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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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.
Depends on what the game is focused on. Combat and survival, absolutely. Story and ,role play maybe but not necessary. However you should play how the DM wants the game to play, period. They are the one putting in the real effort so you show that the proper respect.
As a player and DM : fuck that noise. Bows and arrows are part of the game, and if a DM would tell me that a sword can only hit 19 times and then need to be reworked by a blacksmith, I would either play something else or with someone.
Or you know, pick lizardfolk and make infinite arrows out of bodies.
Or ramsack any merchands.
Or loot every archer I find.
I tried to use limited arrows for the survival aspect. But its not fun or fair. Why limits arrows when cantrips arent ? Because its the rogue ? Because he has sneak attack ? Thats oretty much ALL he has. Take that away or limit it and he cant do shit. Or you force him down a path he doesnt want to take, a la breath of the wild. Everyone loves it when they cant play how they want after all.
But that bit about the DM decides ? Sure he can. He can do whatever he wants. And if he goes too far then the players will fuck off.
But Im here scratching my head and really wondering how more fun is the game if you cannot play it as you want in this specific way. Especially when the person deciding (the dm) isnt even the one directly affected by this. Or is he such a bad DM that he needs to limit an archer's arrows to make it work ?
Yah having a sharpshooter hide behind cover and snipe every battle every turn makes encounters boring sorry. You just think “thats all rouges can do” because with unlimited arrows it kinda forces them into that mold. Just because you are not doing max damage every turn does not mean you are underpowered. Also you need to drain the resources of the party to balance and create the proper tension which is absolutely critical to proper storytelling. That time where the Big bad is slain by the final arrow of the ranger is epic tense moment.
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Swords are not bows. Arrows actually exist. If I go into the woods and shoot all my arrows and never retrieve them, they are gone.
To be honest if a sword is used in 19 fights it needs to be sharpened, at a minimum
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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.
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
"3 of them broke."
"good thing I have mending"
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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.
Yeah I'm a Shadowrun player and we even count the bullets in magazines
And the ammunition type!
I love pulling out protractors and doing trigonometry during my roleplay session to calculate bullet spin and drop
And doing all of that as a first step before rolling dice
Measuring the exact weight of every item in inventory is also a charming but typically discouraged new player practice.
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.
Eating candy?
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