D&D 5E Military food in dnd

[Hussar]

Not having to do dishes would also be amazing. But now I'm wondering about the impact of goodberry on latrine usage. Not normally something to worry about in a fantasy game, but fascinating to consider in general.

Interesting point really. If your entire day's nutrition comes from a single berry you eat in the morning, it's not like the army is going to be pooping a whole lot. Which in turn is going to have an enormous impact on the sanitation, which, let's be honest, killed FAR more soldiers than spears or arrows ever did. Between having Purify Water and Goodberry, that's going to be the healthiest army in history.

It's one of the things that always rather bugs me about D&D. So many of the settings don't really take the books into account. Not in any real way anyway. As I mentioned before, the Monster Manual would have such an enormous impact on the world. So many of the things in the Monster Manual would have huge impacts.

 

[Krachek]

It's one of the things that always rather bugs me about D&D. So many of the settings don't really take the books into account. Not in any real way anyway. As I mentioned before, the Monster Manual would have such an enormous impact on the world. So many of the things in the Monster Manual would have huge impacts.

I think it is done on purpose.
PCs need to be exceptional and the monsters they face be a mysterious threat.
If the world around them commonly use spells and have countermeasure to face cunning monster such as changeling the players will drive PCs that cast spells the usual way for usual task, and they will defeat monster using the usual way to counter and defeat them.

 

[Hussar]

I think it is done on purpose.
PCs need to be exceptional and the monsters they face be a mysterious threat.
If the world around them commonly use spells and have countermeasure to face cunning monster such as changeling the players will drive PCs that cast spells the usual way for usual task, and they will defeat monster using the usual way to counter and defeat them.

That's not quite what I mean though. I'm talking about the day to day use of various D&D elements that probably should be taken into consideration when world building. Take something as simple as Fire Beetles. They're a 3 foot long beetle that sheds light without heat. Something like that would be hugely useful. Both as a light source and a food source. A city lit with fire beetles would be far safer both from burning down regularly, and also safer for the people living there.

There's so many things in D&D that are only there because it makes adventuring easier but would radically change a society if accessible. As this thread shows - 1 2nd level ranger/20 soldiers (not exactly a hugely difficult thing) means your army needs zero food and 1 cleric per 100 soldiers means you need no water. That would totally rewrite military history.

I know, we just sort of push all that stuff off to the side. Kinda like a functional economy.

 

[Krachek]

That's not quite what I mean though. I'm talking about the day to day use of various D&D elements that probably should be taken into consideration when world building. Take something as simple as Fire Beetles. They're a 3 foot long beetle that sheds light without heat. Something like that would be hugely useful. Both as a light source and a food source. A city lit with fire beetles would be far safer both from burning down regularly, and also safer for the people living there.

There's so many things in D&D that are only there because it makes adventuring easier but would radically change a society if accessible. As this thread shows - 1 2nd level ranger/20 soldiers (not exactly a hugely difficult thing) means your army needs zero food and 1 cleric per 100 soldiers means you need no water. That would totally rewrite military history.

I know, we just sort of push all that stuff off to the side. Kinda like a functional economy.

Again I see the Giant fire beetle traits as a rewards for players and PCs.
Bring back some, tame and reproduce them get famous and rich for that!
It is a path where PCs could shine.
Of course designer could make the move before and commercialized fire beetle world wide before players can do it.

 

[Willie the Duck]

It's one of the things that always rather bugs me about D&D. So many of the settings don't really take the books into account. Not in any real way anyway. As I mentioned before, the Monster Manual would have such an enormous impact on the world. So many of the things in the Monster Manual would have huge impacts.

The game rules have always been rather player-facing -- economies that don't make sense, monsters or magic items that would destroy the world if left to their own devices, occasionally 10' poles that cost more than 10' ladders made out of two 10'poles, etc.

In the case of monsters, I've always gotten the impression that most monsters are a lot rarer* in the world, overall, than the wandering monster charts might imply (the PCs are chaos magnets, or somesuch). That certainly would explain how commoners can travel at all. It also explains how, in a world full of flying monsters and mounts, castles built to repel ground-walking armies can exist mostly as real medieval castles did (usually with a few ballista on top of towers as lip-service). They exist because regular human(oid) armies are common and no one's seen a griffin or manticore in these parts in decades -- until the PCs showed up (and conveniently the PCs are then around to address the problem). *As a corollary, those monsters with really useful qualities like fire beetles probably don't thrive in captivity well, or have unstated upkeep issues like special diets or they constantly chew on some other domestic necessity like cloth or timber or something.

If the game worldbuilding went to the logical conclusion of the monstrous and supernatural products within the world (with the frequency that the PCs see them), a lot of things would have to change that would move the game away from the faux-medieval/renaissance fair aesthetic that a lot of people still want in their game. And that's a fundamental paradox of fantasy games -- you are (generally, I don't want to speak for everyone) trying to create a game world that is 'the late Classical to early Renaissance world, but magic and mythical creatures are real.' Well, if magic and mythical creatures were real, a lot of the traits that define that time period wouldn't still be the case. D&D 3e had (in the forum-ing community) something called 'the Tippyverse,' which was what the world looked like if all the gamebook rules applied universally to the world and the people in the world knew and understood those rules and acted accordingly. It's... certainly interesting, but also not what many people want out of their fantasy gaming.

 

[Hussar]

Oh I 100% agree. I get it.

I just lament it from time to time. For all the talk of “verisimilitude “ and “simulation” one would think that this sort of thing would be top of the list.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Oh I 100% agree. I get it.

I just lament it from time to time. For all the talk of “verisimilitude “ and “simulation” one would think that this sort of thing would be top of the list.

Oh, and to be clear, I 100% get that and agree with it too.

I think, for people who want to focus on “verisimilitude “ and “simulation,” it should be on the top of the list. Top of the list for what they want to answer for their game world (and thus why ideas threads like this can be so useful).

D&D has done this weird thing were it has tried to have it both ways as to whether it is a generic fantasy system or a specific game world*. That means that a lot of questions which demand answers (such as, 'how does the world act in light of <this change from reality>?') that honestly would be world-specific simply aren't answered. Systems like RuneQuest with a fixed world** would have an answer, and systems like World of Darkness where the setting is 'real world modern times, except for...' the answers are generally a huge part of the setting description.
*the implied setting inferred by the rules and contents of the spell list, Monster Manual, magic items, etc. To say nothing of the versions where Mystara/Greyhawk/Points of Light/Forgotten Realms were official/semi-official default settings.
**or at least if you aren't playing in Glorantha, you know to change things to fit.

 

[Hussar]

Oh, and to be clear, I 100% get that and agree with it too.

I think, for people who want to focus on “verisimilitude “ and “simulation,” it should be on the top of the list. Top of the list for what they want to answer for their game world (and thus why ideas threads like this can be so useful).

D&D has done this weird thing were it has tried to have it both ways as to whether it is a generic fantasy system or a specific game world*. That means that a lot of questions which demand answers (such as, 'how does the world act in light of ?') that honestly would be world-specific simply aren't answered. Systems like RuneQuest with a fixed world** would have an answer, and systems like World of Darkness where the setting is 'real world modern times, except for...' the answers are generally a huge part of the setting description.
*the implied setting inferred by the rules and contents of the spell list, Monster Manual, magic items, etc. To say nothing of the versions where Mystara/Greyhawk/Points of Light/Forgotten Realms were official/semi-official default settings.
**or at least if you aren't playing in Glorantha, you know to change things to fit.

And it even goes further than that. In DnD published worlds, they often ignore this stuff. It’s not like Forgotten Realms, with its thousands of pages of material actually touches on this sort of thing in more than the most cursory way.