It doesn't necessarily have to be an attack penalty. 5e even offers the perfect tradeoff without having to resort to making you miss more. Bonus Action. You could spend your Bonus Action to add an effect like movement penalty. It would make perfect sense to lose a Bonus Action for taking longer to aim. And Bonus Action would always have a use. It's win-win. Perhaps throw in a Con save to keep it balanced.
Terrible idea IMO.
Now weapons actions = things to always do. The limit is your slot/rest.
With your suggestion weapons actions = things to always do until you'd like to spend your bonus action for something else. Exactly like pommel strike.
Correct me if I'm wrong but most classes doesn't often/always use a bonus action at each turn. If the trade off is a bonus action, most attacks (players and AI) would be done with special effects... And this would be boring.
Most classes Shove or drink potion each turn for BA.
It depends on balancing. Weapon abilities would have to be weaker if they would work on Bonus Action. But I think the goal here is more to give martials choice rather than power. I would like to have weaker or tradeoff abilities you can use more often. These are mundane things you can do with a weapon like Pommel Strike or Trip, they shouldn't be limited to 1 / rest.
As I said, I totally agree that we should not have any limit on weapons actions and I totally agree with more "choices" for all or martial classes.
But shove, hide, dip, eating food and all homebrew bonus actions in BG3 had proven that creating new rules arround bonus actions does not lead to an interresting gameplay (I'm absolutely fine with
healing potions as bonus action to be honnest).
You don't like shove more than I do but your suggestion would just increase the problem.
With limitations : just play with Lae'zel and a 2 handed sword. Pommel strike is absolutely boring because you use it as soon as you can.
Without limitations : spending a bonus action + an action to do "normal damages + a chance to stun" would also be boring because both players and the AI would use it all the time exactly like shove.
And Without limitations : spending an action + a bonus action to do "strength modifier damage + a chance to stun" would never make sense.
Let DnD do what DnD does with bonus actions. It's too important in the balance. Playing with bonus actions each turns with every classes could only be interresting if they added TONS of homebrew bonus actions for every classes, reworking the whole balance at the same time and adding tons of new things to DnD...
Pommel strike could just be an unlimited action right now : compared to a normal attack, "strength modifier damage + a chance to stun" is already a choice that does not need any limitation, that is not breaking the class balance and that would not lead to a repetitive gameplay. Hamrstring shot could easily be unlimited too if the damages were not the same than with a normal attack.
Choices should be in a variety of unlimited balanced actions. Everything else would have bad consequences on the game in my opinion.
