At-Will Magic and Arrows

[Wystan]

I actually played an archer in one campaign where I bought enough arrows that we had a cart followingus loaded with barrels loaded with arrows... was a running gag for the rest of the campaign....

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Yes archers run out of arrows in every game I played in. Until you have a bag of holding or something else there is a finite amount you can carry because we also do weight carried.

It usually happened when you were in a position not to be able to buy more. Like spending weeks in a dungeon.

We have also ran low on food and water.

If this becomes a problem with at-will spells, you could always bring back material spell components. Say, each casting of "radiant lance" consumes one grain of pure white sand, which is available cheap at any decent-sized, plot-convenient town. That way, the wizard can just keep a tiny bag of sand in his pouch o' components, and it doesn't become an issue until you're wandering through the forest for weeks on end.

 

[Agamon]

I admit, I tend to run human(oid)-ocentric games, where the bad guys leave a bunch of arrows for restocking all the time, thus it's hardly ever an issue. I still ask the players to track them, in case. Water and food can run out, and has on occasion.

 

[El Mahdi]

I and my players find bookeeping to be boring. So we ignore it in favor of the assumption that arrows are recovered from bodies and repaired as necessary in between scenes.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The even better question is if they run out of useful spells. I rarely see Vancian casters run out of spells completely, but they do frequently get to a point where their spells are not useful.

This is an appropriate way of qualifying my question.

IME, even this is fairly rare. Battles often last less than a minute in-game, and I find it very unusual that characters would fight two challenging battles without having a chance to rest and recover spells. My point being that these sorts of limitations are not good game mechanics; ammo or spells/day. YMMV, which is why I ask.

 

[Mercutio01]

This is an appropriate way of qualifying my question.

IME, even this is fairly rare. Battles often last less than a minute in-game, and I find it very unusual that characters would fight two challenging battles without having a chance to rest and recover spells. My point being that these sorts of limitations are not good game mechanics; ammo or spells/day. YMMV, which is why I ask.

My mileage does indeed vary, quite a bit in fact. And I disagree with your "factual" statement that the limitations are bad game mechanics. They both happen in my games with some regularity. And I actually like that.

 

[thewok]

Yes and no. Mundane bows require mundane ammunition. Magic bows create their own when drawn. I don't consider it right that archers are restricted by ammunition when melee types aren't. My philosophy is until everyone has to pay some kind of per-hit upkeep on their weapons, no one has to.

I just don't find that a fun part of the game in D&D. I do find it part of the fun of Shadowrun, though, and I track my ammo, how much ammo I have in mags on my person, how much ammo I have in boxes back home, what type of ammo it is, how many empty mags I have (I collect the empty ones to reuse. They may be only 5 nuyen each, but that adds up) and so on. But that's part of the game. I don't consider ammo tracking an intrinsic part of D&D.

 

[Gorgoroth]

the wok's idea

is golden : magic bows spawn magic ammo, Done!

That way resource management and arrow collection becomes moot after you find a magic bow...and a good reason to keep one around even if it's not your focus. I don't think resource management is necessarily fun...but overcoming annoyances through magic, IS fun. ahhh, finally, a magic bow...never have to stock up on any more 1cp arrows.

If I can still occasionally use an ice arrow in my fire-arrow-spawning magic bow...or even combine fire + ice, that'd be wicked cool.

Let magic guide you! Realism is good, magic is the solution to annoying realism limits. Or if you go the "endless quiver" route, that would be cool too...I guess it would be a fairly common item to find in a group of high level enemy archers (esp the boss would have one "why does he NEVER seem to run out? hmmmm")

 

[Ahnehnois]

My mileage does indeed vary, quite a bit in fact. And I disagree with your "factual" statement that the limitations are bad game mechanics. They both happen in my games with some regularity. And I actually like that.

I think you're misreading my perspective a bit.

My characters don't often run out of resources, but I would be quite happy if they did.

The flaw in the game mechanics is that they are too forgiving. Moderate level casters can memorize/cast so many spells in a day that the restriction is not meaningful enough. Carrying mechanics are sufficiently forgiving and arrows are sufficiently cheap that most characters can get more than they need. And yet people have to keep track of things that aren't going to run out, which is a lot of needless bookkeeping. That's the problem, IME.

If your style causes different outcomes, I hardly begrudge you for that.

 

[Elf Witch]

I'd like to see mechanics in D&D that abstract ammunition, rations, and even money. So the PCs can run out, but they don't have to keep track.

One's interesting and the other's boring.

That said, keeping track of rations could be interesting, if the game had detailed wilderness exploration, dehydration and starvation rules, the problem couldn't be solved easily by magic, and the PCs were on a desert or arctic expedition, or at sea for a long period.

I find keeping count of charges on a wand kind of dull buy necessary to the game and sometimes spell management can be a drag especially at higher levels and if you are dealing with more than one spell list because you have a multiclass character.

So I don't really find counting arrows that much more boring just about the same.

It is different strokes for different folks. If you run out of ammo then you need to improvise and that can be interesting the same as if you run out of spells or any resource you need.

This is one of those things that can be easily adapted to the role playing group.