Hey all-
I've enjoyed reading the new rules regarding rations, equipment, water and lifestyle choice. I'm interested in playing with these options when I start my next campaign- in my current one we've glossed over these 'mundane' details in the interest of speeding things up. However, I'd like to bring a little more realism to the game and hopefully open up some opportunities for some fun plot-points based on the player's decisions regarding these rules.
I'm interested in if and how other DMs are planning on bringing these rules into their games: Specifically...
1. Do you keep track of the weight of items or do the players?
2. Where are your player's storing their items? What happens if they exceed this amount?
3. How do your players go about replenishing rations? Will you use the lifestyle rules to cover this?
4. How has playing with these optional rules benefited or hurt your campaign?
In the end I'll do whatever my player's think is fun, but I'd like to present these optional rules the best way possible so can give them a fair chance.
1&2 ) I trust the players to handle the mundane details of their gear. If they have too much, or can't logically carry it, they leave it behind. In a few cases, I've had to step in, especially when the weight of the item does't show their actual encombrence of an item. For example, we had a halfling PC in 3E who carried 100+ shiruken, but even though he had the Str to carry them, I pointed out that his armor would have to be made of them to carry them all.
3) Rations have to be bought like any other item, such as torches, oil, horses (which die at an alarming rate 
), etc. Your lifestyle rules are supposed to cover non-adventuring gear, so it would cover meals while not adventuring, but not your travel rations
4) I've not used optional rules to hand-wave details, so I can't really answer that. I do like the Lifestyle expenses and downtime activity, but have yet to play with them.
3. I've always let players hunt and forage for rations, and in 4E I even wrote a skill challenge they could use at any time to go find some food. In 5E, lifestyle costs would cover your day to day meals, but lifestyle doesn't generate gear so you'd still have to go buy rations (but if my players wanted to risk hunting while out exploring, I'd let them).
1. Players keep track of the weight of things they are carrying or hauling in a vehicle.
2. Players have their characters store items anywhere from in their pockets to in warehouses, as makes sense for the particular items. I am pretty lenient about applying the weight limit rules, but if one player happens to have exceeded their carrying capacity we basically just adjust for that (hand some item to another character to carry, sell off something unneeded, put something down, etc.)
3. If the characters have the skill and time to do so they hunt & gather to keep up supplies, otherwise they just stock up on rations before leaving town or pay their living expenses while in town - so I will situationally be using lifestyle costs to cover this.
4. There has not been any huge help or significant harm from using these rules, but there has been the minor benefit (in my group's opinion) of the players feeling like their characters and their adventures are more believable (or more accurately, raise less distracting questions) because they can see how the characters live in the world and how the characters get their haul of treasure back to civilization in order to spend it and so on.
Things which I am sure many people have no problem simply completely glossing over as "yes, that all happens, but 'off camera' so we don't have to deal with it."
JDizzleton wrote:
JDizzleton wrote:
We keep track of ammunition more than rations but I have started docking cash at the beginning of each game month to reflect living costs. The cool thing is if you are paying henchmen you can guestimate how much they would expect to be paid from this and knock that off too.
I keep track of armour and equipment weight but I'm not anal about the exact weight of the loot. It's easier to just assume that they are encumbered while carrying a sack full of gold because it only becomes relevant if they need to retreat with the cash. If you use these rules you will find that players become more discerning about what they steal. Coins become too much of a pain so they might just grab a few fistfuls each and then focus on gems, jewellery, and art objects. Carrying chests out can work but it has an impact on marching order, whether shields can be equipped, and so forth.
I do have the players keep track of weight--primarily at character creation and lower levels. Once one or two people have a bag of holding I don't worry about it anymore.
I've found that if you actually do keep track of weight, it very well could matter, even with the Str x10 capacity of the playtest. In 3e the numbers were so low for non-Strength concerned characters (rogues and wizards in particular) that it was easy to go over if your DM didn't enforce it. I don't know how many 3e characters I've created and had to adjust their low-level equipment to fit into their actual carrying capacity.
So the statement in the 3e PHB that "Unless your character is weak or carrying a lot of gear...The extra gear your character carries, such as weapons and rope, won't slow him or her down any more than the armor already does," is simply not true, unless they consider Str 12 rogue, or Str 10 caster to be "weak."
The playtest version of Str x10 was nice. However, I made 10+ pre-gen characters with the final playtest packet, and hitting your encumbrance limit was an issue for some of them. You can't just buy whatever you want, even whatever makes sense for you character to have. One of my players created an archer fighter with a Strength 10, and banded armor. He found out quickly that he couldn't carry everything he needed. We had a ranger that tried to get by with a Strength of 8, and had to have someone else carry his extra arrows for him. (And by extra, I mean he had 20 and they had 20).
With Str x15...I think it will work. 
I will say that I often think starting gear suggestions are rather lacking in the sorts of things adventurers might want to carry. Often your starting characters don't have any empty sacks for loot, ropes, blankets, tents, whetstones, spare clothes, soap (for courtesy to your adventuring party, please), etc. Although I think it can be a learning experience if your characters start out with just what the starting packs give them and then get to experience the lack of having the items they need. If they feel a desire to go buy them after their first adventure, it adds to the experience. The adventuring packs in 5e are far superior to the ones of the past though, so another good job from the developers.
After I have my players determine their initial weight, I don't stress so much as the campaign moves along. Unless they are fairly close to their limit and start buying new stuff, they would usually still be under the limit, so it is a waste of time to track every little potion and dagger.
I want to start keeping track of rations more. Finding yourself in the wilderness and realizing you didn't pack enough food is fun for my exploration style. Now you have to get creative. That said, I don't want to worry about having characters actually purchase rations "on camera" every time. If they are paying a sufficient lifestyle expense, I'll just assume the restock their rations to whatever amount they normally carry (and I want them to have a number and weight for that on their sheet).
That's one thing I might also do with lifestyle expenses. If characters want to make sure all of their adventuring needs are ready to go (since the lifestyle expenses aren't really providing them extra cash for such things) I'd just charge an "adventurer's tax" at the beginning of a certain timeframe. It goes to cover rations and ammo and such. I'd probably charge about 20gp a month and say you're good. 50gp if you really don't want to worry about extra expenditures.
One thing about rations that I don't think gets enough attention is water. A waterskin only holds half the water you need for the day (and it's heavy when full). So you're going to need to have a stream or other source of water at least 1/day to get sufficient water and keep your waterskins good to go. I'll probably encourage characters to carry at least 2. I'm also going to start encouraging pack animals.
I'm actually really happy about the exploration rules this time around. I'll need to see the DMs rules to clear up some things, but it is quite a bit better than the playtest, and I thought the playtest did the best job in a long time.
If the player (or players) really get into the accounting end of the game, I'm happy to support that...
But, in general... I try to keep it 'light' in terms of keeping track of ammunition, rations and weight carried. Sometimes I make it part of the scenario... Like, the players are in a wilderness setting, and arrows are not going to be easy to come by. In that case I might keep close track and expect the players to do so as well. It's sort of the American Old West situation where the Cowboys are pinned down by the Bandits and can't re-arm themselves.
If players are trying to pick up every bit of flotsam and jetsam in the dungeon... then I might start asking questions about who's carrying what... and how can you hold your sword and shield at the ready if you have a 4 foot marble statue of Selune balanced on your shoulder.
We have people who want to strip every dead enemy naked and take everything that can't be nailed down back to sell at the Fallcrest Flea Market... "Hey, this table's in pretty good shape, I think I could get a couple of SP's from Dinkard the Innkeeper... his furniture is always getting busted up on Saturday 'Fight Nite'."
The trick, I think, is to keep it interesting. If you're just doing math for the sake of doing math... then it gets coumbersom, but if you can work the math into the plot...then it makes more sense. Keeping track of living expenses could be a bore... unless the guys are running out of cash and need to come up with the rent by friday or be 'outdoors, ya know?'.
We've not had enough gear collected to have to use any of these rules regarding carrying capacity. Our very first session of the starter set we spent money (silver coins) to stay at the inn. We sort of rolled our eyes and haven't bothered after the initial role play of the scene.
As an aside, we have also started groaning when we loot coins. It is tedious recording 2-4 different types of coinage on our char sheets. When we switch to Tyranny of Dragons I will be converting everything to straight gold pieces and ignoring any other coins except for role play scenes. I like the idea of variety in coinage but in practice it has needlessly bogged down play after the battles.