I'be been analyzing the game play seeing how closely it would emulate 5e rules. What stood out to me most was a lack of reactions. After digging around I learned that they were not implemented to avoid tying the players up in menus.
And honestly that makes a lot of sense, reactions can be very complicated, especially with multiple opportunities to active. After a lot of thinking though, I feel they are imperative to the experience.
This got me to thinking how best they could be implemented without drudging down game play. I flipped through and picked out some Bonus actions form the game and thought about how best to activate them in game. The key ones I looked at are: The Shield Spell, The Counterspell spell, Hellish Rebuke, and the Protection Fighting Style. Each of these functions differently and would be hard to implement on an automatic system.
However, if the system were not automatic, I believe these could work flawlessly. Consider if instead of being presented a menu on what your reaction should be, your reactions were skills you had, that used your reaction point to activate on your turn, and went off when a valid scenario presented itself.
The way I see it, Reaction skills can be broken down into 3 types: Counters (attacks that target an enemy after a certain action) Support ( Actions that target your allies, and often respond to an enemy action apply a buff at the last second) And self Buffs (Actions you use at the last moment to protect yourself.)
As such I see it playing out like so:
Shield: Activates when you take an attack that requires a roll to hit. granting you +5 AC until end of turn.
Hellish Rebuke: Targets an enemy, when that enemy attacks you you respond with your hellish rebuke after the attack resolves.
Counter spell: Pick your target ahead of time, if they cast a spell during that turn they ether fail or make a Save DC to cast it.
Protection Fighting style: Choose an ally in range that ally either just gains advantage against the next attack or could be taken one step further by selecting an ally to target, then an enemy to protect them from, though I lean more towards the former.
This system isn't flawless however, as the first round of combat you will not be able to take any reactions if you lose the initiative roll. And it takes more anticipation than in 5e, as you have to chose your targets before the action happens. It also seems pretty safe to say that in order for the AI to use reactions effectively they should remain single target.
Their is also the matter of what happens if your skills condition is not met, in most cases I believe the reaction should just be preserved to be used on another turn if it didn't activate.
However this was the best system I could think of that could allow reactions without severely altering the flow of the game.
A few concerns however Counterspell is very potent and if resting in the game is easy, having a say no button to most spells in the game ins't going to be good. But I feel this could be said about most abilities as well, and will simply have to hope they are balanced accordingly.
I was hoping to get some feedback from others as to how viable that might be, or if you even feel it is necessary to have them. As well as to brainstorm alternatives, or if you notice a fault in my idea that I overlooked.
