One of the key weaknesses evident in the design of the Marvel Multiverse RPG (MM) is its approach to the ‘action economy.’ For those uninitiated to the idea, the action economy is how much a each character can do in a single turn of combat. And for MM that isn’t much.

All characters have three actions, which can be done once per turn each.
Standard: Used to attack, use most powers, ect.
Reaction: Used when a trigger occurs.
Movement: Used to move a character or pickup and throw objects.

You may have already realised the problem with this setup, that isn’t alot for a player to do. For example, if I’m playing as Spider-Man and I go to attack Electro but miss. That’s it. My turn is done. Nothin’ was accomplised. That feels really bad as not only a player but also as a narrator when you roll an attack for Thanos and just miss. There is also no progression in the action economy with there being only way to increase it. The Lightning Actions power from the Super-Speed power set, which gives you an extra standard and reaction. And again, having a single ability become necessary for all characters DOES NOT FEEL GOOD.

Let’s compare this to how the two largest RPGs on the market handle their action economy; Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition (5e) and Pathfinder 2nd edition (PF2).

In 5e all characters and creatures also have a standard, reaction, and movement action, and an additional bonus action. While the addition of a bonus action may seem minor it makes combat feel absurdly better. Now minor actions like pulling something out of a bag or using a lesser ability don’t need to use your entire action. It also means that enemies can be given small, flavourful abilities such as a howl which demoralises enemies. Additionally, characters that focus on attacking with weapons gain more attacks at higher levels. It is not so disappointing when 1 of your 2 attacks miss in a turn.

But right now the crown jewel of action economy for a lot of people, myself included, is the PF2 system. In PF2 you have three actions with certain activities using more than one action. This means you can attack three times, raise a shield before moving in and attacking, cast a spell using 1-3 actions actions to create different effects, ect. Its a great system, and we can implement something similar to MM.

So with these in mind, lets try and improve the MM action system.

Firstly I toyed with making something like the 5e system, but the implementation of bonus actions would require rewriting almost the entire powers section. I then thought about the PF2 system and found out, if it was implemented directly, characters would deal insane amount of damage compared to what they currently do. So instead I went with a gutted version of the PF2 system and combined it with the Ranks of MM to give characters of higher power levels more to do.

Here’s my proposed improvement to the action system of Marvel Multiverse:

On their turn each character has a number of actions equal to their rank +1 and 1 reaction.
Example: The rank 1 Hydra Agent has 2 actions and chooses to shoot his gun before moving into cover. His boss, the rank 3 Red Skull, has 4 actions and chooses to shoot his gun then enter an attack stance before moving into melee reach of his enemy and punches them.

All activities which require time or concentration to do, such as using a power or moving your basic speed, use an action. Each time a character repeats an action in a turn they gain one trouble on that action. This trouble stacks.
Example: Wolverine uses her Vicious Attack power to attack the rank 1 Hydra Agent. Sadly the attack misses. Since she has actions remaining, she decides to use her Vicious Attack again even though she has trouble. This time the attack hits but the Hydra Agent is still standing. If she used Vicious Attack again she’d have 2x trouble, so instead she uses her Focused Fury power and rolls without any trouble.

Damage multipliers do not automatically increase with rank. Instead a character can expend additional actions when using a power to perform a charged action. For every action expended, their damage multiplier increase by +1 for that action.
Example: Iron Man want to put all his effort into a single unibeam and shoots it at Ultron. His normal damage multiplied is x2 due to having the Accuracy 1 power. He wants to make it a charged action and puts all 5 of his actions into a single Elemental Blast. This increases the damage multiplier for the attack from x2 to x7.

Finally, the Lightning Actions power gives a character +1 action per turn.

This system isn’t perfect since the damage output of each character has been increased by about 15% per rank (thus damage at rank 6 has almost doubled). Though in the 4 hours of playtesting I have done with this new system I have seen nothing but an improvement to my players interaction with the games combat systems.

Let me know what you think along with any further suggestions you may have in the comments.