Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Rechan 12-31-07, 06:32 PM	There's few things that I absolutely despise about D&D. That short list isn't important right now, but the one that's jumping up and down and waving its arms at the moment is occurring due to the DM I'm under. I hate keeping track of every minute detail. Counting ammunition. Keeping track of rations per day. The distance the horses can travel without tiring. The amount of copper we have. Encumbrance. It's just so tedious and bothersome and I fail to see the significance. I could see if, say, we were lost in the woods, behind enemy lines, then our amount of ammo and food would be important. But in general? I'm more interested in the story and you know, moving on. We actually wasted about ten minutes real-time arguing "Who gets what horse" because there was a warforged with us, and we had to travel quickly to get somewhere. One of the players actually started contabulating how long he could force march and run and it just... Who cares about how many droplets are in their wineskin? When I DM, I make liberal use of 'handwaving for convenience sake'. But then, I do good to keep track of loot and XP totals.
Dravda 12-31-07, 06:49 PM	Some of the things you mentioned are the DM's job. How long it will take your horses to travel to a place, for example. Other than that, it's not usually so much of a problem. Ammo? Just subtract 1 every time you shoot. You don't HAVE to go looking for missed ammunition after each battle. Rations? Take off 1 day's rations every time you wake up or every evening. Coppers? Beggars exist for a reason, you know. You are right about the encumbrance limit, though. See if your DM will ignore that part, and just use common sense instead (Player: "I put all the books in the library into my backpack!" DM: "...") Remember that the rules are to facilitate fun, not inhibit it. If the rules are becoming cumbersome to everyone's enjoyment, just ignore or get rid of them. -Count Dravda
Neutronium_Dragon 12-31-07, 08:07 PM	> Ammo? Just subtract 1 every time you shoot. That's still extra book-keeping which rarely adds anything to the game, particularly since the cost of ammunition is trivial. We have spell component pouches for a reason. Why not just have a generic "Quiver/Pouch" that you buy and gives you a similar unlimited personal use of appropriate normal ammunition for the weapon?
Watsyurname529 12-31-07, 08:26 PM	> Ammo? Just subtract 1 every time you shoot. That's still extra book-keeping which rarely adds anything to the game, particularly since the cost of ammunition is trivial. We have spell component pouches for a reason. Why not just have a generic "Quiver/Pouch" that you buy and gives you a similar unlimited personal use of appropriate normal ammunition for the weapon? How is that extra book-keeping? Just keep a pencil handy and just erase one checkmark each time you shoot. Wow, that takes what, a couple milliseconds. As for the unlimited ammo, that's a no unless it's a magical quiver, which has been done. Go find that, it's in the MIC IIRC.
BugHunter 12-31-07, 11:10 PM	As other posters have said it takes no time to make a tally mark for each shot of ammo used or ration. You do need to know your encumbrance because carrying a bunch of junk will affect how fast you can move in a round. You can use Excel to figure your total encumbrance by using the formula functions then just typing the name and weight of the items.
Kouk 01-01-08, 07:32 PM	I hate tracking minutiae too. "Just subtract 1 every time you shoot" OK, I can do that sure, but it kind of breaks the flow of combat for me to disengage from the fight and start doing little erasing and writing after I use Rapid Shot or Manyshot or I got an extra attack because I'm Hasted, or I only use two of my three attacks in my Full Attack because the targets are gone or something. When your brain is toasted because you've been up for 15 hours and you are only staying up because of caffeine, those numbers get fuzzy. :D Same thing for food, it isn't always easy to remember. Did the Survival check succeed today? Were we moving at normal rate or is there some penalty? How many people are actually fed, who has to eat his own stuff this time? Were we able to get enough food from that monster? Tracking encumbrance is almost unnecessary when you are mid to high-ish level and have loads of extradimensional space available (everyone should have a Haversack!) unless you are trying to do some wacky looting. In early levels, try to keep your weight down by having pack animals or just "burying" stashes and marking the locations really well on your map if you have to keep moving. Hopefully you can go back for it later and have the luxury of "dragging" it. For ammo there is the Quiver of Anariel for something like 38,000 gp which just makes an unlimited number of arrows (waste of money if you ask me). Otherwise, you could buy a large stock of arrows, and just "guesstimate" how many you used and drop a few GP in town. For a mere 10gp you can get 200 arrows, and you will probably be hard pressed to use 200 each time between town visits. It is a PITA to do, but you can basically wash your hands of keeping track of your own ammo (if you have stocked 100 or so and just consider all that weight to always be a part of you even though it is bound to decrease over time, I don't think the DM will complain). The absurd cheapness of normal ammunition once you are past level 3 (what is it, like 0.002 percent of your last adventure's haul?) has led me to allow all characters to ignore all cost and weight of normal ammunition. I also feel having to track things like that unfairly penalize ranged fighters. "Special" ammo like Adamantine or Bane arrows I will insist be kept track of, though not weight (.15 of a pound each? I would consider that "negligible"). Conveniently in the MIC there are items like "Everlasting Rations" (or whatever it is called) which makes food for a normal-sized adventuring party each day so you never have to track that again. Some DMs are "details oriented" but if it does nothing for the players' enjoyment then some sort of compromise is in order. After all, the DM doesn't have to track ammo or rations, his NPCs are usually dead 1 in-game minute after the first time they appear. Check what the other players think though. Some players like that too ("Gritty realism" they call it...).
Eldritch_Lord 01-01-08, 07:53 PM	The 3.5e Star Wars RPG (the one before SAGA) has a handy little rule for ammo I always use when I run a game: The Star Wars game says that any time you roll a 1 on your attack roll with a ranged weapon, you've run out of ammo. Now, that works for Star Wars because "out of ammo" means "I have to stick another blaster cartridge in here" and not "I have to go buy more arrows," so I have modified that rule to be: Whenever you roll a 1 on your attack roll with a ranged weapon, you are down to just enough ammo for 2 more full attacks. It's easy to remember, bookkeeping-free, and allows that dramatic "Oh, sh--...I'm out of arrows, guys, we're screwed!" moment that leads to conservation of shots for the next few rounds without actually screwing the party. Then they're out of ammo until they reach the next town/city/bastion of civilization, whereupon they stock up and the ammo cost is folded into the other miscellaneous "upkeep" costs like food, rations, lodging, etc.
UAMDB 01-02-08, 09:38 AM	I play in a game and I run a game also. In both games we never keep track of rations or water, or ammo. We just assume that everytime you go to town you get more arrows and food, and water. For us it adds nothing to the game, to keep track of how many arrows are left, when we are able to carry a lot. As for emcumberance, we keep it reasonable. Like someone else said, if you are trying to carry all of the books in the castle then you are emcumbered unless you have a high strength and light armour. Some DM's like to micro-manage the game, others don't. However, if the DM says you must keep uo with everything then there is nothing you can do put keep track.
HermitIX 01-03-08, 04:56 PM	Every time I shot an arrow I would draw a tally mark, once I got to 4 groups of 5 marks I had an empty quiver. All you need to know for weight is light load, medium load, and heavy load. Unless you are close to moving in to the next category, you don’t need to stop the game and recalculate because you picked up a potion or two. And in my experience if I was close enough for those potions to matter I was close enough to remember in my head how close I was. I thought you bought rations by the day, 5 rations 5 days. I love keeping track of that stuff. I never found it time consuming. Some of the best role playing experiences I have had were because I was dealing with these types of things. I had a rogue who always had a medium load because he had almost everything from chalk to wax in his bag. When we entered combat he would drop his back pack, to lower himself to light load. Once to start combat he flung his pack at a black guard and got the group a surprise round. I would never have thought about that if I didn’t deal with encumbrance. I think it’s all attitude. If you like it, it adds to the game if you don’t like it then you hate having to deal with it, and it bogs you down. I keep track of how many pages I have left in my spell book too.
LinusMundane 01-03-08, 05:07 PM	Don't know what the rule about cheap plugs here is, but if you play with a laptop and can spare 20$ check out.. http://theonlysheet.com/ It will actively track spells cast on you, potions you drink, abilities increased or decreased, encumberence and seemingly most important, ammo usage...
Dunsel 01-04-08, 08:35 AM	You could always hire an assistant! :)
JerichoAlar 01-04-08, 12:13 PM	I don't think I like the 'every time you roll a 1' for ranged ammo - especially on iterative attacks. a simpler way to abstract might simply to be roll a d20 for every encounter you fired your bow in. that represents the number of arrows that you lost during the encounter (either by firing and not being able to recover, or because the fletchings were damaged in the quiver or from getting your quiver hit by a stray attack, etc) in this way you're only tracking ammo per encounter rather than per round - although once I got down to my last quiver I think I'd track every shot again.
PyrosSilvercaster 01-04-08, 12:54 PM	Keeping track of rations and ammo and all that is really dependent on what style you play and what sort of circumstances you get into. Now if you are able to stop into a town on a regular basis, and you KNOW this to be true, not that big a deal. But there may be circumstances where that is not possible for whatever reason. Those are the times when keeping track of that stuff can become necessary, not only for game sake but also for the feeling of impending doom which I personally enjoy in a game. For sword swingers it isn't that big a deal unless you get sunderred or whatever, but archers and casters there should be that mental calculation sitting in the back of your mind thinking "How much longer can I do this?" It's like watching an action flick where the hero is down to his last mag. He knows it, you know it, it adds to the excitement.
CryoSilver 01-04-08, 01:42 PM	High level archers are going through arrows at about 5 per round; a quiver every 24 seconds; it CAN be worth keeping track of, but my players usually just buy arrows in lots of 1000 and shove them in hammerspace, except for the few quivers they leave out for immediate use, so it's never a huge deal.
DrMorganes 01-04-08, 07:24 PM	See, that's part of it right there: at lower levels keeping track of your ammo is one of the things that helps with the tension of the game, and at higher levels the availability of magic to provide unlimited ammunition helps with the "high powered hero" feeling of the later levels. Food? We're talking about seasoned adventurers who slay all manner of fell beasties, etc! Succumbing to starvation should not be an issue unless the lack of food is part of the adventure! Once the party's cleric hits 5th level, food and water cease to be an issue (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createFoodAndWater.htm) altogether. Overland travel moves at the speed of plot. If the travel is the adventure, great! Otherwise "after a tenday of grueling travel you arrive at your destination" is quite sufficient. See above for managing food as it relates to travel. Encumbrance I generally ignore unless the players get stupidly greedy, have scored big, or managed to acquire the service of a decent henchman (http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/gamespyarchive/index.php). :D
sblaxman 01-04-08, 08:38 PM	I DM all the time, for food, I rarely make my players keep track of it, just make them buy a full set of rations when they get to town. The exception is if they are in a harsh enviornment (arctic, desert, other plane of exisistance) where every drop of water and bite of food is relavent. For ammo, I'm pretty generous with the "recover ammo from your enemy" system where any enemy w/ a bow usually has a full load of arrows on him. just make a tally for every shot you take (check check check check cross etc), as opposed to erasing a check for every shot
John Paul Stoddard 01-05-08, 02:22 PM	Game Mechanics Game Mechanics They are there to add some realism to a Fantasy Game. Some Games are not High In Magic..so you can't just stop in Magi-o-Mart and buy Endless "x-dimensional" bag-o-goodies Next time your at the Grocerystore, try not using a Basket to shop, and see how easy it is to not worry about encumberance..I bet you won't buy to much. The reason for rules is to stop cheaters.. "Hey Dm what do you mean I can't shoot, I bought ten thousand arrows, see they are written down right here." Dm " you come to a 40 foot Chasm" Player "We will tie our 1000 1000000' ropes together and make a Rope bridge across the chasm." Dm "You enter a dark passage and can not see a thing" Player "We light a torch every 5 feet and hang it on the wall":P Dm " Theres no place to hang them" Player "We put them in Scounces we have in our Pack" Dm "How Many Do you have" Player " One for Every Torch":P
Pudge_is_cute 01-06-08, 10:32 PM	Well, get a notebook or 2 to list things that needs to be listed. For easier doing the math, get a calculator to get past things.
Mock26 01-06-08, 11:13 PM	> Ammo? Just subtract 1 every time you shoot. That's still extra book-keeping which rarely adds anything to the game, particularly since the cost of ammunition is trivial. Then why keep track of spells cast? Keeping track of when you run out of spells rarely adds anything to the game. So, do away with keeping track of spells and let spellcasters cast as many spells as they want. And why stop there? Do away with hit points. Really, how hard is it to make a tiny hash mark on your character sheet when you shoot your bow? It doesn't matter if it is extra work because it takes almost no energy at all to do so. I find it odd that someone who apparently doesn't see a problem with marking off hit points would object to marking off ammunition. All in all, over the course of a 6 hour sesssion it shouldn't take more than a minute or two to keep track of these things. (On an aside, one of my players from several years ago would always bring an extra dice bag with forty d20s in it, and these represented the arrows for his bow. He'd dump all the dice out in a bowl and as he shot he'd take a die, roll, and then dump it back in the bag. When he ran out of dice (which rarely happened) he ran out of arrows. This can work really well, and be fun, if you happen to have a ton of extra dice.) As for why the DM is doing this, maybe he's like me and he likes his game of D&D to be grounded in reality. And, sure, trying to haul 58,000 gp, 78,000 sp, and 12,000 pp out of a dungeon without a portable hole and being told you can't carry all that is most definitely NOT heroic fantasy (nor is being told that you ran out of food and you are now starting to starve), but as I said above, some people like their game to be grounded in reality.
Sergikins 01-07-08, 12:18 AM	As stated above, book keeping matters as much as it matters to the game. For example, in my latest campaign, i took one entire session for my players to travel from one town to another. This was because my campaign has a large basis in the fact that it is hard to travel from one town to another that doesn't have protected roads thanks to bandits and monsters (in this case gnolls) along the way, they met a kindly farmer duo who gave them shelter from the snow (none of the players had purchased cold weather gear), and a rabid gnoll who's only desire is to lick the hexblade's face. But on the other hand, if i were running my eberron campaign, if they needed to get somewhere, i just look at the maps and tell them where they pass through and if anything important happened along the way. takes about 3 minutes, but traveling is not the focus of eberron. My home brew world is one based on grueling survival. eberron isn't as much. as stated above, your book keeping should reflect the theme of the campaign.
Axiomatic_vampire 01-07-08, 02:21 AM	If the DM actually enjoys the realism of tracking that stuff, you might just let the DM have that. After all, the DM should be having fun too. Concessions sometimes have to be made.
kuonji 01-07-08, 02:36 AM	Really, how hard is it to make a tiny hash mark on your character sheet when you shoot your bow? It doesn't matter if it is extra work because it takes almost no energy at all to do so. I find it odd that someone who apparently doesn't see a problem with marking off hit points would object to marking off ammunition. All in all, over the course of a 6 hour sesssion it shouldn't take more than a minute or two to keep track of these things. It's not difficult at all. But as was pointed out above, an archer-type character can go through 20 to 50 arrows in a single fight. Following the 4/day encounter system, thats 80 to 200 arrows depending on the length of fights. I don't know about you, but I think that's alot of check marks to be filling up a character sheet with. Sure, at low levels ammo is important, but at higher levels I don't see it as being very fun tracking the hundreds of arrows I'm going through every week, especially when I will pretty much need a separate sheet of paper to track them since I don't want to fill up my entire sheet with hash marks, or wear the sheet down quickly with constant checking and erasing of tiny boxes. I think the point is that unless ammo is important for some reason, such as you just broke out of jail and you find a limited supply or you have a few shots of some magical ammo, then I just don't see a real need to track the hundreds and thousands of arrows an archer could go through over time. I think the OP is saying that, for him (and I agree) it isn't very fun to have to constantly keep track of ammo (among other things); it isn't about the amount of effort involved in making hash marks, it's about the necessity of tracking some mundane detail that is subtracting from the enjoyment of the game for this person. To the OP: Talk to your DM, let him know your concerns. See if you can find a compromise that satisfies your DM but reduces the issue for you.
Elsydeon 01-07-08, 02:48 AM	When I DM I tend to create one or two bags/quivers/whatever of mundane crap. You can buy a bag of mundane crap for x cash and never worry about having cooking gear, some rope, whatever. Infinite nonmagical arrows/bolts, that kind of thing. It just makes life easier.
Belkar 01-07-08, 12:42 PM	When I DM I tend to create one or two bags/quivers/whatever of mundane crap. You can buy a bag of mundane crap for x cash and never worry about having cooking gear, some rope, whatever. Infinite nonmagical arrows/bolts, that kind of thing. It just makes life easier. I'm probably going to get shot for mentioning "RPGA" on the forums... ;) But a similar system to this is used in Living Greyhawk campaigns - and it's one I use at home, too. Lifestyle and Upkeep The GP required to support PCs between adventures is called "upkeep." For 12 GP per TU (*a Time Unit, or TU, is the minimum time between adventures) your PC gets adventurer’s "standard upkeep." This pays for common room and board, replenishes rations, mends clothing and equipment, refills healing and disguise kits, restocks up to twenty normal steel arrows and bolts, and heals hit point and temporary ability damage between adventures. You may also pay more GP to live better than the average adventurer. For 50 GP per TU, "rich upkeep" gives the same benefits as standard upkeep and a +2 Circumstance bonus on Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, Intimidate, Perform, Profession, and Sense Motive checks when your GM determines that your increased social status would grant you a benefit. For 100 GP per TU, "luxury upkeep" increases this bonus to +4. You may choose not to pay for your PC’s upkeep for an adventure. If you do so, the PC retains any damage into the next adventure and does not gain any of the benefits of standard upkeep. The PC may gain other penalties or benefits at the discretion of your GM. At the beginning of the adventure, if your PC possesses at least five ranks in Survival and succeed on a DC 20 Survival check, he gains the benefits for standard upkeep. He may still gain penalties or benefits at the discretion of your GM. If you fail this check, you may not then choose to pay for upkeep for that adventure. Declare your upkeep choice to your GM before play begins. You must have enough GP to cover the adventure’s TU cost at the beginning of play, but the actual deduction of the GP occurs after play. A bit complicated sounding, but I use the system in my home games. I define a TU as 2 weeks to a month (the time you should reasonably rest between dungeons ;) ). I know other DM's who use a greater or smaller timeframe. It's just fluff... the mechanics of it remain the same. For "X" gp, you refill 20 ammo, get food and board for that time period, and heal your damage. Woohoo! You wanna spend more money? Then you do... you stay in a better inn or perhaps a manor, you eat at the best places, and hobnob with the "higher" society. Your gp spent liberally and your exposure to nobility and other groups gives you an edge in certain social interactions. You don't want to spend any money? You're a ranger, or a druid? Fine. You got 5 ranks in survival and make a DC 20 check? You live off the land. (However, though the RPA doesn't do it this way, when using this rule in my home games, and character living off the land must pay a couple gp to refill ammo - and they don't start the new adventure with damage, you're fully healed. Though I've gamed with GM's who rule with the DC 20 check, you find/make replacement ammo). Easy peasy.
Mock26 01-07-08, 02:08 PM	It's not difficult at all. But as was pointed out above, an archer-type character can go through 20 to 50 arrows in a single fight. Following the 4/day encounter system, thats 80 to 200 arrows depending on the length of fights. I don't know about you, but I think that's alot of check marks to be filling up a character sheet with. Then get a seperate sheet of paper for your arrows.
Etarnon 01-07-08, 09:18 PM	(On an aside, one of my players from several years ago would always bring an extra dice bag with forty d20s in it, and these represented the arrows for his bow. He'd dump all the dice out in a bowl and as he shot he'd take a die, roll, and then dump it back in the bag. When he ran out of dice (which rarely happened) he ran out of arrows. This can work really well, and be fun, if you happen to have a ton of extra dice.) This is chock full of Win. Yeah, have an ammo sheet, like Twilight:2000 used. JUST for ammo. We never worry about it. When I am running Spycraft, If they roll a '1' on a ranged attack 50% gun jam, 50% out of ammo, bad guys take cover and reload / clear the jam, PCs do whatever. I only worry about supplies if they are in a desert, especially water. Otherwise it adds some flavor, but the players have to be into it. If they are, we do the cookout, camping, etc, etc chats by the fire, but if they are not, it is... Night passes, you dress for the trip, breakfast, and set out...