#action points

[maxkirin]

No writing today because I have waaay too many errands to run and there's only so many Action Points! 🥄💦

That's life tho! I'll get back to writing tomorrow. There's only two big chapters left and the epilogues—there really isn't much writing left in this book. So exciting! 😁

[myselfinsert]

I love how they think giving us a dress that looks like it belongs to Harper from wizards of waverly place and some action points is gonna fix this disaster they made of the game. thanks for the ap, it ran out in under 4 minutes.

[creativerogues]

Action Points: Converting to 5th Edition...

WHAT ARE ACTION POINTS?

Action points give characters the means to affect game play in significant ways, by improving important rolls or unlocking special abilities. Each character has a limited number of action points, and once an action point is spent, it is gone for good.

ACQUIRING ACTION POINTS

A beginning (1st-level) character starts the game with 5 action points. 

A character above 1st level starts the game with a number of action points equal to 5 + 1/2 his or her current character level.

Every time a character advances, they gain a number of action points equal to 5 + 1/2 his or her new character level.

Action Points and Existing Games

Adding action points to an existing campaign is easy, since characters don’t need to make any special changes. 

Each character simply gains a number of action points equal to 5 + 1/2 his or her current character level.

NPCs and Action Points

Most NPCs probably shouldn’t have action points, due to the added complexity this would create.

In the case of important villains or other significant characters, however, the DM may award them an appropriate number of action points to use against the player characters.

A number of action points equal to 1/2 the NPC’s level is a good baseline.

USING ACTION POINTS

You can spend 1 action point either to add to a single d20 roll, to take a special action, or to improve the use of a feat.

You can spend 1 action point in a round.

If you spend a point to use a special action, you can’t spend another one in the same round to improve a die roll, and vice versa.

Add to a Roll

When you spend 1 action point to improve a d20 roll, you add the result of a 1d6 roll to your d20 roll (including attack rolls, saves, checks, or any other roll of a d20) to help you meet or exceed the target number.

You can declare the use of 1 action point to alter a d20 roll after the roll is made, but only before the DM reveals the result of that roll.

You can’t use an action point to alter the result of a d20 roll when the result is a Critical Fail or Critical Success.

Depending on character level, a character might be able to roll more than one d6 when they spend 1 action point.

Action Point Dice Table

Character Level                         Action Point Dice Rolled

1st - 7th                                                          1d6

8th - 14                                                           2d6

15th - 20th                                                      3d6

If so, apply the highest result and disregard the other rolls.

A 15th-level character, for instance, gets to roll 3d6 and take the best result of the three.

So, if they rolled a 1, 2, and 4, they would apply the 4 to their d20 roll.

Special Actions

A character can perform certain tasks by spending an action point. 

In addition to the actions described below, some feats might allow the expenditure of action points in order to gain or activate specific abilities, at the DM’s option.

Activate Class Ability: A character can spend 1 action point to gain another use of a class ability that has a limited number of uses per day. For example, a barbarian might spend an action point to gain another use of her Rage Ability, or a paladin might spend an action point to gain an addition use of her Smite Ability.

Boost Defense: A character can spend 1 action point as a free action when fighting, as part of a Combat Encounter. 

This gives them greater benefits for fighting for the entire round, giving them a +3 bonus to their AC until their next turn, and Advantage on Initiative Rolls and Dexterity Saving Throws, until their next turn.

Emulate Feat: At the beginning of a character’s turn, they may spend 1 action point as a free action to gain the benefit of a feat that he or she doesn’t have. They must meet the prerequisites of the feat.

He or she gains the benefits of that feat until the beginning of his or her next turn.

Extra Attack: During any round in which a character takes a full attack action, they may spend 1 action point to make an extra attack at his or her highest attack bonus.

Action points may be used in this way with both melee and ranged attacks or spells.

Spell Boost: A character can spend 1 action point as a free action to increase the effective caster level of one of his or her spells by 2.

They must decide whether or not to spend an action point in this manner before casting the spell.

Spell Recall: Spellcasters who prepare their spells in advance can spend 1 action point to recall any spell just cast.

The spell can be cast again later with no effect on other prepared spells.

This use of an action point is a free action and can only be done in the same round that the spell is cast.

Spellcasters such as clerics, sorcerers, wizards, warlocks and bards can spend 1 action point to cast a spell without using one of their spell slots.

This use of an action point is a free action and can only be done as the spell is being cast.

Stable: Any time a character is dying, they can spend 1 action point to become stable.

Improving Feats

The use of action points opens up a whole range of possible feats.

However, it’s easier on characters simply to improve existing feats to take advantage of action points—that way, characters needn’t spend their precious feat slots simply to gain the ability to use their action points.

But below are a few examples of how actions points can be used with new feats.

Unless otherwise stated, each effect requires a free action to activate and lasts 1 round.

Blind-Fight: You can spend 1 action point to negate your miss chance for a single attack.

Combat Expertise: You can spend 1 action point to double the bonus to Armor Class granted by the feat.

Dodge: You can spend 1 action point to increase your bonus to Dexterity Saving Throws by +2.

Improved Critical: You can spend 1 action point to increase your "critical threat range" from 19–20 to 18–20, from 17–20 to 15–20, or from 15– 20 to 12–20, including the effects of other benefits from class, racial or archetypal features.

Improved Initiative: You can spend 1 action point to double your bonus on initiative checks.

Power Attack: You can spend 1 action point to double your bonus on damage rolls.

Spell Focus: You can spend 1 action point to increase to Save DCs for spells or other magical effects by +2.

Spell Penetration: You can spend 1 action point to reroll 1 damage die roll for a magical effect of your creation.

BEHIND THE CURTAIN: ACTION POINTS

Action points give players some control over poor die rolls.

Although this has little effect in an average encounter, it makes it a little more likely that characters will survive extremely challenging encounters and less likely that a single character will fall to what would otherwise be a balanced foe because of bad luck.

A reserve of action points lets even careful players expose their characters to more risks, heightening the game’s tension and opening the door to even more heroic action.

This variant also makes it less likely that an entire adventuring group will fall victim to one powerful effect.

Action points also make it more likely that the use of a character’s most potent abilities will be successful.

For example, although its overall effect on an encounter might be minimal, few things frustrate a player more than missing with an attack— an event that becomes less likely when using action points.

That said, action points can also lead characters to routinely get in over their heads (relying on action points to save themselves), and for DMs to unconsciously increase the difficulty of encounters (since characters are more likely to succeed against foes of equal power).

This is fine as long as the characters have a reserve of such points to spend—but if they run out, encounters that would otherwise be merely challenging can become incredibly deadly.

Keep the number of action points available to your players in mind when designing encounters.

For DMs who are worried that action points increase the power level of characters without an offsetting cost, there’s an easy solution.

Just think of each action point as a one-use magic item with a broad range of possible effects.

With that analogy, it becomes easy to justify reducing the amount of treasure awarded to balance out the accrual of action points.

Note that this is merely a tool for DMs interested in carefully monitoring character power levels; action points should never be for sale.

An action point is roughly equivalent to a magic item worth 100 gp per character level (since the higher a character’s level, the more potent the effect).

[youre-just-a-gameboy]

Prototyping

“House of Asterius” is a cat and mouse style game where one player is the last Athenian sacrifice left in the labyrinth and the other is the violent and hungry Minotaur. As the sacrifice you must search the every-changing labyrinth for the exit before the Minotaur gets to you. Both players must navigate the labyrinth as walls and entire paths appear and disappear before their eyes. The board is made up of 24 individual map tiles with several surprise encounters. Actions were dictated by the suits on a deck of cards.

The two mechanics I focused on were action points and map deformation.

My final product has these components: 24 map tiles that are shuffled and randomly placed face down to create a map, a deck of playing cards, two player tokens and 13 walls.

First Session

In our brainstorming and first playtesting session, my partner and I tried to combine our preferred mechanics. They wanted to implement bluffing and I wanted to focus on map addition. After a quick brainstorming session we ended up with a game about escaping a labyrinth/maze. In the first version the goal was to find the exit before the other player. 

After we parted ways I finetuned the theme by researching more on the mythologies surrounding the labyrinth and Daedalus, the inventor. At this point I changed the dynamic of the players from both trying to escape to one of them being the Minotaur.

Another major aspect I changed was the effects of the cards that were used to complete certain actions. Originally diamond cards allowed you to move, spade cards let you place down more walls, heart cards let you break walls down and clover cards meant you could either shuffle the map tiles or peek at a face down tile. I changed it around so that movement was not an action controlled by the cards. Instead diamond cards let you switch the placement of two map tiles on the board and clover cards let you peek at a face down tile. Spade and heart cards remained the same except you were also allowed to build and destroy map tiles.

The monster and treasure tiles originally caused the total amount of cards to decrease or increase but I felt like that was difficult to keep track of so instead those tiles decreased or increased the amount of moves you could make on your turn. 

Second Session

In my second playtest I found a major flaw. If the exit tile was shuffled with the rest tiles and randomly placed on the board a player could accidentally find it on the first round if it ends up on the edge of the map formation. After two attempts where my opponent coincidentally began the game by immediately finding the exit I changed the setup rules so that the Minotaur player would secretly choose where the exit tile will be placed at the start of the game.

After successfully playing the game through that way I felt that each player should start with two moves/actions instead of only one to make each turn more interesting. My playtesting partner also suggested that face cards should have a better effect than number cards to make it more interesting. To prepare for the third session I also changed the wording of my rules to make them more readable.

Third Session

In the final playtest the changes that I made definitely improved the overall gameplay. Unfortunately I forgot two of the tiles at home so our starting set up was a 4 x 5 array instead of 4 x 6. My opponent felt that there was definitely a good amount of suspense as the sacrifice to motivate them to find the exit but the element of not knowing what the next tile could be encouraged them to explore as well. This was good to hear because aside from the action point mechanics I wanted the secondary mechanic to be map deformation.

After finishing the game I received some feedback on the monster and treasure encounter tiles. The effects of those encounters should be temporary or one-use instead of a permanent effect because it made the game too unbalanced.

[whovian223]

New to Me #boardgames - February 2025 @fantasyflightgames.bsky.social @reposproduction.bsky.social @burntislandgames.bsky.social @pegasusspiele.bsky.social

New to Me - February 2025

[heyimben]

Exploring "Joker’s Grid" – A Game of Strategy and Surprise

Introduction

"Joker’s Grid" is a tic-tac-toe-inspired game that introduces twists and turns to keep things interesting. Players try to either complete a row, column, or diagonal with regular tokens or by drawing three Red Jokers in a row. The game features a middle control rule and the Red Joker mechanic, both of which add depth and unpredictability to the classic tic-tac-toe structure. In this blog post, I’ll walk through the development of the game across three play sessions and discuss the changes made to the rules to improve the gameplay experience. Play Log

Session 1: First Play with Khoa

During the first play session with my classmate Khoa, we tested the basic rules of the game. The objective was simple: complete a row, column, or diagonal with regular tokens. However, there were no additional mechanics like the middle control or Red Jokers. This session allowed us to get a feel for the pacing and the general structure of the game.

While the game was enjoyable, I noticed that the player who places the first token typically had an advantage. They were able to occupy open spaces more freely and easily set up for a win. There was also no additional strategy involved in controlling certain spots, which made the game a little predictable.

Session 2: Adjusting the Rules

The second play session was with a few friends, and it was here that I made my first big rule changes. I introduced the middle control rule, where players must spend 3 points to move a token to the middle of the grid. This change was made because I realized that the middle spot was becoming a powerful position for whoever placed their token there first, and it felt too much like an automatic win condition. By adding this rule, I aimed to give players more control over the game and encourage strategic thinking about when to move tokens.

Additionally, I added the Red Joker mechanic, where players can draw Red Jokers from the card deck. If a player draws 3 Red Jokers in a row, they win, regardless of how many tokens they have placed on the grid. This rule was introduced because I wanted to create a path to victory for players who may be behind or who hadn't placed many tokens on the board. The Red Joker mechanic provides a plot twist, giving players a fighting chance even if they don't dominate the grid with tokens.

Session 3: Final Play with Leland

The third play session, this time with my classmate Leland, was a test to see how the new rules worked in practice. We both enjoyed the game, and the added layers of strategy with the middle control and Red Jokers made the gameplay much more engaging. After this session, I felt that the rules were solid, so I decided to keep them as they were.

Core Mechanic

The core mechanics of "Joker’s Grid" are Set Collection and Action Points. Players collect Red Jokers in a row to win the game, which is the Set Collection mechanic. Additionally, the Action Points mechanic comes into play as players must manage their points to place tokens on the grid and even move tokens to the middle, which adds strategic depth to the gameplay.

Conclusion

Through three play sessions, "Joker’s Grid" evolved into a fun and strategic game. The introduction of the middle control rule and Red Joker mechanic gave the game depth and unpredictability. The experience of playing with friends and classmates helped refine the rules, and I’m excited to continue testing and improving the game.

[personswithdisabilitiesday]

Developing and Promoting Implementation of the UNCRPD and Disability Rights across the Commonwealth- Promoting CDPF Disability Inclusion Action Plan (COSP 17 Side Event).

Developing and Promoting Implementation of the UNCRPD and Disability Rights across the Commonwealth: Promoting CDPF Disability Inclusion Act

The meeting will address the gains that have been made in developing support for and that will be made if the Action Plan is adopted and the

The meeting will address the gains that have been made in developing support for and that will be made if the Action Plan is adopted and the Action Points and how they will be implemented across the 56 countries of the Commonwealth.

Watch the Developing and Promoting Implementation of the UNCRPD and Disability Rights across the Commonwealth: Promoting CDPF Disability Inclusion Action Plan (COSP 17 Side Event)!

[zentendo]

Unleash the Apocalypse with METRO QUESTER on Nintendo Switch - A Hack-and-Slash RPG Extravaganza!

KEMCO, the renowned game developer, is set to captivate Nintendo Switch enthusiasts with the release of METRO QUESTER, a thrilling hack-and-slash RPG. Priced at just USD 19.99, this post-apocalyptic dungeon exploration promises an immersive experience on your favorite handheld console. Overview METRO QUESTER takes you on a journey through the desolate dungeons of TOKYO, offering a…

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