Trust me, tracked food, water, and ammo gets real effing interesting real effing quick when you start to run out.
Unless of course you have a character who totally neuters it with first level abilities. It's possible to have interesting survival games, but you're going to need to stack a whole lot of limitations or just outright class bans to make it work in D&D, what with first level stuff like create or destroy water, goodberry and purify food and drink.
Trust me, tracked food, water, and ammo gets real effing interesting real effing quick when you start to run out.
Not if that's not the style of game you expected to play. Then it's just frustrating
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
"I don't want to have to track encumbrance, I don't want to have to track consumables, I don't want to deal with any sort of threats or unexpected setbacks during travel, I don't want to deal with getting lost during travel, I don't want to have to deal with finding shelter or setting camp, I don't want to have to put up with having my rest interrupted by hostile creatures no matter where I'm resting..."
.
..
...
" Man, travel is so boring! Nothing cool or interesting ever happens when we travel! Why did the developers not come up with a way to make travel and exploration more interesting and exciting?"
Trust me, tracked food, water, and ammo gets real effing interesting real effing quick when you start to run out.
I've been there, and honestly it does not unless the GM actually adds means for the PCs to do something about it. If it's just "you're taking X days to cross from point A to point B but you only have X-Y days worth of food" it's not actually interesting. And as was already said, there's too many ways available to get around most of those limitations available starting at 1st level.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Everything in that list is something I've seen more than a few people complain about and yell at people for not removing from their games. Usually because it "wastes session time" and is held up as nothing but unpleasant distractions from The Story. It's all in the same vein as consumables/encumbrance - things that exist to drain the players' resources, hinder their progress, and force them to exert themselves to move forward. Those things are all necessary to the Exploration Experience; the more of them you cull, the worse exploration gameplay gets, and it's not a slow process.
Random encounters are a big one, honestly - a lot of tables discard random encounters entirely because they can't resolve even simple combats in less than an hour and so they decide combat of any sort is to be reserved strictly for Pivotal Story Moments. And then DMs wonder why their players blow through even Deadly encounters without much hitch die to never having to expend any resources on anything remotely like a threat until they get to the Big Boss Thingus. People don't feel like they're exploring a dungeon if they can move freely within it and there's nothing in it but loot, random lore dumps, and one blatantly marked Boss Fog wall they can wander through when and as they please.
Start "wasting" more session time. Get a timer and teach your players how to resolve a combat turn in fewer than nine minutes. Spoil their supplies. Break their stuff. Ambush them with nuisance encounters they don't even get experience for. Invent new and interesting diseases for them to catch while wandering around getting cut open in the filthiest places on the planet.
Push them. Challenge them. Drain them. Make them work for it, and if they don't learn fast enough send them scurrying away from the dungeon with no loot and their tails between their legs. It'll be good for them. The second time through, when they're properly prepared and manage to clear it out, the sense of victory will be all the sweeter.
Random encounters are a big one, honestly - a lot of tables discard random encounters entirely because they can't resolve even simple combats in less than an hour and so they decide combat of any sort is to be reserved strictly for Pivotal Story Moments. And then DMs wonder why their players blow through even Deadly encounters without much hitch die to never having to expend any resources on anything remotely like a threat until they get to the Big Boss Thingus.
The fact that 5e doesn't work without padding it with trash fights is bad design. If you really want to make resource management a thing in D&D, the first step is nuking long rests. Switch to gritty realism, and don't allow long rests in the field at all. That wilderness survival mission suddenly turns interesting when you know you aren't getting a long rest until you're done.
Random encounters are a big one, honestly - a lot of tables discard random encounters entirely because they can't resolve even simple combats in less than an hour and so they decide combat of any sort is to be reserved strictly for Pivotal Story Moments. And then DMs wonder why their players blow through even Deadly encounters without much hitch die to never having to expend any resources on anything remotely like a threat until they get to the Big Boss Thingus.
The fact that 5e doesn't work without padding it with trash fights is bad design. If you really want to make resource management a thing in D&D, the first step is nuking long rests. Switch to gritty realism, and don't allow long rests in the field at all. That wilderness survival mission suddenly turns interesting when you know you aren't getting a long rest until you're done.
But they aren’t “trash,” they’re just not related to the main quest. Stuff unrelated to the main quest should happen to promote verisimilitude.
D&D was never a combat only game. if you want that go to a video game.
Think of it this way. How much fighting was in the story of the Trojan war? Not much really. It was a story if lust, intrigue, backstabbing, power grabs and trickery. If your not in on anything but the fighting your in the boring part of the story. ( I tend to think that is why so many people want all those options, to flavor up fighting)
But they aren’t “trash,” they’re just not related to the main quest. Stuff unrelated to the main quest should happen to promote verisimilitude.
Random wandering monsters do not improve verisimilitude; outside of very unusual situations (demon invasions, etc) they shouldn't be common enough to be particularly relevant on the scale of an adventuring day, and a fight that occurs when you're a long rest away from your destination might as well not happen unless it's deadly+++.
If you skipped all the travel in Lord of the Rings how much story would you have?
They could have just skipped everything and had the giant Eagles just fly the ring bearer over the volcano and dropped him in with the ring. Makes a pretty short story that way. But we would just skip all that boring travel.
If you skipped all the travel in Lord of the Rings how much story would you have?
They could have just skipped everything and had the giant Eagles just fly the ring bearer over the volcano and dropped him in with the ring. Makes a pretty short story that way. But we would just skip all that boring travel.
How much of that was random stuff unrelated to the plot? I'm struggling to think of much that could be straight taken out without having significant effect on the story later. Their meeting the Elves leaving for Valinor?
There are flabby bits, like the adventure in the old forest and Tom Bombadil. And guess what gets cut the instant time becomes an issue and they want to speed things up, like making a film? Ah yes, things like Tom Bombadil and the adventure in the old forest. Because they're the least valuable contributions.
I love LotR. It's one of my favourite books. However, as popular as it is, its main barrier as a book to more people reading is how long and slow it is...because it has a lot of flabby bits. None of them are actually superfluous...but could certainly be condensed. Wandering monsters are pure flab; padding and combat for the sake of combat, which is something most [good] stories avoid for good reason. If I can have a fight actually be related to the story as opposed to a random monster attacking a party that can defeat it...because it's stupid, I guess...then I'll go for option 1. It's more fun, it engages the players more, it has more meaning, it makes more sense (no, bears don't attack hunting parties on a daily basis) and actually does something for the story.
Sometimes it makes sense to have encounters. In survival themed games, sure it makes sense, but in others, it doesn't necessarily make sense. There's a reason why even such a very flabby story like LotR doesn't have a bear randomly attack the party or even so much as a group of bandits. It wouldn't serve the story.
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LotR didn’t need the giant spider in Mordor that Golum tries to use to kill Frodo, it could have been a treacherous cliff. But having that monster there made the world feel more real. LotR didn’t need the goblins in the mines of Moria, or the Balrog, they could have been any threat to harry the party and split them up, but it made the same odor feel more real. LotR didn’t need Sam & Frodo to be running out of supplies and almost starved when they reached the volcano, but it made the journey seem more harrowing, and therefore more real.
Borrowing from another IP now, Spider-Man’s web shooters don’t always need to run out of web fluid at the worst possible times, but it makes the story feel more real.
A certain modicum of survivalism makes any adventure feel more real. It doesn’t need to be overkill, but in the right proportions with deliberate and judicious application, it does enhance the story.
LotR didn’t need the giant spider in Mordor that Golum tries to use to kill Frodo, it could have been a treacherous cliff. But having that monster there made the world feel more real.
It's an encounter either way that advanced the story that a random encounter doesn't. You're talking about replacing an encounter with an interesting creature that is related to the story and helps develop both Gollum and Sauron to achieve a plot point with...bland generic random cliff. That's my point - if you're going to have an encounter, have it relevant to the plot and characters involved, and not just "Trippy Koala 421".
LotR didn’t need the goblins in the mines of Moria, or the Balrog, they could have been any threat to harry the party and split them up, but it made the same odor feel more real.
Right, but again...it develops the lore of the story, talking more about the Dwarves, it develops Gimli, it teaches.us more about Saruman, it gives an excuse for a believable end to Gandalf. It even gives us an excuse for more exposition on Sauron to develop his character. See how "Random Encounter 5638 with Trippy Koala 421" doesn't fill that niche?
LotR didn’t need Sam & Frodo to be running out of supplies and almost starved when they reached the volcano, but it made the journey seem more harrowing, and therefore more real.
Sure. Did you notice that Tolkien never really discussed gathering food until then? And never bothered with the other party? Is it worth bringing it up constantly throughout the game and distracting from the game, or did Tolkien get it right and only introduce it when he felt it would actually improve the story? Just saying "Right, up until now, food has been plentiful, but now you're entering a land where it is scarce [because reasons] and so you'll have to work for it?"
Borrowing from another IP now, Spider-Man’s web shooters don’t always need to run out of web fluid at the worst possible times, but it makes the story feel more real.
As an aside, I actually prefer the natural shooters. Anyway, to look at Garfield Spiderman, did you notice that it only failed...when it was impactful to the story? It's not really about trying to make things realistic, it's about using an obstacle to develop the story. Having his shooters fry when going up against his enemy was about raising the stakes, making the BBEG a bigger threat, and so forth. They don't have his webshooters run out while fighting some random thug, because it's meaningless. He'd go "Huh, that's odd, only an idiot wouldn't make sure that they're full before getting in a fight", knock the guy unconscious, refill them and move on. Instead, it's done to serve a greater purpose of making the BBEG even more threatening.
A certain modicum of survivalism makes any adventure feel more real. It doesn’t need to be overkill, but in the right proportions with deliberate and judicious application, it does enhance the story.
Unless it's threatening the party, it's a distraction. If it's not a threat, then...you're just rolling to find out how often you need to roll. Survival is a valid game that can be fun...but unless you're doing it properly, and using it as a tool to keep it worrying the party, then it just becomes rolls to see how often you roll. Like Tolkien, if it's not part of the threat and atmosphere...then don't have it. It really depends on the tone and style of game that you're running.
And as a development on a point that I made earlier and was ignored...apart from food (which by RAW is actually made largely irrelevant by the mechanics of the game anyway), these things aren't realistic. You don't go into the forest and get attacked by bears most days. You might every now and again, but it's a rare occurrence that travelling will result in such an encounter. You won't just run out of arrows because you carry a whole bunch and can rely on taking them off your enemies to get you through. Food in reality might be an issue, but the rules on foraging actually makes it pretty irrelevant outside of exceptional circumstances like a gigantic dungeon or crossing a desert. My recommendation? When you get to those conditions where relying on foraging wouldn't be reliable, start counting then. The other situation is if you're pursuing someone and you want to present the choice of spending time foraging or break into your rations. Otherwise, you're rolling to see if you have to spend extra time foraging and therefore arrive on the third day or the fourth, and if there's no time limit like in most adventures? Meh, who cares?
That's why travelling sucks. It's not because the mechanics are ignored, but because, unless the DM incorporates the travelling as an intentional aspect of the game, it's just padding and filler. Today I spent 3 hours foraging instead of 1. Yay. Survival is good if it's a central part of the game you play. You're fighting every day to get enough food, you don't have time to spend extra time foraging and those rolls actually matter? Yeah, they're meaningful and can be exciting. You're just going three days to another town and there's no realistic way that you'll starve? Probably best to just ignore it and focus on the story.
As I said, it depends on the tone and style of game you're playing. If you're playing in Icewind Dale where food is scarce and you can feasibly keep players risking starvation, where roaming monsters are going to be desperate for food and willing to attack anything that moves, and where you want an atmosphere of struggling against the environment? Great! These things can really work well. When you're on the Sword Coast where.you are tripping over food, animals are able to find safer food than an entire group of adventurers and your players.just want to kill.some Goblins, find loot and rough up the BBEG? The mechanics are just a distraction and time sink. They can be good tools, but they're not universally so.
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A monster doesn’t have to be “wandering” for the encounter to be random. I count any encounter that doesn’t have anything to do with the main antagonists as a “random” encounter. Those all add a sense of depth and breadth to the world the protagonist inhabit. And I did specify the lack of resources as happening in Mordor.
PS- And I have had PCs of mine die of dehydration, starvation, and hypothermia. That is why to this day almost 30 years later every PC I create carries an additional waterskin, a blanket, and a means of making a fire and fuel to burn. And I always track my rations and ammo very carefully.
I think it is worth noting that the OP clearly does not want to have arrow scarcity and tracking ammunition part of their game, and that’s fine. Maybe they have a player who does a bad job at tracking it in the midst of combat, so are constantly fielding "drat, how many arrows did I fire off again?” questions (plenty of players who get so caught up in the combat they forget to do the busy work of ticking down their ammo). Or maybe their group is just not into the survival elements. Or perhaps they are, but a survival element that only hampers one person in the party and would leave them twiddling their thumbs during combat while everyone else is still at 100% fighting ability is not their thing.
The reality is that each group is different - what might be fun for some groups is not fun for others. If the OP does not want one of their players to track ammunition - and that is literally the premise of the thread - then that is their prerogative. It is not like the OP is responding asking follow-up questions about “I did not really think about the survival element, I want to consider that more.”
But, of course, this is the D&D Beyond forums, where a question of “I do not really like the taste of fish, what other protein should I have for dinner?” would result in a few responsive suggestions of pork, beef, etc…. and a ten page discussion of the nutritional merits of eating fish.
Which is, of course, not to say that posts saying “beef is a good option for you/I agree with some of the other options presented, but have you considered that fish has omega-3s you cannot get from other sources easily?” are inherently unhelpful posts - they can help folks see another perspective they might not have considered. Yet aggressively defending the other perspective without (a) answering the actual question and (b) the OP actually inviting such a defence seems to happen on every single thread, and that is unhelpful. It is really no wonder that so few OPs actually end up responding to their own threads - they stop becoming their threads rather quickly.
So, for the OP’s benefit, if you are still following this thread. You are welcome to consider the advantages of limited ammunition; you are also welcome to use any of the homebrew or other solutions presented here to your underlying problem. Neither answer is right or wrong - do what works best for your table.
If you skipped all the travel in Lord of the Rings how much story would you have?
They could have just skipped everything and had the giant Eagles just fly the ring bearer over the volcano and dropped him in with the ring. Makes a pretty short story that way. But we would just skip all that boring travel.
How much of that was random stuff unrelated to the plot? I'm struggling to think of much that could be straight taken out without having significant effect on the story later. Their meeting the Elves leaving for Valinor?
The Hobbit contained more of what in D&D terms might be considered wandering monsters - the trolls, the Mirkwood spiders - but they still advanced the plot or helped build the world. Which wandering monsters can be used to accomplish in D&D, but rarely are
True wandering monsters are mostly one of the relics of the old days of the game, when a group of kobolds with no apparent home or purpose would just be tromping around a dungeon like lost, rabid puppies
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Trippy Koala 421 can fill that niche if the DM takes the opportunity to use it to accomplish those things. Haven’t you ever let something random inspire you to add elements to your world/setting/lore that otherwise wouldn’t have existed? As a DM I can only come up with so much by myself, but if I utilize the options presented to my by having the dice decide what comes along then it forces me to think outside the box. That’s sometimes when I get inspired to weave things together in the most memorable of ways.
I'm not sure a creature that is static can't be described as a random encounter. The idea of a random encounter is that it's not plot driven or done with a purpose in mind - JRRT could easily have just not had a Watcher in that particular water, if that's what he wanted. However, I agree that it's still not a random encounter because it had a purpose, and a very important purpose at that - it explains why the party didn't just back out of the rather suicidal adventure through Moria and also to make it clear that they were lost. They had no choice but to continue on when the Balrog turned up. It wasn't a random encounter, but a purposeful one intended to help push the plot along. Tolkien didn't just roll a die and had the result that a Watcher should be there, it had a specific purpose. Tom Bombadil and the old forest wasn't a random encounter - it explained why Merry had the ability to harm the Witch King when very few others could not (something the PJ films ignore). As Kotath says, nearly everything that happens in LotR, despite being one of the flabbiest-yet-still-successful books I know, is hand crafted to serve the plot in some way. You don't get "random owlbear wanders into the camp and decides that it will try to take out the party for no real reason" very often.
Some more thoughts I've had. Everything should be serving a purpose. We're not talking about simply removing encounters - but due to the constraints of time, you have to choose what encounters you do have. We all have limited time at the table. If you're fighting random encounters out in the wild, then you're not able to spend that time fighting minions and rescuing fair maidens. Sometimes that is the order of the day. I'm running Rime of the Frostmaiden, and the environment is almost as much of a BBEG (after a manner of speaking) as the BBEG herself. So yeah, they get hungry Owlbears being attracted to their rations and perhaps things slightly fresher. They get the local Dragon flying past, or having to hide from a passing Giant, all the while trying to scrape enough food together to keep them going. On the other hand, when we were running around doing quests in the Sword Coast where the environment was just a backdrop, food was plentiful. There was no real chance of failure, and as the DMG (I think) counsels, we shouldn't be rolling for things if there is no realistic chance of failure, so we don't. It just distracts from where the good bits are in the game. It's much better to spend that encounter, one of only three we're going to get tonight because of time, fighting our way through a dungeon to rescue a fair maiden than to spend it...killing some random fauna that we're never going to think about again. Or we can spend that time forming relationships with NPCs, or solving puzzles, or anything that actually expands the adventure rather than acting as a filler.
Different tools for different purposes. Sometimes it's useful to have these mechanics, other times not. The question is, do you want the environment to rival the BBEG for the party's attention, energy and feelings? That'll tell you whether these wilderness mechanics are going to be good to include or not.
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Unless of course you have a character who totally neuters it with first level abilities. It's possible to have interesting survival games, but you're going to need to stack a whole lot of limitations or just outright class bans to make it work in D&D, what with first level stuff like create or destroy water, goodberry and purify food and drink.
Not if that's not the style of game you expected to play. Then it's just frustrating
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
"I don't want to have to track encumbrance, I don't want to have to track consumables, I don't want to deal with any sort of threats or unexpected setbacks during travel, I don't want to deal with getting lost during travel, I don't want to have to deal with finding shelter or setting camp, I don't want to have to put up with having my rest interrupted by hostile creatures no matter where I'm resting..."
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..
...
" Man, travel is so boring! Nothing cool or interesting ever happens when we travel! Why did the developers not come up with a way to make travel and exploration more interesting and exciting?"
Please do not contact or message me.
I've been there, and honestly it does not unless the GM actually adds means for the PCs to do something about it. If it's just "you're taking X days to cross from point A to point B but you only have X-Y days worth of food" it's not actually interesting. And as was already said, there's too many ways available to get around most of those limitations available starting at 1st level.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Everything in that list is something I've seen more than a few people complain about and yell at people for not removing from their games. Usually because it "wastes session time" and is held up as nothing but unpleasant distractions from The Story. It's all in the same vein as consumables/encumbrance - things that exist to drain the players' resources, hinder their progress, and force them to exert themselves to move forward. Those things are all necessary to the Exploration Experience; the more of them you cull, the worse exploration gameplay gets, and it's not a slow process.
Random encounters are a big one, honestly - a lot of tables discard random encounters entirely because they can't resolve even simple combats in less than an hour and so they decide combat of any sort is to be reserved strictly for Pivotal Story Moments. And then DMs wonder why their players blow through even Deadly encounters without much hitch die to never having to expend any resources on anything remotely like a threat until they get to the Big Boss Thingus. People don't feel like they're exploring a dungeon if they can move freely within it and there's nothing in it but loot, random lore dumps, and one blatantly marked Boss Fog wall they can wander through when and as they please.
Start "wasting" more session time. Get a timer and teach your players how to resolve a combat turn in fewer than nine minutes. Spoil their supplies. Break their stuff. Ambush them with nuisance encounters they don't even get experience for. Invent new and interesting diseases for them to catch while wandering around getting cut open in the filthiest places on the planet.
Push them. Challenge them. Drain them. Make them work for it, and if they don't learn fast enough send them scurrying away from the dungeon with no loot and their tails between their legs. It'll be good for them. The second time through, when they're properly prepared and manage to clear it out, the sense of victory will be all the sweeter.
Please do not contact or message me.
Everything is fine until your on that 7 day trip when some bandits ambush you on day 2. Steel or kill your horses extending that trip a week.
Or those guys you ticked off in the last town are following you trying for a chance to rob and kill you.
Even the third level spell create food and water can not feed and water 6 men and their horses for a day. Unless your casting it twice.
Add in bad weather and trying to find shelter in a snow storm.
Yep travel is so boring.
The fact that 5e doesn't work without padding it with trash fights is bad design. If you really want to make resource management a thing in D&D, the first step is nuking long rests. Switch to gritty realism, and don't allow long rests in the field at all. That wilderness survival mission suddenly turns interesting when you know you aren't getting a long rest until you're done.
But they aren’t “trash,” they’re just not related to the main quest. Stuff unrelated to the main quest should happen to promote verisimilitude.
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D&D was never a combat only game. if you want that go to a video game.
Think of it this way. How much fighting was in the story of the Trojan war? Not much really. It was a story if lust, intrigue, backstabbing, power grabs and trickery. If your not in on anything but the fighting your in the boring part of the story. ( I tend to think that is why so many people want all those options, to flavor up fighting)
Random wandering monsters do not improve verisimilitude; outside of very unusual situations (demon invasions, etc) they shouldn't be common enough to be particularly relevant on the scale of an adventuring day, and a fight that occurs when you're a long rest away from your destination might as well not happen unless it's deadly+++.
You’re entitled to your opinion, and I’m entitled to mine.
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If you skipped all the travel in Lord of the Rings how much story would you have?
They could have just skipped everything and had the giant Eagles just fly the ring bearer over the volcano and dropped him in with the ring. Makes a pretty short story that way. But we would just skip all that boring travel.
How much of that was random stuff unrelated to the plot? I'm struggling to think of much that could be straight taken out without having significant effect on the story later. Their meeting the Elves leaving for Valinor?
There are flabby bits, like the adventure in the old forest and Tom Bombadil. And guess what gets cut the instant time becomes an issue and they want to speed things up, like making a film? Ah yes, things like Tom Bombadil and the adventure in the old forest. Because they're the least valuable contributions.
I love LotR. It's one of my favourite books. However, as popular as it is, its main barrier as a book to more people reading is how long and slow it is...because it has a lot of flabby bits. None of them are actually superfluous...but could certainly be condensed. Wandering monsters are pure flab; padding and combat for the sake of combat, which is something most [good] stories avoid for good reason. If I can have a fight actually be related to the story as opposed to a random monster attacking a party that can defeat it...because it's stupid, I guess...then I'll go for option 1. It's more fun, it engages the players more, it has more meaning, it makes more sense (no, bears don't attack hunting parties on a daily basis) and actually does something for the story.
Sometimes it makes sense to have encounters. In survival themed games, sure it makes sense, but in others, it doesn't necessarily make sense. There's a reason why even such a very flabby story like LotR doesn't have a bear randomly attack the party or even so much as a group of bandits. It wouldn't serve the story.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
LotR didn’t need the giant spider in Mordor that Golum tries to use to kill Frodo, it could have been a treacherous cliff. But having that monster there made the world feel more real. LotR didn’t need the goblins in the mines of Moria, or the Balrog, they could have been any threat to harry the party and split them up, but it made the same odor feel more real. LotR didn’t need Sam & Frodo to be running out of supplies and almost starved when they reached the volcano, but it made the journey seem more harrowing, and therefore more real.
Borrowing from another IP now, Spider-Man’s web shooters don’t always need to run out of web fluid at the worst possible times, but it makes the story feel more real.
A certain modicum of survivalism makes any adventure feel more real. It doesn’t need to be overkill, but in the right proportions with deliberate and judicious application, it does enhance the story.
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It's an encounter either way that advanced the story that a random encounter doesn't. You're talking about replacing an encounter with an interesting creature that is related to the story and helps develop both Gollum and Sauron to achieve a plot point with...bland generic random cliff. That's my point - if you're going to have an encounter, have it relevant to the plot and characters involved, and not just "Trippy Koala 421".
Right, but again...it develops the lore of the story, talking more about the Dwarves, it develops Gimli, it teaches.us more about Saruman, it gives an excuse for a believable end to Gandalf. It even gives us an excuse for more exposition on Sauron to develop his character. See how "Random Encounter 5638 with Trippy Koala 421" doesn't fill that niche?
Sure. Did you notice that Tolkien never really discussed gathering food until then? And never bothered with the other party? Is it worth bringing it up constantly throughout the game and distracting from the game, or did Tolkien get it right and only introduce it when he felt it would actually improve the story? Just saying "Right, up until now, food has been plentiful, but now you're entering a land where it is scarce [because reasons] and so you'll have to work for it?"
As an aside, I actually prefer the natural shooters. Anyway, to look at Garfield Spiderman, did you notice that it only failed...when it was impactful to the story? It's not really about trying to make things realistic, it's about using an obstacle to develop the story. Having his shooters fry when going up against his enemy was about raising the stakes, making the BBEG a bigger threat, and so forth. They don't have his webshooters run out while fighting some random thug, because it's meaningless. He'd go "Huh, that's odd, only an idiot wouldn't make sure that they're full before getting in a fight", knock the guy unconscious, refill them and move on. Instead, it's done to serve a greater purpose of making the BBEG even more threatening.
Unless it's threatening the party, it's a distraction. If it's not a threat, then...you're just rolling to find out how often you need to roll. Survival is a valid game that can be fun...but unless you're doing it properly, and using it as a tool to keep it worrying the party, then it just becomes rolls to see how often you roll. Like Tolkien, if it's not part of the threat and atmosphere...then don't have it. It really depends on the tone and style of game that you're running.
And as a development on a point that I made earlier and was ignored...apart from food (which by RAW is actually made largely irrelevant by the mechanics of the game anyway), these things aren't realistic. You don't go into the forest and get attacked by bears most days. You might every now and again, but it's a rare occurrence that travelling will result in such an encounter. You won't just run out of arrows because you carry a whole bunch and can rely on taking them off your enemies to get you through. Food in reality might be an issue, but the rules on foraging actually makes it pretty irrelevant outside of exceptional circumstances like a gigantic dungeon or crossing a desert. My recommendation? When you get to those conditions where relying on foraging wouldn't be reliable, start counting then. The other situation is if you're pursuing someone and you want to present the choice of spending time foraging or break into your rations. Otherwise, you're rolling to see if you have to spend extra time foraging and therefore arrive on the third day or the fourth, and if there's no time limit like in most adventures? Meh, who cares?
That's why travelling sucks. It's not because the mechanics are ignored, but because, unless the DM incorporates the travelling as an intentional aspect of the game, it's just padding and filler. Today I spent 3 hours foraging instead of 1. Yay. Survival is good if it's a central part of the game you play. You're fighting every day to get enough food, you don't have time to spend extra time foraging and those rolls actually matter? Yeah, they're meaningful and can be exciting. You're just going three days to another town and there's no realistic way that you'll starve? Probably best to just ignore it and focus on the story.
As I said, it depends on the tone and style of game you're playing. If you're playing in Icewind Dale where food is scarce and you can feasibly keep players risking starvation, where roaming monsters are going to be desperate for food and willing to attack anything that moves, and where you want an atmosphere of struggling against the environment? Great! These things can really work well. When you're on the Sword Coast where.you are tripping over food, animals are able to find safer food than an entire group of adventurers and your players.just want to kill.some Goblins, find loot and rough up the BBEG? The mechanics are just a distraction and time sink. They can be good tools, but they're not universally so.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
A monster doesn’t have to be “wandering” for the encounter to be random. I count any encounter that doesn’t have anything to do with the main antagonists as a “random” encounter. Those all add a sense of depth and breadth to the world the protagonist inhabit. And I did specify the lack of resources as happening in Mordor.
PS- And I have had PCs of mine die of dehydration, starvation, and hypothermia. That is why to this day almost 30 years later every PC I create carries an additional waterskin, a blanket, and a means of making a fire and fuel to burn. And I always track my rations and ammo very carefully.
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I think it is worth noting that the OP clearly does not want to have arrow scarcity and tracking ammunition part of their game, and that’s fine. Maybe they have a player who does a bad job at tracking it in the midst of combat, so are constantly fielding "drat, how many arrows did I fire off again?” questions (plenty of players who get so caught up in the combat they forget to do the busy work of ticking down their ammo). Or maybe their group is just not into the survival elements. Or perhaps they are, but a survival element that only hampers one person in the party and would leave them twiddling their thumbs during combat while everyone else is still at 100% fighting ability is not their thing.
The reality is that each group is different - what might be fun for some groups is not fun for others. If the OP does not want one of their players to track ammunition - and that is literally the premise of the thread - then that is their prerogative. It is not like the OP is responding asking follow-up questions about “I did not really think about the survival element, I want to consider that more.”
But, of course, this is the D&D Beyond forums, where a question of “I do not really like the taste of fish, what other protein should I have for dinner?” would result in a few responsive suggestions of pork, beef, etc…. and a ten page discussion of the nutritional merits of eating fish.
Which is, of course, not to say that posts saying “beef is a good option for you/I agree with some of the other options presented, but have you considered that fish has omega-3s you cannot get from other sources easily?” are inherently unhelpful posts - they can help folks see another perspective they might not have considered. Yet aggressively defending the other perspective without (a) answering the actual question and (b) the OP actually inviting such a defence seems to happen on every single thread, and that is unhelpful. It is really no wonder that so few OPs actually end up responding to their own threads - they stop becoming their threads rather quickly.
So, for the OP’s benefit, if you are still following this thread. You are welcome to consider the advantages of limited ammunition; you are also welcome to use any of the homebrew or other solutions presented here to your underlying problem. Neither answer is right or wrong - do what works best for your table.
The Hobbit contained more of what in D&D terms might be considered wandering monsters - the trolls, the Mirkwood spiders - but they still advanced the plot or helped build the world. Which wandering monsters can be used to accomplish in D&D, but rarely are
True wandering monsters are mostly one of the relics of the old days of the game, when a group of kobolds with no apparent home or purpose would just be tromping around a dungeon like lost, rabid puppies
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Trippy Koala 421 can fill that niche if the DM takes the opportunity to use it to accomplish those things. Haven’t you ever let something random inspire you to add elements to your world/setting/lore that otherwise wouldn’t have existed? As a DM I can only come up with so much by myself, but if I utilize the options presented to my by having the dice decide what comes along then it forces me to think outside the box. That’s sometimes when I get inspired to weave things together in the most memorable of ways.
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I'm not sure a creature that is static can't be described as a random encounter. The idea of a random encounter is that it's not plot driven or done with a purpose in mind - JRRT could easily have just not had a Watcher in that particular water, if that's what he wanted. However, I agree that it's still not a random encounter because it had a purpose, and a very important purpose at that - it explains why the party didn't just back out of the rather suicidal adventure through Moria and also to make it clear that they were lost. They had no choice but to continue on when the Balrog turned up. It wasn't a random encounter, but a purposeful one intended to help push the plot along. Tolkien didn't just roll a die and had the result that a Watcher should be there, it had a specific purpose. Tom Bombadil and the old forest wasn't a random encounter - it explained why Merry had the ability to harm the Witch King when very few others could not (something the PJ films ignore). As Kotath says, nearly everything that happens in LotR, despite being one of the flabbiest-yet-still-successful books I know, is hand crafted to serve the plot in some way. You don't get "random owlbear wanders into the camp and decides that it will try to take out the party for no real reason" very often.
Some more thoughts I've had. Everything should be serving a purpose. We're not talking about simply removing encounters - but due to the constraints of time, you have to choose what encounters you do have. We all have limited time at the table. If you're fighting random encounters out in the wild, then you're not able to spend that time fighting minions and rescuing fair maidens. Sometimes that is the order of the day. I'm running Rime of the Frostmaiden, and the environment is almost as much of a BBEG (after a manner of speaking) as the BBEG herself. So yeah, they get hungry Owlbears being attracted to their rations and perhaps things slightly fresher. They get the local Dragon flying past, or having to hide from a passing Giant, all the while trying to scrape enough food together to keep them going. On the other hand, when we were running around doing quests in the Sword Coast where the environment was just a backdrop, food was plentiful. There was no real chance of failure, and as the DMG (I think) counsels, we shouldn't be rolling for things if there is no realistic chance of failure, so we don't. It just distracts from where the good bits are in the game. It's much better to spend that encounter, one of only three we're going to get tonight because of time, fighting our way through a dungeon to rescue a fair maiden than to spend it...killing some random fauna that we're never going to think about again. Or we can spend that time forming relationships with NPCs, or solving puzzles, or anything that actually expands the adventure rather than acting as a filler.
Different tools for different purposes. Sometimes it's useful to have these mechanics, other times not. The question is, do you want the environment to rival the BBEG for the party's attention, energy and feelings? That'll tell you whether these wilderness mechanics are going to be good to include or not.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.