Welcome back to the weekly Tabletop Games thread! This thread is where we can talk about all kinds of RPGs, card games, board games, etc. Whether you gather around a physical table in the real world, or use a virtual space to play with friends who may live far away from you, this is where you can discuss your favorites, ask for and/or receive recommendations, recap your recent adventures, or even find some people to play games with!
Discussion Prompt: The lead designer behind D&D 5e, Mike Mearls, has in recent years publicly stated that the thing he dislikes most about 5e is the Bonus Action, which ironically was his own design to begin with. In case anyone’s unfamiliar, a Bonus Action is “a special action that you can take on the same turn that you take an action. You can’t take more than one Bonus Action on a turn, and you have a Bonus Action to take only if a rule explicitly says so.” For example, a Barbarian can activate their Rage as a Bonus Action, leaving them free to still attack an enemy in the same turn. If the Barbarian’s Rage took their entire turn, then they’d end up essentially doing nothing on the first round of every combat. Mearls’s main complaint is that while BAs were designed to speed the game up, they ended up slowing it down more often than not, because it quickly became seen a resource that players, of course, want to spend. On your turn, after you take your main action, there’s inevitably some time spent figuring out if you have any BA abilities you can use. Then, monster statblocks started using BAs in addition to players, which compounds the problem by making monsters more complicated for the DM to run.
What are your thoughts on the Bonus Action, or action economy in general? And is there a system that you think handles the issue in a better way?
If you would like to suggest a prompt or contribute a write-up or discussion topic of your own, let me know in the comments!