A post from earlier on a different location had me curious about two things:

1 - Does the DDB character builder track ammunition?

2 - Do you track ammunition in your games?

I know on #1 that it may seem odd I don't know if it does nor not, but I can't use it for my regular game, and so we don't bother with the RAW dungeon crawl.

You can track them pretty easily in your inventory, but as far as I know, it doesn’t automatically deduct them when you roll an attack with your bow.

We only track magical ammunition, the odd pack of +1 arrows and such. But mundane, we just hand wave. 
In theory, we might if we were in a survival campaign, or if we went to another plane where they were hard to come by. But general, we just assume people re-stock in town. 

I only track it when it is necessary. AKA how far are from resupply. 

We track magical arrows and such but mundane items are not tracked.  Party is level 9 and we tend to teleport to friendly city for long rests so it is assumed we resupply.

I don't track standard ammunition. I only track stuff that I intend that they run out of, risk running out of or need to ration. The thing is, archers are already bottom of the pile, demanding that they have this limit on top is harsh when the other types (melee, casters) don't have this issue, or at least not to the same degree. Therefore, we just assume that they have enough arrows to see them through.

I will track stuff that I want them to ration though. I might give them some +2 Arrows, and I'll track those so they save them for desperate moments. I won't with normal arrows though. It's not worth the effort of bookkeeping.

I tracked them the couple of times I played an archer, didn't feel particularly hard to remember. That said, given there's no variety to mundane arrows, it's fair to handwave if you don't want the bookkeeping.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

A post from earlier on a different location had me curious about two things:

1 - Does the DDB character builder track ammunition?

2 - Do you track ammunition in your games?

I know on #1 that it may seem odd I don't know if it does nor not, but I can't use it for my regular game, and so we don't bother with the RAW dungeon crawl.

As a DM this falls into nit picky maintenance, which is troublesome to deal with. ie Carry weight, coin weight, Food while travelling. For a new Player I will point it out, then explain as long as they always remember to do some RP of maintenance, and to say they are restocking supplies when in towns, I will never bother a player about it. 

This includes Magical Ammo. (+1 & +2 anything ultra special will be given by me for a reason.)

maintenance is just a number you spend in towns, you will use as little or as much as is needed. 

The tracking of things like ammunition, rations, water, torches, oil for lamps, and other adventuring gear is something you would do to create a sense of verisimilitude for the players, as these "could" be resources in more realistic situations could prove to be dangerous to run out of it.  In Dungeon Survival scenarios, running out of torches could be death, in a sea travel scenario, running out of fresh water could be death, in a wilderness scenario running out of food could be death.  

The question of course you have to ask yourself is, do you want the adventures of your story to be at risk of or even potentially die because they ran out of supplies?  Is that a possibility in your game?   If not, tracking stuff becomes a kind of unnecessary burden, but if you use it to create a sense of realism, its worth doing.

I personally track everything, but I do it for the players, I don't burden them with it.  So before they set out anywhere, we go over their list of supplies, I will note them and as time passes, I will update the list and make comments like (half your rations are gone) or (you take your wineskin is feeling light) or (as you light a torch you realize you only have one more left).  I do it for them mostly so that I can use it as a tension builder and keep them conscious of the reality of the world (verisimilitude).  Of course, the fact that I'm known for murdering entire parties who ran out of food and water before, the players know I don't just screw about with it, I will definitely let the elements and lack of supplies kill characters.

Quote from OSR4Ever >>

The tracking of things like ammunition, rations, water, torches, oil for lamps, and other adventuring gear is something you would do to create a sense of verisimilitude for the players, as these "could" be resources in more realistic situations could prove to be dangerous to run out of it.  In Dungeon Survival scenarios, running out of torches could be death, in a sea travel scenario, running out of fresh water could be death, in a wilderness scenario running out of food could be death.  

The question of course you have to ask yourself is, do you want the adventures of your story to be at risk of or even potentially die because they ran out of supplies?  Is that a possibility in your game?   If not, tracking stuff becomes a kind of unnecessary burden, but if you use it to create a sense of realism, its worth doing.

I personally track everything, but I do it for the players, I don't burden them with it.  So before they set out anywhere, we go over their list of supplies, I will note them and as time passes, I will update the list and make comments like (half your rations are gone) or (you take your wineskin is feeling light) or (as you light a torch you realize you only have one more left).  I do it for them mostly so that I can use it as a tension builder and keep them conscious of the reality of the world (verisimilitude).  Of course, the fact that I'm known for murdering entire parties who ran out of food and water before, the players know I don't just screw about with it, I will definitely let the elements and lack of supplies kill characters.

 
I'll note that both of us are long time players, who would likely find the combat-slog style games a lot of folks run to be quite boring and uninspired, as well -- something the vast majority of players don't have to deal with; we've been there and done that.

But, also, tracking things in the past was technically more important, but was ignored just as much as it is today -- it is an element of a adventure and part of a style of game that has a place and time, and most games simply aren't that place or have reached that time. We've got 40 plus years of games. The vast majority of players have fewer than 6. They also likely don't do a lot of travel, wilderness, exploration, discovery, and "shopping trip" roleplay stuff as a normative part of their games. The DMs don't know how to do this kind of adventure style, or how to handle or use the RP stuff to pass out info, or even really how to run a player-driven open world sandbox style of thing. I don't faul tthem for it -- it was a decade before I had really figured out a lot of that stuff myself -- and still more before my players really wanted that kind of thing.

I have my players track it all. It becomes part of role playing, part of exploration (which is the least involved part of the game for most 5e players, ime, while it was more critical ages ago). It's a basic part of the game for us, though -- it is no more arduous than tracking how much money you find. But it is finicky, and it only matters if the need to to track it matters -- as most folks here have commented so far, they track the items that are important -- magical ammunition, for example.

It is not uncommon for one of my adventures to involve a two week travel period -- at lower levels, that means accounting for all of the supplies, while at higher levels it hardly seems to have an impact (since they can afford speedier means, or just magic themselves there). The act of getting to a place becomes part of the challenge, a thing to overcome, and that's, well, probably not very exciting to them.

They don't see the game the way I do, either -- they see "goodberry" and think "oh, that's a spell to make travel hand wavable". I see it and realize it is a spell that was created to help manage spell slots in an exploration and wilderness setting. They see the Ranger and think "this is a class that isn't good at combat", whereas I see it and realize it is a class that is meant (until now) to be a wildenres support class -- the folks who are supposed to make it possible for survival type games; the kind none of them really play or see the fun in.

I don't run a survival style game, though -- it's just an adventure game, like the novels. Movies which often don't count the bullets used, just like they aren't counting the arrows used. Having that whole tension bit in a game where "oh, damn, I'm out of bullets/arrows" just isn't on their radar.

I don't force those, either -- but my game style does mean an effort to suck their resources out of them. All of those resources. That's a very old school style (at least, to me, and I've been doing it since the olden days, sooo). Food, water, ammo, carrying cap, spell slots, rests, the rest of it: that's a dungeon crawl style of thinking, and I am of the opinion that shockingly few of them have ever truly run a real dungeon crawl of the old style sort, where there were 100 rooms and they were going to have to make trips back and forth from the local town to finish it all. Like my group did when we all started, they just stay in the dungeon.

I recently shifted to a two hour period for wilderness encounters. I had wanted to shift to a four hour period, and did for a good while, but it was missing a lot of the flexibility. My players like to travel for 10 hours a day, not 8, for example. With the random encounters (which can include little ruins and side jaunts), the planned encounters, and terrain, it took them about a month to get to where they were going -- a trip that could have taken them as little as 2 weeks. But this time they didn't have a time pressure, lol. There usually is one. Stuff like "you have to get here in 9 days, and it is a 12 day trip". All of which played out over three sessions.

But they don't see the game as a series of challenges, of problems that players have to solve. So these little problems appear to be unimportant to them.

I think they'll get to a point where they do find value in that. They just have to finish exploring all the options they can see on the low hanging branches, first.

That's the thing about these concepts like tracking supplies, The Ranger Class, core architecture like the adventuring day, wilderness travel, and random encounters.  A lot of these sort of things without the context of old school D&D, I can imagine seem very strange to modern gamers who are unaware why and where these things came from.

As you point out people complaining about the Ranger making a poor fighter... yeah of course it's like that.  When you replace the entire Ranger's Archetype and purpose with a couple of skills-Nature and Survival that any class can now take, you have to ask the question, why have a Ranger class at all?  Like the point of the Ranger in D&D, why they were added to the game was because wilderness travel through unknown territory in D&D was an absolutely lethal proposition.  You didn't just "travel" through the woods....that would be insane.  You had to plan a trip like that very carefully and one of the best ways to avoid certain death was to have a Ranger with you.

Today there is absolutely nothing about the Ranger that makes them better or more likely to survive or help others survive the wilderness than any other class, they aren't better at tracking or hunting or anything to do with the wilds than any other class. 

That however on a high level is the issue with modern D&D as a system.  They have redefined how the game was played, removed archetypes, and altered philosophical approaches to what an adventure is and how its executed, but they don't adapt their own designs to these new approaches, they keep all the sacred cows in out of tradition.  The end result is you have stuff in the game that used to have a clear purpose, but with the shift of philosophy and approach, they no longer actually serve any purpose at all.

The Ranger Class is one of the more grievous examples as the entire archetype's purpose in the game has been removed entirely.  Tracking, hunting, and survival, these things are not part of the game anymore.  They are a skill check and done.  You have stuff like Traps as well.  I mean, what is the point of traps in 5e?  They don't do anything.  ooh.. you get poisoned and take some damage?  Short Rest and fixed.  Traps are a waste of table time, they no longer serve any purpose in the game.

It would be better if 5e embraced what it actually is about and then designed classes and sub-classes for that purpose.  Right now its in this weird space where they design things for things that used to be in the game, but aren't anymore.

I never track ammunition or rations unless I'm running a campaign, like Tombs of Annihilation, where survival is a big factor. For most campaigns the PCs are close enough to shops and visiting them frequently enough I just assume the characters are stocking up between adventures

I don't usually track ammunition unless there's very few and get all fired. I assume most of them are recovered after combat and eventually some are purchased to replace missing ones, preferring to leave it to player characters to handle as part of any upkeep cost.

I have tracked ammunition in games before and played in games where others do it. There’s a reason my groups do not track ammo at our tables anymore (other than special ammunition, of course).

In my experience, it led to a number of headaches, including slower combat as the person tracked ammunition or agonized about its use when low, as well as issues where one player could end up twiddling their thumbs, unable to play their class as intended for large swaths of time.

At this point, I just hand-waive it away by saying folks recover their ammunition after fights, and it is assumed they have enough spare copper to restock their supply every time they need to, which is done automatically as a basic assumption anytime folks are in town.  After setting that baseline of how we’re explaining ammunition, it is never mentioned again in the game.  Less realistic and ignores the stated price of ammunition?  Sure, but those elements of realism and game design do not bring enough entertainment value to offset how boring tracking ammunition can be.