Standard > Swift > Move

[Jeff the Green]

I've been thinking about a houserule, and am hoping y'all could help me tease out the implications.

It's pretty clearly a bad idea to allow characters to convert move actions into swift actions since there's so many more powerful things to do with a swift action than a move (I can't think of any move action spells, for instance). But what about the other way around? Let characters convert standard actions into swift actions and swift actions into move actions.

The biggest change I see is that it makes pseudo-pouncing much easier and reduces the value of a cleric dip, but honestly I see that as a good thing. What other main changes are there?

[Vanitas]

Star Wars Saga Edition does something similar, you may want to check it out.

[Story]

It would make Chronocharm of the Horizon Walker useless.

[nedz]

It's pretty clearly a bad idea to allow characters to convert move actions into swift actions since there's so many more powerful things to do with a swift action than a move (I can't think of any move action spells, for instance). But what about the other way around? Let characters convert standard actions into swift actions and move actions into swift actions.

I think you got the last sentence the wrong way around ?

This effectively gives free pounce, though not on a charge.
Three move actions a round ?
Swift action to move and then full attack is quite good for a Scout.

I think that this helps melee characters and is neutral to casters.

[Person_Man]

In 5E, it looks like they're limiting it to 1 Action, 1 Move, 1 Reaction, and 1 Concentration, plus a jumble of "non-Actions" I hope they remove. Having played every iteration of D&D and lots of other tabletop rpg and wargames, my opinion is that precisely defined non-convertible actions actions is the way to go. If players can "juggle" actions or gain an action advantage, it almost always leads to abuse.

Having said that, there's already a ton of action juggling and advantage in 3.X (and to a slightly lesser degree, Pathfinder). So it wouldn't be that big of a deal if you added it in. It's just be yet another layer of complexity/abuse.

[Zweisteine]

This makes little sense, because swift actions are faster than move actions.

Standard actions take up most of your turn, move actions take up much of it, swift take up very little, and free actions take no time a tall.

I'd imagine it something like this:
Full-round: 6 seconds
Standard: 3 seconds of action
Move: 2 seconds of action
Swift: 1 second of focus
Free 0.1 seconds (which takes place during another non-swift action)

That's not actually accurate, but it gets the scale about right.