D20 Action Points

There was a Reddit user named Kubular who happened upon a novel way to determine damage in D&D combat when their friend had assumed that it was just the difference of their D20 roll minus the target’s armor class. Something similar happened to me a bit ago, before I switched to decision-based initiative from individual initiative (as Dwiz referred to them). My friends kept mixing up their initiative with their attack roll, not consciously, but just as an honest mistake when you have to keep doing shit with that D20. That was actually a partial motive for me in switching to my current approach because it felt more intuitive and maybe even ‘fairer’—but the misconception stuck with me.

There are many ways to combine all those pesky combat rolls, and one of my favorites I had tried before was Nova’s approach of using damage dice, but isn’t it funny to stumble upon something new by accident? Like chocolate chip cookies (which I know weren’t really accidental but you get the point, it’s cute). So, maybe once per turn, everyone rolls D20. If anyone rolled high enough to do something, they can do something. Modifiers lower the barrier of whatever you want to do.

But that feels kinda shitty in its own way. It has the same effect as per usual of losing your turn to act, without the moment of realization at least being delayed. So, maybe instead of taking each round on its own, the D20 adds to a stamina pool (etc.) which accumulates each turn (probably up to 20). On your turn, you can spend as much stamina as you want. Modifiers act as discounts on action costs. Below I tried to convert my current decision-based action menu into a cost-based one:

• Move: 5 points
• Use item: 10 points
  • Use large item: +5 points
  • Trigger critical move: +10 points
• Assist: Give ally points
• Contest: Subtract points from enemy’s own

I think this is too finicky for me personally, and this blog post is again me exorcising an idea to convince myself that it’s probably a bad one, but again I think it’s interesting to criticize a rule according to how someone who hasn’t internalized the ruleset intuitively interprets the outcome and its implications.