D&D 5E What resources do you track in play?

[Morrus]

I know that you can track most anything (rations, ammo, etc.) -- but which physical resources - not meta things like spell slots - do you actually track in your own game?

We track money (for obvious reasons) and healing potions. We don't track ammo, or rations, nor do we track spell components and the like.

 

[cbwjm]

We track: Money, healing potions, priced material components for spells, and ammunition. Material components for spells with no gold cost aren't tracked since that is covered by the component pouch or focus, verbal and somatic components are noted but so far in our games that hasn't been an issue.

Since we are talking about tracking physical items, I should note that we also haven't really tracked the weight of items either. We noticed this when we realised that we had over 1000 gold coins that we were lugging around everywhere (technically the 8 strength halfling was lugging them around). We may have bought a pack horse to help cover that, can't quite remember.

 

[DaveDash]

Here's a screenshot of some of the things we track:

 

[Shiroiken]

As a DM, I assume my players to be tracking everything. Some of them may not be, but that's a trust issue.

As a Player, I track everything: Ammunition, Healer's Kit uses, Rations (when not foraging), etc. I even track something almost everyone forgets: Container Capacity. A character may be able to carry 15,000 coins by weight, but not without something to carry them in. It would take 10 full sacks to carry all that weight, and even if you discount the difficulty of carrying 10 large sacks (think large bags of dog food), their 5 lbs weight costs you 250 coins, so you're really limited to 14,750 coins. And that's assuming you're naked and unarmed...

 

[iserith]

What is tracked in my games is based on what that effort emphasizes about the campaign's theme. If tracking something rigorously puts the focus of the game in the right place, then we track it. If it doesn't, then we don't. As you can imagine, this will therefore vary based on the game I'm running.

In my current campaign:

Gold
Caravan Upkeep Cost/Day
Days of Supplies for the Caravan
Consumable magic items

Because of the way rests are handled in this campaign, the PCs need the caravan to take long rests and to remove the risk of random encounters. So I made it something into which the characters can invest their gold.

In my dungeon run one-shots:

Encumbrance (variant rule)
Ammo
Rations
Torches
Water
Gold
Consumable magic items

This is so because what's important to this type of game is your staying power and how much treasure you can carry out of the place.

And while it's not a physical resource, something I track in all my games is Time. Because there's almost never enough of it to accomplish all your goals and wandering monsters are always lurking if you take too long on a task.

 

[dagger]

Money
Ammo,
Food (at low levels, at higher levels its pointless),
Encumbrance,
Equipment that has uses (like torches and holy water),
Spell Components that are 100GP or more.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The only resource that matters is the DMs patience.


Once you've burned through that, it's all over.

 

[Lehrbuch]

I know that you can track most anything (rations, ammo, etc.) -- but which physical resources - not meta things like spell slots - do you actually track in your own game?

We track money (for obvious reasons) and healing potions. We don't track ammo, or rations, nor do we track spell components and the like.

We track things that are scarce. So, exactly what that is depends on the context and changes a bit from Adventure to Adventure. Usually consumable magical items (i.e. potions, charges) are almost always tracked. High denomination money is tracked; where "high" is a bit dependent on the wealth of the party at the time.

Rations, torches, ammo, spell components and so forth are only tracked once the party has somehow got into a situation where they cannot (or could not have) trivially re-supply.

In general, we try to not penalise the PCs for the idiot mistakes of the players. For example, the PCs will remember to do things like bring enough food, within reason, as they have to carry the damn stuff so will trivially notice and remember about it if they are not carrying it. Whereas players can easily forget to check whether stuff like this is written on the character sheet.

 

[The Human Target]

Money and consumable magic.

And money is rounded to gold only.

 

[Li Shenron]

I know that you can track most anything (rations, ammo, etc.) -- but which physical resources - not meta things like spell slots - do you actually track in your own game?

We track money (for obvious reasons) and healing potions. We don't track ammo, or rations, nor do we track spell components and the like.

Well it's not always the same...

In the last couple of years I was lucky when I managed to run a one-shot, so I essentially don't even track money, because they are unlikely to be spent anyway. But the players of course are tracking those on their own, since they normally have the illusion that it matters.

As a player, I am never against keeping track of stuff, as I like the idea of managing my inventory. So if the DM wants, I am fine even with tracking individual doses of spell components!

But as a DM I would never force such micro-management on players. When I used to have the time to run long-term campaigns, I typically tracked things that could really make a difference during exploration such as torches and healer's kits. Not so much rations since they matter more during downtime than during action.

Ammunitions are a tricky case... On one hand tracking arrows is a matter of realism, but something that for most groups doesn't add much in terms of fun and can be overlooked. On the other hand, it has a much bigger effect on the balance between different characters. Unlike light sources, healing doses, rations etc. that can be shared among everyone equally (and so their scarcity affects the whole group), running out of arrows affects only the group's archer(s). So IMHO tracking ammo is a game choice that should be considered more carefully. I can even go as far as saying that I would consider this choice bound to the DM's judgement on how the system treats ranged combatants: if you think the rules edition you're using favors ranged combatants too much compared to melee combatants, then I'd suggest start tracking ammo as a way to put a break on that.