So I looked over the various gaming threads that had come out of discussions of Action Points and how they were used — I agree and disagree in equal measures with what folks are saying, so I’m just writing down my thoughts on Action Points from my own point of view.
\nThis essentially codifies the House Ruled Action Point system I’ve been using.
\nFirst, my thoughts:<\/p>\n
\n1. Action Points are cool. I don’t necessarily love how they’re implemented in the game, because:
\n– 1a: They can only do one thing (take an additional Standard Action).
\n– 1b: That option is alternately kind of lame or potentially game breaking.
\n2. Due to (1b) and the risk of a game breaking series of Action Point expenditures (two or three rounds in a row of additional actions would kind of break things, yes), the game designers opted to:
\n– 2a: Heavily restrict the number of APs a player can have.
\n– 2b: Heavily restrict how often APs can be used.
\nI understand why they did that, but I think it simply treats the symptomatic problems of the system as implemented — it doesn’t fix what’s busted.
\n3. Since Action Points, under the standard system are both (a) rare and (b) unstable in terms of payoff, they’re rarely used by the players.
\n– 3a: Their primary purpose (allowing players to combat the unavoidable whiff-factor in a dice mechanic with no bell curve and roughly a 50\/50 chance of success on any given roll) is alternately too weak or too powerful in practice.
\n– 3b: Their alternate purpose (as a way to make characters more awesome) is diluted.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\nTruly, they might just as easily not even be in the game: as written, they represent a lot of bookkeeping (“a new Action Point accrues every two encounters, but the total resets to 1 after each Extended Rest”? Really, Wizards of the Coast? Really<\/em>?), for a rare and often anticlimactic pay-off.
\nThey are, alternately, “too much” and “not enough”, in my opinion.
\nSo here’s my hack. Changes and additions are italicized.<\/p>\n\n1. Your character starts with one Action Point. For the purposes of drifting as little as possible from the core rules, we’ll retain the standard accrual rules I just made fun of:
\n– 1a. You gain a fresh Action Point every other encounter.
\n– 1b. Your current total of Action points resets to 1 after an Extended Rest.
\n2. You can use your Action Points for one of three<\/em> things:
\n– 2a: Spend an AP to take an additional standard action. (Once per Encounter)
\n– 2b: Spend an AP to reroll a failed (or successful) d20 roll. (Once per Turn)
\n– 2c: Spend an AP to add +3 to (or subtract 3 from) a d20 roll. (Once per Turn)<\/em>
\nEdit to Add:<\/b> A natural 1 can’t be rerolled, and always misses. Sometimes, you’re just screwed, and that’s awesome too.
\n3. At will, as a free action, you can cross off a Healing Surge and give yourself an Action Point, which can immediately be used in one of the ways listed under 2. <\/em> Healing Surges reset per the normal rules.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe end result allows players to “push” by sacrificing some resources in a way that I already know I like a lot from playing lots of other games with similar options. (Vincent Baker uses a phrase “trading in your future for your present” and I like that term quite a lot.)
\nIt’s also relatively “trad gaming” in the options it presents: if I really wanted to hack it into some kind of Indie co-authored hippie craziness, I’d add a few Meta-options under #2, like spending an AP to let you add facts to the game fiction, a la Spirit of the Century<\/em>.
\nEven without that option, I’d definitely consider a player who really wanted to take part in a scene and suggested paying an Action Point to conveniently show up, if it was remotely plausible.
\nBones?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So I looked over the various gaming threads that had come out of discussions of Action Points and how they<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-d20","category-game-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}