I'm not sure exactly how rations work due to the conflict between their weight (2 lb) and the rules stating that an adventurer needs 1 lb. I have found two different answers but i dislike both.
- A ration includes the weight of the package. I don't like this because its odd the package weights as much as the ration itself (at least maybe with a nut it's true). - You need 1lb to subsist (half ration). I also don't like this as, if it is the case, there isn't any drawback to always consume half rations (wich is absurd, I'm slim and eat more than 1 lb in a normal day, in fact if a walk 8 hours in a day, i eat more than 2 lb, probably). Please tell me if there is any consensus/official version.
Frankly, the official food rules are very exploitable. You can go CON+3 days without eating and eating half a ration counts as half a day without food. So if you can go 3 days without food, you can go 6 days on half rations, eating 3 rations in that time. But eating a full ration resets the timer. So if you eat a full ration, wait 3 days, and eat another full ration, you can go another 3 days, making 7-8 days on 2 rations. It is literally twice as efficient, and there is no downside.
As a DM, I would throw some house rules in there. As a player, I make rations a role play opportunity.
I'd say either package weight, or simply the fact that "1 lb of food needed to subsist" is an average, and rations are just heavier than average. You probably need more than 1 lb of celery to subsist, but less than 1 lb of fatty mutton, which has much more caloric density than celery. On the other hand, rations tend to be calorically dense foods (nuts, jerky, dried food), so you'd expect them to weigh less, not more, than the average. So, yeah, packaging. :D
I would guess that the given weight in the equipment list includes a factor for bulk as well as weight. There are a few items that weigh substantially less than their given "weights". It might have been clearer if the game had used a different term for "encumbrance units".
The rule about needing 1 pound of food probably is referring to weight. Although a the nutritional benefit of a pound of food is going to vary wildly depending on what the food is.
Slow death by starvation! Such a fun theme for a D&D adventure.
Seriously though -- the rules are full of fuzzy stuff like that. Errors, even. I would choose to ignore the stuff about how many pounds of food is needed per day, since that depends on what kind of food it is, if you're forcing yourself to be realistic about it. (As has been pointed out)
I just take it how it says on the equipment list. 1 day of food is 2 lbs. I don't question what any other rules say, the list says what it is. 2 lbs of food wrapped in paper, the paper has negligible weight.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
In order to make the rules fit, I would say that 1 lb is the minimum of food that a character needs to not suffer effects of starvation, but that unless they're being careful, that character generally eats more and would eat an entire ration in a day. The ration is 2 lb, and is a comfortable amount of food, not the minimum. You can still follow the actual rules presented and maybe extend your rations even further than you initially expected:
If you're not careful, you eat a ration item a day.
If you are rationing on full rations, you eat a half a ration item and survive with no ill effects.
If you are eating half rations, you eat half a pound of food, which is a quarter of a ration item.
There's even a bit of real world analog to this as well. A "ration" might be 3 MREs which provide nearly 3800 calories, nearly twice the recommendation rather than just the minimum you need to survive.
edit: Tried to add a small amount of clarity between the “ration item” and “rationing your food.”
I'm not sure exactly how rations work due to the conflict between their weight (2 lb) and the rules stating that an adventurer needs 1 lb. I have found two different answers but i dislike both.
- A ration includes the weight of the package. I don't like this because its odd the package weights as much as the ration itself (at least maybe with a nut it's true). - You need 1lb to subsist (half ration). I also don't like this as, if it is the case, there isn't any drawback to always consume half rations (wich is absurd, I'm slim and eat more than 1 lb in a normal day, in fact if a walk 8 hours in a day, i eat more than 2 lb, probably). Please tell me if there is any consensus/official version.
I'd say while you need at least 1 lb a day of food, a ration is 2 lb to completly fullfill all your need and satiaty during adventuring day.
The real question for me is whether you are the type of adventurer who discards the ration packaging on your adventures, or whether you respect Leave No Trace principles in the wilderness.
It's two pounds of spinach, so you're lucky if you get one pound of ration after you're done preparing it
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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)
It's just not worth getting into this level of detail, and your game will not be improved by it if you do. Each day, mark off one portion of rations if you're not getting fed anywhere else. Good, now we don't have to worry about something very boring like how much rations weigh.
A good rule of thumb is that if your characters' major dilemma could be solved by a trip to a grocery store, then you're probably aiming wrong with the game design. And sure, someone will say "But my game is about wilderness survival" or "My PCs are trekking through an arctic wasteland after they teleported badly..." And yes, those sound fun. But they're fun because of the monsters, and because of the climate dangers, and the party roleplay: not because the weight of the rations container has been accurately calculated. Mark off one ration: you've eaten for the day. Now go fight that wyvern.
The game's hunger rules aren't particularly realistic unless you're already malnourished. Even a relatively lean human still has more than enough fat to go a few weeks without food with limited ill effects. If you've got big muscles, that can also be broken down into glucose. It's not going to be fun, but you're also not going to crash and waste away after just 3-5 days.
It's hard to make hunger a major concern in any kind of survival scenario compared to having clean water, managing extreme temperatures and avoiding infections, major injuries, poison, and terrain hazards. Unless you're running some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland, there's always something to hunt and eat in the wild.
The game's hunger rules aren't particularly realistic unless you're already malnourished. Even a relatively lean human still has more than enough fat to go a few weeks without food with limited ill effects. If you've got big muscles, that can also be broken down into glucose. It's not going to be fun, but you're also not going to crash and waste away after just 3-5 days.
It's hard to make hunger a major concern in any kind of survival scenario compared to having clean water, managing extreme temperatures and avoiding infections, major injuries, poison, and terrain hazards. Unless you're running some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland, there's always something to hunt and eat in the wild.
The point is, somebody needs to go out and find that food.
The problem is, doing so isn't fun or interesting.
It's just not worth getting into this level of detail, and your game will not be improved by it if you do. Each day, mark off one portion of rations if you're not getting fed anywhere else. Good, now we don't have to worry about something very boring like how much rations weigh.
A good rule of thumb is that if your characters' major dilemma could be solved by a trip to a grocery store, then you're probably aiming wrong with the game design. And sure, someone will say "But my game is about wilderness survival" or "My PCs are trekking through an arctic wasteland after they teleported badly..." And yes, those sound fun. But they're fun because of the monsters, and because of the climate dangers, and the party roleplay: not because the weight of the rations container has been accurately calculated. Mark off one ration: you've eaten for the day. Now go fight that wyvern.
I'm not one to say someone else's fun is wrong, but I feel the same way you do when it comes to tracking rations.
It's just not worth getting into this level of detail, and your game will not be improved by it if you do. Each day, mark off one portion of rations if you're not getting fed anywhere else. Good, now we don't have to worry about something very boring like how much rations weigh.
A good rule of thumb is that if your characters' major dilemma could be solved by a trip to a grocery store, then you're probably aiming wrong with the game design. And sure, someone will say "But my game is about wilderness survival" or "My PCs are trekking through an arctic wasteland after they teleported badly..." And yes, those sound fun. But they're fun because of the monsters, and because of the climate dangers, and the party roleplay: not because the weight of the rations container has been accurately calculated. Mark off one ration: you've eaten for the day. Now go fight that wyvern.
I'm not one to say someone else's fun is wrong, but I feel the same way you do when it comes to tracking rations.
Yeah, it was probably ungenerous of me to say that nobody will have fun with it. But I'd guess that it's an extremely rare table of 5 players where getting into detail about eating rations is going to improve the gaming experience, even if someone is really enjoying the rest of it. I am probably still haunted by an experience in one game where the act of setting up camp for the night took at least 20-30 minutes of game time with a bunch choices and ability checks every time we did it.
The game's hunger rules aren't particularly realistic unless you're already malnourished. Even a relatively lean human still has more than enough fat to go a few weeks without food with limited ill effects. If you've got big muscles, that can also be broken down into glucose. It's not going to be fun, but you're also not going to crash and waste away after just 3-5 days.
It's hard to make hunger a major concern in any kind of survival scenario compared to having clean water, managing extreme temperatures and avoiding infections, major injuries, poison, and terrain hazards. Unless you're running some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland, there's always something to hunt and eat in the wild.
The point is, somebody needs to go out and find that food.
The problem is, doing so isn't fun or interesting.
Thus, the plight of Rangers. ;P
The Outlander background allows you to ignore the ration question entirely and feed the entire party every day, unless you're in a desert or something
Feature: Wanderer
You have an excellent memory for maps and geography, and you can always recall the general layout of terrain, settlements, and other features around you. In addition, you can find food and fresh water for yourself and up to five other people each day, provided that the land offers berries, small game, water, and so forth.
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I am probably still haunted by an experience in one game where the act of setting up camp for the night took at least 20-30 minutes of game time with a bunch choices and ability checks every time we did it.
I had a DM once who insisted I detail exactly how I was setting up to sleep in my tent for the night and then told me I woke up with a cold and a -1 penalty on all my rolls for the next day because I'd used the "wrong" number of layers
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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)
The game's hunger rules aren't particularly realistic unless you're already malnourished. Even a relatively lean human still has more than enough fat to go a few weeks without food with limited ill effects. If you've got big muscles, that can also be broken down into glucose. It's not going to be fun, but you're also not going to crash and waste away after just 3-5 days.
It's hard to make hunger a major concern in any kind of survival scenario compared to having clean water, managing extreme temperatures and avoiding infections, major injuries, poison, and terrain hazards. Unless you're running some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland, there's always something to hunt and eat in the wild.
The point is, somebody needs to go out and find that food.
The problem is, doing so isn't fun or interesting.
Thus, the plight of Rangers. ;P
The Outlander background allows you to ignore the ration question entirely and feed the entire party every day, unless you're in a desert or something
Feature: Wanderer
You have an excellent memory for maps and geography, and you can always recall the general layout of terrain, settlements, and other features around you. In addition, you can find food and fresh water for yourself and up to five other people each day, provided that the land offers berries, small game, water, and so forth.
Oh, I'm aware. My Bard has that background. We're gonna see how much good it does in Hell.
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Greetings guys.
I'm not sure exactly how rations work due to the conflict between their weight (2 lb) and the rules stating that an adventurer needs 1 lb. I have found two different answers but i dislike both.
- A ration includes the weight of the package. I don't like this because its odd the package weights as much as the ration itself (at least maybe with a nut it's true).
- You need 1lb to subsist (half ration). I also don't like this as, if it is the case, there isn't any drawback to always consume half rations (wich is absurd, I'm slim and eat more than 1 lb in a normal day, in fact if a walk 8 hours in a day, i eat more than 2 lb, probably).
Please tell me if there is any consensus/official version.
I'm going with package weight.
Frankly, the official food rules are very exploitable. You can go CON+3 days without eating and eating half a ration counts as half a day without food. So if you can go 3 days without food, you can go 6 days on half rations, eating 3 rations in that time. But eating a full ration resets the timer. So if you eat a full ration, wait 3 days, and eat another full ration, you can go another 3 days, making 7-8 days on 2 rations. It is literally twice as efficient, and there is no downside.
As a DM, I would throw some house rules in there. As a player, I make rations a role play opportunity.
I'd say either package weight, or simply the fact that "1 lb of food needed to subsist" is an average, and rations are just heavier than average. You probably need more than 1 lb of celery to subsist, but less than 1 lb of fatty mutton, which has much more caloric density than celery. On the other hand, rations tend to be calorically dense foods (nuts, jerky, dried food), so you'd expect them to weigh less, not more, than the average. So, yeah, packaging. :D
I would guess that the given weight in the equipment list includes a factor for bulk as well as weight. There are a few items that weigh substantially less than their given "weights". It might have been clearer if the game had used a different term for "encumbrance units".
The rule about needing 1 pound of food probably is referring to weight. Although a the nutritional benefit of a pound of food is going to vary wildly depending on what the food is.
Slow death by starvation! Such a fun theme for a D&D adventure.
Seriously though -- the rules are full of fuzzy stuff like that. Errors, even. I would choose to ignore the stuff about how many pounds of food is needed per day, since that depends on what kind of food it is, if you're forcing yourself to be realistic about it. (As has been pointed out)
I also ignore encumbrance most of the time.
I had the party do constitution checks for hunger daily. Increasing DC each day they didn’t eat. If they fail, constitution -1 until they eat.
I just take it how it says on the equipment list. 1 day of food is 2 lbs. I don't question what any other rules say, the list says what it is. 2 lbs of food wrapped in paper, the paper has negligible weight.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
In order to make the rules fit, I would say that 1 lb is the minimum of food that a character needs to not suffer effects of starvation, but that unless they're being careful, that character generally eats more and would eat an entire ration in a day. The ration is 2 lb, and is a comfortable amount of food, not the minimum. You can still follow the actual rules presented and maybe extend your rations even further than you initially expected:
There's even a bit of real world analog to this as well. A "ration" might be 3 MREs which provide nearly 3800 calories, nearly twice the recommendation rather than just the minimum you need to survive.
edit: Tried to add a small amount of clarity between the “ration item” and “rationing your food.”
I'd say while you need at least 1 lb a day of food, a ration is 2 lb to completly fullfill all your need and satiaty during adventuring day.
The real question for me is whether you are the type of adventurer who discards the ration packaging on your adventures, or whether you respect Leave No Trace principles in the wilderness.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
When you’re hungry enough, there’s no distinction between ration and packaging.
It's two pounds of spinach, so you're lucky if you get one pound of ration after you're done preparing it
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)
It's just not worth getting into this level of detail, and your game will not be improved by it if you do. Each day, mark off one portion of rations if you're not getting fed anywhere else. Good, now we don't have to worry about something very boring like how much rations weigh.
A good rule of thumb is that if your characters' major dilemma could be solved by a trip to a grocery store, then you're probably aiming wrong with the game design. And sure, someone will say "But my game is about wilderness survival" or "My PCs are trekking through an arctic wasteland after they teleported badly..." And yes, those sound fun. But they're fun because of the monsters, and because of the climate dangers, and the party roleplay: not because the weight of the rations container has been accurately calculated. Mark off one ration: you've eaten for the day. Now go fight that wyvern.
The game's hunger rules aren't particularly realistic unless you're already malnourished. Even a relatively lean human still has more than enough fat to go a few weeks without food with limited ill effects. If you've got big muscles, that can also be broken down into glucose. It's not going to be fun, but you're also not going to crash and waste away after just 3-5 days.
It's hard to make hunger a major concern in any kind of survival scenario compared to having clean water, managing extreme temperatures and avoiding infections, major injuries, poison, and terrain hazards. Unless you're running some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland, there's always something to hunt and eat in the wild.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
The point is, somebody needs to go out and find that food.
The problem is, doing so isn't fun or interesting.
Thus, the plight of Rangers. ;P
I'm not one to say someone else's fun is wrong, but I feel the same way you do when it comes to tracking rations.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Yeah, it was probably ungenerous of me to say that nobody will have fun with it. But I'd guess that it's an extremely rare table of 5 players where getting into detail about eating rations is going to improve the gaming experience, even if someone is really enjoying the rest of it. I am probably still haunted by an experience in one game where the act of setting up camp for the night took at least 20-30 minutes of game time with a bunch choices and ability checks every time we did it.
The Outlander background allows you to ignore the ration question entirely and feed the entire party every day, unless you're in a desert or something
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 had a DM once who insisted I detail exactly how I was setting up to sleep in my tent for the night and then told me I woke up with a cold and a -1 penalty on all my rolls for the next day because I'd used the "wrong" number of layers
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)
Oh, I'm aware. My Bard has that background. We're gonna see how much good it does in Hell.