This is a game where PCs go toe-to-toe with gimongous ancient dragons and demon lords. A human and a halfling are both effectively insect-sized to them, like a deerfly and a mosquito. I'm really not worried about PCs wrestling anorexic ogres.
So your more realistic game is one that ended with such vide-game-esque design as to create a source of endless water that doesn't do anything water does?
You are I assume talking about Supply? Look, I would absolutely love to use a more realistic method to handle survival, with food and water being separately tracked and handled realistically. But it is nigh impossible to get players to buy into something which is functionally a straight negative from their point of view, no matter how much I like it or would be fine with as a player myself. So I accept Supply as a necessary abstraction so I can actually have exploration and travel rules at all.
No, I mean how A5E version of decanter of endless water somehow produces water that cannot be used in any way water can except the few ways listed because it would "trivialize survival", effectively turning it into item operating on video game logic. So much for realism.
Ok, fair enough. I actually haven't memorized the descriptions of every magic item in A5e, so I was unaware of that. Even so, I hardly think one wonky magic item implies a lack of interest in realism generally.
Wait, you can't drink from the decanter in A5e?
I would probably change that back to fresh or salt water rather than undrinkable if I was playing A5e. Otherwise, seems like a pretty disappointing item to get.
Until you want to put out a fire.
I kind of feel like that doesn't come up often enough that I'd ever feel happy to find a decanter of endless undrinkable water.
