Theoretical House Rule: Large Party... Limited Actions

[Balthanon]

So, this is more for a play by post situation than in person, where it would probably be far more unwieldy, but I was wondering if anyone has experimented with having more players in the game and then restricting the number of actions the party has to allocate in combat. So for instance, you might have 6 players in a party, but in order to not have to adjust CR too much, the party has 4 characters worth of actions that any of the players can use. You could either handle it as only 4 players get to go, or you could go down to a slightly more granular level and say that the party has 4 move actions, 4 standard actions, and 4 swift actions available, plus maybe 8 free actions that can be used by any of the characters. (In 3.5 anyway, 5e I'm not sure what the equivalent would be.)

You would presumably still have regular character limitations, so any one character could only use a single character's worth of actions, but it seems like it could pose some interesting challenges for players. It would require that the party work together and would present more tactical decisions than normal. The other issue is that the party would still have more resources than usual (more spell slots, more hp, more uses of class abilities, etc...), but it does seem like it would go a fair way towards keeping large parties to standard CR values.

The obvious risks here are players never getting to make decisions, though you could potentially alleviate that with a fatigue system or something, where a player's character acting too many rounds in a row triggers some kind of penalty. You would also potentially have problems with players dictating actions to players, rather than coming to a consensus. Technically I've seen that happen in regular games too though, so it's probably just a discussion that needs to be had.

Anyway, thought I would throw it out to see if anyone else has had thoughts about doing something like this in their games or even implemented it. I've seen it from the other side in 4e (maybe 5e?) boss encounters, where they get more actions allocated than normal, but I've never seen it go the other way.

[Batcathat]

What's the intended purpose of the rule? Just to keep the party's power down? Because it seems like it would mainly turn the already unwieldy situation of having a large party into an even more unwieldy one (since the party have to coordinate their action usage rather than just all doing their thing).

[BRC]

I would recommend against it. Competing for actions is a quick way to lead to a toxic table.

Doing Stuff is Fun, and nobody wants to feel like they're holding the party back. If there's any sort of optimization difference in your party, then it will quickly become apparent who has the most "Effective' Turns, and party strategy will be to give that person an action every round, while whoever has the least effective turns never gets to go. You could limit things with a fatigue system, but even that will quickly sort the party into the Primary Lineup and the Back-Bench.

Every round will turn into an argument over who "Deserves" to get one of the limited number of turns.

And if a PC needs to take a turn to extricate themselves from a situation, then they're taking that away from everybody else who could use their turns to get closer to victory, instead of just staving off defeat.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I would recommend against it...Doing Stuff is Fun
This. Exactly this.

I mean, just go back and look at your post. You identify one potential pro (makes encounter building a smidge easier), and basically everything else you forsee is negative. What are you hoping to achieve?

The only way I can think of to make this work would be as a way of letting people play multiple characters. Give each PLAYER get one set of actions, and let them split it up as they see fit. That'll give you most of the same tactical decision making without making anyone feel excluded or (shudder) provoking constant circular discussions about who gets to act next.

[Vahnavoi]

Do you expect your players to be uneven posters or to be online at different times? I can see a justification for only fraction of available characters acting per turn if you are more active than your players and it would take a very long time to gather actions from everyone.

To use a fictive calendar to illustrate the principle:

Monday: you can post.
Tuesday: player A can post.
Wednesday: player B can post.
Thursday: Player C can post.
Friday: You can post.
Saturday: Player D can post.
Sunday: Player E can post.

The possibilities are: wait a whole week for players ABCDE and process a turn each Monday, or, in line with your suggestion, players ABC play turn 1 that's processed Friday, and then players DE play turn 2 that's processed Monday. So on and so forth.

[Balthanon]

I mean, just go back and look at your post. You identify one potential pro (makes encounter building a smidge easier), and basically everything else you forsee is negative. What are you hoping to achieve?

The only way I can think of to make this work would be as a way of letting people play multiple characters. Give each PLAYER get one set of actions, and let them split it up as they see fit. That'll give you most of the same tactical decision making without making anyone feel excluded or (shudder) provoking constant circular discussions about who gets to act next.

This is more a thought exercise than anything I'm really planning at the moment, but it was spurred by a few games where I had 7 or 8 applicants that were decent, but didn't want to expand the party to that extent.

For me the tactical portion and coordination aspect is actually something I see as a potential benefit rather than a downside, so long as it is up front in the game description and the players are on board with it-- it's another aspect that the players can focus on building for and working together on. It basically turns the game into something more like a cooperative board game during combat in some respects. I would almost see this houserule as something you build a campaign around, rather than something you put in place after the fact honestly. (The idea of giving a player multiple characters was something that I thought of as well potentially, but honestly this has the most other benefits when you're dealing with an uneven number of players. If you have two players or 3 players, I could see that working though. Maybe have the "extra" actions rotate at that point, if the party can't cooperate on when to use them.)

The encounter building aspect also isn't necessarily minor if you have a DM that is working off of a module-- reworking every encounter in an adventure to account for 5, 6, or 7 players when you have a large party is no small task. A lot of DMs likely don't have time to construct their own encounters or modify them. You can potentially try just running them through a module that is higher level, but it's going to make things a lot more swingy in terms of potential lethality.

(Another potential benefit I could see that is party dependent is when you get someone who honestly doesn't care much about combat and just wants it to be done with to get back to other aspects of the game they enjoy. You can add this person without significant impact on the balance of encounters and they might give up the lion's share of their actions during combat without caring about it.)


Do you expect your players to be uneven posters or to be online at different times? I can see a justification for only fraction of available characters acting per turn if you are more active than your players and it would take a very long time to gather actions from everyone.

The possibilities are: wait a whole week for players ABCDE and process a turn each Monday, or, in line with your suggestion, players ABC play turn 1 that's processed Friday, and then players DE play turn 2 that's processed Monday. So on and so forth.

This is another benefit that was in the back of my mind on this, yes. I've actually already outlined some other options to address this piece (namely, letting players give some "default actions" that can be used for their characters in situations where they aren't able to post quickly), but honestly, this is a problem with play by post (at least based on my past experience, my latest games haven't gotten into combat yet) that can use as many solutions as possible thrown at it sometimes. The fact that it can take a month or more to get through a single encounter slows things down a lot in play by post.

(I actually think the best solution is probably some sessions where everyone is available at the same time where you're basically playing live, but it's not always feasible.)


I would recommend against it. Competing for actions is a quick way to lead to a toxic table.

Doing Stuff is Fun, and nobody wants to feel like they're holding the party back. If there's any sort of optimization difference in your party, then it will quickly become apparent who has the most "Effective' Turns, and party strategy will be to give that person an action every round, while whoever has the least effective turns never gets to go. You could limit things with a fatigue system, but even that will quickly sort the party into the Primary Lineup and the Back-Bench.

Yeah, if it ends up boiling down into a competition, it has pretty much failed at that point. I've worked with groups before though that I think could handle it without it turning into that-- I'm honestly seeing this as more of a joint effort at all stages, where you do have players handling individual characters, but there's cooperation in all aspects of the game, from building the characters through to the actual combat/social situation/etc... Ideally, everyone contributes to the discussion about who does what in combat and comes to consensus and that is 'Doing Stuff' for them. (Ideals obviously break down in actual play frequently though, which is why I didn't just jump into proposing this for my active games.)

Overall, I do think this is very much dependent upon your gaming group, but it seems like something that could be workable for some of them.

[icefractal]

Time wise, it seems like it wouldn't speed things up unless the resolution time (rolling the dice, adding the numbers) significantly exceeds the decision time, which IMO is seldom the case. In the situation that the decision time is greater, it will probably slow things down, as now you need to decide everyone's potential action and rank them.

In terms of CR balancing - well personally, I'd just increase the number of foes proportionately, which is easy if the PCs have a double-sized party - just 2x the foes as well.

But as an alternative, you could do what some systems (such as Lancer, IIRC) do - enemies can get more than one turn each when there are less of them. You might want to pair this with somewhat increased HP on the enemy side, but it would balance the action economy however much you want it to.

[Batcathat]

Time wise, it seems like it wouldn't speed things up unless the resolution time (rolling the dice, adding the numbers) significantly exceeds the decision time, which IMO is seldom the case. In the situation that the decision time is greater, it will probably slow things down, as now you need to decide everyone's potential action and rank them.

Yeah, this is my main issue with it too. I don't think it would necessarily create conflict or anything, I just don't really see an upside to it in most situations.

[Grod_The_Giant]

This is more a thought exercise than anything I'm really planning at the moment, but it was spurred by a few games where I had 7 or 8 applicants that were decent, but didn't want to expand the party to that extent.
The thing is, even in a combat-heavy game I don't know how much this would actually help. There may be fewer actions, but there will be just as much roleplaying. My experience with large groups is that while combat can get slow, at least there's structure. It's out-of-combat stuff that gets really messy, with people going off in different directions and trying to interject themselves into conversations.


For me the tactical portion and coordination aspect is actually something I see as a potential benefit rather than a downside, so long as it is up front in the game description and the players are on board with it-- it's another aspect that the players can focus on building for and working together on. It basically turns the game into something more like a cooperative board game during combat in some respects.
I get that, but I don't think it'll work as neatly as you expect. Even with a good group who are on-board with the idea... have you ever sat and watched a party spend forty minutes arguing over how to approach a situation, with the discussion moving in circles because everyone has their own interpretations of what's going on? There are really only two ways I can see this panning out--either the decision-making part of combat takes waaaaay longer, or one or two experienced players wind up basically dictating tactics.

That's why I suggested multiple characters per player. You definitely couldn't use it in a big group, but it's the best way I can think of to add that extra tactical element while still keeping clear lines of command.


The encounter building aspect also isn't necessarily minor if you have a DM that is working off of a module-- reworking every encounter in an adventure to account for 5, 6, or 7 players when you have a large party is no small task.
It doesn't have to be hard. There have been plenty of times I've prepared adventures for an unknown number of players; nine times out of ten adding or removing a few duplicate creatures is all you need to do. It'll certainly be less work than redoing the entire combat paradigm.

[Quertus]

during combat

OK, if it wasn't for that phrase, I might be able to get behind this.

Like, imagine if each Player had a set of "Action Tokens" or "Scene Tokens" to spend.

OK, we're in the Adventurer's Guild, to get a Job. Anyone want to spend their Tokens to take an action here?

OK, we've survived the drunken brawl the drunken dwarf started (up some coin thanks to the halfling thief), and we're on the quest to defeat the Giant Toads that Sir Ruthless picked at random while bashing heads. Anyone want to spend their Tokens to take an action here?

OK, Princess Fumbles got eaten by a Toad, preventing "Fireball coming online" the Red from soloing the Toad encounter, requiring Sir Ruthless to get involved cutting her free. We're headed back to the adventurer's guild to collect the bounty and (hopefully) pick a better quest. Anyone want to spend their action tokens here?

OK, after Princess Fumbles nearly drown in the bath, before being rescued by Saint Satin, they come downstairs to discover that the drunken dwarf has passed out, and nobody has chosen a new quest. So Saint Satan picks the "Orphan Pilgrimage" quest. As we set off on the next quest, anyone want to spend an action token here?

Princess Fumbles ties the drunken dwarf to his horse (upside down). Sir Ruthless arranges the children for optimal coverage, and argues with Saint Satin about the virtues of preparing them for a children's crusade.

OK, we've had 4 scenes, everyone gets 2 extra Scene Tokens. Our next scene is...

Kinda like Chubo's, except less "Power Rangers", less "everyone has to speak exactly evenly in each scene", and more "balance throughout the night", everyone gets involved in roughly the same number / importance of scenes.

What I don't see is the value of what you're trying to do, limiting it to just combat. One of my common sayings is that the good thing about Combat in an RPG was that, traditionally, it was the one time that everyone got to participate. Talk to the King? Everyone but your Face is probably a liability. Sneak in and steal an artifact? Everyone but the Thief is probably a liability (the walking tin cans definitely are). Hack the server? Everyone but the... uh... what did Shadowrun call them again? Net Runner?... everyone but them is dead weight. But combat? Nobody has to twiddle their thumbs in a traditional combat.

If the party is oversized, won't that mean that they have to share XP and treasure, and, thus, won't be individually as powerful? Doesn't that mean that large party balance largely takes care of itself after a few levels (in most systems)? What's the real issue here?

[Balthanon]

OK, if it wasn't for that phrase, I might be able to get behind this.

Like, imagine if each Player had a set of "Action Tokens" or "Scene Tokens" to spend.


Encounters might have been a better method of framing it in the initial post rather than combat, I commented a bit later when I was talking about the cooperation aspect of using it with "actual combat/social situation/etc...", so I do see it as beneficial in those situations too. That does kind of require having some structures in place for adjudicating those though, which doesn't really exist in the games I'm most familiar with (mainly 3.5); so I tend to default to thinking of combat as the primary situation where action economy has a notable effect.

I haven't really read through the 5e DMG since it was published to see if it was still there, but I believe the 5e playtest had more structure around some of that with the "3 pillars" of combat/exploration/social interaction at one point that I was considering backporting to 3.5.

(I like the examples, incidentally.)



If the party is oversized, won't that mean that they have to share XP and treasure, and, thus, won't be individually as powerful? Doesn't that mean that large party balance largely takes care of itself after a few levels (in most systems)? What's the real issue here?

For the treasure/XP component, that is likely to be an issue if you're just splitting it the standard way (which if you're running off a module would be likely; I tend towards milestone leveling personally and have honestly only run out of a module a few times and heavily modified it personally); encounters out leveling you doesn't really fix the problem though. Like I said for another comment, it just increases how swingy the encounter is, as you're more likely to run into Save or Die spells you're not of sufficient level to survive, more focused damage that might outright kill players, etc...

As to the issue that spurred this thought, it is mainly that guidance for encounter building is largely built around the 4 person party, but the number of times I've actually played in groups with exactly 4 players and a DM is vanishingly small. :) This was a thought exercise about how that could be addressed on one side of the scale.

[King of Nowhere]

In addition to all that's been said already, my simulationist perspective would clash with this rule. I like to put everythong into a framework of realism, if a rule is completely arbitrary and nonsensical - like a bigger party not getting more actions and not being stronger - it breaks my immersion. And by the way, would it also work for monsters? You have an encounter with 6 goblins, but only 4 get to act?
I really wouldn't like that.

Personally, my balance fix would be to make stronger encounters, accept that they are more swingy, and make sure the party has access to resurrection spells.

As for the difficulty of balancing encounters, i never found any use in the cr system. Any party that's even remotely optimized will tear apart "level appropriate" foes; i have to eyeball it anyway.