Why would you want to create an action or droplet just to open a file?

A good working droplet is a no brainer. No searching for the right action. You don't even need Photoshop opened. A droplet will open photoshop and perform the action(s) on just those files that were dropped onto the droplet icon. It's just a more automated way of doing things you want done on a regular bases. If you create a good working action then the droplet should work equally as well.

Years ago I was doing reworking 300-500 images into avatars daily  for a chat program. They had specs for dimensions and file size. I had a series of droplets which I created. I had the first one set to run an action to set the height, sharpen the images and save in a specified folder. A second to crop the width of any image that exceeded the required width. A third to reduce the file size. By breaking it up into 3 I was able to view the images to evaluate if the 2nd and 3rd run was needed. Of course I also had to evaluate content of images. You would be amazed at what some people thought appropriate LOL.