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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 8086076" data-attributes="member: 6787503">I unravel this knot differently than how I suspect most do (at least in this thread) and agree with [USER=27761]@Blackrat[/USER]. When taken as a whole, the rules for food are workable as-is, although my reading might not be the most natural. It makes sense to me, so I'll give a try at explaining how it works.First of all, is the item: Rations (1 day), which weighs 2 lb. Notice there aren't any specific rules attached to this item, just that it's 2 lb. of dry foods that a person can presumably be expected to eat in 1 day.Then there are the Food rules. Let's take them one bit at a time. "A character needs one pound of food per day and can make food last longer by subsisting on half rations." So while 1 day of rations is 2 lb., a character only needs 1 lb., a "half ration", to subsist, thereby stretching 1 day of food over 2 days. So far, so good. I also believe this is the "full required amount" of food that must be eaten to remove exhaustion caused by lack of food and water."Eating half a pound of food in a day counts as half a day without food." Okay, so while subsisting on half rations, or 1 lb. of food per day counts as a day with food, cutting that in half and only eating 1/2 lb. results in half a day without food, because 1 lb./day is the minimum you need. I think this makes sense."A character can go without food for a number of days equal to 3 + his or her Constitution modifier (minimum 1). At the end of each day beyond that limit, a character automatically suffers one level of exhaustion. A normal day of eating resets the count of days without food to zero." This is why food is important and how not eating results in exhaustion. Every time you eat less than 1 lb./day, you accrue a day or a half day without food, and these just keep adding up, which results in levels of exhaustion once you exceed your limit. The only way to reset the number of days back to zero is to have "a normal day of eating", but what's that? It isn't defined anywhere, but I would venture that a normal day of eating is the 2 lb./day implied by the item.So we end up with a scheme like this:<table style='width: 100%'><tr><td></td><td>Amount </td><td>Effect </td></tr><tr><td>Eating normally</td><td>2 lb./day </td><td>Resets days without food to zero </td></tr><tr><td>Subsisting</td><td>1 lb./day </td><td>-- </td></tr><tr><td>Half a day without food</td><td>1/2 lb./day </td><td>Accrues half a day without food </td></tr><tr><td>A day without food</td><td><1/2 lb./day </td><td>Accrues a day without food </td></tr></table></blockquote>

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