Proposal: Lower the Item level of the Endless Quiver

Son of Meepo · Apr 28, 2011

Not that my opinion amounts to much, but I'd be all in favor of getting rid of mundane ammo tracking.

[sblock=Threadjack]

renau1g said:
I can say that the times I've seen a set-up where only the longbow wielding can hit the enemy and the melee party members sit around with their ... longswords ... in their hands is 0.

I've played a charisma paladin.

I have seen encounters where the only way for the melee characters to get into the fight is by making some sort of skill check (Acrobatics or Athletics).

Charisma paladins get hosed because they're generally walking around with a -4 ACP and lack the training or the ability scores to make those checks.

And what was I going to do about it? Pick up a ranged weapon and make RBAs? Would that be with my 13 Str or my 10 Dex? I mostly stayed back and used my save granting powers and healing. I only made (ineffective) RBAs so that I could mark things that got close enough.

It didn't get any better for me until I hit paragon and was able to turn my ranged dilettante power into an at-will with Versatile Master.

Sometimes some characters will have difficulty with certain encounters.[/sblock]

KarinsDad · Apr 28, 2011

twilsemail said:
You're not giving an advantage, you're removing a disadvantage.

Ammo is ammo. It's a game concept with that built in disadvantage of renewable charges in order to get the significant advantage of long range. It's a trade off (and quite frankly, nobody takes a sling).

You are wanting to remove the disadvantage for nothing in return. Just because spell casters do not have this disadvantage is irrelevant. Spell casters are often limited to range 10 (rarely 20) instead or 20/40. Extra range = ammo. Fair tradeoff.

Maybe we should lower the long range of bow users so that melee users can reach the same distance with a charge. And in return, we'll give the bowmen free arrows.

In the Paper Chase, my PC got knocked unconscious. Nobody in the party (TMK) had the "ammo" of a healing potion, so nobody was able to get him conscious via that method. It was fair that we had no healing potions and the PCs still had options. If a Ranger doesn't take other options and is only going to rely on 40 arrows and a bow, then he gets what he pays for. He knows ahead of time coming in the limitation of a bow. Why is this new or surprising?

One of the early complaints of 4E was that it was too much like MMOs.

One property of MMOs is infinite arrows for free.

renau1g said:
One could argue that once you get past first levels RAW says that mundane equipment does not cost money when building a new PC, so they could purchase 500 arrows off camera and because D&D doesn't address in the rules the inability to carry 500 arrows (maybe a wagon of arrows?) and not really worry.

Precisely.

renau1g said:
I can say that the times I've seen a set-up where only the longbow wielding can hit the enemy and the melee party members sit around with their ... longswords ... in their hands is 0. It would be pretty poor encounter design on the DM's part to only allow the ranged PC's to participate. Realistically, the only PC's who may run out of arrows would be ranged rangers and maybe some ranged rogues (although they're likely spending around 50% less shots).

True, but I've seen many many instances where the melee PCs have to cross water or jump chasms or climb cliffs (having to sheath a weapon/shield in the process) or move slowly across the battlefield without an attack due to Slowed or Dazed while the ranged PCs with the exact same situation fire away every single round.

One advantage of ranged attacks is that the number of times it cannot be used is very slim, much slimmer than the number of times a melee attack cannot attack.

Each type of PC has pros and cons. Ammo is one of the cons of a bowman. I see no need for us to house rule take that con away without the player going out of his way to do so.

twilsemail · Apr 28, 2011

So, KD votes NO.

If anyone else feels like responding to the above, have at it. I don't think it particularly elicits a response.

Running out of ammo and being unable to participate isn't fun. The point of the game is to have fun.

KarinsDad · Apr 28, 2011

twilsemail said:
Running out of ammo and being unable to participate isn't fun. The point of the game is to have fun.

How many times has that occurred here that we need a house rule? How many times has a DM here forced a player to keep track of ammo?

In fact, how does one even definitively conclude that running out of ammo "isn't fun" for all players? Can the game not be played where the PC has an unavailable option and the game still be fun? At our table, if this ever happened, the players would laugh their butts off cause of the fumbling bowman trying to come up with more arrows. It would become part of the story. You are wanting to remove that potential part of the story development. At our table, this would become a "Thanksgiving for years to come story of how the bowman walked into the wilderness with 20 arrows".

And being out of ammo is not necessarily the same as being unable to participate. Being unable to participate due to being Stunned or Unconscious happens a lot more here on PBP than running out of arrows. Should we remove those from the game system?

Lot's of assumptions on your part here.

My real take on this is that a house rule on this is not needed for how PBP handles ranged weapons. If there was a real need for this, then it might require a house rule. So far, nobody has presented a compelling reason for a house rule. It's mostly just speculation, smoke, and mirrors.

twilsemail · Apr 28, 2011

1. "At our table..." doesn't apply to pbp. At your table 2-3 encouters takes an afternoon. Here it takes weeks or months.

2. You haven't presented a compelling argument against the houserule other than you don't like houserules.

I'm not married to the proposal. I really couldn't care less. One of my PCs uses a glaive and the other is on the fast track to retired or dead(again) and uses a thrown weapon besides. If I ever decide to DM a game on here I won't be tracking ammo.

I do feel that, if something is going to be changed it shouldn't be the item.

Walking Dad · Apr 28, 2011

Crossposting from the L4W discussion:

Dekana said:
I'll make a counter-counter proposal: magic ranged weapons have automatically returning ammunition in the same way that magic thrown weapons do. So you have to track ammunition for a level or two, and after that it's a given that you can afford enough arrows to last forever.

BTW, I play a non-bow Bard and a Mage here. But I don't like unwritten house rules in Living PbP games.

KarinsDad · Apr 28, 2011

Walking Dad said:
BTW, I play a non-bow Bard and a Mage here. But I don't like unwritten house rules in Living PbP games.

There are no unwritten rules. If you have a ranged PC with an ammo weapon, you need ammo.

There are just no Wiki police checking that the player is being honest.

And quite frankly, I doubt that any of the DMs really care. Just like they probably don't care if your PC is carrying around enough food. It really is a non-issue.

Walking Dad · Apr 29, 2011

KarinsDad said:
There are no unwritten rules. If you have a ranged PC with an ammo weapon, you need ammo.

There are just no Wiki police checking that the player is being honest.

And quite frankly, I doubt that any of the DMs really care. Just like they probably don't care if your PC is carrying around enough food. It really is a non-issue.

So the magic food and unlimited ammo wondrous items are just traps and we laugh about players who want to buy them to not 'cheat' like the rest who are to lazy to note their remaining arrows in a quick sheet?

KarinsDad · Apr 29, 2011

Walking Dad said:
So the magic food and unlimited ammo wondrous items are just traps and we laugh about players who want to buy them to not 'cheat' like the rest who are to lazy to note their remaining arrows in a quick sheet?

People are people. Some of them are lazy. Some of them do cheat. Some of them do lie. And some of them are just forgetful or not interested in minutia.

Do you think that having a house rule would change any of this at all? Especially a house rule that shouts "you need to buy one of these 'now lower level' items if you are a ranged bow or crossbow user". Having such a house rule implies that the judges will be checking when in fact, they won't (why else would you have such a house rule unless the judges were interested in this level of bookkeeping?).

I personally prefer that LEB is house rule light because 4E, especially with all of the errata, is rule heavy.

If your proposal really reallly really affected a lot of players for something that the players and DMs really cared about and it was an obvious hole in the game system, then I would support it.

It doesn't and it isn't.

The game system has a way to handle this. It's called being a responsible player. Buy and carry a bunch of arrows. If you are going on a major out of town mission, buy a bag of holding. If you are higher level, then get the quiver. That mechanism is not egregious, it's just something that many people ignore, either intentionally or unintentionally because the game system has enough bookkeeping without adding more for the minutia.

In fact, a PC buying a Bag of Holding and a boatload of arrows already does what your proposal suggests, it's just at a slightly greater cost with a lot more utility.

I think you saw a cool idea on another thread and thought it would be good for LEB, but it isn't.

Unless something is broken, we shouldn't be fixing it here with house rules. All rules for the game should come from WotC unless something important that affects multiple players is egregiously broken. IMO. Flavor house rules for the campaign setting to me are much more important than modifying classes, feats, powers, and items that are ok as is (or adding new feats, powers, or items when we already have access to many thousands of them).

stonegod · Apr 29, 2011

twils... please don't "vote" for judges. This is the second time I've mentioned this (though it may not have been you).

As for this: While I understand folk's legalistic concern about arrows and such, I do not wish to legislate everything in the game as well. This, to date, has been a non-problem. If the other judges vote officially, I will as well. But this, the food issue, and a few others are I think should be communicated by the DM but not mandated.