It's time for another Good Idea/Bad Idea: Action Economy Edition.

[Thiyr]

No, not the animaniacs short. I've got a few ideas I'd been rolling around in my head as far as houserules to improve the quality of 3.5 games and various mechanics overall. I'm looking for input as to how you feel these would work overall and why. We're gonna start with one for now, to see how it works out. Note: this is all unplaytested at the moment, so anything I say is pure conjecture.

On the action economy: Action economy is pretty much the name of the game more often than not. If you have more actions, you can do more. Is it good enough to use your standard action, or even a full round on? what about swift actions? This makes sense, considering that you only really have one standard, one move, and one swift to play with. What if things had more actions though?

"But bulbasaur!" you cry, "Why, wouldn't that just make casters even more absurd? Despite your luxurious green bulb and charismatic face, this seems like a terrible idea!"

Easily solved. The idea is as follows: Remove the full attack as an attack option. Instead, at any point in which you would gain an iterative attack, you instead gain a second standard action. Each standard action used to make an attack beyond the first receives a -5 penalty. Only two spells, powers, invocations, maneuvers, SLAs (spell-type effects, or STEs), etc can be used during the round. No STE may be used twice in a round, and if used via the additional standard action, the second STE used must be at least 5 levels lower than the first if a spell or power, one grade lower if an invocation, or must be of a type previously unused for maneuvers (ex, you can use a strike and then a boost or vice versa, but not two strikes). Only one kind of STE may be used during your turn in this manner. In cases where "full attacks" are referenced, treat it as if you had used all of your standard actions to make an attack action.

The intent of this is to bring things that are otherwise not worth their action cost and give them the potential to be used, without allowing people to go nova even -easier- than they currently can with the stuff that's already awesome. It has the side effects of allowing for more movement per round, and making the twf chain irrelevant. It also attempt to make BAB worth just a tad more. Thoughts?

[Aegis013]

It would make ToB characters into monstrosities (Eat 5 manuevers in one tuuuurn!!!), it would make pounce not so good.

Casters would still be on top. Druids get a huge buff thanks to natural iterative attacks. Unless you're not including natural attacks.

I don't see this being that big a deal, unless it applies to monsters too, then I think monsters get the best deal here. Unless you're not including natural attacks.

It's interesting at least.

[Quietus]

The first problem I see is that it's valuing a standard action for a melee character at the same as a spell. A Glitterdust or Web spell is not the same value as an attack with a -5 penalty, even if the guy attacking also gets further attacks.

Also : Manyshot. Cranking out that many arrows could get really silly.

I like the idea behind this, but it's definitely not without issues.

[Thiyr]

On 5 maneuvers in 1 turn: No, it doesn't.


Only two spells, powers, invocations, maneuvers, SLAs (spell-type effects, or STEs), etc can be used during the round.

That was the nice, obvious thing to catch.

On natural attacks: Those aren't iterative attacks, those are natural attacks. This would be based purely on BAB. Though that does point out the issue of "how does this work with natural attacks".

On valuing attacks vs spells: Of course an extra attack isn't worth a spell. That's just kinda a silly thought. For a bit of backstory, though, this was inspired by looking at intimidate and thinking "Man, this is terrible. Not that the effect is bad, but why would you ever waste a turn doing this?", and then starting to wonder why it should waste the whole turn. And there's plenty of stuff like that, where the fact that it takes -time- is the only thing bringing the ability down. And while this is a boost to casters, it doesn't help them go -nova- faster, which was the big thing I was trying to work around. Of course more actions will help them more than it'll help Fightara the Face-Punch, but it really saves them a feat and some spell slots, which were never really the worry to begin with. This wasn't intended to be a "Let's make casters and fighters equal". This was more of a "let's make more options viable".

I did not, however, consider manyshot. Probably due to a severe lack of archery in groups i've played in. I wonder how I'd work at that one.

[Coidzor]

On natural attacks: Those aren't iterative attacks, those are natural attacks. This would be based purely on BAB. Though that does point out the issue of "how does this work with natural attacks".

I was just wondering about that. Can't really make the secondary ones count as swift actions that can be only used for each natural weapon, after all... And making them into a standard action that can only be used for each natural weapon would have the same effect and sound klunky. Then again, since one effectively has a sort of pounce anyway.... maybe not. :smallconfused:

What kind of action is a charge? Does it just eat up a move action and a standard action as well but apply the attack penalties to subsequent attacks made? ...And since one can trade a standard for a move, IIRC, could one theoretically, once one had 3 standard actions, charge two different enemies but attack at full BAB and then BAB-5? If so, I think shock trooper chargers will like it a lot, unless I'm forgetting some relatively simple method of getting extra charging into one round.


...Also, does that mean that once they've got a second standard action, casters effectively lose their swift action and render themselves unable to cast an immediate action spell in response to an action against themselves? ...If not, does the bit where an immediate action when not on one's turn eats the swift action of one's next turn mean that one eats up one of a character's 2 STEs a round if someone does an immediate action spell before their turn?

Does make it kind of interesting, since one's first standard action doesn't have to be an attack, since one's second standard action, if it's the first attack, gets the full BAB without penalty, if I'm reading that right, anyway....

[Godskook]

Have you ever tried to change your car's oil by beating it with a baseball bat? This proposition has about the same effect on 3.5. While you've probably fixed something in the process, so much comes unbalanaced that its now annoyingly ridiculous how much re-balancing has to be done.

To start:

1.Natural Attacks now make no sense, as do any monsters(Hi dragons!) or PC classes that rely on them(Alas, poor Totemist, I knew it well!).

2.Things that have really good single attacks and an STE worth talking about just got an insanely good buff between BAB 6-10 region(Again, hi dragons!).

3.A good deal of class features, feats and spells rely on being able to manipulate the action economy in very precise ways, and I'm not just talking about actually activating an STE. For example: Warblade, Psionics(oh gawd!), Swordsage, Crusader(kinda, in that he relies on the other two having to in order to preserve his niche), MoI for essentia control, Factotum, swift action spells(not quickened!), greater many shot,

4.This buffs gish builds like the Sorcadin, who're built to deal damage and cast spells already, getting 16+ BAB and 9th level spells by level 20.

[TroubleBrewing]

Optimizing for intimidate can reduce the action cost required from a standard to a Move action. Plus, with relatively little work (as most of it has already been done for you by Takahashi no Onisan), you can take the target to cowering with a single turn.

[candycorn]

This makes clerics ridiculous.

Divine Power just became a way to increase your casting rate too.