D&D 5E Does anyone actually track rations?

[AaronOfBarbaria]

It may depend on the type of campaign you run. Mine tend toward the gritty and realistic where thngs like food and shelter are regularly big issues.

That is indeed very different from what my campaigns tend toward, even when "gritty and realistic."

It can be difficult to get players to engage with that if you handwave a lot of stuff.

I find that things which are difficult to get players to engage with are difficult because the player in question just isn't interested in engaging with that thing, and even if they get into the habit of engaging with that thing are doing so begrudgingly and against their own preference. The lack of engaging and the handwaving are casually related, but I'd say you have them backwards - the handwave is because the players don't want to engage with that thing.

Like I said, once players experience their characters msising important equipment, they rarely ever do it again and in my experience it has made our games better for doing it.

Then you are lucky that you have players actually interested in engaging in that aspect of the game. If they weren't, the experience would likely have been you putting them in the situation where their characters are missing important equipment, and them responding with an escalating procedure starting with pointing out that they don't like that and ending with them finding another DM to play with.

It doesn't have to be. Making the player care about things that are important to the character can be useful.

Yes, that can be useful. It just isn't inherently useful, and as a result there are a lot of things that it just isn't useful to get the player to care about.

 

[MG.0]

Then you are lucky that you have players actually interested in engaging in that aspect of the game. If they weren't, the experience would likely have been you putting them in the situation where their characters are missing important equipment, and them responding with an escalating procedure starting with pointing out that they don't like that and ending with them finding another DM to play with.

If they really weren't interested and resisted the idea of having to pick up after themseleves, I would reconsider. Likewise if the campaign style were different. I don't always run this style, but I like it. As I said, the players are OK with it, and it seems to help everyone consider additional environmental details they would probably not think about otherwise.

I'm not trying to irritate the players, just make them care about things important to their character's survival, e.g. "Did I buy enough food?", "Did I forget cold weather gear?", "Where's my sword?", "What's my character holding while climbing that mountain ledge?", etc. I could handwave ALL of that, but then it doesn't create the atmosphere I am trying to craft.

 

[aramis erak]

Small caveat: darkvision was common but the races that got it were limited in class levels.

I've never seen a game of AD&D where the level limits were hit. Mind you, I've known people who claim to have played characters into the high 30's, but in every case, they simply reduced demi-human XP above cap, rather than actually capping.

And on Krynn, everyone capped at 18th level. Humans included.

 

[aramis erak]

I don't recall goodberry nullifying the need for food and water for an entire day.

In 2E, because I have it handy, it's an Either/or case: 1 point of physical damage or a full day's hunger sated.

 

[MG.0]

I've never seen a game of AD&D where the level limits were hit.

Really? In 1st edition, a lot of the caps were quite low, e.g. below 10.

I do know a lot of people who ignored the caps, but I do know why they were there too. They were meant to encourage players to play humans, because that is what the game was fundamentally based on. Playing elves, dwarves, etc. in first edition was not far off from playing a monster, which Gygax discouraged. There's still a lot of validity to his arguments too.

 

[MG.0]

In 2E, because I have it handy, it's an Either/or case: 1 point of physical damage or a full day's hunger sated.

Tehcnically it's not a full day, it's one meal. I suppose it is up to the DM as to whether that is the same thing or not.

2nd edition had essentially the same spell description as 1st (Unearthed Arcana).

I pointed out the other significant limitations here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ations/page8&p=6710090&viewfull=1#post6710090

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Yes, exactly this.

If players can't be bothered to track stuff they absolutely need (how hard is it to say you picked up that weapon you dropped?) when I as the DM have no problem tracking all of them, that says more about their interest in the game than anything. I've found enforcing it is not a chore. dropping isn't rampant and once players get the idea, the other problems disappear as well.

In-game I think having the character care about vital equipment is a far cry from worrying about trivial stuff like remembering to wash.

Personally, I make "general assumptions" unless my players state otherwise. That said, my players also understand that my "general assumptions" trump their "general assumptions"...so if I make the assumption that the PC's were panicked enough during some night-time interruption and the players all quickly state "It's gone? Back in to the woods again? This thing is going to keep coming back...lets get the hell out of here! Now! ... We all run back towards the river and get on the raft!", I would make the assumption that "getting away" is sufficient for them a concern that they probably *would* leave a lot of stuff behind. Would it be stupid for them to do that? Maybe, maybe not, they don't know when the monster is going to strike again. They're "panicking", in so far as season adventurers panic. I'd probably let each of them make an averaged Int + Wis check to see what they remembered to grab other than a weapon; in that situation, weapon is probably a given...but shield, backpack, armor....not so much.

As for "trivial" stuff...yeah, I mostly gloss over it too. Mostly. Sometimes I will mention stuff to them that their PC's might have thoughts about (e.g.: "You've been wounded in a couple of battles, trecking through this swamp for several days now...you notice some of your smaller cuts and scrapes starting to itch a lot more. One or two may even be a bit swollen and puffy. You feel fine, however, and continue on for another couple hours until it's lunch time. What do you guys do?"). A little "hint" that mother nature would toss at them, saying Hey guys...you should probably clean and bandage that up...just saying...

But my DM'ing style if very much a "picture yourself there" style; I don't really cotton to much "mechanics trump common sense" idea of DM'ing. For example, Goodberry. Yes, it can give you neutriants for a full day...but it doesn't actually give you mass. It's still just one berry in size. Your stomach is going to be grumbling, and you are going to be hungry as all hell...but you won't start to suffer from starvation; you have the neutriants. Kinda like taking a bunch of vitamins and then drinking a couple of Red-Bulls. Attempting to subsist on this for more than a day or three would probably screw up your stomach (and maybe liver, kidney's, etc).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Wolf118]

You know, the Goodberry spell description starts with, "Up to ten berries appear in your hand..." That doesn't mean 10 berries appear, it means that there could be as many as ten berries or as little as one. The spell doesn't specify that the caster gets to choose how many berries appear, either.

To me, that means the DM determines, whether by fiat or random d10 roll. So if only two berries appear for a party of four, is the Druid or Ranger going to use up another slot? And that's the main difference to using this spell vs rations; the balancing of limited resources. If the caster has to use two or three spell slots every day to feed the party, that's going to have an effect on their combat and exploration tasks.

 

[discosoc]

I've never seen a game of AD&D where the level limits were hit. Mind you, I've known people who claim to have played characters into the high 30's, but in every case, they simply reduced demi-human XP above cap, rather than actually capping.

And on Krynn, everyone capped at 18th level. Humans included.

I know it was common to drop the level caps, but people really didn't think it through in terms of balancing. On one hand, everyone would joke about how pointless it was to play a human, and no the other they'd remove the biggest reason for doing so in the first place.

A similar issue was with Wizards. As written, wizards got a fair chunk of their xp from casting spells. But what people either didn't bother reading or just disregarded was how long it took to actually memorize those spells (10 minutes per level of each spell). So a 1st level wizard could memorize his whole 1 known spell each day in 10 minutes. At 10th level, it would take 6.5 hours of solid 'alone time' to memorize his spells. By 20th level, you'd have to have just over 27 hours of downtime to memorize your whole selection. And if you memorized something you don't need, you can't choose to forget it; instead you just either keep it memorized or cast it to clear the slot (no xp for that). This meant wizards were supposed to be kind of picky on their spell selection at higher level, because it wasn't easy or feasible to change things up in the middle of a dungeon. There was also the issue of spell selection being limited to what you found or could research from another mage, and if you failed your check to copy it, you could never again try to learn that spell. Failed to copy that fireball spell into your book? Have fun being a mage without it!

Those were common rules that got houseruled away or ignored for convenience usually, but went a long way to propagating the whole "wizards are overpowered" assumptions that are so common.

 

[discosoc]

You know, the Goodberry spell description starts with, "Up to ten berries appear in your hand..." That doesn't mean 10 berries appear, it means that there could be as many as ten berries or as little as one. The spell doesn't specify that the caster gets to choose how many berries appear, either.

To me, that means the DM determines, whether by fiat or random d10 roll. So if only two berries appear for a party of four, is the Druid or Ranger going to use up another slot? And that's the main difference to using this spell vs rations; the balancing of limited resources. If the caster has to use two or three spell slots every day to feed the party, that's going to have an effect on their combat and exploration tasks.

Huh, this is actually a really good observation. I just reread it and you're right. That very well might go a long way to making players care about basic resources a bit more if they know it's a 1st level spell being cast that may or may not suffice. Thank you for pointing it out.