Mearls' Bonus Action Removal

[Kryx]

Bonus actions are fairly hacky, and with 3+ years running the final game under my belt it's now obvious how to live without them

You just need to glue the appropriate actions together - for instance, Two-Weapon Fighting is just a special attack action.

Instead of there being an Attack action, you'd have Attack as a category with new class-exclusive options added to it. Cleaner design.

Bonus action - they're pretty hacky; I'd get rid of them and just design smarter. Prior editions always poke through your thinking and distort it. We were so dependent on swift/minor actions that it took a lot of work to stop framing concepts in their terms.

I think bonus actions are needlessly fiddly. If we crafted actions correctly, we wouldn't need them. Alas, the benefits of three years of hindsight!

I wonder how abilities like

• Monk's Patient Defense (Bonus action to dodge)
• Monk's Step of the Wind (Bonus action to dash/disengage)
• Rogue's Cunning Action (Bonus action to dodge/disengage/hide)

would play out mechanically. Without the tradeoff for lost damage a rogue or monk could become incredibly tanky by always dodging while doing good damage.

Thoughts on how this should be implemented?

[SqueakyElLobo]

Dash and Disengage could be tied to the move action, maybe dodge as well. A lot of bonus action spells, eg Healing Word, I cannot see being tied to an action effectively. The system and its parts would definitely need a big rework to remove Bonus Action from the game.

[Tetrasodium]

moon druid wildshape & combat wildshape's burn spell slot to heal yourself are both bonus actions too. I don't see the benefit in removing bonus actions though?

[jaappleton]

I like how one of the lead designers of 5E doesn't like aspects of its design. Seriously, I like that.

That tells me they're always trying to improve. They aren't complacent.

I honestly don't mind bonus actions, I like them. Or rather, I like what I can do with them.

[Cybren]

Dash and Disengage could be tied to the move action, maybe dodge as well. A lot of bonus action spells, eg Healing Word, I cannot see being tied to an action effectively. The system and its parts would definitely need a big rework to remove Bonus Action from the game.

There's no such thing as a "move action" remember.


You can accomplish most of what bonus actions do with different regular actions like mearls said, but it does close up some design space that bonus actions use. They would probably not have abilities worded like cunning action, and the rogue would have some other ability in its place, which isn't necessarily bad, just different.

[Honest Tiefling]

I don't see the benefit in removing bonus actions though?

I'm with the chemical here, what IS the issue with bonus actions? Are they confusing for newcomers?

[mephnick]

Yeah I quite like the BA design..

[pwykersotz]

I wonder how abilities like

• Monk's Patient Defense (Bonus action to dodge)
• Monk's Step of the Wind (Bonus action to dash/disengage)
• Rogue's Cunning Action (Bonus action to dodge/disengage/hide)

would play out mechanically. Without the tradeoff for lost damage a rogue or monk could become incredibly tanky by always dodging while doing good damage.

Thoughts on how this should be implemented?

Rogues can't dodge as a bonus action. Cunning action allows for Dash, Disengage, and Hide.

Monks would be fine, Ki cost keeps it reasonably limited, and in theory you wouldn't be able to use two class-specific actions at once.

[DragonSorcererX]

I like Bonus Actions, but if they do that, I hope it is in some Unearthed Arcana book or a DMG II optional rule.

I don't know why... but I have a strange feeling that a 5.5e may happen like what happened with 3.0 and 4e... I hope not.

[Sabeta]

He just says they're Hacky. I believe he views them as a metagame element that feels too much like major and minor actions from older editions.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'm with the chemical here, what IS the issue with bonus actions? Are they confusing for newcomers?

If they are, I think it's mostly because of the goofy little "you don't get a bonus action unless you have an ability that says you can do a thing as a bonus action" bit. Honestly, I think they're probably less confusing than having a lot of situational "when you do this, you can also do that" type abilities.

If they went down that path, I think most bonus action things could probably be rewritten as "you may ____ in addition to your normal action," or "you may take an additional action that may only be used to ____" or some such. Which is... eh? I certainly see where Mearls is coming from there; you could handle most things that way, and it might well be more elegant design-wise... but like I said, I think not having them be situational "if x than y" things is much better from a useability standpoint. I also like the two-action setup; it gives you an interesting set of secondary choices to make without interfering with your default attack/cast-a-spell schtick.

[Vaz]

Step 1; Ignore Mike Mearls.

[RSP]

It sounds like he's saying Rogues and Monks would just get to do their stuff without calling them Bonus Actions and things like TWF would just be an additional attack with the attack action.

However, without the BA, I fail to see how you would cap these abilities at one a round. Would a Monk/Rogue multiclass be able to Dash and Dodge in addition to their normal action (with extra martial arts attacks?) and move.

I don't think this is very well thought out, if all you're doing is saying "you can only do one of these added things a round in addition to your action," then all you're really doing is removing the name "bonus action" while keeping them in the game.

[Tetrasodium]

If they are, I think it's mostly because of the goofy little "you don't get a bonus action unless you have an ability that says you can do a thing as a bonus action" bit. Honestly, I think they're probably less confusing than having a lot of situational "when you do this, you can also do that" type abilities.

If they went down that path, I think most bonus action things could probably be rewritten as "you may ____ in addition to your normal action," or "you may take an additional action that may only be used to ____" or some such. Which is... eh? I certainly see where Mearls is coming from there; you could handle most things that way, and it might well be more elegant design-wise... but like I said, I think not having them be situational "if x than y" things is much better from a useability standpoint. I also like the two-action setup; it gives you an interesting set of secondary choices to make without interfering with your default attack/cast-a-spell schtick.

You could do that, but bonus action comes with a built in limiter of only having 1/turn so they don't need to worry too much about what happens when you combine bonus actions A B & Q together when you have feat M & Z. As a result, bonus acyion abilities can be pretty nice in many cases. If you could do a bunch of them there would be some in need of rebalancing

[Foxhound438]

Step 1; Ignore Mike Mearls.

agreed.

As to the OP, those things are only the surface of the issue: there are also a ton of bonus action spells as well... You could mark each of these things with "once per turn" and have no action economy cost to it, but then you have the issue of having multiple "free actions" all in the same turn, like a rogue/bard getting 1/turn inspiration, then 1/turn free dash, then 1/turn extra attack from 2wf, then 1/turn back end of a quarterstaff, then 1/turn spiritual weapon attack... it just makes it way messier, and the game would devolve into a contest of who can stack the most effects that used to be bonus action together, or else you get the PF issue of having to have every one of these things say you can't "stack" them with any of the others.

[Sigreid]

Looks like Mearls is off his meds again.

[Gryndle]

Step 1; Ignore Mike Mearls.

yeah I find this rule works for most game issues. :)

[Battlebooze]

It sounds like he's saying Rogues and Monks would just get to do their stuff without calling them Bonus Actions and things like TWF would just be an additional attack with the attack action.

However, without the BA, I fail to see how you would cap these abilities at one a round. Would a Monk/Rogue multiclass be able to Dash and Dodge in addition to their normal action (with extra martial arts attacks?) and move.

I don't think this is very well thought out, if all you're doing is saying "you can only do one of these added things a round in addition to your action," then all you're really doing is removing the name "bonus action" while keeping them in the game.

Exactly.

I wonder if he wants to get rid of all the bonus action spells, converting them into "regular" action spells?

[pwykersotz]

While there might be a few specific cases where they're used when they maybe shouldn't be (eg his example of TWF), I'm gonna go with the consensus here that Bouns Actions, on the whole, are fine and do their job well.

Sometimes you hold onto mechanics from prior editions out of habit; sometimes you hold on to them because they actually work well.

I dunno. I've thought about it a little, and I think that there's something valuable about keeping the action economy simple and using the exception based setup as opposed to having a slot for a small subset of actions. At the very least it encourages the use of 'extras' as opposed to making you lament that you can't use your rightful bonus action. It's like what WoW did with bonus exp. It used to be a penalty if you played too long. The players hated it. So they changed the labels. Now the penalty is "normal" and the rested experience is a bonus. The players loved it. That labeling makes all the difference in the feeling of your character.

I'm tentatively in favor of Mearls' idea.

[Theodoxus]

Perhaps rename them 'secondary actions'? Takes the stigma away from it being a "bonus" that you might get to do... IDK... never had an issue, didn't even think it might be an issue until this thread...

[Saeviomage]

I think 5e would have been better if they'd just avoided trying to force people to think in certain ways: trying to get people to not optimize bonus actions, expecting that disallowing delays would reduce confusion and/or tactical abuse etc have both just ended up with more complex interactions that are just as bad, and their own conceit that the 'problem' is now solved just led them to open up abuses because they weren't watching for them.

[Fflewddur Fflam]

Step 1; Ignore Mike Mearls.

+10000.

Just about everything Mearls comes up with sucks, like his recent Initiative variant. Whenever 6e happens years from now, I hope he's not around for it.

[pwykersotz]

I think 5e would have been better if they'd just avoided trying to force people to think in certain ways: trying to get people to not optimize bonus actions, expecting that disallowing delays would reduce confusion and/or tactical abuse etc have both just ended up with more complex interactions that are just as bad, and their own conceit that the 'problem' is now solved just led them to open up abuses because they weren't watching for them.

Those complex systems are, in my experience, only present on the forums and to a very small subset of actual gamers. Basically, you have to import the mindset. The rules of the game do nothing but force people to think in certain ways. The presence of Hit Points and Damage force a paradigm. So does everything else. It's all about what you choose to enforce. Mearls' idea isn't good or bad on the face of it, it's entirely neutral in my estimation. Whether tables find the change in focus valuable or detrimental is up to them.

[cooperjer]

The bonus actions can be confusing to players from previous editions and new players. One specific example is the Action Surge text with respect to bonus action. Another confusing point is casting a spell as a bonus action limits the spells cast for Cast a Spell action to a cantrip; however, casting a spell as a Reaction does not do the same. Finally, the offhand hand attack as a bonus action does not add the ability bonus and this infiltrates every other attack that uses the bonus action and usually needs to be corrected.

With respect to spells, casting a spell as a bonus action, it can be written similar to Green Flame Blade or Booming Blade. The character gets to make a weapon attack the same turn the spell is cast. If a character is carrying two light weapons, then the character gets to make an additional attack when it takes the Attack action. If a character is using Flurry of Blows it can spend a ki point to make three melee weapon attacks with it takes the Attack action. This increases to four melee weapon attacks at level 5. If a character is using Fast Hands or the Hide action, then add a feature that says a character can choose to perform one of those "ad-hoc" actions once per turn.

Something to keep in mind is that Mearls seems to have an interesting group of players. The players have used his new initiative system for about 20 hours of game play and found that they like it and it might speed up game play. For his group, they seem to get an idea of what their character is going to do at the start of the round and then commit to it. Therefore, when it comes to making a decision of whether to make that extra attack or disengage depending on the condition of the NPCs when comes to the players turn they have already made the decision and are sticking to it. It may be very possible that a player in Mearls group would say I'm going to Disengage and Hide this turn regardless of the condition of the NPC near the character when it comes to the players turn. There is no need to balance out what to do with the bonus action that turn depending on what has happened in the field of play.

I have one player that would not enjoy this. In fact, he complains that there are too many options for his bonus action and he tries to convince me that the action should be positioned as an object interaction. These discussions usually happen about things in the UA or about custom magic items.

[Chaosmancer]

My only complaint with bonus actions is that they can't be used with actions.

I ran into this with my cleric a few days ago. I have a magic sword that lets me use a special bonus action to heal. I also wanted to use my bonus action for something else (i can't remember at the time, i think healing word) and i couldn't take my action to use a bonus action ability.

It was just very strange to me that i can't technically do two very fast things on my turn, and i can't think of anything that would break if you did allow it. I think my case only appeared because of a homebrewed item, normal gameplay it almost would never come up i imagine

[PeteNutButter]

Get rid of bonus actions? Seems like a convoluted way to fix TWF, which is really the only thing "fixed" by this. One step forward, thirty steps backwards.

So I'm going to cast healing word on my companion, move hex, make an attack (killing something), move hex, make an attack with my offhand (getting another kill), move hex again, and inspire my teammate. I'm a level 1 bard with magic initiate and I just took seven actions.

The action economy is there for a reason, if nothing else it keeps the game moving. IMO it's one of the best things in 5e to keep it balanced.

Don't even get me started about how my war cleric berserker is going to be dual wielding quarterstaves for an effective 4 bonus action attacks, 5 if he procs GWM, which with that many attacks shouldn't be hard...

[pwykersotz]

Get rid of bonus actions? Seems like a convoluted way to fix TWF, which is really the only thing "fixed" by this. One step forward, thirty steps backwards.

So I'm going to cast healing word on my companion, move hex, make an attack (killing something), move hex, make an attack with my offhand (getting another kill), move hex again, and inspire my teammate. I'm a level 1 bard with magic initiate and I just took seven actions.

The action economy is there for a reason, if nothing else it keeps the game moving. IMO it's one of the best things in 5e to keep it balanced.

Why do you assume that there wouldn't be a use limit if bonus actions were removed? Several people are inferring that, and I don't think that's reasonable.

[PeteNutButter]

Why do you assume that there wouldn't be a use limit if bonus actions were removed? Several people are inferring that, and I don't think that's reasonable.

Limit how? The action economy is set up so that you can call out what type of action is required to do x.

If PAM said you can't do this if you also TWF this round etc. Every new ability would be a paragraph of text (saying what it can't be used with), when there is already an existing way to handle that: Bonus Actions. Removing bonus actions but keeping the same mechanics is not removing bonus actions.

[MadBear]

where does this hatred of Mike Mearls come from? I've seen it pop up a few times now this week, and I'm genuinely curious where it comes from.

[pwykersotz]

Limit how? The action economy is set up so that you can call out what type of action is required to do x.

If PAM said you can't do this if you also TWF this round etc. Every new ability would be a paragraph of text. Removing bonus actions but keeping the same mechanics is not removing bonus actions.

I don't think that keeping the exact same mechanics is a reasonable extrapolation. He explicitly says otherwise. From the first post:

If we crafted actions correctly, we wouldn't need them.

The actions would be re-crafted to make this work. The point (I think) is that the "action economy" is a thing that shouldn't exist in its current form. If you recraft and streamline actions, you might get both more efficiency and more verisimilitude than bonus actions currently provide, but that's without snapping the game in half by allowing unlimited use of what are current bonus actions.