Let's have a quickie! The 50g Houserule.

[Nytmare]

Question sort of related:

Does anyone else here not track the mundane? I don't require my players to track food, ammo, water, where they poop, etc.

I am strictly a "when the game is about limited resources, then we will pay attention to limited resources."

Ammo is probably the only thing on your list that we track somewhat regularly, but only because my current game is in the Underdark, sans wagon, and the character burning through all the ammo is a wimpy little kobold who can't carry a lot. Every time we're anywhere near a place where he can resupply himself however, it's understood that it just happens, along with food, water, and any other basic provisions.

I don't even pay attention to gold on the low end of things and assume that there's as much an overflow of loose coinage coming into the party as is leaving via nights in inns, random meals, and restocked supplies.

If they're broke, not having money will be important. If they don't have access to food, then we start tracking rations. Otherwise, it's not adding anything to the game so we ignore it.

 

[Amaroq]

Yeah, our experience is, by about 5th level, "money" becomes pretty immaterial as a resource, and by Paragon all the more so.

"Ahh, the dragon's hoard .. 57,000gp! Let's go to the inn and celebrate! ... okay, everybody spend 5sp buying drinks .."

So, much as others indicated, there's little point tracking food, daily expenditure, etc - especially as multiple characters can probably forage for food sufficiently in a Nature session.

One of our DMs is a bit of a "foodie", so he loves describing the elegant meal we're served at the Count's ball .. or the terrible gruel we're brought whilst in prison .. and one of the characters is playing the party cook, so we do get pretty specific indications of when (and what) we ate.

We often wind up in situations where our DM describes, say, "You're in an abandoned mine. Pretty much anything you'd expect to find in a mine is available here .. maybe not all of it in working condition, but any mundane item you can justify is here somewhere."

So, sure, somebody picks up a pick, somebody else picks up a lantern, and a third character finds a canary cage with a dead canary in it. We're not going to haul them out and sell them somewhere but they may get noted on character sheets for later ...

... because, as somebody noted earlier, there actually is a moment of fun when staring at one's character sheet and finding just the right piece of equipment.

"If only we had a wheelbarrow ..."

Encumbrance, I'm considering looking at a little more carefully for my next campaign just to prevent the kitchen-sink-character .. but even that only works for a little while before the group finds a portable hole, haversack of holding, wagon of infinite draught horses, airship with an infinite hold, or a fortress of solitude with a Teleportation Circle to get in and out of.

 

[Nytmare]

For encumbrance I used to go with an abstract system, but have switched over to "hey, you leveled up and the Character Builder says that you're cheating."

In ye olden dayes, we played with a "you can carry 1 item for every point of strength you have" and just reduced everything to a mundane item slot system. You can carry 1 potion and it was an item, or you could carry 10 items in 1 bag and it was 1 item, and you could carry a bag on one of your 2 shoulders or in one of your 2 hands, etc, etc.

 

[Starfox]

Not every adventure has to be planned and undertaken like an archeological exploration. One of my thrills when adventuring is having a character equipped like Conan: Weapon, loincloth, sandals, wits, panther-like physique... And that's it.

Only this rarely works well in DnD.

 

[Nytmare]

I can't find panther-like physique on the equipment list. What book was that in?

 

[Gruns]

Here...

I can't find panther-like physique on the equipment list. What book was that in?

Player's Handbook 2, page 83

Later!
Gruns

 

[Gort]

Don't really like this houserule. One of my favourite things about 4e is NOT having to track all of the minutiae of adventuring life, like ammunition, bedrolls and so forth.

Are there really GMs out there who are like, "AHA! But you CAN'T light a fire because you neglected to buy a flint and steel! Everyone DIES!"

 

[Amaroq]

Well, as a GM I have killed a character who couldn't light a fire because he didn't have a flint and steel ...

... but to be fair, he'd jumped off a ship, alone, without his pack, in metal armor, into a barely-above-freezing river, in the middle of winter, in a desolate snow-covered area. He successfully got out of the armor, swam to shore, and crawled out .. but then didn't have any way to dry off, warm up, or light a fire, had no nature skill to rely on, had no divine favor to call upon, and was low enough level that he wasn't "important" in world terms. So it was hardly a "haha!" moment .. and if I recall, I think he ran into a pack of wolves before freezing to death, so had he managed to kill one, he'd have had a pelt to work with.

 

[Rachel]

Don't really like this houserule. One of my favourite things about 4e is NOT having to track all of the minutiae of adventuring life, like ammunition, bedrolls and so forth.

Are there really GMs out there who are like, "AHA! But you CAN'T light a fire because you neglected to buy a flint and steel! Everyone DIES!"

Actually Gort, you might this rule better than most based on that statement. With 100g, you're thinking will be to take that extra gold you have after buying the essentials and buy all sorts of "minutiae" with it which promotes minutiae tracking. Reducing the gold at start-up leads more to "well I didn't buy flint and steel (b/c you had less gold)" and the DM responds "its fine, you can still light a fire" (ie, handwave!).