Giving an unlimited resource always changes the balance, the most fun i ever had as a rouge was with limited arrows because it forced me to think outside the box of “hide and shoot”
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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The Shadow of the Demon lord system is different and interesting. You don't track individual arrows, you track quivers (which are quite expensive). A character might have like 3 quivers.
You lose a quiver on a critical fail, otherwise you don't track ammo. This means on average you have 20 arrows per quiver, which works out about right without any of the paperwork.
Interesting but i don’t like it from a role playing angle. I don’t know how to explain how that works, but if i could it would be cool.
Not a player myself, but would this work?
Each quiver holds a single arrow, but they are enchanted with a replenishment function. If the archer utters a specific phrase just after drawing, the arrow replenishes. If they miss the very tight window, the enchantment is broken and has to be re-applied.
The way my gm does it is basically "Drawing and rapidly firing, you reach into your quiver and find it empty". This works because we've never had multiple crit fails in a row.
Your in game god of archery thought your form was so cringe that they zapped a quiver out of existence to save you the embarrassment
Would you like it if it werent counted then ?
Because being forced to do what you do not want or need to do is the problem.
No matter if its counted or not, pick whatever you prefer and is more fun to you. You can even have both at once in the same party.
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Random story on bows:
One of the first DnD experiences I had I was told not to worry about counting arrows. We had an encounter down a long corridor where I had a particularly advantageous spot I could use my bow at. I got some great rolls, got sneak attack bonuses, and ultimately carried the entire encounter.
The party was happy, the DM was not. Next session, I had to count arrows, none of them could be recoverable as they 'always broke', the DM ruled they no longer got a sneak attack bonus, and every merchant in town was always 'fresh out' so I could never restock.
This was years ago and I still have never made another character with a bow.
That's just a bad DM.
100%. If you as a DM get salty about the players using the tools given to them, you're a bad DM.
Almost like if being limited into your main gimmick outside of the rulea or even fun factor is never good.
Fuck that DM
I would have dropped that campaign like a bad habit. That DM actively made your experience worse because you had a good session, and that's just not ok.
I'll never understand why some DMs nerf players when they can just as easily buff themselves.
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DM: "You all get a magic quiver with unlimited arrows. Hurray!"
The one player who spent all their money on fancy arrows of various kinds crumples their character sheet up and tosses it aside
Player: "I don't wanna play anymore... 😠"
Regular arrows should be infinite and special arrows limited. I like how they did it in BG3 actuallu
I haven't played 5E on paper so I was actually wondering if that's how the rules worked or not.
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My players would just sell it back. I know, I gave them important items and they did that XD
I played in one campaign where I had to track arrows. It was a homebrewed world where anything outside of cities was extremely dangerous. We found eventually that the reason why was all the good gods had died, as this devouring entity had started eating them and then had gotten trapped, which let evil go unchecked.
It was a lot of fun, my character would have to go out and sneak around to find good wood for arrows and he spent his time during watches crafting more arrows.
So you liked it and had fun right ?
Good then. The question isnt to count arrows or not, but to find how to have fun yourself with the arrows. There isnt a right answer. It depends on you as a player.
If you have fun, you are winning. Doesnt matter if you count or not.
I just did it counting arrows for a 5e dungeon campaign, and it makes things more interesting. 5E has turfed most of the original D&D dungeon crawl mechanics, but I can see why it was a thing - it adds a little bit of risk.
I count special arrows, but normal ones ? Its not fun if you build your built around it. Plus, its very easy to carry hundreds of them at once, using your party as mules. Meaning the only moments you are lacking bolts or arrows is either your choice or your DM's. So, either you have fun yourself by adding a challenge, akind to me picking spells appropriate for my bard, or the DM's that wants to limit you in a bad way
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Timer systems like arrow counting, rations and encumbrance are good for game flow. Removing them tends to diminish the level of emotional investment and roleplaying in the game.
I'd get overwhelmed very quickly trying to keep track of all that personally, but if it works for your table, that's perfectly fine.
I can only keep up with this things on vtt's, specially foundry.
There are systems that make it not purely accounting, like resource dice.
Personally I've never managed to make 20 attacks as an archer in one combat in 5e before, so tracking those just tends to result in a number going from 20 to 12 or whatever and then me saying "by the way I walk around the battlefield picking up my arrows"
it doesn't really add anything
What you described is barely a timer system, reset on combat end doesn't really ever matter to a game. I'm addressing longer time frame resource drain benefiting the game by creating risk and promoting choice. There isn't really a point if arrows aren't lost and broken.
I mean sure, I've dealt with GMs saying arrows broke or were lost or whatever. Now in the next combat that number on my character sheet counts down from 17 to 10. Then next combat it goes from 15 to 9. Then I get to a town and say "ok i go buy some arrows how much does that cost" and the gm says "idk like some silver" and im like "cool" and i remove a gold piece and refill arrows
it still doesn't really add anything
this isn't because those aspects of game design are fundamentally flawed, that isn't what im saying. just that 5e doesn't really work like that. it's not a very well designed system at the end of the day
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In our PF1e game where I play a ranged slayer, I track arrows. It made it way more interesting early on where I didn't have any blunt arrows so I couldn't hurt skeletons. Eventually, I put the money into durable arrows so after every encounter I don't run away from, it's assumed I have time to pick mine up.
I don't mind it at all, though we play on FoundryVTT so it tracks it a lot easier.
What all do you like about Foundry?
My favorite part is that it's super customizable, and specifically that it's self-hosted. We ran into issues with Roll20 all the time where it would get super slow or something wasn't working like you'd expect, especially inventory stuff.
I won't say Foundry is perfect, but where the tool itself lacks, the fact that there are thousands of modules that can change functionality or add something cool is just amazing. Modules get made to add blood spatter, deal with terrain, add custom weather effects, add in items from 3rd party books, etc.
And like I said, self-hosting is a big win because we're no longer reliant on someone else. Sure, if the host's internet drops, we can't play, but it's only happened twice in two years of using it.
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Yeah I'm a Shadowrun player and we even count the bullets in magazines
I find this more fun in systems like Shadowrun where I can be like 'This mag is alternatively loaded with Exex and APDS ammo and it's for the big emergencies that sometimes happen'. Like, you might have 6 different mags with different ammo in that game and use them all, depending on what situations come up.
I really like Fabula Ultimas take on this too: Basic consumables like arrows aren't limited or tracked, but you have inventory points that inform how many potions or other situation-changing items you can produce out of your bag of tricks, before you need to hit a town to restock. And then they have some abilities/classes you can pick give you more of these points, refill these points in combat or during travel, or key off of these points to do other things related to crafting and item use. Really really good.
Measuring the exact weight of every item in inventory is also a charming but typically discouraged new player practice.
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