D&D General Weapons should break left and right

[Lanefan]

Yeah, this is the sort of thing I find annoying - people who want things for “authenticity” when they have no real idea what actually would be authentic. A bit of abstraction helps to cover over lots of ignorance. At least the characters know what they are doing, after all, they are the people who live in that world.

A common-ish fumble result when using bow is that the string snaps; if you don't have spares in your gear list you'll need to jury-rig something or go bow-less for a while.

You have a point, though: if the PCs aren't ready for action - e.g. they're jumped while travelling through a forest - I should probably make the archer types spend a round stringing their bows before they start shooting as they wouldn't leave them strung all the time.

 

[Lanefan]

Counting ammunition, unless it's a very unusual situation is just one of the many, many things I just let slide. Like ... every time a character ends up in the water I don't worry about what just got wet. Is there food still okay? When are they going to strip off their armor, clean and oil it so it doesn't rust and the leather straps are maintained? What, you don't have the kit to do so in your inventory? Guess you're getting rusty, oh and without proper oiling you'll need to replace those boots soon as well. Don't forget to sharpen ... wait ... you don't have a whetstone either? Don't get me started on the spell book and all the scrolls a wizard is carrying.

You're far nicer than I am.

Someone goes swimming unexpectedly, I go through most of that sequence - particularly with things like scrolls and spellbooks.

And as a player, if my character wears armour then "Armour Care Kit" is usually high on my list of carried gear and "Whetstone" is often in there somewhere for the sharp weapons (though as these things can be shared around, we're usually good as long as someone in the party has them).

 

[Lanefan]

Cool. I usually assume crossbows underground, since they have a flatter trajectory, but you'd have the same issues to overcome regarding bolts.

The locals would have home-field advantage perhaps, in that as crossbow bolts can be all metal and some underground species are good at mining-smelting-manufacturing metal it means the locals might have loads of ammo for their crossbows while the PCs have nothing for their long and short bows.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Awesome! Like what, do you think?

Bones, monster quills, I’m pretty sure the duergar use metal ones. No idea what drow use but they must get through a lot of bolts with those hand crossbows.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Bones, monster quills, I’m pretty sure the duergar use metal ones. No idea what drow use but they must get through a lot of bolts with those hand crossbows.

Sounds like good choices for inventive players!

 

[Remathilis]

"My character, who is a Ranger and spent whole life hunting witha bow, would be competent enought to ensure they have enough arrows even if I, regular modern person playing them, did not think of specifying it."

And dismissing this argument either means players are told they cannot play a character smarter than them or start annoyingly specify minutia like declaring they check for traps every step they take.

We used to joke about "Death by Gotcha", a method of DMing where things that would be painfully obvious to a real person but not to a player sitting at a table. The classic example is the green slime dropped on a PCs head because they failed to announce they were looking up at the ceiling. But it can apply to any DM obsessed with Zork levels of pixelb!tching. Wilderness exploration can absolutely fall into this category depending on how much the DM wants to gotcha his players. ("We buy food for the sea voyage." "Ok, but you didn't say you were buying limes. Save vs scurvy.")

 

[Micah Sweet]

We used to joke about "Death by Gotcha", a method of DMing where things that would be painfully obvious to a real person but not to a player sitting at a table. The classic example is the green slime dropped on a PCs head because they failed to announce they were looking up at the ceiling. But it can apply to any DM obsessed with Zork levels of pixelb!tching. Wilderness exploration can absolutely fall into this category depending on how much the DM wants to gotcha his players. ("We buy food for the sea voyage." "Ok, but you didn't say you were buying limes. Save vs scurvy.")

And I'm sure all of those extreme examples are analogous to what we're talking about re: the ability and need to make arrows?

 

[cbwjm]

The player whose PC just spent 4000 g.p. to pick up an Endless Quiver would have a pretty good case for feeling resentful if another player's PC just always had endless ammo anyway because of being too lazy to track it and-or the DM not enforcing ammo limits.

Why would that player buy an endless quiver if ammo limits aren't enforced? Unless they've been on their phone the whole game, if they regularly shoot arrows, they'd know that the DM doesn't enforce ammo tracking.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

So we've moved directly to insults then? My players ask questions if they have specific concerns that aren't addressed in my description, and I answer to the best of my ability to do so and their PCs ability to perceive their surroundings. I trust them to be smart, and they haven't let me down yet.

I have been very deliberate to not call you a douche, but say that this is the kind of action that makes one come off as a douche. I am judgign the action, not the person. The DM I mentioned, I do not consider him a douche either, but I think entire gaming group acted like he was one when he pulled the stunt with armor.

The player whose PC just spent 4000 g.p. to pick up an Endless Quiver would have a pretty good case for feeling resentful if another player's PC just always had endless ammo anyway because of being too lazy to track it and-or the DM not enforcing ammo limits.

Well, maybe we should consider if we even need magic items for every silly little thing. Heroes of legends rarely had magic items galore, usually 1-3 things. Heracles had his mace and lion-skin cloak and speciall arrows he covered in mosnter blood. Thor had Mjolnir and his belt. King Arthur had Excalibur, sword in stone and Excalibur's magic sheat and they all were folded in people's minds into just Excalibur. D&D never could deliver o nthe fantasy with the way magic items are overly common and used to solve all small minutia like tracking arrows. It cheapens the actuall cool magic items.

I don't look at D&D as a collaborative storytelling game and never have. Leave that side of things to the indie games, thanks. To me it's first and foremost a battle for survival (that not every character will win), with any resulting story emerging as a sometimes-pleasant side effect.

Then we fundamentally do not agree on what rpgs are and further discussion between is us pointless because root of our disagreement goes far deeper and beyond current topic.

Keep in mind also that not all characters behave and function like highly-trained Navy SEALs; if they did, IMO the game would be far less fun and entertaining.

I do not think expecting a character who adventurers for a living to say they check for traps is "behaving like highly-trianed Navy SEAL". Maybe by modern Earth standars, but by standars of Fantasy World? Not at all.

 

[Staffan]

We used to joke about "Death by Gotcha", a method of DMing where things that would be painfully obvious to a real person but not to a player sitting at a table. The classic example is the green slime dropped on a PCs head because they failed to announce they were looking up at the ceiling.

It's well established that no-one ever looks up to the ceiling.