D&D 5E What are the "True Issues" with 5e?

[Gammadoodler]

Sounds like a 5e problem to me.

Could be.

Are their other editions where ammo is expensive and/or hard to find, or where storage is so limited PCs can't effectively stockpile it?

 

[Micah Sweet]

In my experience..it inspires a decision point once, maybe twice, a campaign. And it is a nothingburger of a decision.

"I stop in a store and buy a bunch of arrows"

I'll grant that it's more than zero.. but time spent tracking it for the 'decision point' is a bit like spending 50 cents in postage to get a 5 cent rebate.

So you don't care. That's just a preference.

 

[Gammadoodler]

So you don't care. That's just a preference.

Sure, never said otherwise.

For the folks who enjoy moving numbers around on their character sheet that will seldom, if ever, have any kind of narrative impact in play..

Go nuts. Live your bliss.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course there's no need to redesign the game. He already has a game that does that. This is being given as a reason not to do it--to keep the existing crappy, biased rules and their favoritism of magic-users over non-magic-users.


Except that it's exactly how it's used. That's literally what people are doing when they make crappy jokes like "shouting hands back on" and the like, or snide jabs like accusing a game of being "superheroes" etc.

The use is, very clearly, that things which do not conform to Earth-like situations are unacceptable. Unless something is explicitly magic--which almost always means spellcasting. Then it's totally fine, do whatever you want. Because only one side of this is required to conform to something (usually less than) what is possible on IRL Earth.

If you think we should have our capabilities be more like they in IRL Earth, I'm all for that. It just takes a little research to get things right; it can and has been done for some games.

And plenty of supernatural things in games aren't spells. No need for the chip on your shoulder.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay.

Then I am calling them out for applying bizarrely self-contradictory standards of realism. Because they want some particular things to be ultrahyperreal, and other things never even get thought about.

All or nothing then. Not a great place to have a discussion from.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've noticed that a few players, when asked to track arrows, will start carrying dozens of arrows all the time. Which gets silly, even if they convince me it's technically possible to have 100 arrows accessible, there's a reason no one does that in real life.

Yeah, a lot of gamers seem to be deathly afraid of any bookkeeping.

 

[Vaalingrade]

For me, it was 4e that made me realize tracking ammo is no longer even fair as I watched the Arcane classes spam cantrips round after round with no need for any ammunition at all. Sure, bows have great range, but that comes up pretty rarely.

When arguably the best archer in the game is a Warlock with Eldritch Spear, why should we even care about making sure the Ranger tosses a few gold into his "arrow budget" every time he hits town? I mean heck, you never see Legolas run out of arrows.

Spinning out of this, I developed the concept of narrative items: items you're just assumed to be buying/making without gold expenditure or explicit action. Mundane ammo is like this, Superior (magical, mechanical, masterwork) ammo has a die you roll and if you roll a 1, you're out for the encounter. Then I branched out to Chemical Soldier, an alchemist that has per-encounter and at-will alchemy that works this way, finally going to the item Utility belt, which lets you decide you have certain items on you per-encounter.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For me, it was 4e that made me realize tracking ammo is no longer even fair as I watched the Arcane classes spam cantrips round after round with no need for any ammunition at all. Sure, bows have great range, but that comes up pretty rarely.

When arguably the best archer in the game is a Warlock with Eldritch Spear, why should we even care about making sure the Ranger tosses a few gold into his "arrow budget" every time he hits town? I mean heck, you never see Legolas run out of arrows.

Fairness doesn't really enter into though. Bow need ammunition, and cantrips don't. It is what it is, and that fact doesn't mean you shouldn't track ammo.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For me, it was 4e that made me realize tracking ammo is no longer even fair as I watched the Arcane classes spam cantrips round after round with no need for any ammunition at all. Sure, bows have great range, but that comes up pretty rarely.

When arguably the best archer in the game is a Warlock with Eldritch Spear, why should we even care about making sure the Ranger tosses a few gold into his "arrow budget" every time he hits town? I mean heck, you never see Legolas run out of arrows.

He does in the books.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not the one who treats it as a dichotomy! I hate that people do this! But they do, in fact, do it. All the time! And they use it as an excuse for why the rules should be crappy for some players and super awesome for others!

And yes, it absolutely is hypocritical--because these people clearly want D&D to be a cooperative game.

But I'm done discussing this with you. I guarantee you, you won't convince me on this one. You are simply, flatly wrong, and the things you have said have done nothing to change my mind; if anything, they've made me even more convinced.

I don't think anyone expects minds to be changed here.