Ammunition Woes

[James McMurray]

The endless quiver magic item doesn't exist in my campaign--but if you're looking for the RAW answer, it's a level 9 wondrous item in Adventurer's Vault.

9th level? That's ludicrous. Before AV came out we made an endless quiver for the cleric in our epic game. I put it at 1st level. That's 360gp, which is the same as the price of 10,800 quivers, or 30 shots per combat for 360 fights. Putting it at 9th means you're effectively buying 126,000 arrows.

I guess the fluff for infinite creation makes sense to be higher level, but balancewise there's no reason to ever buy an endless quiver. It's primarily a convenience for the player, which very rarely might matter in the game.

 

[frankthedm]

Are none of your foes shooting at the party? I'm a firm believer in counting arrows, food and water but they also should not be that hard to get in the field. Bandits and humanoids provide arrows, monsters are made of meat and just about anything alive needs water.

In 3E things were a little worse for arrow restocking since DMs would shy away from missile weapons since humanoids loaded down with decent bows would be giving unintended treasure. Not even to mention how inefficient missile fire was in comparison to picking up a great axe and charging especially with that -4 for shooting into melee. Now that used bows have a 1/5 resale rate at best, bows now normally get a damage bonus and the rest of the tribe can shoot while the grunts engage in melee, sprinkling archers in more encounters is much more effective.

 

[Dreadite]

Since my player loves to keep track of things, I've started allowing this one: For every arrow he fires, after combat he rolls 1dX (where X would be the number of arrows fired, we play on Maptool so you CAN roll odd sided dice...). He can manage to "recover" that many fired arrows in good shape, assuming he has time to search the area.

I thought that was a fairly neat solution (he suggested it), to keep his "realism" intact.

 

[Bond James Bond]

As a DM, I don`t stongly enforce players to keep track of the ammunition beyond rolling eyes once in a while since our archer mysteriously never ever runs out (or even low) of ammo.

As a player, I do count Arrows. Why? For me it´s part of the rp experience. For the same reason, my characters do not always mysteriously have ropes or other mundane items with them, just because they would be handy in a certain situation.

I just wish they would make an at-will ranged attack which is nearly as good as twin strike with just a single arrow. But then, rapid shot in 3rd wasnt much better ammnition wise.

 

[Drakhar]

What I did in my group for any one wanting to use a Bow/crossbow/sling was that Every time they got to town they deducted the price of one quiver of ammunition (1g I believe) and that lasted them as long as it took to get back to town, so if they spent a month out in the wilderness or were gone for a day, they had to get a new set. Seemed fair and balanced to myself and my players. But then that was before the endless quiver came out.

 

[Syrsuro]

Hi All -


It frustrates me that many people appear to play one way and the book implies another - this is compounded by the fact that this only applies to a single build of a single class to be completely impotent when out of ammo. Magical thrown weapons return to the user, why not arrows - at least in a way that is not tedious.

Why does this frustrate you?

Why do you care how anyone else plays the game?

How do YOU want to handle this?

Why can't you just handle it the way you want to and not worry about it?

Heck - if you want to, why not rule that just as magical thrown items return to the user's hand, magical bows create ammunition? It doesn't seem unbalancing and its no less logical than all magic thrown weapons being returning weaopns.

Or, if you feel bound by the RAW, give your ranger an endless quiver (AV, level 9 item*)


Carl

*Although I'd call it badly overpriced at level 9 - you would have to use 126,000 arrows before it paid for itself....

CFT

 

[Kordeth]

*Although I'd call it badly overpriced at level 9 - you would have to use 126,000 arrows before it paid for itself....

CFT

Hmm--assuming 2 arrows per round on average and 6 rounds per encounter on average, and finally assuming ten encounters per level, that means the endless quiver should pay for itself right around the time you reach level 1,050.

 

[Plane Sailing]

We never hear of players running out of ammunition mid-adventure - as a matter of fact I think many groups allow the ranger just to "fill up" when he is in town - that's the limit of ammunition management for them.

I see ammo management as a vital balancing factor for the archer classes - the archer ranger can throw out tonnes of damage, he only needs one magic bow for his multiple attacks (and does 1d10 each attack without needing a feat), he can stay far out of range of melee foes and even most caster attacks... so he throws down lots of damage without getting in nearly as much danger as the other classes.

They blooming well need something to keep them down a little!

I've always played in games where ammo is tracked, and it has actually helped the game tremendously - especially when the ranger realises he is down to his last 20 arrows and starts thinking more carefully about what he is up to.

I'd not want a game where archers have infinite arrows any more than a game where pistols have infinite ammo and never need reloading.

I've seen figures quoting 12-24 arrows in a typical longbow quiver and 60-80 arrows in a mongol shortbow horse archer quiver, and those are probably pretty reasonable.

In 4e I'd never expect an archer to have more than 2 quivers, and mostly just 1. However, I'd also assume that any archer has the basic skills of a fletcher and could knock up his own arrows given a bit of downtime.

Cheers

 

[Benimoto]

I would argue that the lack of any specific rules for ammunition management would seem to indicate that the designers intend that different groups handle it in the way that makes most sense to them. Further, the breadth of responses in this thread seems to indicate that, if that is their strategy, it seems to be working.

 

[IanArgent]

Good point, there (leaving it to the groups). In that case, they either shouldn't have put in the ever-full quiver, or made it a lower-level item