Could you expand on why you don’t like the Bonus Action mechanic?

Comment I’ve heard you mention that you’d like to do away with Bonus Actions. For me the Bonus Action seems like a great mechanic, and restricting the action economy makes it much easier to make simply worded yet balanced homebrewed subclasses and helps maintain balance when multiclassing.

Without the Bonus Action mechanic, I’m having a hard time imagining how you’d restrict #actions w/cunning action, inspiration, monk abilities, etc without getting buried in a pile of “You may take an extra action to do X unless you’ve taken one to do Y or Z or..”

Question: Could you expand on why you don’t like the Bonus Action mechanic and what you’d rather be in place?

mikemearls18 points21 days ago
Bonus actions are clunky because they are solving the wrong thing. The problem is what you combo on your turn, not that you are making a combo of several action. So, for Cunning Action I’d redo it like this:

Cunning Action As an action, you do two of the following things. You can’t do one of these things twice: * Make a weapon attack * Dash * Disengage * Hide

In some ways, a more explicit approach would actually encourage some more fun design. from discussion AMA: Mike Mearls, D&D Creative Director.