Regarding ammo

Say I have a ranger and uses bow and arrows. Do I have to keep track of every arrow I fire and
if I run out, am I unable to use my powers then? I know realistically, I can't fire an empty bow
but the powers doesnt seem to have any requirements for arrows. Or did I miss something. And how about monsters?
Say the decripid skeleton and their arrows, they keep firing every round and what happens when they run out of arrows?
Same goes to the goblin warrior with its 5 javelins. Kinda lame if he can only do it 5 times.

bagger245 said:

Say I have a ranger and uses bow and arrows. Do I have to keep track of every arrow I fire and
if I run out, am I unable to use my powers then? I know realistically, I can't fire an empty bow
but the powers doesnt seem to have any requirements for arrows. Or did I miss something. And how about monsters?
Say the decripid skeleton and their arrows, they keep firing every round and what happens when they run out of arrows?
Same goes to the goblin warrior with its 5 javelins. Kinda lame if he can only do it 5 times.

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When you run out of ammo, you can no longer use that weapon. This is covered on pp. 270-271 of the PHB, under the definition of the ranged, close, and area attack types.

In the overall spirit of 4e, we ignore ammo.

Oh, ok. Thanks. I totally missed reading that entry.

Check with your GM. Some don't care about that level of accounting. Others are happy to hand wave it if there's an in-game explanation. Endless Quiver is an item in the adventurer's vault. IIRC it's 8th or 9th level, but unless you're in a low magic campaign you may be able to talk the GM into making it a 1st level item instead. The 360gp you'd be spending on it is enough to buy 10,000+ arrows, so you're mostly just trading in character money for in game convenience.

brehobit said:

In the overall spirit of 4e, we ignore ammo.

Click to expand...

I'm with you for the PCs. If a monster entry says only 'x' ammo (e.g. Kobold sling pot things) then I use that... after they go into melee

I only track special ammo, like silvered arrows and such (not that anyone has that at the moment), and handwave the rest.

I am of the opinion that they forgot one simple rule.


Currently: For a thrown weapon, all enchanted thrown weapons automatically come with the returning enchantment (in addition to whatever other enchantment it has).

Proposed: I think that, for a ranged weapon, all enchanted ranged weapons should come with the unlimited ammunition enchantment (in addition to whatever other enchantment it has). (Note - this would not reduce the reload time.)

Note: I am aware that an item exists that already does this. But that enchantment is a ludicrously high cost and thus is one that few characters would ever want to pay for*.

I don't see what this unbalances and it eliminates the need to track ammo (and makes far more sense in the 4E world where ammo does not carry separate enchantments, unlike earlier editions).

But, although many DMs find such tracking tedious and pointless, the RAW do require you to keep track of the ammunition.

Carl


*The endless quiver (AV) has the same function. But with its cost of 4200 gp, you would have to expend 84,000 crossbow bolts (or 126,000 arrows) before breaking even with this item. Even if you managed to expend 20 bolts or 30 arrows per encounter (a high estimation, imho) that means that it would take 4200 encounters before you broke even. If you somehow obtained one at 1st level and used it for every adventure you would reach 30th level long before you got your money's worth from this item and if the game allowed it you would get your money back when you reached 420th level. To put it another way, to break even you would have to average over 100 arrows per encounter throughout your entire career. In short - I don't understand the logic used in its pricing.

CFT

As a PC I didn't want to just hand-wave it away, but I also didn't want to have to festoon my ranger with quivers. So I proposed having most arrows be recoverable after use, but on a "natural one" attack roll, they were beyond recovery. The ranger's gone through KotS and most of Thunderspire and has lost between 20 and 30 arrows so far. I expect he'll be buying some more soon. This method is easy to adjust for higher or lower levels of wastage too. Just say that 5s or less on the unadjusted attack roll are unrecoverable, or any time you miss an enemy by 10 points or more, etc.

How they came up with the price for the Endless Quiver is a mystery.

I think Syrsuro idea that ranged magic weapons get infinite normal ammo is a great one.

It's not like the Archer Ranger isn't the worst class feature to start with, they can actually run out of powers because of a lack of a mundane item unlike any other class?