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Why "gain a bonus minor action"?

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ammulder:
There are a number of places where when you do something that normally takes a minor action, some equipment or advantage says "gain a bonus minor action" when you do it.  For instance, ejecting a clip with a wireless smartgun link: use a minor action, gain a bonus minor action.

I'm not quite clear on why there's this "gain a bonus minor action" mechanic instead of making the thing free to do.

Is it just because there's no more free actions, so they don't want to say things are free?

Or is the unstated concept that you might not gain the bonus minor action if you're already at your limit of 5 minor actions for the turn?  The wording there is not completely clear to me: "Characters may never start a player turn with more than 5 Minor Actions. If they would have earned more through any circumstances, that number is reduced to 5."  One of these "gain a bonus minor action" actions wouldn't result in you starting a player turn with more than 5 minor actions, but it would count as you "earned more though any circumstances".

So if you have 4 initiative dice (action allotment: 1 major + 5 minor) and eject a clip via your wireless smartgun link, potentially giving you a 6th minor action that turn, do you get the bonus minor action or not?

Stainless Steel Devil Rat:
It's because there are supposed to be no "free actions" in 6e.  Spend a minor to gain a minor is the 6e equivalent to 5e's Free Actions.  The overall benefit is in 5e you had a finite number of Free Actions (despite the name) whereas in 6e you can spend a minor to gain a minor pretty much indefinitely, so long as you keep having appropriate gear that grants it!

It's not meant to establish a ceiling on how many minors you can take in total... the "you can't start your player turn with more than X minor actions" clearly only places the restriction on the start of your turn.   Why does it exist?  I believe it's meant to be a bit of future-proofing to preemptively wall off any loopholes that might have allowed for a ridiculous stack of minor actions.  I also think the cap of 5 vs 6 was chosen to make it a painful choice to spend 4 minors in place of a 2nd major.. if you do that, you only have 1 more minor at maximum to share between self defense, movement, taking cover, etc.  spending 4 minors and THEN still having 2 more minors left over?  That's pretty viable, and therefore makes it kind of a no brainer to go for 2 majors rather than being a choice with real pros and cons.

Xenon:
Note that mechanically you also need to actually have a spare minor action to use in order to use the action.

Michael Chandra:
Honestly, given how some writers were actually surprised it now was 1+Dice in Minors, I strongly suspect the limit of 5 was a mistake myself from a previous version of the rules, and that it exists to go 'the max you can get, is the max you can get, even if we later introduce ways of getting extra Minors (iirc there's already at least 1 thing doing so), you're still facing a cap so you can't toss out 3+ attacks'.

Anyway yeah, the limit applies at turn start. The 'spend a minor, get a minor' is meant to give basic Free Actions while it still restrict you because eventually you run out of Minors and can't do extra stuff anymore, and many of these things are once-per-turn so no infinite use.

Xenon:

--- Quote from: Michael Chandra on ---Honestly, given how some writers were actually surprised it now was 1+Dice in Minors, I strongly suspect the limit of 5 was a mistake myself from a previous version of the rules
--- End quote ---
Agreed.

From the sticky house rule thread:

--- Quote from: Xenon on ---Max number of actions
Characters may never start a player turn with more than 6 Minor Actions. If they would have earned more through any circumstances, that number is reduced to 6
--- End quote ---

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