It's not "just" hit points. That is the whole thing: the decision whether or not to keep delving or to try and rest in the dungeon, or to make for the surface are all important decisions that are informed by the resources available. If you reduce the number of resources they have to concern themselves with -- goodberry and light and being too lazy to track ammo, etc -- then that question becomes minor, if not entirely moot.
D&D (2024) What could One D&D do to bring the game back to the dungeon?
Right, but at the same time, you have to go out of your way to change the game to suit your preferences. If your players had the same preferences, they wouldn't be wanting to use these tools in the first place.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
But, as said earlier, choosing to cast Light or just use Darkvision is a difficult decision, as Light can ruin your chance of sneaking by the enemy or getting a stealth attack, and Darkvision makes it so you can't see color and have a -5 to passive Perception (so enemies are better at stealth attacking you, and you might not be able to tell if the dragon in the next room is Chromatic or Metallic).
And Goodberry takes spell slots.
And there's nothing in 5e that encourages you to ignore ammo. The fact that a lot of people do isn't WotC's or 5e's fault. There's nothing that they could do to force people to keep track of ammo or encumberance.
A lot of the things that you're complaining about 5e don't seem like anything WotC can fix. It seems like they did try to cater a bit to the "back to the dungeon" playstyle you like, but people just don't like that playstyle and ignore the rules associated with it (ammo, equipment and gold weight, darkvision penalties, etc).
WotC can't force people to engage in an unpopular playstyle.
Well, as for ammo, the fact that they suggest players find way more gold than they can use, thus making it a simple matter to carry around as much ammo as physically possible sort of trivializes it, in my eyes.
Plus, I stopped caring about it back in 4e as a DM. If a Wizard can throw fire from his hands all day long, then tracking ammo for a Ranger is a nerf to the Ranger, IMO. I just tell players that if they cough up a few gold pieces anytime they hit town to replenish ammo and "spell components", I'm fine with assuming they can scavenge this stuff in the field sufficient to not need to track it.
People thinking they can just ignore encumbrance is kind of wotc's fault for a few reasons. First they made carry capacities so generous that they are almost able to hold anything but things your gm says you can't carry Second the container rules are unfinished at best. Third they didn't bother to list body slots so players push to carry multiple backpacks & stuff. On top of all that they put in powerful build to give players an option to unilaterally veto any efforts the gm engages in towards the goal of making carry capacities matter unless those efforts are crippling to everyone else. Then finally d&dbeyond didn't support containers till like a year or two ago so players took it as wotc's blessing to not bother ether
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
So, what would be the solution? Make arrows weigh/cost more? Put a maximum number of arrows that a character can have on them at once barring magic items like the Quiver of Ehlonna (which is already implied through the "quivers can only carry 20 arrows" rule)?
This is why spell components exist (at least the costly ones). To ensure that spellcasters don't have an unfair advantage over their martial equivalents for the cost of using their abilities. However, that's another rule that is commonly ignored.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
I've seen characters that have carrying capacities so low that they cannot carry their default starting equipment.
How so? Backpacks list how much weight and volume they can fit in them.
I have never seen a player try to wear multiple backpacks at a time. Do yours?
Powerful Build is only a thing for a few races, and those are mostly newer ones (no race in the PHB has Powerful Build).
And WotC didn't own D&D Beyond until this year. How is that WotC's fault?
The default is 15 pounds x strength isn't it? Were they rolling and got something really low and wanted to wear heavy armor? (What is the optional one? I confess to not remembering. Were they using that?)
That's true, but "unpopular" doesn't mean "untenable" and if players that don't like it are ignoring the rukles anyway, we can just discount them and are back to the beginning of the thread: what rule changes can they make for One D&D that support dungeon crawling for those players who want to engage in that. We can ignore the players that don't want to, because apparently they just ignore whatever rules they like to. Which is fine for them. Good gaming, I say, just at someone else's table.
Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
If you care about the game as a game, you are obviously going to use whatever means are available to achieve success. Otherwise, you are basically handcuffing yourself. When it comes to dungeon delving as a thing the game is based around you want a meta to play that makes managing your resources and the decision to push on interesting.
I am not sure modern D&D should be that game though. I think games like Into the Odd and Old School Essentials cover it better.
