How many activated abilities before it gets confusing?

[ACOS]

I figure combat actions can be broken down into 3 broad categories:

-Single/Multi target attack/debuff
-Enhancing/healing/defending an ally
-Protecting yourself

Summoning critters and walls of various materials are a 4th action but their purpose fits into one of those 3 broad categories. By default in D&D you can make an attack, aid another, or go full defense.

So that's 3 things everyone can do. The simplest activated action to tack on that would be something like "reroll a miss" or "Take an extra action" set to a recharge schedule like X per encounter/daily or it refreshes when you spend a swift/move/standard/full action doing something/nothing.

So, everyone has 3 types of actions from which they can choose at any given time. So, 3-5 level-appropriate options for each type? Since they'd presumably be grouped, it shouldn't be too much.

In my experience, rerolls on a daily basis is one of the slowest, most annoying mechanics you can implement in a game.

No slower or more annoying extra actions.

[shadzar]

So how many activated abilities should you have to feel like you have options

1

Why in the hell would I need a laundry list of things going off to keep track of when it is easier to come up with something for the moment off the top of my head that works now, rather than waiting for something later?

Poisons are things you wait for to work for you as a delayed killing device, not a bunch of gimmick ability effects.

Set someone on fire, that is enough to have options. Two states: on and off. Then just do whatever you want to the idiot on fire.

Do you think it takes a bunch of accounting to track status effects in order to play the game and do anything else?

Imagine a 6 man party each with some effect that must be tracked by ALL the players and the DM, and the DMs 10 monster encounter that each has a single effect that can all happen at once.

that is 16 status effects going at once that much be accounted for with each and every new actin that takes place to see if they interact with the effects.

Here I thought new school was about playing the game and having more fights, not spending 16 hours per day taking two rounds of a fight because you have to track 16^16 status effects with each action taken by the DM or any player?

[rampaging-poet]

shadzar, you're confusing status effects and activated abilities. "On fire" is a status effect - you're either on fire or not, and specific things happen (damage every turn) while you are on fire. "Cast fireball" is an activated ability - a wizard with fireball memorized may choose to cast it and create a large sphere of flame, but the memorized spell does nothing until then. For reference, "Immunity to Fire" is an example of a passive ability because it lasts forever and people with it don't have to do anything special to ignore fire damage that would otherwise be inflicted on them.

Tracking multiple status effects can be confusing because it is additional bookkeeping. Tracking multiple active abilities can be confusing if there are too many choices to pick from quickly during combat.

Saying that one activated ability is too complex means that having the ability to swing a sword and no other options creates enough confusion to significantly slow down the game. I highly doubt that is what you actually meant, but it's why people were laughing at you.

[shadzar]

activated abilities are the cause of status effects.

swinging a sword is NOT an activated ability, it is just something that happens. the activated ability is in addition to the sword swing. you only need one at a time.

by saying a sword swing is an activated ability are you confusing it with "action"?

[Sakuya Izayoi]

Rereading the OP, he seems to be talking about the amount of "buttons" you can push. Swing sword, fire arrow, or, like his 4e example, a big bloated hotbar. And the analysis paralysis that can result from having too many. Not status effects or DoTs or the like.

[rampaging-poet]

I would consider anything that has a clearly-defined interaction with the rules, requires an action to activate, and isn't just basic movement to be an activated ability. Under this definition, swinging a sword with the intent to strike something is an activated ability, it's just an incredibly common ability called "attacking" that anyone can do. You have the sword, you have the ability to swing the sword, and you must use one of your actions to do so. Drinking potions, applying poison to a blade, throwing burning oil, and the like are also activated abilities that anyone with the appropriate item on hand can try. Like you said, there are always options.

However, suppose we ignore all the stuff literally all characters are capable of, and also actions without direct support by the rules. TTRPGs are inherently open-ended, so the number of things a character could spend an action doing is literally infinite even before giving characters additional abilities. Furthermore, trying to count abilities like drinking potions is futile because there's no way of knowing how many different potions a character has. Each character should, by virtue of their class and racial abilities, have some number of things they can do that most people cannot. For a wizard, that might be casting fireball, a cleric could turn undead, or a barbarian might work himself into a battle-frenzy. The OP is trying to find out how many things like that an individual character can do before evaluating their usefulness becomes impossible.

[Schleiermacher]

Well, 3.5 Wizards are playable, so... quite a lot, apparently.

Of course, Vancian spellcasting comes with some pretty significant chunking of those abilities. But Maneuvers don't, and Swordsages are playable too. So 12 abilities is apparently not too many even when they're all combat abilities and most of them are generally applicable. I do think it's more than you need, though. The floor is perhaps a more interesting thing to look for than the ceiling.

[Dulon]

I think something to consider too is that time isn't too big a factor for most tabletop games. Assuming you've got six players and an MC each taking a minute or so each per turn you've got like five minutes minimum to read over all your stuff and pick something to do.

Mid-level 3.x wizards can easily have like 20+ spells, but are still pretty fast to run because you don't actually look up every one on every single turn. Most the time you'll decide something like "I want a mid-level damage spell" and go from there because that simple decision cuts out all your high and low level spells, as well as all buffs, nerfs, heals and anything else that doesn't do damage. At most you're looking up and comparing between 2-6 spells at any given time, probably on the lower end if you have multiple copies of some spells readied.

I guess my point is that you can have a staggeringly huge amount of options in a game, if you have a good hierarchy system to sort through them quickly. The decision of what you want to do (ie. shoot that guy in the face, or heal the party) should take all of two seconds while the decision of how you want to do it (ie. specific ability/spell selection) can be afforded a couple minutes because its gonna take awhile before play moves back around to you anyway.

[OgreBattle]

The minimum amount of choices to feel like you have options is also important, but I think that also goes into how effective your options actually are. The Tome Samurai's solution to any problem is "I hit it hard with my x4 crit weapon", but as one's levels increase that single option is able to solve more problems to stay level appropriate.