The Impact of Revised Action Economy in the Game

[Derrick Winters]

I'm about to run a dungeon crawl with a few variant rules from Pathfinder Unchained.

The most far-reaching of these variant rules is the Revised Action Economy.
A handy cheat sheet for RAE

What do you think the impact of the Revised Action Economy will be?
(i.e. TWF is suddenly viable at level 1)

What are cases not addressed by the RAE that need to be?
(i.e. Pounce/everything that references a "full attack action" needs to be clarified)

[Rub-Eta]

The main difference, to me, is that it's different. I wouldn't want to play in your game because I really don't feel like switching. Maybe I would be swayed after attempting it. But I doubt it
I bring this up because it's a very important aspect: optimal isn't always better than standard. Keyboards are a great example, the buttons' are placed where they are because of tecnical limitations of a typewriter. Now those limitations are long gone and there are infact other, more optimal key-layouts. But nobody would buy that other keyboard, because we can't write with it, even if it's more optimal than our current one.

(In the same sense, I actually find Pathfinder more relaxed and simple to play than 5E. Even if they've simplified a lot of rules in 5E and their combat chapter is shorter than some class entries in Pathfinder. It's still harder for me and less relaxing, simply because I'm used to more complicated rules).

Since this is a very combat heavy game you're planning, maybe you should review the need of changing such a vital area of combat? What benefits will it gain you and your game? Wouldn't it be easier and benefitting to the combat to let the players run with a set of rules they already know (to keep it more fluent)?

[Ridiculon]

i've played with it recently on a short dungeon and its pretty interesting.

i know there is a caveat somewhere that says the GM may decide to limit swift actions per round. well mine either didnt get the memo or simply chose not to limit them at all. I don't think that it would be a huge issue for most classes to have 3 swift actions per round (possible anyway), but i was playing an inquisitor so it was actually a pretty substantial power boost during my judgement combat.

it is a swift action to switch judgement powers, so my turns ended up looking something like:

(move, active offensive judgement, switch to passive healing judgement) -> (switch to active OJ, active OJ, switch to passive healing)

other than niche cases like that (and the issue with spring attack now basically being useless as a feat) the biggest change is that the normal CR system is not quite suitable. you will just have to play test to figure that one out

[fatbaldbloke]

How does this revision work for higher level martial characters? Have they effectively lost an attack from their full round action?

[Ridiculon]

not sure, we are still level 1 in that campaign (Carrion Crown)

[Porridge]

Derrick Winters wrote:

What do you think the impact of the Revised Action Economy will be?

What are cases not addressed by the RAE that need to be?

As far as your first question goes, we use a version of the RAE, and we love it. It tends to make combat much more fluid and mobile. And (in our case) much more fun.

As far as your second question goes, the biggest issue we noticed using the RAE was how natural attacks worked in this system. As it stands, the RAE rules say:

• Original RAE Natural Attack Rules:
• Making a single natural attack takes 1 action.
• Making all of your natural attacks (primary and secondary) takes 3 actions.

One consequence of this is that it makes monsters with one attack (e.g., one giant bite attack) extremely dangerous, as they can now attack three times per round instead of once. And since such monsters often have very high attack bonuses, the increasing iterative penalties don't do much to prevent them from hitting all three times, which is often enough to kill a player.

Another consequence of this is that it keeps monsters wedded to the "full attack" paradigm, where there's a huge incentive to starting the round right next to your opponent. (E.g., a monster with 10 claw attacks that has to move to reach you can only attack twice (once at full BAB and once at BAB-5), whereas if they start their turn right next to you, they can make all 10 attacks (at full BAB).)

So in our games we tweaked the natural attack rules as follows:

• Revised RAE Natural Attack Rules:
• If you have 2+ natural attacks, making one attack takes 1 action.
• If you have only 1 natural attack, making one attack takes 2 actions.
• Making all your primary natural attacks takes 2 actions.
• Making all of your natural attacks (primary and secondary) takes 3 actions.

Armed combat is also more dangerous at low levels, since a 1st level fighter can now make three attacks with their greatsword in a single round instead of just one. We found this to not be as big a deal, since at low levels these further attacks almost always miss. But a natural tweak we used to get around this, mirroring the above change, is this:

• Revised RAE Armed Attack Rules:
• If you have a BAB less than 5, making a simple attack takes 2 actions.
• If you have a BAB of 6 or greater, a simple attack takes 1 action.

This makes low-level armed combat less deadly.

[Porridge]

The other issue that came up a lot was how to translate various feats (rapid shot, multishot, vital strike) and various class abilities that were written assuming the standard action economy. This requires a bit of case-by-case ruling on the part of the GM, but several people have sketched batches of rulings that one might employ that you can make use of.

The most extensive set of rulings I'm aware of are those of Puna'chong. But partially worked out versions of these rules have also been suggested by master_marshmallow, Kaladore, Threeshades, and some other people as well.

[master_marshmallow]

I have my own take on it. We use it and we're not looking back.

[Mullog]

I am really impressed with Puna'Chong RAE houserules.
Do you know if he adapted the base and hybrid classes?