Global comment: Resource management can be an integral or neglected part of any D&D game (see that thread about bases/strongholds going on now and I describe a spectrum of scenery to mini-game for fortifications, it's an instance of what's being discussed here). The 5e rules for survival etc. are easily ignored, fudged around with and Ghostfire Games seems largely to exist to provide (from Grim Hollow and their most recent kickstarter) more robust ways of doing survival and determining what matters mechanically for survival.
To hone in on ammunition, i think it's interesting that the use of ammunition as written or interpreted in 5e (and to my knowledge every other version of D&D) actually goes contrary to the presumptions of combat. In the six second round, there's presumed multiple efforts to get at the enemy in melee, but in ranged combat it's presumed the entire six seconds is used to get off one arrow, bolt or slingstone. Maybe that's accurate for crossbows, and maybe it's accurate for some archery (though not Legolas style archery, and shit I forgot about horseback sports archery where three targets are definitely taken down in under six seconds ... from horseback). So I don't know the presumptive tick off one arrow for attack actually makes "simulationist" sense.
I remember the original Twilight: 2000, some self styled "grognards" and "realists" scoffed that weapons were tracked as "shots" (so like a revolver would have 2 shots, most ARs would have 10, that sort of stuff). But combat in that game flowed, and resource management was defintiely a thing. Anyway, what I really like now is Free Leagues recent edition of T2k, and used in Alien, and may go back to the original Year Zero games in their line, but you don't really count bullets. As a proficient user of a weapon it's presumed you know what youre doing in keeping your weapon topped off and weapons only empty due to fumbles, stress fails etc. FFG's Star Wars does something similar (and let's face it, most D&D players run combat with more Star Wars in mind than "realistic combat"). Supplies like fuel and food can have similar complications posed by them, those more dice driven complications as opposed to strict accounting fails posit that the hero isn't as stupid as the players are when it comes to planning for combat or the wilderness etc. They have a damn plan, but the dice are the reflection of the truism sometimes accredited to Mike Tyson that "everyone has a plan until they're punched in the face".
What my half thinking is trying to get at is, rather than "strict accounting" inventory management, instead sorts of letting the mechanics of d20 checks determine complications might add more of a survival feel to one's game as opposed to players ticking off boxes and assuming resource consumption just goes "by the numbers" ... it's a bit video gamey. Whereas dice can help determine how long the rations last or can be extended through a negotiation of surivival checks and exhaustion levels. Ammunition? I'm not a fletcher and know next to nothing about how arrows can be recycled (and that may be at most tables a matter of DM generosity or parsimony rather than reality) but just let the fight happen and use survival checks to determine how much the archer can "top off" after a battle.
Yes, there's a table of stuff ... it's not entirely clear what the "reason" they were there for at least as far as the PHB asserts. We don't really know what the heck to do with Tools till Xanathar's. If your group really likes counting arrows, that's cool. If you're not into that, but also don't want to just have "presumed its done" narrative handwavium and you want to game the journey or supplies, there's systems I feel that can be imported into 5e for those who don't want to be box checkers.
5e can be played with a lot of different tones (again, it's why Ghostfire has commercial success publishing at least two distinct survival systems), as such what's the best mechanical or narrative option to land on for in game resource management is an open ended question, which is a cool thing.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I feel like at low levels, it's more important to track things like food and other mundane supplies, though it really depends on what the thing is. For example, players at 20th don't have to be worried about food expenses and I understand some DM's who hand wave stuff like that.
For arrows and ammunition, it's a different matter, you can run out of arrows pretty easily since your quiver can only hold so much. No matter how much money you have, you can't carry 10 billion quivers on your person at once and still be able to function as normal. Even if you've got a really high dex score, it's not like you cant magically produce arrows out of thin air in the middle of combat.
Though I understand DM's who rule differently or people who disagree, I think at low levels, a lot of this stuff is pretty important, since they don't have nearly as much resources to spend as characters at higher levels do. Honestly, I would always track ammunition, and anything that doesn't take a overly long time to track, even if it is mundane why not track it? If humans need the thing in real life, they should need it in D&D too.
The best explanation of this to me was found in this blog https://theangrygm.com/exploring-by-the-rules/ where he explains the rules are there for a reason and when u hand wave some of the rules the whole composite of element fall apart and lose its purpose. It's a long read but it was satisfying and gave me a whole different perspective on why things are there for.
But in the end, it's up to the DM and players to decide how they wanna play their game some find these rules annoying some don't, to me it's just a matter of how it's delivered and the audience.
For arrows and ammunition, it's a different matter, you can run out of arrows pretty easily since your quiver can only hold so much.
A full day of adventuring is maybe 20 rounds of combat; if you don't use anything but arrows, that's 20 arrows in tier 1, 40 in tier 2, and a typical dungeon design is a single adventuring day of encounters. Carrying 40 arrows is not a problem, so if your expected play style is "go to the the dungeon, then return to civilization", tracking arrows is irrelevant.
If you then go on a long cross-country journey far away from civilization, tracking arrows absolutely should be a factor -- but so should a lot of other things that get abstracted.
For arrows and ammunition, it's a different matter, you can run out of arrows pretty easily since your quiver can only hold so much.
A full day of adventuring is maybe 20 rounds of combat; if you don't use anything but arrows, that's 20 arrows in tier 1, 40 in tier 2, and a typical dungeon design is a single adventuring day of encounters. Carrying 40 arrows is not a problem, so if your expected play style is "go to the the dungeon, then return to civilization", tracking arrows is irrelevant.
If you then go on a long cross-country journey far away from civilization, tracking arrows absolutely should be a factor -- but so should a lot of other things that get abstracted.
Like boots and no one with the cobbler tool proficiency when they get busted, or tailor proficiencies for the wear and tear of clothes etc. It's all stuff that can be played but isn't essential despite what some YouTuber is claiming is game orthodoxy.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
To hone in on ammunition, i think it's interesting that the use of ammunition as written or interpreted in 5e (and to my knowledge every other version of D&D) actually goes contrary to the presumptions of combat. In the six second round, there's presumed multiple efforts to get at the enemy in melee, but in ranged combat it's presumed the entire six seconds is used to get off one arrow, bolt or slingstone. Maybe that's accurate for crossbows, and maybe it's accurate for some archery (though not Legolas style archery, and shit I forgot about horseback sports archery where three targets are definitely taken down in under six seconds ... from horseback). So I don't know the presumptive tick off one arrow for attack actually makes "simulationist" sense.
I can't believe this has never occurred to me before. You're totally right.
What my half thinking is trying to get at is, rather than "strict accounting" inventory management, instead sorts of letting the mechanics of d20 checks determine complications might add more of a survival feel to one's game as opposed to players ticking off boxes and assuming resource consumption just goes "by the numbers" ... it's a bit video gamey. Whereas dice can help determine how long the rations last or can be extended through a negotiation of surivival checks and exhaustion levels. Ammunition? I'm not a fletcher and know next to nothing about how arrows can be recycled (and that may be at most tables a matter of DM generosity or parsimony rather than reality) but just let the fight happen and use survival checks to determine how much the archer can "top off" after a battle.
Check out The Black Hack and its Usage Die mechanic. I think it's really clever. I've never played with it but I'd like to.
To hone in on ammunition, i think it's interesting that the use of ammunition as written or interpreted in 5e (and to my knowledge every other version of D&D) actually goes contrary to the presumptions of combat. In the six second round, there's presumed multiple efforts to get at the enemy in melee, but in ranged combat it's presumed the entire six seconds is used to get off one arrow, bolt or slingstone. Maybe that's accurate for crossbows, and maybe it's accurate for some archery (though not Legolas style archery, and shit I forgot about horseback sports archery where three targets are definitely taken down in under six seconds ... from horseback). So I don't know the presumptive tick off one arrow for attack actually makes "simulationist" sense.
Rate of fire of longbows is somewhat debated, but a typical estimate is up to 12 shots per minute with a lower sustained rate (a 5th level fighter can shoot 20), so it's not too bad. The real realism problem is the part where they don't instantly die when engaged in melee (there's something to be said for melee weapon attacks against targets that are unable to make opportunity attacks being at advantage).
Check out The Black Hack and its Usage Die mechanic. I think it's really clever. I've never played with it but I'd like to.
Thanks for the tip. I'm familiar with, as in read about, The Black Hack / White Hack books (I know, different games, but they're talked about in the same sentence a lot) but have yet to read them themselves. That mechanic gives me more reason to check at least Black Hack out. I think I remember the usage die being referenced but it's cool to see that mechanic in game more mechanically closer to 5e than the stuff I was referencing.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
We usually track our arrows, and I'm the kind of player that will do an investigation check to see if there are any re-usable arrows after the combat has finished.
For food/rations because we're all within a town at the moment we're usually not too far away from our digs, so isn't as important - but if we went out to the country, I'd be ticking them off each adventuring day.
Our DM isn't going through our sheets saying "you've used that torch, you need to take it off" but it's there and we are expected that we'd be removing used items - it's not that hard now it's online - when we first did it many moons ago my page got rather messy with all the inventory tracking I was doing :)
I think it's one of those things where it's part of the game and it should be used, but there's no point being so stubborn about enforcing it that it's not fun.
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Odo Proudfoot - Lvl 10 Halfling Monk - Princes of the Apocalypse (Campaign Finished)
Isn't that exactly what everybody keeps arguing though, Kotath? That there is absolutely no good reason whatsoever, ever, to press players on the issue? That even if they're striking out into the vast deserts of Nowherezakstan with nothing but sand, rock, and ragged scrub as far as the eye can see, the DM is a bad person if they ask the party "What're you doing about food, water, ammunition, and expendables?" Or that the DM rolling up 'Supply Spoilage' on their list of Complications and telling the party "Looks like the rot got into your supplies; all your rations are spoiled. You're going to have to find a way to feed yourselves moving forward or turn back and hope you can last the trip" makes that DM a game-ruining monster?
"Inventory can be important without being all-important" still suggests that players should be thinking about what they're carrying, when the entire point of the counter-arguments in this thread seems to be "players should never have to spend time or energy thinking about what they're carrying because there's better stuff for them to do". Why? The DM's allowed to spank the players for not bothering to use their brains anywhere else; why are players allowed to just completely flat-out disregard equipment and supply for free?
I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that I'm proposing punishing players for sorting this stuff out. My primary irritation is with the oft-espoused idea that players are too stupid to account for this crap, or that players just can't be assed to do so, and trying to get them to engage with any sort of logistical challenge is a sign of bad DMing. People say "these things totally matter, but they should only really matter when they matter and tracking them when they don't matter is stupid and makes you a bad DM", and then busily ensure they never bother putting their games into situations where such things matter because players spit and hiss and whine whenever they have to turn on their thinkmeat for longer than it takes to produce the phrase "I hit the sword with my orc".
Here's the thing: how do you know where the party's supply situation stands when they start fleeing from a superior pursuit force? If you've ignored supply for the entire game and constantly reasured your players that they'll never ever ever ever have to think about supply before saying "WHELP, y'all are now on the run and can't stop in town for a freshening-up. How many rations y'all got, because it's now time for supply to matter", your players are not going to have any supply because they were assured it wouldn't matter. They're gonna be pissed off at the bait and switch, and in this case they may well have a right to be. Frankly, shit like this is why I don't trust the DM one micron when they say "don't worry about this crap, It won't be important" and keep track of what I have and what I need anyways.
Isn't that exactly what everybody keeps arguing though, Kotath? That there is absolutely no good reason whatsoever, ever, to press players on the issue? That even if they're striking out into the vast deserts of Nowherezakstan with nothing but sand, rock, and ragged scrub as far as the eye can see, the DM is a bad person if they ask the party "What're you doing about food, water, ammunition, and expendables?" Or that the DM rolling up 'Supply Spoilage' on their list of Complications and telling the party "Looks like the rot got into your supplies; all your rations are spoiled. You're going to have to find a way to feed yourselves moving forward or turn back and hope you can last the trip" makes that DM a game-ruining monster?
Quite literally, no. I can quote where it's been explicitly said otherwise, too. On the other hand, you have been applying those labels and worse to those who don't think that tracking how many crumbs are in their pocket whilst in the land of fat and honey where food is so plentiful that it practically falls into your pockets is a particularly gainful exercise. Or counting arrows going down to, horror of horrors, find only one quiver left before they're replenished. The discussion is about whether only bad DMs only track the minutiae even when it's irrelevant, and has been since the topic came up.
"Inventory can be important without being all-important" still suggests that players should be thinking about what they're carrying, when the entire point of the counter-arguments in this thread seems to be "players should never have to spend time or energy thinking about what they're carrying because there's better stuff for them to do". Why? The DM's allowed to spank the players for not bothering to use their brains anywhere else; why are players allowed to just completely flat-out disregard equipment and supply for free?
DMs are not allowed to spank people for playing a game and not getting dragged down in useless minutiae. Do you "spank" your players when they don't mention that they have a wash? They don't change their clothes? Do the laundry? How about when they don't mention that they've put their undies on? Breathed? I never "spank" my players for not mentioning those, because it's reasonable to assume that they do those things, unless there's a reason to think that they haven't. If they're travelling through lush forests that are full of fruit trees, going through fields with vegetables, going through areas rich in game, then it's reasonable to assume that their characters, who have Int and Wis scores of 20 with expertise in Survival are not stupid enough to starve while quite literally surrounded by food, and instead will forage and hint and do what they have to in order to get food. Just like you assume that they breathe. If resources are scarce, that's a different matter. Travelling through Mordor where the ground is poisonous is a different issue and they will have to track things. Not in the middle of the Shire where they a tripping over and breaking food because it's so plentiful. Characters aren't that dumb.
Resource tracking is a tool. It's useful if it's actually applicable where resources have a reasonable chance of running out and can create a particular atmosphere. On the other hand, it's a tool, when it's not helpful, you put it down. There's a reason why people don't carry hammers when they're going to the cinema or walking down the shops for milk - it just gets in the way.
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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.
to me this is very much a “what game do the players want”.
I don’t mind some admin, but I despise the busywork if it becomes overbearing. I don’t mind food being important but make it an overall theme. Arrows, just have me take off a few gold when I am in town, or assume that my archer is vaguely competent and has been repairing/making arrows with supplies they have as they has been going.
I know others like very admin heavy games and that’s fine. But expectations need to be set, and lacks should be themes. Just having to go through an inventory of “water, check, food, check” every time I leave town is just not fun to me and assumes that my character is not vaguely competent because me as a player, not in the situation myself and having not grown up used to the requirements of travel, forgot to say hey we get this.
You can have fun with it. You absolutely can. It just needs to be done well, or it needs to be done in small, thematic doses imho
[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?
As the OP of the original thread (I wish I had found the post where you made this thread before replying to others there lol) I am going to suggest a middle point here. I will say I have been playing many different TTRPG's now for 30 odd years, but only DnD about 6 now (since just after 5th edition came out I think). So I have had lots of experiance with survival games where resource management is key, through to RP heavy games where we don't really care. Sci fi Settings where blasters can be recharged between fights, or plasma weapons are easy to come by, and MERCS3000, a system where you could buy your own Apache Helicopter and had to track how many hellfire missiles you had loaded and ready to go, or how many 1000 rounds of Ammo you had left on your Mig.
For me Resource management scales in DnD based on character level and wealth. I run high fantasy, high magic campaigns, so magic shops are all over the place, magic items are available to buy, find, steal, or given as loot on a regular basis, by level 6 I expect every character in my party have at least 2 attunable magic items each and usually make items available with this aim in mind. my current party of 8 currently have I think a total of 40 magic items throughout the party, or in one of there 2 bags of holding. I don't generally worry about Encumbrance, but I will make sure that party members don't have multiple sets of armour, or 2 heavy crossbows etc. There is more of a common sense approach rather than hard rules about Encumbrance. I will also say i use the Sane magic item price guide vs the DMG price guide for magic items so they are al ot more cash to buy.
When it comes to Ammo up to level 6 again I get my players to track, but, historically I have found that at about level 2-3 the party will bulk buy things like arrows so tracking ammo does become a paper exercise. Add into that the "hunting for arrows after every fight" and the game can slow down for the sake of what, in a normal adventuring day maybe 10 arrows being lost by the party overall at a cost of 1/2 a gp.
My current game has been running for 55 sessions at 4 hours a session, one session a week and the party are just at level 6, this feeds into my next feeling on resource management, the players have had a year of real time worrying about resource management for mundane ammo, they have got the point of it and there are now more exciting things that as a party they can worry about. Diamonds is the key one (so the cleric can resurrect). I also think party size comes into it, again my current game was 8 has just gone down to 7 players, for me a big party is more about the storytelling and the RP rather then tracking resources. With a large party there is also more scope for them to have a range of abilities to help with scavenging. My current group has 2 players with the outlander background. So between them they can feed and water the whole party in the wilderness, they also have a druid, ranger and fighter, all of whom from a class perspective can help track, hunt and catch food. Again in the early stages of the campaign I did get the party to track rations, worry about water etc, but after a year of real time playing that aspect has moved ot the background more.
Another aspect I find like Party size is the medium, I find that an in person round the table game flows far faster and therefore things like buying resources can be fed into the game better, playing a game remotely over video call things can slow down significantly simply through the issue of making sure everyone can speak and no one feels left out so, resource management can be a simple thing to cut back on earlier on to keep things flowing. I like to play an RP heavy game so simply saying, mark of 3 gold you buy arrows, doesn;t really work, I like to name the fletcher they are buying from, describe them, give a bit of a description about the shop and quality of the arrows etc.
As mentioned above this doesn't mean survival is ignored. It just shifts based on the length of game time, the level of the party and the wealth they have.
Out of the Abyss is a great example of this approach, at the early levels they are escaping a prison, with only the things they manage to get out, there are rules for finding food and water vs escaping the chasing drow, as the game progresses the party gains equipment, money, and experiance the battle becomes more about surviving the horrors of the Demon Lords appearing. Then later on they return with an army to try and beat back the Demon Lords and save the Underdark.
At the higher levels when they return resource management becomes about managing the army rather than worrying about individual arrows.
I think Scraloc is right that resource management can be a thing, but it doesn't have to always be a thing. I also don't think anyone is saying a DM who imposes hard rules about resource management is DMing wrong, just as a DM not imposing strict arrow accountability is also not DMing wrong.
It's an element to the game, like material components and can be either "enforced" or brought up as an occasional in game challenge or sorta floated as fluff.
I'm getting most from this thread as differing ways DM address resource management, and a little confusion as to why this has to be such a heated argument.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
“Yes, which means you have the training and experience necessary to know that attempting this climb without a single tool or mechanical aid is a great way to end up paste at the bottom" the DM responds.
People don't even try to do anything else, and it frustrates me tremendously. There's so many cool little tales to be told out there if people would just stop trying to blow them off and bumrush the BBEG as fast as humanly possible.”
I often feel the same way then realize that I have a lifetime of experience with outdoors activities (camping, hiking, survival camping, hunting, fishing, swimming, diving, rock climbing, etc, etc, etc ) and that the things I see as mundane tool solvable problems because of that many (not alll) other players have little or no experience to fall back on and so they turn to magic as a solution to everything. As a player I carry all sorts of small mundane items that can be used to solve all sorts of problems saving the mage’s spells for things that can’t be solved mundanely (like countering spelling the bbeg’s fireball or disintegrate spells).
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Global comment: Resource management can be an integral or neglected part of any D&D game (see that thread about bases/strongholds going on now and I describe a spectrum of scenery to mini-game for fortifications, it's an instance of what's being discussed here). The 5e rules for survival etc. are easily ignored, fudged around with and Ghostfire Games seems largely to exist to provide (from Grim Hollow and their most recent kickstarter) more robust ways of doing survival and determining what matters mechanically for survival.
To hone in on ammunition, i think it's interesting that the use of ammunition as written or interpreted in 5e (and to my knowledge every other version of D&D) actually goes contrary to the presumptions of combat. In the six second round, there's presumed multiple efforts to get at the enemy in melee, but in ranged combat it's presumed the entire six seconds is used to get off one arrow, bolt or slingstone. Maybe that's accurate for crossbows, and maybe it's accurate for some archery (though not Legolas style archery, and shit I forgot about horseback sports archery where three targets are definitely taken down in under six seconds ... from horseback). So I don't know the presumptive tick off one arrow for attack actually makes "simulationist" sense.
I remember the original Twilight: 2000, some self styled "grognards" and "realists" scoffed that weapons were tracked as "shots" (so like a revolver would have 2 shots, most ARs would have 10, that sort of stuff). But combat in that game flowed, and resource management was defintiely a thing. Anyway, what I really like now is Free Leagues recent edition of T2k, and used in Alien, and may go back to the original Year Zero games in their line, but you don't really count bullets. As a proficient user of a weapon it's presumed you know what youre doing in keeping your weapon topped off and weapons only empty due to fumbles, stress fails etc. FFG's Star Wars does something similar (and let's face it, most D&D players run combat with more Star Wars in mind than "realistic combat"). Supplies like fuel and food can have similar complications posed by them, those more dice driven complications as opposed to strict accounting fails posit that the hero isn't as stupid as the players are when it comes to planning for combat or the wilderness etc. They have a damn plan, but the dice are the reflection of the truism sometimes accredited to Mike Tyson that "everyone has a plan until they're punched in the face".
What my half thinking is trying to get at is, rather than "strict accounting" inventory management, instead sorts of letting the mechanics of d20 checks determine complications might add more of a survival feel to one's game as opposed to players ticking off boxes and assuming resource consumption just goes "by the numbers" ... it's a bit video gamey. Whereas dice can help determine how long the rations last or can be extended through a negotiation of surivival checks and exhaustion levels. Ammunition? I'm not a fletcher and know next to nothing about how arrows can be recycled (and that may be at most tables a matter of DM generosity or parsimony rather than reality) but just let the fight happen and use survival checks to determine how much the archer can "top off" after a battle.
Yes, there's a table of stuff ... it's not entirely clear what the "reason" they were there for at least as far as the PHB asserts. We don't really know what the heck to do with Tools till Xanathar's. If your group really likes counting arrows, that's cool. If you're not into that, but also don't want to just have "presumed its done" narrative handwavium and you want to game the journey or supplies, there's systems I feel that can be imported into 5e for those who don't want to be box checkers.
5e can be played with a lot of different tones (again, it's why Ghostfire has commercial success publishing at least two distinct survival systems), as such what's the best mechanical or narrative option to land on for in game resource management is an open ended question, which is a cool thing.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I feel like at low levels, it's more important to track things like food and other mundane supplies, though it really depends on what the thing is. For example, players at 20th don't have to be worried about food expenses and I understand some DM's who hand wave stuff like that.
For arrows and ammunition, it's a different matter, you can run out of arrows pretty easily since your quiver can only hold so much. No matter how much money you have, you can't carry 10 billion quivers on your person at once and still be able to function as normal. Even if you've got a really high dex score, it's not like you cant magically produce arrows out of thin air in the middle of combat.
Though I understand DM's who rule differently or people who disagree, I think at low levels, a lot of this stuff is pretty important, since they don't have nearly as much resources to spend as characters at higher levels do. Honestly, I would always track ammunition, and anything that doesn't take a overly long time to track, even if it is mundane why not track it? If humans need the thing in real life, they should need it in D&D too.
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HERE.The best explanation of this to me was found in this blog https://theangrygm.com/exploring-by-the-rules/ where he explains the rules are there for a reason and when u hand wave some of the rules the whole composite of element fall apart and lose its purpose. It's a long read but it was satisfying and gave me a whole different perspective on why things are there for.
But in the end, it's up to the DM and players to decide how they wanna play their game some find these rules annoying some don't, to me it's just a matter of how it's delivered and the audience.
A full day of adventuring is maybe 20 rounds of combat; if you don't use anything but arrows, that's 20 arrows in tier 1, 40 in tier 2, and a typical dungeon design is a single adventuring day of encounters. Carrying 40 arrows is not a problem, so if your expected play style is "go to the the dungeon, then return to civilization", tracking arrows is irrelevant.
If you then go on a long cross-country journey far away from civilization, tracking arrows absolutely should be a factor -- but so should a lot of other things that get abstracted.
Like boots and no one with the cobbler tool proficiency when they get busted, or tailor proficiencies for the wear and tear of clothes etc. It's all stuff that can be played but isn't essential despite what some YouTuber is claiming is game orthodoxy.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I can't believe this has never occurred to me before. You're totally right.
Check out The Black Hack and its Usage Die mechanic. I think it's really clever. I've never played with it but I'd like to.
Rate of fire of longbows is somewhat debated, but a typical estimate is up to 12 shots per minute with a lower sustained rate (a 5th level fighter can shoot 20), so it's not too bad. The real realism problem is the part where they don't instantly die when engaged in melee (there's something to be said for melee weapon attacks against targets that are unable to make opportunity attacks being at advantage).
Thanks for the tip. I'm familiar with, as in read about, The Black Hack / White Hack books (I know, different games, but they're talked about in the same sentence a lot) but have yet to read them themselves. That mechanic gives me more reason to check at least Black Hack out. I think I remember the usage die being referenced but it's cool to see that mechanic in game more mechanically closer to 5e than the stuff I was referencing.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
We usually track our arrows, and I'm the kind of player that will do an investigation check to see if there are any re-usable arrows after the combat has finished.
For food/rations because we're all within a town at the moment we're usually not too far away from our digs, so isn't as important - but if we went out to the country, I'd be ticking them off each adventuring day.
Our DM isn't going through our sheets saying "you've used that torch, you need to take it off" but it's there and we are expected that we'd be removing used items - it's not that hard now it's online - when we first did it many moons ago my page got rather messy with all the inventory tracking I was doing :)
I think it's one of those things where it's part of the game and it should be used, but there's no point being so stubborn about enforcing it that it's not fun.
Odo Proudfoot - Lvl 10 Halfling Monk - Princes of the Apocalypse (Campaign Finished)
Orryn Pebblefoot - Lvl 5 Rock Gnome Wizard (Deceased) - Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (Deceased)
Anerin Ap Tewdr - Lvl 5 Human (Variant) Bard (College of Valor) - Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
Isn't that exactly what everybody keeps arguing though, Kotath? That there is absolutely no good reason whatsoever, ever, to press players on the issue? That even if they're striking out into the vast deserts of Nowherezakstan with nothing but sand, rock, and ragged scrub as far as the eye can see, the DM is a bad person if they ask the party "What're you doing about food, water, ammunition, and expendables?" Or that the DM rolling up 'Supply Spoilage' on their list of Complications and telling the party "Looks like the rot got into your supplies; all your rations are spoiled. You're going to have to find a way to feed yourselves moving forward or turn back and hope you can last the trip" makes that DM a game-ruining monster?
"Inventory can be important without being all-important" still suggests that players should be thinking about what they're carrying, when the entire point of the counter-arguments in this thread seems to be "players should never have to spend time or energy thinking about what they're carrying because there's better stuff for them to do". Why? The DM's allowed to spank the players for not bothering to use their brains anywhere else; why are players allowed to just completely flat-out disregard equipment and supply for free?
Please do not contact or message me.
I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that I'm proposing punishing players for sorting this stuff out. My primary irritation is with the oft-espoused idea that players are too stupid to account for this crap, or that players just can't be assed to do so, and trying to get them to engage with any sort of logistical challenge is a sign of bad DMing. People say "these things totally matter, but they should only really matter when they matter and tracking them when they don't matter is stupid and makes you a bad DM", and then busily ensure they never bother putting their games into situations where such things matter because players spit and hiss and whine whenever they have to turn on their thinkmeat for longer than it takes to produce the phrase "I hit the sword with my orc".
Here's the thing: how do you know where the party's supply situation stands when they start fleeing from a superior pursuit force? If you've ignored supply for the entire game and constantly reasured your players that they'll never ever ever ever have to think about supply before saying "WHELP, y'all are now on the run and can't stop in town for a freshening-up. How many rations y'all got, because it's now time for supply to matter", your players are not going to have any supply because they were assured it wouldn't matter. They're gonna be pissed off at the bait and switch, and in this case they may well have a right to be. Frankly, shit like this is why I don't trust the DM one micron when they say "don't worry about this crap, It won't be important" and keep track of what I have and what I need anyways.
Please do not contact or message me.
Quite literally, no. I can quote where it's been explicitly said otherwise, too. On the other hand, you have been applying those labels and worse to those who don't think that tracking how many crumbs are in their pocket whilst in the land of fat and honey where food is so plentiful that it practically falls into your pockets is a particularly gainful exercise. Or counting arrows going down to, horror of horrors, find only one quiver left before they're replenished. The discussion is about whether only bad DMs only track the minutiae even when it's irrelevant, and has been since the topic came up.
DMs are not allowed to spank people for playing a game and not getting dragged down in useless minutiae. Do you "spank" your players when they don't mention that they have a wash? They don't change their clothes? Do the laundry? How about when they don't mention that they've put their undies on? Breathed? I never "spank" my players for not mentioning those, because it's reasonable to assume that they do those things, unless there's a reason to think that they haven't. If they're travelling through lush forests that are full of fruit trees, going through fields with vegetables, going through areas rich in game, then it's reasonable to assume that their characters, who have Int and Wis scores of 20 with expertise in Survival are not stupid enough to starve while quite literally surrounded by food, and instead will forage and hint and do what they have to in order to get food. Just like you assume that they breathe. If resources are scarce, that's a different matter. Travelling through Mordor where the ground is poisonous is a different issue and they will have to track things. Not in the middle of the Shire where they a tripping over and breaking food because it's so plentiful. Characters aren't that dumb.
Resource tracking is a tool. It's useful if it's actually applicable where resources have a reasonable chance of running out and can create a particular atmosphere. On the other hand, it's a tool, when it's not helpful, you put it down. There's a reason why people don't carry hammers when they're going to the cinema or walking down the shops for milk - it just gets in the way.
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.
to me this is very much a “what game do the players want”.
I don’t mind some admin, but I despise the busywork if it becomes overbearing. I don’t mind food being important but make it an overall theme. Arrows, just have me take off a few gold when I am in town, or assume that my archer is vaguely competent and has been repairing/making arrows with supplies they have as they has been going.
I know others like very admin heavy games and that’s fine. But expectations need to be set, and lacks should be themes. Just having to go through an inventory of “water, check, food, check” every time I leave town is just not fun to me and assumes that my character is not vaguely competent because me as a player, not in the situation myself and having not grown up used to the requirements of travel, forgot to say hey we get this.
You can have fun with it. You absolutely can. It just needs to be done well, or it needs to be done in small, thematic doses imho
As the OP of the original thread (I wish I had found the post where you made this thread before replying to others there lol) I am going to suggest a middle point here. I will say I have been playing many different TTRPG's now for 30 odd years, but only DnD about 6 now (since just after 5th edition came out I think). So I have had lots of experiance with survival games where resource management is key, through to RP heavy games where we don't really care. Sci fi Settings where blasters can be recharged between fights, or plasma weapons are easy to come by, and MERCS3000, a system where you could buy your own Apache Helicopter and had to track how many hellfire missiles you had loaded and ready to go, or how many 1000 rounds of Ammo you had left on your Mig.
For me Resource management scales in DnD based on character level and wealth. I run high fantasy, high magic campaigns, so magic shops are all over the place, magic items are available to buy, find, steal, or given as loot on a regular basis, by level 6 I expect every character in my party have at least 2 attunable magic items each and usually make items available with this aim in mind. my current party of 8 currently have I think a total of 40 magic items throughout the party, or in one of there 2 bags of holding. I don't generally worry about Encumbrance, but I will make sure that party members don't have multiple sets of armour, or 2 heavy crossbows etc. There is more of a common sense approach rather than hard rules about Encumbrance. I will also say i use the Sane magic item price guide vs the DMG price guide for magic items so they are al ot more cash to buy.
When it comes to Ammo up to level 6 again I get my players to track, but, historically I have found that at about level 2-3 the party will bulk buy things like arrows so tracking ammo does become a paper exercise. Add into that the "hunting for arrows after every fight" and the game can slow down for the sake of what, in a normal adventuring day maybe 10 arrows being lost by the party overall at a cost of 1/2 a gp.
My current game has been running for 55 sessions at 4 hours a session, one session a week and the party are just at level 6, this feeds into my next feeling on resource management, the players have had a year of real time worrying about resource management for mundane ammo, they have got the point of it and there are now more exciting things that as a party they can worry about. Diamonds is the key one (so the cleric can resurrect). I also think party size comes into it, again my current game was 8 has just gone down to 7 players, for me a big party is more about the storytelling and the RP rather then tracking resources. With a large party there is also more scope for them to have a range of abilities to help with scavenging. My current group has 2 players with the outlander background. So between them they can feed and water the whole party in the wilderness, they also have a druid, ranger and fighter, all of whom from a class perspective can help track, hunt and catch food. Again in the early stages of the campaign I did get the party to track rations, worry about water etc, but after a year of real time playing that aspect has moved ot the background more.
Another aspect I find like Party size is the medium, I find that an in person round the table game flows far faster and therefore things like buying resources can be fed into the game better, playing a game remotely over video call things can slow down significantly simply through the issue of making sure everyone can speak and no one feels left out so, resource management can be a simple thing to cut back on earlier on to keep things flowing. I like to play an RP heavy game so simply saying, mark of 3 gold you buy arrows, doesn;t really work, I like to name the fletcher they are buying from, describe them, give a bit of a description about the shop and quality of the arrows etc.
As mentioned above this doesn't mean survival is ignored. It just shifts based on the length of game time, the level of the party and the wealth they have.
Out of the Abyss is a great example of this approach, at the early levels they are escaping a prison, with only the things they manage to get out, there are rules for finding food and water vs escaping the chasing drow, as the game progresses the party gains equipment, money, and experiance the battle becomes more about surviving the horrors of the Demon Lords appearing. Then later on they return with an army to try and beat back the Demon Lords and save the Underdark.
At the higher levels when they return resource management becomes about managing the army rather than worrying about individual arrows.
I think Scraloc is right that resource management can be a thing, but it doesn't have to always be a thing. I also don't think anyone is saying a DM who imposes hard rules about resource management is DMing wrong, just as a DM not imposing strict arrow accountability is also not DMing wrong.
It's an element to the game, like material components and can be either "enforced" or brought up as an occasional in game challenge or sorta floated as fluff.
I'm getting most from this thread as differing ways DM address resource management, and a little confusion as to why this has to be such a heated argument.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
From Yurei:
“Yes, which means you have the training and experience necessary to know that attempting this climb without a single tool or mechanical aid is a great way to end up paste at the bottom" the DM responds.
People don't even try to do anything else, and it frustrates me tremendously. There's so many cool little tales to be told out there if people would just stop trying to blow them off and bumrush the BBEG as fast as humanly possible.”
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.