever you are going to do, make it fast".
So yes, you could Attack, Object Interaction, AND Secondary Action aka talk to another player. But you are still limited to only 3 items on the 4 item menu. I am well aware that most people that want their chars to be gods capable of everything in a single round will hate this. They are playing a different game than I am.
Nothing you said is even distantly related to the question I asked.
I asked if you want a player to be unable to say anything if they are performing some other bonus action.
Now, because what you said isn’t related to what I said, we have four options
1.) A player can say anything, but no more than x seconds AND perform another bonus action
2.) A player can say anything, but no more than x seconds and can’t perform another bonus action
3.) A player can say anything he wants as long as he wants and perform another bonus action
4.) A player can say anything he wants as long as he wants and can’t perform another bonus action
Which do you want, 1 or 2?
Huh...sorry, you have utterly lost me.
Movement, Attack (V components exempt), Object Interaction all have zero opportunity for a conversation. Let's assume that "conversation" is a Secondary Action. (I am trying to avoid the confusion of a Bonus Action). So yes, a Wizard could Move, cast a spell with a Verbal Component AND have a quick conversation. But on the same turn as that the Wizard could not also try to pick up some fancy looking stick he saw on the floor.
Look, frankly, 5e, in fact, almost any edition has done a terrible job with conversation when under Initiative. It is utterly ludicrous for a Wizard to be casting some spell AND having a conversation in the same combat round. But certain concessions have to be made. So a Wizard can cast a "bonus action" leveled spell and a Cantrip on the same round, both with V components. But to suggest that same Wizard can ADDITIONALLY have a convo with a char...just no. If "conversation" is a Secondary Action and the Wizard has already burned an Attack (guess it can should be renamed Action) for a V based Cantrip, and a Secondary Action for leveled V based "Bonus Action" spell, then yeah, the Wizard is left with only Movement or Object Interaction.
I mean, what, a Wizard is casting Tiny Hut, and the group asks him midway through the spell his opinion on if they should attack the orcs that are passing by but have not noticed the group, and the Wizard gets to answer????
I think he's asking you whether you count talking as a bonus action or a free action (assuming I'm not misunderstanding him). But yeah, this thread has gotten kind of confusing.
Close. The Baron doesn’t want free actions. He wants them turned into Bonus actions. I’m asking if he really wants PCs to be unable to talk and drop an item or talk and cease concentration on a spell in the same round.
I can't make this more clear. You want to walk and chew gum at the same time, sure. You can choose those options. And yes, if you think you are going to stack a bunch of free actions in a turn, no, they should not be able to do so. You can choose one.
You say if people want to walk and chew gum at the same time, sure. But, that’s two free actions and your last sentence permits only one. That’s not clear at all.
For one, I want to create characters that I'm attached to and invested in. That's what makes a campaign fun and memorable. I don't mind if a character dies, but if I'm losing a character once per session or every other session, I'm not going to invest in him. I'm not belittling the gamestyle, but it really isn't for me.
Secondly, having unconscious but on death saves really ratchets up the tension. We were fighting a Young Green Dragon and my wife's character went down and had one failure plus one success. I had a choice, I could try and finish off the dragon and hope that she doesn't fail her next two death saves before someone gets around to succeeding in stabilising her, or I could use my turn to administer her the first aid, take the 50:50 chance that it does nothing (my Wisdom is low, ironically, she was our strong in Wisdom character and the medic) and that the dragon might get to do more damage and take someone else out. Choices, choices! That's what makes D&D fun for me. Not having faux grief over a dead character while someone rolls up a new one, but the choices my character is presented with in order to prevent it. Death saves present that opportunity, that dilemma that really does ratchet up tension, rather than "this is the 50,000th roll, maybe this time my character might randomly die?"
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
For one, I want to create characters that I'm attached to and invested in. That's what makes a campaign fun and memorable. I don't mind if a character dies, but if I'm losing a character once per session or every other session, I'm not going to invest in him. I'm not belittling the gamestyle, but it really isn't for me.
Secondly, having unconscious but on death saves really ratchets up the tension. We were fighting a [Tooltip Not Found] and my wife's character went down and had one failure plus one success. I had a choice, I could try and finish off the dragon and hope that she doesn't fail her next two death saves before someone gets around to succeeding in stabilising her, or I could use my turn to administer her the first aid, take the 50:50 chance that it does nothing (my Wisdom is low, ironically, she was our strong in Wisdom character and the medic) and that the dragon might get to do more damage and take someone else out. Choices, choices! That's what makes D&D fun for me. Not having faux grief over a dead character while someone rolls up a new one, but the choices my character is presented with in order to prevent it. Death saves present that opportunity, that dilemma that really does ratchet up tension, rather than "this is the 50,000th roll, maybe this time my character might randomly die?"
Agree for the most part. I mean the death save mechanic is not the worst I've seen, bu it creates this "I'm down, I get up and knocked down and get up again" effect and when you see it fight after fight, session after session, whatever tension or narrative weight it had the first few times is lost and it just becomes part of a routine that is neither dramatic or interesting.
The real issue however is that it has no consequences or impact on the narrative afterward. Players don't change anything about their narrative or direction of the story because Bob The Barbarian went down 3 times in the last fight after being scorched by dragon breath, clawed to oblivion and swallowed and spit out the hole. You cast a Cure Light Wound and go on like nothing happened. It lacks in drama so much, players don't even talk about it, they just act like it was nothing because in practice, it was nothing. No penalty.. why should they care?
It again goes back to the fact that rewards and penalties drive player behavior. If there is no reward or penalty at all for something, it has no relevance to anyone and doesn't impact player behavior.
It's why I developed an Injury system.. I want the impact of battles to effect player behavior. If someone took a Mortal Injury, the direction of the story changes. Now they have an unconscious character, they need to get them some place safe, they have to carry them out of whatever situation they are in, they are short one character if something else dangerous happens. It creates tension and drama and there is no guarantee that the character will live as dying from a mortal wound is a real possibility unless the players can keep you stable which is not always possible depending on where it happens. Players that take mortal injuries lose 1 point of the permanent constitution as well which means there are long-term consequences of going down in battles which in turn creates more caution and concern over the status of Hit Points before they go down to 0.
The effects of a good injury system are quite wide and they impact the narrative which to me is what a good injury system should do.
Could simply keep track of negative hps, while still leaving them merely unconscious. That way, it may well take more than a single cure light to wake them up again. The cure would stabilize them, if they are not yet stable but not necessarily wake them up unless it does enough to compensate for the negative hps.
Yeah, I dont like the death save system, but it depends on the style of campaign your running.
If it's a campaign where your players get knocked out every combat, you'de proabably have to keep the current system or at least not make one that's harder for players.
But in campaigns with less hard encounters... the system really could be changed.
I kinda wish the DMG had suggested alternate death saving throw systems.
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The current system does not support the idea of spellcasters talking about what spells to cast etc on their turn, so that really isn't impacted by these changes or not. That's all just up to the DM and how much mid combat chatter/planning they personally allow. The PHB suggests brief utterances or gestures.
If I had a 6 second egg timer I would bring it to my table. That would end a lot of the nonsense. It would also drive away many many players.
I"m not saying that it's good or bad, simply that RAW does not support the idea of people coordinating or talking a lot during their turns in combat, and thus your proposed restructure of turns wouldn't really do anything to get rid of it, because it's already something DMs allow beyond the normal rules of combat anyway.
I think a six-second timer is terrible idea. Remember, the first rule of DnD is to have fun. Not to simulate.battlefield conditions.
It depends on the players your working with. If they really dislike a six second timer, dont do it. If they are ok with it, or your player ina very gritty, down to earth campaign, it might be worth a shot.
Personally, I think it might frustrate players, and their are other ways of dealing with people abusing free actions. But it is an interesting idea and you might have fun by giving it a try.
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BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
I don’t know why you directed that at me. I never argued for any of these positions and I think you know that. I was simply asking Baron von Cart which of those options he favored.
Golly, this has gone somewhere while I was away. All I'm gonna say is that if we're talking about whether someone is being a good DM, maybe we've lost the point of the thread.
The jank around free actions is difficult to manage because the game is so open-ended. Like, if you made the rule "you can use any object as part of your movement if it's needed for your movement, and use any object as part of your action if it's needed for your action," that sounds reasonable, except now a character can draw his sword, attack with it, sheathe it, use his second attack to draw another sword, attack with that, sheathe it, then use his movement to grab a rope, swing across a gap, open a door, go through it, and pull a lever to drop the elevator on the other side, descend to the bottom, and step out all in one turn. Is that too much? That feels like too much. Limit it to just one object per activity, though, and you end up with a character not being able to get his potion out of his bag and drink it in the same turn. It's tricky.
That said, there's a lot of people on the D&D design team. I'm sure they can figure it out if they put their minds to it.
Do not cite the deep magic to me, Wren. I was there when it was written.
Paradox of Choice is not a fixed, unchanging law of physics. Every single human being has different thresholds for what counts as 'Paradox of Choice'. Magic: the Gathering has billions of possible deck combinations and choices even just within whatever current horseshit passes as Modern, and it's been enormously more financially successful than D&D for thirty years. World-changingly popular games such as Minecraft embed a dizzying profusion of choices into their basic make-up, and those games are expanded exponentially by a legion of third-party mods. There are millions and millions of people for whom 5e's ruleset is basic, straightforward, and easy to keep in mind as they play. Any halfway competitive TCG gamer who's memorized thousands of cards and thousands more interactions between those cards can keep 5e in their brain without any effort at all.
Is everyone able to do so? No. But pretending no one is able to do so is disingenuous and overly dismissive. And frankly, eliminating any complexity in action economy won't last. 5e's action economy started off simple too, and then eight years of game development happened. Classes, subclasses, and feats were introduced to allow a broader diversity of options because there was unused design space for those things to take up. This thread exists because people are unsatisfied with 5e as it currently stands, and a comfortable majority of suggestions throughout the thread are seeking greater granularity and depth. There certainly exists a strong undercurrent asking for simplification, but even in that instance many of those requests are to clean up poorly designed game elements rather than to eliminate choice in a choice-driven role-playing game. Things like "make unarmed combat and grappling less infuriatingly weirdly written and bad", as opposed to "eliminate bonus actions and make players have to choose between a Move or an Action on their turn."
Unused design space will eventually be filled, should a game be given the chance to grow. The more space is filled, the bigger a game gets. Simply how the whole thing works. And frankly, if a DM relentlessly told me I was too stupid to handle being able to make choices in my choice-driven tabletop RPG and tried to spoon-feed me a single fixed on-rails path instead, that would be a table I would leave as swiftly as I could.
That's simply not what this game is meant to be. And I don't think anybody here would truly argue otherwise.
Please do not contact or message me.
The paradox of choice isn't about building a good game, it's about shopping. To the extent it's relevant to game design, it's in the observation that having a larger number of choices means decision making is slower and confidence that you made the right choice is lower. This is true but... so what? We don't play games to be efficient, and you're not supposed to be confident that you made the right move. The normal goal of a conventional game is complexity high enough that the best choice is not immediately obvious, but low enough that it's possible to be better or worse at the game.
The problem for RPGs is that there's an enormous range in how much complexity people want, and not everyone cares about the 'game' aspects at all. And in any case, good presentation will smooth the process of choice no matter how many choices are available.
I think he's asking you whether you count talking as a bonus action or a free action (assuming I'm not misunderstanding him). But yeah, this thread has gotten kind of confusing.
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HERE.Interresting, I will do some reading on that. It will also trigger some interresting question at my virtual table as all 5 players are psychologists. :)
That is an interesting idea, it does limit a lot of free actions though. Maybe you could just say "You can do one thing that classifies as a free action per a round."
Edits: Clarifying my question.
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HERE.Really? I've been playing wrong. Can you drop a weapon and pull out a new one as a free action then?
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HERE.Frankly, conversation in combat isn't any more unreasonable than a lot of other people can do in combat time; it's an inherent artifact of turn-based combat that people have an unreasonable amount of time to figure out what's going on and choose an optimal action. It's why real-time games that emulate D&D (e.g. Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights) play much differently from tabletop D&D, despite using nominally similar rules.
One thing I'd really have liked if I got the chance would be maybe to buff the humans a bit more? a +1 to every ability score doesn't really make up for a lack of, well, anything else-
Close. The Baron doesn’t want free actions. He wants them turned into Bonus actions. I’m asking if he really wants PCs to be unable to talk and drop an item or talk and cease concentration on a spell in the same round.
You say if people want to walk and chew gum at the same time, sure. But, that’s two free actions and your last sentence permits only one. That’s not clear at all.
Hmmmmm 1 thing? I'd change D&D 5E so that WoTC owned DnDBeyond. :)
I disagree with the 0HP and dead.
For one, I want to create characters that I'm attached to and invested in. That's what makes a campaign fun and memorable. I don't mind if a character dies, but if I'm losing a character once per session or every other session, I'm not going to invest in him. I'm not belittling the gamestyle, but it really isn't for me.
Secondly, having unconscious but on death saves really ratchets up the tension. We were fighting a Young Green Dragon and my wife's character went down and had one failure plus one success. I had a choice, I could try and finish off the dragon and hope that she doesn't fail her next two death saves before someone gets around to succeeding in stabilising her, or I could use my turn to administer her the first aid, take the 50:50 chance that it does nothing (my Wisdom is low, ironically, she was our strong in Wisdom character and the medic) and that the dragon might get to do more damage and take someone else out. Choices, choices! That's what makes D&D fun for me. Not having faux grief over a dead character while someone rolls up a new one, but the choices my character is presented with in order to prevent it. Death saves present that opportunity, that dilemma that really does ratchet up tension, rather than "this is the 50,000th roll, maybe this time my character might randomly die?"
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Yeah, I dont like the death save system, but it depends on the style of campaign your running.
If it's a campaign where your players get knocked out every combat, you'de proabably have to keep the current system or at least not make one that's harder for players.
But in campaigns with less hard encounters... the system really could be changed.
I kinda wish the DMG had suggested alternate death saving throw systems.
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HERE.I like the three death saves and you are out. It creates a certain urgency in the party to stabilize you ASAP.
But, you could make it that it takes ten minutes to get you above zero. At zero, you can walk with assistance, but you certainly can’t fight.
I"m not saying that it's good or bad, simply that RAW does not support the idea of people coordinating or talking a lot during their turns in combat, and thus your proposed restructure of turns wouldn't really do anything to get rid of it, because it's already something DMs allow beyond the normal rules of combat anyway.
I think a six-second timer is terrible idea. Remember, the first rule of DnD is to have fun. Not to simulate.battlefield conditions.
It depends on the players your working with. If they really dislike a six second timer, dont do it. If they are ok with it, or your player ina very gritty, down to earth campaign, it might be worth a shot.
Personally, I think it might frustrate players, and their are other ways of dealing with people abusing free actions. But it is an interesting idea and you might have fun by giving it a try.
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HERE.If you have a smart phone, I would be very surprised if it can't do a 6 second timer.