Changing Full Round Action to make combat more dynamic

[RyanH]

I am reading through the D&D 5e PHP right now to get a feel for it and it got me thinking out action economy and Pathfinder.

One issue with Pathfinder action economy is that iterative attacks, two weapon fighting, etc are all full round actions. This makes combat pretty static as everyone is stuck with 5' steps.

One thing I like about 5e is that movement can happen before/after/between attacks.

As a simple solution to the static combat inherent in full-round actions. What would be the implications in Pathfinder of ...

1) Allowing movement before/after/between attacks.
2) Instead of killing all movement for full round actions, allowing half-movement.

There's probably a couple of feats that would be invalidated/useless (something that allows an attack during movement). But what other implications does the above have?

(Note: I already looked at the action economy in Unchained, and it had some undesirable consequences on classes such as the Magus, that rely on swift actions.)

[Ciaran Barnes]

Give it a try and report how it goes.

[My Self]

Why not the ability to translate a 5-foot step into 1/2 movespeed worth of non-safe movement, and vice versa?

What you have suggested isn't going to break anything. At worst, it's going to bother the Spring Attack people (IE, nobody). I suppose it could make combat scarier at mid-low levels, when a bear could run up and 1-round a player or two. At mid levels, you could be dealing with semi-pouncing dragons. But it also helps martial players keep combat a bit more dynamic.

[Dasrak]

Sounds interesting. I agree that you should give it a try and tell us how it turned out. The only sticky point is figuring out what should provoke an attack of opportunity, but I'm sure you can nail down something reasonable.

[RyanH]

I'd keep AOO's the same for now. If you leave a threatened square you provoke... but can counter with an acrobatics roll. However, that reduces speed by half AGAIN... so that'd give 30' movement/reduced to 15' for full-round action, if you avoid one AOO in a square that puts you at 10' of movement. STILL would make it more dynamic.

The other aspect I'm going to change to make combat more dynamic is to change it so if you do a combat maneuver you can either 1) Take the AOO 2) Take disadvantage (ala 5e) or 3) have the appropriate feat. I think this would make people be much more likely to try a maneuver still with a significant cost.

Last, adding advantage/disadvantage for quick rulings on anything the players want to try, the old "yes you can, but..."

[taks]

Not bad. It will push a bit of advantage towards martial types, but that might not be all that bad. Maybe there could be an associated penalty to AC since you aren't able to defend yourself as well?

[Cyrad]

Sounds good. I long suggested similar changes.

As for combat maneuvers, I don't think penalizing is necessary at all. Even if you use a maneuver with good action economy (like disarm or trip or sunder), you're sacrificing damage to do it. It's not like the called shot rules, where you inflict a massive penalty AND do damage.

[Claxon]

A good suggestion I've seen in the past is to give everyone Spring Attack and to allow characters to move an extra 5ft for every 5 pts of BAB while being able to still full attack.