Do you keep track of normal ammunition?

[Cor Azer]

yes. always have. always will.

as well as food, water, and encumbrance.

edit: and light sources

edit2: and iron spikes and feet of rope and candles and means to write(paper, quills, ink) and every other item listed

edit3: including where coins are minted.

Yup, me too...

Well... except the location of the coins were minted (although that is something I'm considering for another campaign).

 

[jgbrowning]

It depends. At very low levels, I'll keep track of every arrow. As the PCs get richer, I'll start keeping track of magical arrows only and assume that the heroes will have enough arrows for the journey and replenish whenever they get to a town.

The exception, of course, is for situations where arrows are actually scarce - maybe the PCs are in hostile territory for an extened amount of time, or they are in a nonhuman land where noone makes arrows.

Pretty much what I do.

joe b.

 

[eris404]

Just wondering if any others take ammo more seriously?

I do, but maybe my character's ammo isn't what you'd call "normal." I play a gun mage in one campaign, and even though his shot isn't magical, it still costs a small fortune. Plus, we play 3.5 rules and he has limited amounts of shot made from special materials (like silver). Part of the fun for me is the slight panic I feel when I realize George is running low on ammunition and the creature ain't dead yet.

 

[Arnwyn]

Absolutely we keep track of ammunition - normal or otherwise.

 

[kamosa]

We don't in my game

I never felt it was realistic to have people mark off their arrows like they are paint balls that are consumed in the using. An arrow is a pretty solid piece of equipment and usually isn't destroyed in the using. So, I don't make my players mark off their arrows when they use them. I assume they recover their arrows after the combat or create new ones during their down time in camp.

Special arrows that explode or do extra damage are treated like one shot items, but I allow the players to recover +1 arrows as long as they hold the ground after the combat is over and make an appropriate search check.

 

[MacMathan]

IMC we do indeed track ammunition. Especially in 3.5 where different material types can matter for DR. Even normal arrows are valuable especially as archers start blazing through 40/minute of combat Hits are destroyed but a half of the misses are reusable.

 

[spectre72]

Just wondering if any others take ammo more seriously?

Yes we do.

In the game I am currently playing in as a Gnome monk 8/Psion 1 we have a character who's sole purpose in life is to deal out massive damage from range.

Combine a Great Bow with the right feats and the 6th Level archer is doing more damage in a single shot than my monk can do from a flurry of blows if they all hit.

Our GM has also ruled that arrows are lost after they are shot, and at 3 shots a round he goes through ammunition quickly..

I had never really been heavily in favor of tracking ammunition until I saw this character in action, but as a GM and a player I have to agree with the GM in this instance that ammunition is important.

Giving him an unlimited supply of arrows while in the wilderness/dungeon would unbalance the campaign IMHO.

Scott

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

I require PC to track ammunition use, but I also provide a loophole:
I make a magical weapon quality available. For 1000gp, they can get a bow enchanted with Devlin's Barb from Monte Cook's BoEM (I don't remember oof-hand which one) The weapon then creates ammo as the string is drawn. The shot disappears shortly after hitting the mark, which makes it nice if you want to avoid having your arrows tracked back to you, but the chief benefit is just never having to track ammo (outside area of antimagic of course) The price is from the formulae in DMG, but is really only justified in the convenience. To run up the same expense on non-magical ammo, you'd have to fire hundreds of arrows per encounter for more than twenty levels of progression.
I call this weapon special quality "Everlasting."

 

[Geoff Watson]

Only when the supply is limited; eg when the PCs were in a demi-plane where extra-dimensional spaces don't work, and can't get at the several thousand spare arrows in the portable hole/bag of holding/quiver of elhonna/etc.

Geoff.

 

[Serpentes]

I require PC to track ammunition use, but I also provide a loophole:
I make a magical weapon quality available. For 1000gp, they can get a bow enchanted with Devlin's Barb from Monte Cook's BoEM (I don't remember oof-hand which one) The weapon then creates ammo as the string is drawn. The shot disappears shortly after hitting the mark, which makes it nice if you want to avoid having your arrows tracked back to you, but the chief benefit is just never having to track ammo (outside area of antimagic of course) The price is from the formulae in DMG, but is really only justified in the convenience. To run up the same expense on non-magical ammo, you'd have to fire hundreds of arrows per encounter for more than twenty levels of progression.
I call this weapon special quality "Everlasting."

I think that's the best case. While I remember playing with my ranger at low levels I've usually fired 7-10 arrows per encounter before all enemies were engaged in meele with alies so I could (as long as they were humanoid) just state to DM that I take their arrows. We keept track of arrows when I couldn't resupply that way - even rolling for misses if they get destroyed, or using spellcaster's Mending to fixt broken ones (mended magic arrow = regular arrow).
On higher levels standard arrows supply is actually way to small.
Standard 4 shots + bow of speed + rapid shot = 6 shots per round at level 16. Add to it multishot feat and one selected attack from those contains 4 arrows instead of 1. That's 9 arrows fired in one round.
I haven't reached epic level with my ranger yet but improved manyshot, great manyshot and swarm of arrows will leave him out of arrows even faster.

While taking with you like 200 arrows might solve that problem another one arises - 200 arrows weight roughly 30 lb. and no Bag of Holding will ever fix that as someone sugested earlier in this thread - removing specific item from BoH is a full-round-action.

My DM did not know about that spell you've mentioned but he allowed me to enchant my +2 Longbow of Speed into +2 Speed Longbow of Thousand Shots (adding it's ability to conjure arrows as special ability +1).