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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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.
Normally you count them and get half of the shot ones back. It sucks. Thats why almost nobody does it.
Technically no. In reality, yes. Bows require arrows and most spells require a material component. These are never tracked unless it's something special. If a spell costs thousands of gold in material components to cast, it should be required that you actually aquire that component, but otherwise pretty much everyone just assumes that you are prepared with a enough basic materials. The same for arrows and any other basic resources usually. I've never played with a party that tracks food and water, for example. It's just assumed you've come prepared.
I hardly have players even using arrows in our 3.5 games, but I do definitely require the expensive material components (like I know there's a spell that requires a ruby with 100gp or more). Most of them can be acquired easily enough that it doesn't matter (such as sulphur + bat guano) but if it's expensive/rare enough, I'm going to make sure you can actually get them.
My players would just sell it back. I know, I gave them important items and they did that XD
For me it was not being able to cast spell with sword and shield
I started a Pathfinder CRPG a few days ago and one of the classes is specifically designed just to do that. I was tempted to choose it but it had like the highest class difficulty and it's my first time playing so I played it safe and just went with a regular ol' sorcerer.
Its mainly because it makes no logical sense. You van just put the sword in the shield hand then cast the spell it would not even be that hard.
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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
So far the DM isn't being difficult. I feel like I should be able to carry a few dozen without penalty. We'll see how the game progresses.
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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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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.
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Eating candy?
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