When does a player need to decide which actions to perform in his turn? Is it possible to start out attacking and then afterwards decide to either attack again (if the monster is still standing) or do something else? Or does one need to decide on the type of actions before starting to perform them?

You can decide your actions whenever or however. Your hero gets 2 actions to do with what he wants. You can even start one action, say move, interrupt it and do an action , say attack or open a door, and then complete your previous action.

Being able to interrupt actions is not generally true: "Unless noted otherwise, an action must be resolved completely before the hero performs his next action." (page 7, "Hero Turn Summary", item 3.) The Move action is the only one I can find, which you are allowed to interrupt.

In regards to my original questions: On what do you base your statement? I can find nothing in the rules clearly stating one or the other.

SirElvis said:

It seems common sense to me. As the rules do not state anywhere that you must decide what action you are taking before you take them, it seems reasonable to conclude that you choose your action as you take it. I don't see why this is an issue.

KristoffStark said:

It's not an issue. I'm just asking if I might have missed something in the rules, since I feel this might make quite a difference in player/hero power level.

And also: This is in contrast to the rules from the first edition, where you are locked into your "half-actions" by initial choice of "action".

According to the rules the hero gets to perform 2 actions of his choice and is not required to perform any actions at all. The rules themselves do no state that you have to announce both actions before performing them. And, yes, the move action is the only one you can interrupt according to the rule book.

Correct, 1st edition locked you into your intended action of Ready/Run/Battle/(missing name of last action) which was annoying for me (as the OL) since the players would constantly forgot to declare their action. Then I'd have to tell them what their action was because they didn't declare it initially. I was harsh but fair in most cases.

Now, 2nd edition lets you spend your action points on the fly, getting away from the time-sink that was thinking and declaring your action ahead of time.

And I keep seeing this alot on here. "But in 1st edition…" This is a totally new edition with totally new rules, almost like a new game. Forget 1st edition, unless you are playing the 1st edition. Don't stick in "Well, it doesn't really say it in the rules, so we'll go with what first edition said." Because, they are two different games. Try not thinking so hard about it and trying to read between the lines. You'll save yourself a lot of headache.

Coldmoonrising said:

Coldmoonrising said:

I am especially pleased to see that you don't have to declare your actions at the beginning of your turn. I have one friend who always said he was advancing no matter which two half-actions he chose. It also helps because you can more effectively react to OL traps and other bad things that can happen on the party's turn. Finally, this change should cut down on how much time the party spends on planning out the actions of all four heroes before actually executing them. That was always a source of much debate with my fellow players.

Coldmoonrising said:

Yeah, true, but unlike 1st edition, the Heroes are now required to declare the order they're going to take their turns at the beginning of each round.

No more arguements about which action to declare, or which action was declared (or pretended to be declared), but still something to decide before seeing the outcome of other players' actions. Flexibility in action choice is necessary, otherwise Heroes will be less efficient.

The_Warlock said:

We're probably going to ditch that "rule", seems just a waste of time IMO and I don't see the point.

Columbob said:

Eh. We don't get that picky. When I am the OL I just tell the players to take their turns in whatever order they want. This gives the players a slight advantage in that if someone tries something and it doesn't work then the other players can change their turns around. But, it's not a game breaking thing.

Agreed, we always play hero turns in any order on the fly.

jjcole said:

As do we. If there was a line in the rules that said they had to declare their order at the beginning of the heroes turns, I missed it.

The_Warlock said:

The rulebook also says that if the hero players can't decide on the order to take their turns, the default order is clockwise around the table from the OL. If the hero players in your game really have that much trouble deciding who goes in what order, just use that all the time.

When we played 1e, the hero players usually had a rough player order sorted out for their next round before the OL had even finished taking his turn, more often than not. It's usually not difficult to pick out who needs to act first.

That said, I also agree that it's probably not game-breaking to just let them volunteer themselves to act one at a time. Technically speaking it may be against the rules, but seriously, come on. Come on.