In hex crawls both food and arrows can be in short supply.  If you don't like that play, whatever.   Play what appeals.  I have had fun trying to get provisions or have felt rewarded when we steal from the enemy.

A spell is an extreme example of DM fiat.  But the point is merely that scrambling can be fun.  Playing filling armed at full health all the time is one thing I like less about 5e.

Of course resources can be in short supply. that can be fun to a certain extent in moderation.

Unless I am playing in a campaign world where resources and ammo is hard to come by it stops being fun when I have to do it 24/7. spell components especially rare ones should be hard to find. Food and ammo should not be the same. A few times sure after awhile the players just will stay close to home for fear of having to run out of any kind of resource. Again if people want to play Accounts and Ammo lists go right ahead that is not fun for me or most players. We get away from the real world. We don't want our fantasy worlds to act like the real world 24/7 365 days a year.

Hence if you're running a middle or high-fantasy game, ammunition should be a bit more abstracted.

Use something like the ammo check mechanic from Necromunda. If you fire more than one arrow per round, make an ammo check. You get three 'checks'. Fail all three during combat, you're out of arrows. Recovering arrows requires a short rest period and a successful Survival skill check.

Quote from: sureshot on December 03, 2020, 08:46:47 AM
Of course resources can be in short supply. that can be fun to a certain extent in moderation.

Unless I am playing in a campaign world where resources and ammo is hard to come by it stops being fun when I have to do it 24/7. spell components especially rare ones should be hard to find. Food and ammo should not be the same. A few times sure after awhile the players just will stay close to home for fear of having to run out of any kind of resource. Again if people want to play Accounts and Ammo lists go right ahead that is not fun for me or most players. We get away from the real world. We don't want our fantasy worlds to act like the real world 24/7 365 days a year.

Agreed.  We only really worry about expensive components.  Cricket legs and stuff probably not worth a thought.

It may also depend on the type of game.  When we played evil PCs in AD&D and were on the run across the region, as we made enemies, scarcity was fun and a finding stuff was a reward so was emphasized.

I think in general play we are usually not too far from town or the stronghold.  It's not totally handwave But almost is de facto I guess.

It also really depends on the game. When you have an essentials-only-mechanics game like the vast majority of OSR, things like tracking arrows, torches, spell slots, and HP drive a lot of the decision making.

Meanwhile, if I am playing the Burning Wheel, Savage Worlds, or D&D 5e after level 4, tracking arrows is just noise. I got a "ranger" in a 5e campaign that carries 100 arrows with him at the start of each adventure. I never run out. The default encumbrance rules in D&D 5e are so generous that they basically don't exist. I have another character in a D&D 4e game with a bow as a back-up weapon. I don't think I even bothered to put arrows on my sheet. It's just not a game where it matters.

In Savage Worlds your ammo only sometimes matters depending on the setting. For fantasy? basically doesn't matter. Modern Savage Worlds the clip size matters a lot, but a good chunk of future weapons go burrr.

I also couldn't imagine keeping track of arrows in the Burning Wheel. It's not that kind of game. But it also has a full-combat engine for conversations.

In 5e, the mending cantrip can ensure that damn near every arrow is recoverable if you're willing to spend 1 minute on it.

Quote from: sureshot on December 03, 2020, 08:33:07 AMAs for "if you don't track arrows do you give them free spells" nonsensical bullshit. Get over it. Spells are one doing because a character needs both the time to memorize and require components. So no free spells. Arrows unless their is a wood shortage in the rpg world should not be as hard to find or come by as diamond dust. Or plain food for that matter. I will play in such a game yet if the DM is again that anal retentive on tracking everything it's a big warning that I won't have fun at the table.

This is nonsense. Spells have no mass and just appear out of nothing. Arrows, OTOH, have weight and can be broken or damaged. If there's any argument for something being unlimited, spells will win the day.

Resources are only tracked if the DM feels that limiting such a resource will make the game more enjoyable. And which resources are tracked sets the tone of the game and there is no list of things that must or shouldn't be tracked for the game to be "fun". A game where magic use is unlimited (such as The Last Airbender) can be just as fun as one where magic is limited to a few spells a year.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on December 03, 2020, 08:50:05 AMUse something like the ammo check mechanic from Necromunda. If you fire more than one arrow per round, make an ammo check. You get three 'checks'. Fail all three during combat, you're out of arrows. Recovering arrows requires a short rest period and a successful Survival skill check.

Ammo checks work great for games where you are controlling multiple characters, such as Necromunda. But in a regular RPG, a character can always look at his quiver to see how many arrows are left. He shouldn't be able to accidentally run out (unless he's a total newb with no fire discipline).

Quote from: hedgehobbit on December 03, 2020, 11:28:37 AM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on December 03, 2020, 08:50:05 AMUse something like the ammo check mechanic from Necromunda. If you fire more than one arrow per round, make an ammo check. You get three 'checks'. Fail all three during combat, you're out of arrows. Recovering arrows requires a short rest period and a successful Survival skill check.

Ammo checks work great for games where you are controlling multiple characters, such as Necromunda. But in a regular RPG, a character can always look at his quiver to see how many arrows are left. He shouldn't be able to accidentally run out (unless he's a total newb with no fire discipline).

Or he has a full attack that spams arrows. You can build a Pathfinder archer that fires six arrows a round at higher levels, and that doesn't count haste.

Just make hash marks on your character sheet. Jeez, there's no need to track convoluted ammo dice checks and complicate the damn thing.

That reminds me of a situation in game where a character had decided to sabotage another character's rifle. We decided that he could, for example, remove the firing pin.

"That's okay," says the other player, "I have spare firing pins."

"How many?"

"A thousand," said with a completely straight face.

This quickly became the joke answer to all questions of how many at our table.

So, yes, we track our resources.

One one hand, it is rather baffling how the Pundit seems completely ignorant of the reality of subjectivity, variable tastes, and the idea that RPGs are different things to different people. He also doesn't seem to be aware of the problem of One True Wayism - which is so easily debunked with a modicum of post-objectivist thinking and grokking of what "category error" means. (For the sake of full disclosure, I didn't listen to the whole thing - just the first two-thirds or so - but I'm guessing he doesn't change his tune or basic idea).

It is really quite simple: different styles of play are just that. One is not inherently better than the other, in the same way that "dramas" are not inherently better or worse than "comedies," or "science fiction" better or worse than "fantasy." Or, perhaps more relevant to this discussion: low fantasy isn't better or worse than high fantasy.

On the other, at least he's open about his bias and adherence to One True Wayism (even if he seemingly doesn't recognize it as such). On the opposite side of the spectrum, stalwarts of other forums subtly (or not-so subtly) advocate for cultural One True Wayism, that roleplaying feelies is better than killing things, that certain cultural assumptions should infuse every game table, and perhaps the most annoying of all: that the fantasy world should reflect real-world values. The Pundit seems less conflicted, just a bit unaware of his subjective bias.

So I'll give it a shot: Pundit, there are different styles of D&D, different ways to play the game, and different objectives. All styles and approaches share one thing in common: to have fun. How one has fun really depends upon the individual and group. If you find it fun to count arrows, have at it; it facilitates a certain style of play (and in that regard, your advice is good for facilitating a certain style of play). Others don't find it fun, because it detracts from their preferred style.

I mean, you're basically saying: "OK, you're having fun, which is great, but you're doing it wrong, and if you did it right--or rather, the way I do it--you'd have more fun."

Whether you like it or not, D&D has expanded beyond your preferred style of play. It now includes a much broader umbrella of play styles, which can't be anything but a good thing.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 03, 2020, 12:11:36 PM
Just make hash marks on your character sheet. Jeez, there's no need to track convoluted ammo dice checks and complicate the damn thing.

Holy shit!  Yeah...if you like to keep track make has marks on paper...easy. 

If not whatever but it ain't hard or complicated.

The funniest part to me about this conversation is the presumption that 5e and 4E actually have some sort of "don't track ammo" rule.

They don't. Both 4E and 5e by default rules as written require you to track ammo and other resources just like every other edition of D&D.

It's the individual DMs deciding it's not worth the bother to follow the rules of tracking ammo and other resources for their own campaigns and just hand waving it. Except they're doing so in such numbers that not tracking those things is now seen as normal for play.

Frankly, if you want groups to track arrows you need to give them a reason to.

First and foremost that means realistic encumbrance rules that account for bulk as much, if not more, than weight (ex. 100 arrows might only weigh 10 pounds, but they'd be ridiculously cumbersome to carry compared to wearing a 35 lb. coat of plates).

Second, you need to bring your economics into line. When even third level PCs are hauling in thousands of gold pieces worth of treasure, dropping 10 gp on a hundred arrows is barely a footnote. When you can buy a score of arrows for less than a night's stay at a common inn... they're some weird price fluctuations going on, even in modern times for mass-produced machine manufactured ones; hand-made ones can go for $15-20 each).

Third, you need to make using ammunition consuming weapons worth using in a fashion where finite shots are worth tracking. Dealing no more damage than lighter melee weapons means the only way they can be effectively employed is to pepper even weaker targets with multiple arrows in order to drop them.

There's a huge difference between carrying 20 arrows (a reasonable real world number that is small enough for their attrition to be notable and felt) when each will almost certainly drop a humanod foe in a single hit (and many will be recoverable after the fight) and 20 arrows when you need two hits just to reliably drop another human warrior and all those that hit and half of those that miss are destroyed (hence just about any D&D archer who doesn't have a way to produce infinite arrows by magic carrying upwards of five quivers worth of arrows at once).

If arrows did say, 2d10+Dex mod damage, cost 1gp each, and 3/4 of those fired were recoverable if you won, but quiver bulk made carrying more than two-dozen or so at once start to impact your mobility, then you might have something where keeping track of arrows in WotC-era D&D makes some kind of sense. As it stands, they're basically the D&D equivalent of firearm magazines in a James Bond film (with arrows about as effective as bullets vs. named characters in the action genre to boot).

Quote from: Mercurius on December 03, 2020, 12:45:53 PM
It is really quite simple: different styles of play are just that. One is not inherently better than the other, in the same way that "dramas" are not inherently better or worse than "comedies," or "science fiction" better or worse than "fantasy." Or, perhaps more relevant to this discussion: low fantasy isn't better or worse than high fantasy.

On the other other hand, there are commonalities and not everything is loosey-goosey subjective. A specific comedy or even a specific joke might not make all people laugh, but it might make a lot of people laugh, because they have a shared experience, and a shared taste in comedy.

Likewise, certain rules encourage certain behaviors. Awarding xp for gold, for instance. It might not be for everyone (it certainly isn't my preferred xp system) but we can recognize for a lot of people it incentivices certain behaviors over others. (Avoid fights, grab treasure, flee)

A certain style of play might be better than another at evoking certain behaviors. And a group might find those behaviors fun at the gaming table. Tracking ammo is part of rewarding players who plan ahead and manage their resources well. Whole board and video game genres are built on resource management.

I agree that there is no one true way to play the game, but there are game apsects (rules) that are better or worse at evoking certain playstyles.