[REDACTED] here's a thread specifically and solely about discussing the design merits of D&D 5e. Specifically, the idea of logistics - i.e. the idea of tracking one's supply of consumable resources such as food and ammunition, dealing with setbacks and random/semi-random drawbacks in the field, and ensuring you are fully equipped and prepared to handle the rigors of the road.
The discussion emerged in this thread, wherein someone posted a request for assistance in figuring out the best magic item to award to a player so that they could ignore the state of their arrow supply and simply shoot when they felt like shooting. Please buzz through that thread for context, but absolutely do not, under any circumstances, post in it. That is what this thread is for.
As a short summation to provide a springboard for discussion: many modern players feel like logistics is nothing but a distracting, session-spoiling waste of time. Tracking food, ammunition, medical supplies, and the rest is nothing but boring Spreadsheet Adventurer minutiae that adds nothing to the game. Rather, all it does is waste session time on trivial matters that can be handwaved away with no loss of game quality. There's princesses to be slain and dragons to be rescued - nobody cares whether or not Petra remembered to buy field rations when they were in town three weeks ago, and nobody cares about the princess' trivial minions getting in the way between the heroic Adventurers and the Dragon in Distress. The game has evolved beyond the need for trivial annoyances that exist solely to slow down The Narrative, and a DM is well advised to simply skip all that crap and get to the Good Stuff, i.e. the Epic Battle against the Evil Princess. Cut the filler and get to the meat.
It is my stance that people who believe this are...inexperienced at best. "The Filler" is the story of your adventure. "The Story" is not the plot the DM is force-feeding you to get you to leave that crocodile alone and stop trying to ride it; 'The Story' of your game is the tale of what happened. "Filler" is a crucial part of that story, because all the setbacks, all the roadside distractions, all the obstacles and seemingly-trivial nuisance battles are a chance for the story to take a different course, or to divert to a different line even if only for a short time. A 'random' encounter in which the party finds a long-abandoned shrine to a god no one recognizes, only to be attacked by will-o-wisps when they try to investigate? That's not a 'distraction' from the story of your game - that is part of your story. It's an invitation to Explore, to leave the critical path and say "I wonder what this is about. Let's try and find out." The party's decision on how to handlee that encounter is not an annoying break from the game, it IS the game.
D&D, and every other tabletop RPG worth playing, is a game about making decisions in the face of adversity. If the DM cuts out all the adversity, strips out all the things that force players to try and make difficult decisions? What's there left to do? Why are any of us even playing?
Notes: Please do not engage in callout posting of other users
Caerwyn_Glyndwr, others had already made all the suggestions I would have made, so I saw no point in repeating them when I could just upvote those posts (which I did). But the conversation still has merit.
And I would agree the conversation has merit, but it doesn’t have merit here. Someone asking for help wants actual help, not three pages of people arguing about game philosophy which eventually morphs into something completely different.
The new thread button is there for a reason. These forums would be a lot more helpful if folks asking for help got.. help… and folks who wanted to discuss the underlying game philosophy made their own thread instead of hijacking someone wanting help. It’s a more than a bit ridiculous that “how do I deal with this thing that my particular table does not find fun?” has become “random encounters: boring filler or fun way to make a dynamic world?”
So.
Since conversations are not allowed to meander and we're not supposed to discuss the design merits of D&D 5e in threads that aren't specifically and solely about discussing the design merits of D&D 5e, here's a thread specifically and solely about discussing the design merits of D&D 5e. Specifically, the idea of logistics - i.e. the idea of tracking one's supply of consumable resources such as food and ammunition, dealing with setbacks and random/semi-random drawbacks in the field, and ensuring you are fully equipped and prepared to handle the rigors of the road.
The discussion emerged in this thread, wherein someone posted a request for assistance in figuring out the best magic item to award to a player so that they could ignore the state of their arrow supply and simply shoot when they felt like shooting. Please buzz through that thread for context, but absolutely do not, under any circumstances, post in it. That is what this thread is for.
As a short summation to provide a springboard for discussion: many modern players feel like logistics is nothing but a distracting, session-spoiling waste of time. Tracking food, ammunition, medical supplies, and the rest is nothing but boring Spreadsheet Adventurer minutiae that adds nothing to the game. Rather, all it does is waste session time on trivial matters that can be handwaved away with no loss of game quality. There's princesses to be slain and dragons to be rescued - nobody cares whether or not Petra remembered to buy field rations when they were in town three weeks ago, and nobody cares about the princess' trivial minions getting in the way between the heroic Adventurers and the Dragon in Distress. The game has evolved beyond the need for trivial annoyances that exist solely to slow down The Narrative, and a DM is well advised to simply skip all that crap and get to the Good Stuff, i.e. the Epic Battle against the Evil Princess. Cut the filler and get to the meat.
It is my stance that people who believe this are...inexperienced at best. "The Filler" is the story of your adventure. "The Story" is not the plot the DM is force-feeding you to get you to leave that crocodile alone and stop trying to ride it; 'The Story' of your game is the tale of what happened. "Filler" is a crucial part of that story, because all the setbacks, all the roadside distractions, all the obstacles and seemingly-trivial nuisance battles are a chance for the story to take a different course, or to divert to a different line even if only for a short time. A 'random' encounter in which the party finds a long-abandoned shrine to a god no one recognizes, only to be attacked by will-o-wisps when they try to investigate? That's not a 'distraction' from the story of your game - that is part of your story. It's an invitation to Explore, to leave the critical path and say "I wonder what this is about. Let's try and find out." The party's decision on how to handlee that encounter is not an annoying break from the game, it IS the game.
D&D, and every other tabletop RPG worth playing, is a game about making decisions in the face of adversity. If the DM cuts out all the adversity, strips out all the things that force players to try and make difficult decisions? What's there left to do? Why are any of us even playing?
Honestly I get this, but my thoughts are more so it depends on the type of game you and your group are playing. I do agree "filler" like tiny little quests that no one remembers is a massive part of the game, but depending on how your group plays and what they want from a game, varies on how they track minutia like arrows or rations. some groups dont want the sort of game that brings...others do, I personally enjoy both and honestly could care less what my group does as long as I'm playing a fun game with friends
For clarity, the way one major part of this started was when I responded to a comment about wandering monsters with "The fact that 5e doesn't work without padding it with trash fights is bad design."
This does not mean there should never be unexpected encounters, or encounters that are not related to the main plot. What it means is that the system should not be dependent on having a bunch of extra fights to consume resources.
On the more general topic of logistics: it's clear that 5e has chosen to make most logistics trivial to ignore, and I don't think there should be an arrows exception.
For clarity, the way one major part of this started was when I responded to a comment about wandering monsters with "The fact that 5e doesn't work without padding it with trash fights is bad design."
This does not mean there should never be unexpected encounters, or encounters that are not related to the main plot. What it means is that the system should not be dependent on having a bunch of extra fights to consume resources.
It's just as well I didn't ask this in the other thread, but I assume by "work" you're referring to daily XP budgets and things like that?
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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)
For clarity, the way one major part of this started was when I responded to a comment about wandering monsters with "The fact that 5e doesn't work without padding it with trash fights is bad design."
This does not mean there should never be unexpected encounters, or encounters that are not related to the main plot. What it means is that the system should not be dependent on having a bunch of extra fights to consume resources.
It's just as well I didn't ask this in the other thread, but I assume by "work" you're referring to daily XP budgets and things like that?
I was responding to "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."
Personally, I think there is two types of filler content: Filler content players enjoy and filler content they see as busywork. Something that is busywork for one group might be enjoyable to another and vice versa. Additionally, something might be busywork 99% of the time but enjoyable 1% of the time. It is the job of a competent DM to figure out what works for their party and balance unpopular hassle against enjoyment.
Using the examples in this thread of ammunition, food, and random filler encounters, I think there is a pretty good sliding scale of where each of these fall for most groups:
1. Ammunition likely falls more toward the busywork side of things. It is something you have to track every single time you make an attack, something you have to constantly remember to “I buy more arrows while in town”, and something where the payoff is going to have really variable enjoyment mileage which itself only comes up in the rare instances someone has been unable to refill their arrows for a long time. Some archers might find “two shots left, got to make them count” fun… others might just think “great, now my character is useless and boring, while the mages and melee characters get to still have fun.”
2. Food is a bit less of busywork than ammunition for two major reasons: First, it is really only something you have to track once per day, so you are not constantly tallying numbers in the same way you must for every attack. Second, everyone in the party who needs to eat has to keep track of it, so you do not have the “I am being singled out, this feels bad” element ammunition does.
3. Filler encounters likely err on the side of fun - most people enjoy encounters or they would not be playing D&D to begin with. These encounters can make the world seem alive, add a bit of combat to an otherwise bloodless session, or be used for character development moments.
As with most everything about D&D, there is no right answer on how to play - and it is certainly not “inexperienced” to know “my players like this more than that” (and I would suggest saying so borders on the cardinal sin of “my way of playing D&D is right and I think you are a worse player because you play differently.”).
Personally, I tend to not have players track ammunition (almost every archer I have DMed for was a new player and the additional “you have to track this thing also” on top of everything else they needed to learn did not pass the “fun versus flavour” test); have players track food; and liberally use filler encounters so they feel like they are in a living, breathing world. That is what works best for the parties I DM - but I would never say it is the right way to play. If someone’s group loved ammunition tracking, but just wanted to do major story encounters (maybe they are adults and do not have much time to play, so have to cut to the chase or never finish the campaign) - power to them.
For clarity, the way one major part of this started was when I responded to a comment about wandering monsters with "The fact that 5e doesn't work without padding it with trash fights is bad design."
This does not mean there should never be unexpected encounters, or encounters that are not related to the main plot. What it means is that the system should not be dependent on having a bunch of extra fights to consume resources.
On the more general topic of logistics: it's clear that 5e has chosen to make most logistics trivial to ignore, and I don't think there should be an arrows exception.
How does one make the system work, then?
If you want a system where one single fight is all it takes to push the characters to the ends of their rope, then the system needs to give players vastly less rope. 5e characters would need drastically fewer spell slots, enormously fewer hit points, fewer rechargable class abilities - all of it. You'd have to take away the majority of everybody's resources.
If players have less rope, then they cannot withstand the more traditional multiple encounter Adventure. Every fight is Triple Black Diamond deadly and the party will need to bunker up and long rest after even the most minor of encounters. You've effectively turned combat of any sort into a screaming emergency that is to be avoided at absolutely all costs, which is certainly a campaign tone. It's not a tone many tables are going to super appreciate, though.
Either the characters have the resources and endurance to burn through multiple battles or they don't. If they do, then a single battle has to be disproportionately above their weight class to be the One Fight Wonder people want. If they don't, then the entire character of D&D changes.
For clarity, the way one major part of this started was when I responded to a comment about wandering monsters with "The fact that 5e doesn't work without padding it with trash fights is bad design."
This does not mean there should never be unexpected encounters, or encounters that are not related to the main plot. What it means is that the system should not be dependent on having a bunch of extra fights to consume resources.
It's just as well I didn't ask this in the other thread, but I assume by "work" you're referring to daily XP budgets and things like that?
I think he's referring to the general paradigm in 5e. For example, an encounter isn't really deadly if you aren't already doing 6-8 encounters a day, it assumes that you're doing a load of things that...often don't really happen unless you go out of your way to make them happen in order for it to work. I don't think I've ever had 8 encounters in a day...and I've only used published adventures so far. You have to artificially contrive to meet the standards expected...in order to get things to work.
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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.
My simple solution is to just double all of the encounter budgets. Don't change daily budgets, but now a Deadly fight is around 2/3 of your daily budget, and a Medium fight is what is currently considered Deadly. If you really want to have six trash fights per day (no-one wants that; not even published adventures do that) make them all Easy.
The alternate less-math solution is to just double monster hit points (PCs in 5e do too much damage -- it's why using PC builds as enemies doesn't work -- but it's easier to boost hit points than reduce PC damage).
My issue is that if a DM says "Supplies are never going to be a thing in my game, you'll never have to worry about not having what you need to do whatever you feel like doing", not only is that DM removing a large swath of possible Complications from their game - the party will never have to deal with lost, broken, or spoiled equipment, they'll never find an impassable obstacle they need something they didn't think to bring to bypass, they'll never have to get creative with the stuff they did bring to get around a problem - but the players are also being told not to ever bother thinking about equipment or supply. They just magically have whatever they feel like having when they want to have it and elsewise it vanishes into hammerspace where it awaits the next time it's needed. That's just...so boring.
We have thirteen pages of mundane adventuring equipment; that crap is there for a reason. A lot of people find it fun to come up with inventive ways to use mundane gear to get around problems that're otherwise ignored or handled by The Wizard Doing it. Nobody cares about the wizard casting Solve Problem, nobody tells stories about it. People remember that one time their survivalist ranger used a block and tackle, a hundred feet of line, a counterweight log, and a combination of Tinker's and Woodcarver's tools to improvise a mechanism to solve an issue the wizard didn't bother preparing a spell for or was too out of juice to cast Solve Problem at.
Nobody will ever have those cool moments of being creative and clever, doing something remarkable and memorable with stuff everybody laughed at them for bringing along, if the DM just says "You'll never need or have to worry about this crap, don't clutter your sheet with it."
Not to be too much of a grognard, here. Back in 1e, we used to track things like arrows, rations etc. religiously. The official TSR character sheets used to have sections with little tick boxes (conveniently bunched in groups of 20) you could fill in every time you took a shot. Then when you bought more arrows, you'd just erase the boxes. It was about as simple as could be in a pencil and paper set up. The thing was, no one ever ran out of arrows (granted, my experience was only with a dozen or so other nerds in the 80's, and nowhere near universal).
So in theory, yes, it was important to track your arrows, and you could run out. And that was in a time where encumbrance was a bigger issue, and you weren't likely to be carrying around more than 20 or 40 arrows at a given time. But in practice, it never really came up. Managing the resource didn't actually have any in-game impact outside of remembering to deduct a gp or two every time you went to town to reflect that you bought more arrows. It really ended up just being kind of tedious and forgotten. Personally, I'm pretty happy with removing that kind of bookkeeping since when we actually did it, it tended not to really matter.
We have thirteen pages of mundane adventuring equipment; that crap is there for a reason. A lot of people find it fun to come up with inventive ways to use mundane gear to get around problems that're otherwise ignored or handled by The Wizard Doing it. Nobody cares about the wizard casting Solve Problem
Then the first step is eliminating Solve Problem spells, because if all your problems can be resolved at a negligible resource cost, you're clearly declaring "This problem is not interesting and we want it to go away".
I find it a tad odd that you saw a post that lists three bulleted items (1. Ammunition; 2. Food; 3. Filler Encounters) and decide that a three paragraph diatribe about a fourth thing (mundane equipment) not covered by the post was an actual response?
To address mundane equipment under the “fun versus busywork” evaluation, I would generally say it falls more on the “fun” side than the busywork side. First, it is not something you constantly have to track - you spend a couple seconds buying it, then it just sits on your sheet happily requiring no effort to maintain. Second, it is something everyone in the party is effected by (unlike ammunition, which has the “feel bad” of only limiting certain types of character). Third, even if it only comes up sometimes, those times it does come up can lead to fun problem solving moments.
High rewards in terms of fun; low cost in terms of busywork - mundane equipment is something I am a big fan of utilising in my games, and I am hard pressed to come up with a different perspective on why one would want to exclude it from their games.
None of this is an all or none problem. It is possible to track the fun supplies while not tracking things that fail the “fun/busywork” test for that group. D&D, and DMing in particular, is about figuring out the balance that works for each party, and rarely is that balance found at the extremities of possibility.
It is my stance that people who believe this are...inexperienced at best.
Ehhh, this gets awful close to "One True Way to play D&D" territory.
Some people like tracking stuff and some people don't. It's different kinds of fun for different people or different campaigns. The entire survival genre of video games shows that many people enjoy deeply engaging in logistics, but on the other hand even Tolkien himself basically handwaved that stuff away with lembas bread when he didn't want to deal with it.
For me personally, I ignore most of it by default. This has a nice side effect of making it feel really impactful when I don't though. In my Feywild campaign, food matters a lot because fairy food can be as treacherous as any other native thing. When I run Dark Sun (with or without official 5e support), survival will be front-and-center.
But yeah, generally I find logistics to be pretty boring in the typical adventure. And I think part of the ways 5e has become more accessible and attractive to outsiders is by having a very light touch when it comes to rules around logistics to the point where it only matters as much as the DM says it does.
And that's the heart of it. 5e is designed for growing the brand and being as easy to play as possible. I ran a one-shot for newbies the other day and I'm confident that the mental load that logistics would have added outweighed the benefit of including them. And I think the designers came to the same conclusion. Anything that steepens the learning curve or becomes another thing you need to think about has to have a payoff deep and broad enough to justify its inclusion. I think they determined the people who cared would expend the energy required to make logistics matter, and everyone else would just merrily go on their way.
Is that fair to players like you? Not really. But it is what it is. 5e is 90% compromises made to appease a wide range of demographics, and honestly going by relative success both in the cultural spotlight and financially this edition has been far more successful at that than any other.
I don't necessarily have an issue with Solve Problem. If a wizard wants to use their wizarding resources on the problem and they have the right set-up to do so, then sure. They can do them.
One good example from an article I read way back concerned the party coming to a two hundred foot cliff with a waterfall cascading down it. They need to get down that cliff, but there's no path and the climb is treacherous. What do they do? Well, depends in large part on what they brought with them. Doe they all want to take a flying leap off and have the wizard cast Feather Fall? Cool - they'll get down. They might not get all the way down on one cast because Feather Fall stops the moment you touch the ground and the cliff isn't sheer, at which point the DM might call for Acrobatics checks/Dex saves to see if someone can land securely or if they take a tumble and somebody needs to Think Fast.
Do they bodge together some lines and try to make the climb assisted? Okay, they'll get down. The ropes might not hold under all the pounding from that waterfall though, and it turns out there's a flock of nesting bats that explodes out from a cave the adventurers disturb on their way past. Not enemies to cut down, but definitely more saving throws, on top of the stiff Athletics check required to safely descend two hundred feet down a slick, mist-soaked cliff face next to a thundering waterfall. At any point, something could go abruptly pear-shaped and somebody will need to Think Fast.
Does the wizard feel like casting Fly and shuttling people down? Also distinctly possible. That's gonna be a bunch of Athletics checks with rising DCs to see if Capitan Noodle Hands and his wizard wrists can bear a bunch of two hundred pound adventurers in a hundred pounds of gear down a two hundred foot drop without losing his grip. if he does? Better hope somebody can Think Fast.
One way or another, the party's getting down that cliff. The question is whether they do it on their terms or on gravity's terms, how many of which resources they expend to do it, and whether anybody has to Think Fast to try and catch an emergent disaster before it fully unfolds. The DM describes a problem; the party enacts a solution, the DM tests that solution. That testing part and how to salvage sudden sub-problems is where the fun emerges, and what people are giving up when they demand the DM ignore any and all difficulties, setbacks, and obstacles between them and the Evil Princess they're out to slay.
I feel like mundane equipment, rations, and ammunition bookkeeping are options and tools that a DM can use if and when the game calls for it. And that depends on what kinds of expectations are set during a Session 0. Some groups might use them, other groups might not. I'm of the mind that I would not use them, specifically, but if I wanted to introduce a complication of low supplies, I would simply say that the supplies are low. Maybe I established something earlier with an NPC complaining about prices or scarcity, or maybe it's a surprise for everyone because of a cunning enemy action or completely unforeseen circumstances that are meant to be a shock.
In the same vein of the discussion about planned character development and emergent character tendencies, I think this is a difference between complications that are planned versus complications that emerge from the system.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
My simple solution is to just double all of the encounter budgets. Don't change daily budgets, but now a Deadly fight is around 2/3 of your daily budget, and a Medium fight is what is currently considered Deadly. If you really want to have six trash fights per day (no-one wants that; not even published adventures do that) make them all Easy.
The alternate less-math solution is to just double monster hit points (PCs in 5e do too much damage -- it's why using PC builds as enemies doesn't work -- but it's easier to boost hit points than reduce PC damage).
One thing I'm leaning more and more towards is a 3-tier rest system. Short and Long rests are the same, but a Long rest requires actual civilization - a bed, a cooked meal, maybe a bath. When traveling in the wilderness or sailing on a ship, each night is an (Insert good name here) rest, which is basically just a short rest that also serves to stave off exhaustion.
So now you can have a 6-7 encounter "adventuring day" over a two-week expedition into the wilderness. In a dungeon or other "adventure-dense" area away from civilization that might require multiple adventuring days, I'll include some other way to get the benefits of a long rest - a magic fountain or a grateful rescued cleric or some other "force of good that helps heroes achieve their destiny" trope. I'm still working out the kinks, but so far its worked really well for my group.
Thanks for this wonderful and thoughtful question, there is a lot to unpack here.
First I would like to say why quite a few groups I have played in and other GM's I have talked to decided to have some form of tracking and then why some I have talked to do not. The main reason (besides the game setting requires it) is a player or player decided to take advantage of the "you get the basic stuff you need for free and I the GM will just reduce the stuff you find accordingly" method. The issues I have seen and talked to people about have been; spells require components to provide game balance so player has to buy stuff which means they do not buy other things (player "thought" this was free for spell casters), buy food once and it refreshes, buy 3 arrows instead of 20 since they only fire 3 before melee, buy a kit to make potions of healing and then you get free potions of healing (also expanded over time to include many other potion options) and had endless supply of flasks for potions and specific monster attacks (acid, rust, fire, etc) that list damaging equipment but the player sees that as only affecting that encounter and then a new encounter resets everything to the base state of their PC.
GM's and players who do not like as much tracking have explained to me that they are heroes and thus should have everything they need to be heroic. I have often felt this way of playing is more like a "Dinner and a Murder" box game or a early AD&D Tournament module and you the player have to decide when to use your limited stuff and if you use something when you are not supposed to it often was a problem (this was generally an issue with the player not knowing when to use something and saw that they could do something and wanted to take part in the game so in effect wasted items and abilities when they did not need to, this can be a problem with how the game/adventure is written and how the GM preps the players for the game).
I hope that background provides some incite but I do not think it fully answers your question, which I think could take 5-30 pages of thoughts.
GM wants final battle to take X% of parties resources: IMHO this is a tough topic as in general I feel the GM wants a encounter to be challenging when necessary and less so when necessary. With random die rolls you do not know if a spell or attack will do max damage or even if it will hit or take effect, so it is possible for what a GM thinks will be easy to be hard and for something to be hard is in fact easy. In general I try and keep track of the players basic status at points of the game, ie are they fully healed, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4 (as well as for powers and abilities) as well as in general how the player is rolling at that time. This can provide me the GM with info on how I might adjust an encounter to fit how the PC's are or even if I insert an encounter that makes them think about going on or resting. Note this GM trick is hard to learn and often mistakes can be made in one direction or another. I am not going to expand on this more as it would take a lot more space.
Not to be too much of a grognard, here. Back in 1e, we used to track things like arrows, rations etc. religiously. The official TSR character sheets used to have sections with little tick boxes (conveniently bunched in groups of 20) you could fill in every time you took a shot. Then when you bought more arrows, you'd just erase the boxes. It was about as simple as could be in a pencil and paper set up. The thing was, no one ever ran out of arrows (granted, my experience was only with a dozen or so other nerds in the 80's, and nowhere near universal).
So in theory, yes, it was important to track your arrows, and you could run out. And that was in a time where encumbrance was a bigger issue, and you weren't likely to be carrying around more than 20 or 40 arrows at a given time. But in practice, it never really came up. Managing the resource didn't actually have any in-game impact outside of remembering to deduct a gp or two every time you went to town to reflect that you bought more arrows. It really ended up just being kind of tedious and forgotten. Personally, I'm pretty happy with removing that kind of bookkeeping since when we actually did it, it tended not to really matter.
That was also in a time before video game RPGs tracked all that stuff for you automatically
Times have changed
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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)
"We're heroes; we should have everything we need to be heroic."
Says who?
I hate when the world treats me like a Destined Hero everyone admires and respects and expects to Save The Day. The only reason the world should treat you like a hero is if you've already proven yourself to be one. I don't even like when the DM treats the party like Destined Heroes. Destined Heroes are boring. Nothing robs a story of impact, meaning, and satisfaction like someone saying "your victory was inevitable, for it was foretold a thousand years ago by the Prophets of Weal".
Cool. Glad to know the outcome was never in doubt and nothing I did mattered for spit because it was my Destiny to be a Hero. Heroism is something the PCs should have to exert themselves to the utmost to earn, not a default assumption from the start. Destined Heroes can get away with always having exactly what they need to do whatever they like; those of us in the muck and dirt handling the work Destined Heroes are too important to deal with are gonna stock up and make sure we have what we need to do what we can. Because we can't just produce a climber's kit or a block and tackle or a bag of bearings or whatever else we need out of HeroSpace, whether we ever actually obtained it or not. That's one of those things that will just kill a game outright for me.
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[REDACTED] here's a thread specifically and solely about discussing the design merits of D&D 5e. Specifically, the idea of logistics - i.e. the idea of tracking one's supply of consumable resources such as food and ammunition, dealing with setbacks and random/semi-random drawbacks in the field, and ensuring you are fully equipped and prepared to handle the rigors of the road.
The discussion emerged in this thread, wherein someone posted a request for assistance in figuring out the best magic item to award to a player so that they could ignore the state of their arrow supply and simply shoot when they felt like shooting. Please buzz through that thread for context, but absolutely do not, under any circumstances, post in it. That is what this thread is for.
As a short summation to provide a springboard for discussion: many modern players feel like logistics is nothing but a distracting, session-spoiling waste of time. Tracking food, ammunition, medical supplies, and the rest is nothing but boring Spreadsheet Adventurer minutiae that adds nothing to the game. Rather, all it does is waste session time on trivial matters that can be handwaved away with no loss of game quality. There's princesses to be slain and dragons to be rescued - nobody cares whether or not Petra remembered to buy field rations when they were in town three weeks ago, and nobody cares about the princess' trivial minions getting in the way between the heroic Adventurers and the Dragon in Distress. The game has evolved beyond the need for trivial annoyances that exist solely to slow down The Narrative, and a DM is well advised to simply skip all that crap and get to the Good Stuff, i.e. the Epic Battle against the Evil Princess. Cut the filler and get to the meat.
It is my stance that people who believe this are...inexperienced at best. "The Filler" is the story of your adventure. "The Story" is not the plot the DM is force-feeding you to get you to leave that crocodile alone and stop trying to ride it; 'The Story' of your game is the tale of what happened. "Filler" is a crucial part of that story, because all the setbacks, all the roadside distractions, all the obstacles and seemingly-trivial nuisance battles are a chance for the story to take a different course, or to divert to a different line even if only for a short time. A 'random' encounter in which the party finds a long-abandoned shrine to a god no one recognizes, only to be attacked by will-o-wisps when they try to investigate? That's not a 'distraction' from the story of your game - that is part of your story. It's an invitation to Explore, to leave the critical path and say "I wonder what this is about. Let's try and find out." The party's decision on how to handlee that encounter is not an annoying break from the game, it IS the game.
D&D, and every other tabletop RPG worth playing, is a game about making decisions in the face of adversity. If the DM cuts out all the adversity, strips out all the things that force players to try and make difficult decisions? What's there left to do? Why are any of us even playing?
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Honestly I get this, but my thoughts are more so it depends on the type of game you and your group are playing. I do agree "filler" like tiny little quests that no one remembers is a massive part of the game, but depending on how your group plays and what they want from a game, varies on how they track minutia like arrows or rations. some groups dont want the sort of game that brings...others do, I personally enjoy both and honestly could care less what my group does as long as I'm playing a fun game with friends
For clarity, the way one major part of this started was when I responded to a comment about wandering monsters with "The fact that 5e doesn't work without padding it with trash fights is bad design."
This does not mean there should never be unexpected encounters, or encounters that are not related to the main plot. What it means is that the system should not be dependent on having a bunch of extra fights to consume resources.
On the more general topic of logistics: it's clear that 5e has chosen to make most logistics trivial to ignore, and I don't think there should be an arrows exception.
It's just as well I didn't ask this in the other thread, but I assume by "work" you're referring to daily XP budgets and things like that?
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 was responding to "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."
Personally, I think there is two types of filler content: Filler content players enjoy and filler content they see as busywork. Something that is busywork for one group might be enjoyable to another and vice versa. Additionally, something might be busywork 99% of the time but enjoyable 1% of the time. It is the job of a competent DM to figure out what works for their party and balance unpopular hassle against enjoyment.
Using the examples in this thread of ammunition, food, and random filler encounters, I think there is a pretty good sliding scale of where each of these fall for most groups:
1. Ammunition likely falls more toward the busywork side of things. It is something you have to track every single time you make an attack, something you have to constantly remember to “I buy more arrows while in town”, and something where the payoff is going to have really variable enjoyment mileage which itself only comes up in the rare instances someone has been unable to refill their arrows for a long time. Some archers might find “two shots left, got to make them count” fun… others might just think “great, now my character is useless and boring, while the mages and melee characters get to still have fun.”
2. Food is a bit less of busywork than ammunition for two major reasons: First, it is really only something you have to track once per day, so you are not constantly tallying numbers in the same way you must for every attack. Second, everyone in the party who needs to eat has to keep track of it, so you do not have the “I am being singled out, this feels bad” element ammunition does.
3. Filler encounters likely err on the side of fun - most people enjoy encounters or they would not be playing D&D to begin with. These encounters can make the world seem alive, add a bit of combat to an otherwise bloodless session, or be used for character development moments.
As with most everything about D&D, there is no right answer on how to play - and it is certainly not “inexperienced” to know “my players like this more than that” (and I would suggest saying so borders on the cardinal sin of “my way of playing D&D is right and I think you are a worse player because you play differently.”).
Personally, I tend to not have players track ammunition (almost every archer I have DMed for was a new player and the additional “you have to track this thing also” on top of everything else they needed to learn did not pass the “fun versus flavour” test); have players track food; and liberally use filler encounters so they feel like they are in a living, breathing world. That is what works best for the parties I DM - but I would never say it is the right way to play. If someone’s group loved ammunition tracking, but just wanted to do major story encounters (maybe they are adults and do not have much time to play, so have to cut to the chase or never finish the campaign) - power to them.
How does one make the system work, then?
If you want a system where one single fight is all it takes to push the characters to the ends of their rope, then the system needs to give players vastly less rope. 5e characters would need drastically fewer spell slots, enormously fewer hit points, fewer rechargable class abilities - all of it. You'd have to take away the majority of everybody's resources.
If players have less rope, then they cannot withstand the more traditional multiple encounter Adventure. Every fight is Triple Black Diamond deadly and the party will need to bunker up and long rest after even the most minor of encounters. You've effectively turned combat of any sort into a screaming emergency that is to be avoided at absolutely all costs, which is certainly a campaign tone. It's not a tone many tables are going to super appreciate, though.
Either the characters have the resources and endurance to burn through multiple battles or they don't. If they do, then a single battle has to be disproportionately above their weight class to be the One Fight Wonder people want. If they don't, then the entire character of D&D changes.
How do you resolve that?
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I think he's referring to the general paradigm in 5e. For example, an encounter isn't really deadly if you aren't already doing 6-8 encounters a day, it assumes that you're doing a load of things that...often don't really happen unless you go out of your way to make them happen in order for it to work. I don't think I've ever had 8 encounters in a day...and I've only used published adventures so far. You have to artificially contrive to meet the standards expected...in order to get things to work.
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.
My simple solution is to just double all of the encounter budgets. Don't change daily budgets, but now a Deadly fight is around 2/3 of your daily budget, and a Medium fight is what is currently considered Deadly. If you really want to have six trash fights per day (no-one wants that; not even published adventures do that) make them all Easy.
The alternate less-math solution is to just double monster hit points (PCs in 5e do too much damage -- it's why using PC builds as enemies doesn't work -- but it's easier to boost hit points than reduce PC damage).
@Caerwyn
My issue is that if a DM says "Supplies are never going to be a thing in my game, you'll never have to worry about not having what you need to do whatever you feel like doing", not only is that DM removing a large swath of possible Complications from their game - the party will never have to deal with lost, broken, or spoiled equipment, they'll never find an impassable obstacle they need something they didn't think to bring to bypass, they'll never have to get creative with the stuff they did bring to get around a problem - but the players are also being told not to ever bother thinking about equipment or supply. They just magically have whatever they feel like having when they want to have it and elsewise it vanishes into hammerspace where it awaits the next time it's needed. That's just...so boring.
We have thirteen pages of mundane adventuring equipment; that crap is there for a reason. A lot of people find it fun to come up with inventive ways to use mundane gear to get around problems that're otherwise ignored or handled by The Wizard Doing it. Nobody cares about the wizard casting Solve Problem, nobody tells stories about it. People remember that one time their survivalist ranger used a block and tackle, a hundred feet of line, a counterweight log, and a combination of Tinker's and Woodcarver's tools to improvise a mechanism to solve an issue the wizard didn't bother preparing a spell for or was too out of juice to cast Solve Problem at.
Nobody will ever have those cool moments of being creative and clever, doing something remarkable and memorable with stuff everybody laughed at them for bringing along, if the DM just says "You'll never need or have to worry about this crap, don't clutter your sheet with it."
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Not to be too much of a grognard, here. Back in 1e, we used to track things like arrows, rations etc. religiously. The official TSR character sheets used to have sections with little tick boxes (conveniently bunched in groups of 20) you could fill in every time you took a shot. Then when you bought more arrows, you'd just erase the boxes. It was about as simple as could be in a pencil and paper set up. The thing was, no one ever ran out of arrows (granted, my experience was only with a dozen or so other nerds in the 80's, and nowhere near universal).
So in theory, yes, it was important to track your arrows, and you could run out. And that was in a time where encumbrance was a bigger issue, and you weren't likely to be carrying around more than 20 or 40 arrows at a given time. But in practice, it never really came up. Managing the resource didn't actually have any in-game impact outside of remembering to deduct a gp or two every time you went to town to reflect that you bought more arrows. It really ended up just being kind of tedious and forgotten. Personally, I'm pretty happy with removing that kind of bookkeeping since when we actually did it, it tended not to really matter.
Then the first step is eliminating Solve Problem spells, because if all your problems can be resolved at a negligible resource cost, you're clearly declaring "This problem is not interesting and we want it to go away".
I find it a tad odd that you saw a post that lists three bulleted items (1. Ammunition; 2. Food; 3. Filler Encounters) and decide that a three paragraph diatribe about a fourth thing (mundane equipment) not covered by the post was an actual response?
To address mundane equipment under the “fun versus busywork” evaluation, I would generally say it falls more on the “fun” side than the busywork side. First, it is not something you constantly have to track - you spend a couple seconds buying it, then it just sits on your sheet happily requiring no effort to maintain. Second, it is something everyone in the party is effected by (unlike ammunition, which has the “feel bad” of only limiting certain types of character). Third, even if it only comes up sometimes, those times it does come up can lead to fun problem solving moments.
High rewards in terms of fun; low cost in terms of busywork - mundane equipment is something I am a big fan of utilising in my games, and I am hard pressed to come up with a different perspective on why one would want to exclude it from their games.
None of this is an all or none problem. It is possible to track the fun supplies while not tracking things that fail the “fun/busywork” test for that group. D&D, and DMing in particular, is about figuring out the balance that works for each party, and rarely is that balance found at the extremities of possibility.
Ehhh, this gets awful close to "One True Way to play D&D" territory.
Some people like tracking stuff and some people don't. It's different kinds of fun for different people or different campaigns. The entire survival genre of video games shows that many people enjoy deeply engaging in logistics, but on the other hand even Tolkien himself basically handwaved that stuff away with lembas bread when he didn't want to deal with it.
For me personally, I ignore most of it by default. This has a nice side effect of making it feel really impactful when I don't though. In my Feywild campaign, food matters a lot because fairy food can be as treacherous as any other native thing. When I run Dark Sun (with or without official 5e support), survival will be front-and-center.
But yeah, generally I find logistics to be pretty boring in the typical adventure. And I think part of the ways 5e has become more accessible and attractive to outsiders is by having a very light touch when it comes to rules around logistics to the point where it only matters as much as the DM says it does.
And that's the heart of it. 5e is designed for growing the brand and being as easy to play as possible. I ran a one-shot for newbies the other day and I'm confident that the mental load that logistics would have added outweighed the benefit of including them. And I think the designers came to the same conclusion. Anything that steepens the learning curve or becomes another thing you need to think about has to have a payoff deep and broad enough to justify its inclusion. I think they determined the people who cared would expend the energy required to make logistics matter, and everyone else would just merrily go on their way.
Is that fair to players like you? Not really. But it is what it is. 5e is 90% compromises made to appease a wide range of demographics, and honestly going by relative success both in the cultural spotlight and financially this edition has been far more successful at that than any other.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I don't necessarily have an issue with Solve Problem. If a wizard wants to use their wizarding resources on the problem and they have the right set-up to do so, then sure. They can do them.
One good example from an article I read way back concerned the party coming to a two hundred foot cliff with a waterfall cascading down it. They need to get down that cliff, but there's no path and the climb is treacherous. What do they do? Well, depends in large part on what they brought with them. Doe they all want to take a flying leap off and have the wizard cast Feather Fall? Cool - they'll get down. They might not get all the way down on one cast because Feather Fall stops the moment you touch the ground and the cliff isn't sheer, at which point the DM might call for Acrobatics checks/Dex saves to see if someone can land securely or if they take a tumble and somebody needs to Think Fast.
Do they bodge together some lines and try to make the climb assisted? Okay, they'll get down. The ropes might not hold under all the pounding from that waterfall though, and it turns out there's a flock of nesting bats that explodes out from a cave the adventurers disturb on their way past. Not enemies to cut down, but definitely more saving throws, on top of the stiff Athletics check required to safely descend two hundred feet down a slick, mist-soaked cliff face next to a thundering waterfall. At any point, something could go abruptly pear-shaped and somebody will need to Think Fast.
Does the wizard feel like casting Fly and shuttling people down? Also distinctly possible. That's gonna be a bunch of Athletics checks with rising DCs to see if Capitan Noodle Hands and his wizard wrists can bear a bunch of two hundred pound adventurers in a hundred pounds of gear down a two hundred foot drop without losing his grip. if he does? Better hope somebody can Think Fast.
One way or another, the party's getting down that cliff. The question is whether they do it on their terms or on gravity's terms, how many of which resources they expend to do it, and whether anybody has to Think Fast to try and catch an emergent disaster before it fully unfolds. The DM describes a problem; the party enacts a solution, the DM tests that solution. That testing part and how to salvage sudden sub-problems is where the fun emerges, and what people are giving up when they demand the DM ignore any and all difficulties, setbacks, and obstacles between them and the Evil Princess they're out to slay.
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I feel like mundane equipment, rations, and ammunition bookkeeping are options and tools that a DM can use if and when the game calls for it. And that depends on what kinds of expectations are set during a Session 0. Some groups might use them, other groups might not. I'm of the mind that I would not use them, specifically, but if I wanted to introduce a complication of low supplies, I would simply say that the supplies are low. Maybe I established something earlier with an NPC complaining about prices or scarcity, or maybe it's a surprise for everyone because of a cunning enemy action or completely unforeseen circumstances that are meant to be a shock.
In the same vein of the discussion about planned character development and emergent character tendencies, I think this is a difference between complications that are planned versus complications that emerge from the system.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
One thing I'm leaning more and more towards is a 3-tier rest system. Short and Long rests are the same, but a Long rest requires actual civilization - a bed, a cooked meal, maybe a bath. When traveling in the wilderness or sailing on a ship, each night is an (Insert good name here) rest, which is basically just a short rest that also serves to stave off exhaustion.
So now you can have a 6-7 encounter "adventuring day" over a two-week expedition into the wilderness. In a dungeon or other "adventure-dense" area away from civilization that might require multiple adventuring days, I'll include some other way to get the benefits of a long rest - a magic fountain or a grateful rescued cleric or some other "force of good that helps heroes achieve their destiny" trope. I'm still working out the kinks, but so far its worked really well for my group.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Yurei1453,
Thanks for this wonderful and thoughtful question, there is a lot to unpack here.
First I would like to say why quite a few groups I have played in and other GM's I have talked to decided to have some form of tracking and then why some I have talked to do not. The main reason (besides the game setting requires it) is a player or player decided to take advantage of the "you get the basic stuff you need for free and I the GM will just reduce the stuff you find accordingly" method. The issues I have seen and talked to people about have been; spells require components to provide game balance so player has to buy stuff which means they do not buy other things (player "thought" this was free for spell casters), buy food once and it refreshes, buy 3 arrows instead of 20 since they only fire 3 before melee, buy a kit to make potions of healing and then you get free potions of healing (also expanded over time to include many other potion options) and had endless supply of flasks for potions and specific monster attacks (acid, rust, fire, etc) that list damaging equipment but the player sees that as only affecting that encounter and then a new encounter resets everything to the base state of their PC.
GM's and players who do not like as much tracking have explained to me that they are heroes and thus should have everything they need to be heroic. I have often felt this way of playing is more like a "Dinner and a Murder" box game or a early AD&D Tournament module and you the player have to decide when to use your limited stuff and if you use something when you are not supposed to it often was a problem (this was generally an issue with the player not knowing when to use something and saw that they could do something and wanted to take part in the game so in effect wasted items and abilities when they did not need to, this can be a problem with how the game/adventure is written and how the GM preps the players for the game).
I hope that background provides some incite but I do not think it fully answers your question, which I think could take 5-30 pages of thoughts.
GM wants final battle to take X% of parties resources: IMHO this is a tough topic as in general I feel the GM wants a encounter to be challenging when necessary and less so when necessary. With random die rolls you do not know if a spell or attack will do max damage or even if it will hit or take effect, so it is possible for what a GM thinks will be easy to be hard and for something to be hard is in fact easy. In general I try and keep track of the players basic status at points of the game, ie are they fully healed, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4 (as well as for powers and abilities) as well as in general how the player is rolling at that time. This can provide me the GM with info on how I might adjust an encounter to fit how the PC's are or even if I insert an encounter that makes them think about going on or resting. Note this GM trick is hard to learn and often mistakes can be made in one direction or another. I am not going to expand on this more as it would take a lot more space.
Sorry need to go.
Good Luck
That was also in a time before video game RPGs tracked all that stuff for you automatically
Times have changed
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)
That line is, I believe, the crux of the matter.
"We're heroes; we should have everything we need to be heroic."
Says who?
I hate when the world treats me like a Destined Hero everyone admires and respects and expects to Save The Day. The only reason the world should treat you like a hero is if you've already proven yourself to be one. I don't even like when the DM treats the party like Destined Heroes. Destined Heroes are boring. Nothing robs a story of impact, meaning, and satisfaction like someone saying "your victory was inevitable, for it was foretold a thousand years ago by the Prophets of Weal".
Cool. Glad to know the outcome was never in doubt and nothing I did mattered for spit because it was my Destiny to be a Hero. Heroism is something the PCs should have to exert themselves to the utmost to earn, not a default assumption from the start. Destined Heroes can get away with always having exactly what they need to do whatever they like; those of us in the muck and dirt handling the work Destined Heroes are too important to deal with are gonna stock up and make sure we have what we need to do what we can. Because we can't just produce a climber's kit or a block and tackle or a bag of bearings or whatever else we need out of HeroSpace, whether we ever actually obtained it or not. That's one of those things that will just kill a game outright for me.
Please do not contact or message me.