D&D General D&D without Resource Management

[GreatestHonor]

Some powers would be very powerful if usable all the time. Wildshape like in the movie seems like that. Not sure how to fix that. Maybe only have one animal you can turn into? Add ore as you level up?

That’s honestly a really cool idea. Wildshape becoming overall stronger but lacking its current versatility. I think that could make an interesting subclass almost on its own.

 

[Voadam]

D&D from the beginning quickly had options (usually magical) for getting around mundane resource management in a lot of ways.

Continual light stones obviate torches and lanterns. 5e light cantrip and darkvision do too.

Bags of Holding address a lot of encumbrance limitations.

5e good berry provides a days rations for the party and heals 10 hp as a 1st level spell.

5e rope trick for safe short rest camping. Earlier editions lasted a night's rest to recover spells.

5e money is not a big deal after you get plate mail.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Fixing encumbrance

For encumbrance at the table with pen and paper: Slotbased systems.
Your carrying capacity is your Strengthscore in "Carrying Unit" which I call a Zent. One could use Stone or Shield or any other name

i remember coming up with a similar simplified encumberance system before in one thread or another, the fundamentals of it was each point in your STR score is worth 3 carry capacity so someone with a 10/+0 STR would have 30 capacity (max STR of 20 would have 60 capacity),

items are divided up into aproximate weight classes of heavy(greatsword, heavy armour), medium(shield, longsword), light(rope, quiver of arrows), and trinket(dagger, potion) with an encumbarance of 8, 5, 2 and 1 respectively, and things like quivers of arrows or rope use the depletion die mechanic to track how long they last before they exhaust their supply/break after use.

 

[Pedantic]

D&D from the beginning quickly had options (usually magical) for getting around mundane resource management in a lot of ways.

Continual light stones obviate torches and lanterns. 5e light cantrip and darkvision do too.

Bags of Holding address a lot of encumbrance limitations.

5e good berry provides a days rations for the party and heals 10 hp as a 1st level spell.

5e rope trick for safe short rest camping. Earlier editions lasted a night's rest to recover spells.

5e money is not a big deal after you get plate mail.

I'm not sure that totally proves that removing resource management is a desirable outcome, so much as removing specific resources from play is a desirable reward. I have fond memories of striving after Rings of Sustenance and Murlynd's Spoons.

 

[CreamCloud0]

1. The idea that you have to track food and drink is there because not every party is going to have a Druid or a Ranger in it. And if either of those classes are in a party, they not might have the Goodberry spell or the Natural Explorer class feature. In the party I am currently playing in, my Bugbear Ranger (Gloom Stalker) is using Deft Explorer instead of Natural Explorer. The problem with Natural Explorer is that it requires you to ask the DM on what kind of terrain exists in the adventure. You can't simply choose a terrain and hope that it exists in the adventure for you to gain any benefit from it. Plus you only gain the benefits when you have been exploring in the wilderness for about an hour. My party also has a Goblin Druid in it, and he doesn't have the Goodberry spell.

3. Considering the number of people who have complained about the 5e Ranger on these forums, I don't think everyone is beating a path to the Ranger's door just so that they don't have to track down their next meal.

Any mention from WoTC on how One D&D is supposedly going to deal with resource management?

part of the issue with that implementation is that i think alot of people who pick those classes/features want to be good at those parts of the game rather than sidestepping it entirely, i don't deny that some people take them so they can ignore that part of the game but it's like picking a rogue who's invested in slight of hand/thieves tools and the DMG says to remove all locked doors+chests and traps as a result because why would you of picked a class that specialises in that area of the game if you didn't want to specifically remove it as an obstacle.

 

[Voadam]

I'm not sure that totally proves that removing resource management is a desirable outcome, so much as removing specific resources from play is a desirable reward. I have fond memories of striving after Rings of Sustenance and Murlynd's Spoons.

I have memories of most every PC archer in 3e/3.5/pathfinder quickly buying a magic quiver to hold enough ammunition not to sweat ordinary arrows. So tracking arrows was mostly in effect a low level thing to be trivially overcome fairly quickly.

How easy it is to overcome these things has varied a lot across editions and individual games. I can remember buying rations for a lot of characters from B/X and AD&D on and never really tracking that type of stuff after character creation. I have been in games where a survival check covered gathering food.

3e was the really big one for resource managing gold and loot and items with the ability to buy and make and sell magic items, a decent wealth per level guide, and the escalating costs for more powerful items and the usefulness of the christmas tree slot items.

 

[Micah Sweet]

D&D from the beginning quickly had options (usually magical) for getting around mundane resource management in a lot of ways.

Continual light stones obviate torches and lanterns. 5e light cantrip and darkvision do too.

Bags of Holding address a lot of encumbrance limitations.

5e good berry provides a days rations for the party and heals 10 hp as a 1st level spell.

5e rope trick for safe short rest camping. Earlier editions lasted a night's rest to recover spells.

5e money is not a big deal after you get plate mail.

In the TSR editions, Continual Light was a 2nd level spell (and probably too powerful at that), Bags of Holding were not easily available to PCs by their own will, and of course all those 5e things didn't exist. WotC has created numerous ways to ignore and/or circumvent resource management that previously weren't present or were much more difficult to implement. A sad state of affairs IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have memories of most every PC archer in 3e/3.5/pathfinder quickly buying a magic quiver to hold enough ammunition not to sweat ordinary arrows. So tracking arrows was mostly in effect a low level thing to be trivially overcome fairly quickly.

How easy it is to overcome these things has varied a lot across editions and individual games. I can remember buying rations for a lot of characters from B/X and AD&D on and never really tracking that type of stuff after character creation. I have been in games where a survival check covered gathering food.

3e was the really big one for resource managing gold and loot and items with the ability to buy and make and sell magic items, a decent wealth per level guide, and the escalating costs for more powerful items and the usefulness of the christmas tree slot items.

The thing was, it depended on whether or not the DM or the players wanted to enforce those rules, not whether or not the rules were there, or could be easily ignored by the players on their own recognizance.

 

[Pedantic]

part of the issue with that implementation is that i think alot of people who pick those classes/features want to be good at those parts of the game rather than sidestepping it entirely, i don't deny that some people take them so they can ignore that part of the game but it's like picking a rogue who's invested in slight of hand/thieves tools and the DMG says to remove all locked doors+chests and traps as a result because why would you of picked a class that specialises in that area of the game if you didn't want to specifically remove it as an obstacle.

That's an interesting line of discussion. I would hold that the reward for being sufficiently good at lockpicking/finding traps is not being stopped by locks and defeating traps, essentially existing in a game state that does not have locked doors or traps. You seem to be suggesting that the point is better achieved by existing at something like a 85%-95% success chance against those sorts of obstacles, so that you consistently have to demonstrate the ability through rolling.

I think this becomes a question about what the point of the game is; is it about overcoming those obstacles in and of themselves, or are those obstacles one point of interaction in dealing with a broader puzzle/challenge? Obviously the design is pretty confused on that point when it comes to class abilities (probably best exemplified by the Ranger) but I think it's reasonable for competency to largely represent removing a class of obstacle altogether.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's an interesting line of discussion. I would hold that the reward for being sufficiently good at lockpicking/finding traps is not being stopped by locks and defeating traps, essentially existing in a game state that does not have locked doors or traps. You seem to be suggesting that the point is better achieved by existing at something like a 85%-95% success chance against those sorts of obstacles, so that you consistently have to demonstrate the ability through rolling.

I think this becomes a question about what the point of the game is; is it about overcoming those obstacles in and of themselves, or are those obstacles one point of interaction in dealing with a broader puzzle/challenge? Obviously the design is pretty confused on that point when it comes to class abilities (probably best exemplified by the Ranger) but I think it's reasonable for competency to largely represent removing a class of obstacle altogether.

I think it would be better, if the goal is to remove a class of obstacle, to literally remove it from your game as opposed to forcing PCs to make significant built choices that remove them. On a table to table basis, of course.