A number of great bloggers have written commentary on the use of action points in 4e, and many have made good suggestions as to how to make the use of action points a bit bolder. Ameron’s “Putting More ‘Action’ in Action Points” on Dungeon’sMaster.com, “Other Uses for Action Points” on Polyhedral, and “Fun with D&D 4e Action Points” by the Chatty DM come to mind. I’ve been struggling with this question myself as my group hits our one year anniversary of play. More often than not, action points are being used as a simple re-roll which gets the job done mechanically, but fails to create the big moments that I’m looking for in our encounters.

So, David and I put together a set of simple house rules that attempt to encourage bold play without nerfing the flexibility of the system as a whole. These ideas definitely build upon suggestions others have already made but, hopefully, take them one step further.

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