D&D 5E Proposed House Rules for Supplies

[James Gasik]

For a game I'm starting next month, I decided to try and make bookkeeping a little less tedious. Curious if I messed up and made an obvious exploit somewhere.


Supplies

Instead of tracking things like inexpensive material components, ammunition, or rations, this campaign will use the following rules.

Short Rest: characters need to have one unit of Supplies to take a Short Rest, but this does not consume that unit. The idea is that you're maybe having a quick meal or snack while you rest. A Short Rest takes 10 minutes to complete. While taking a Short Rest, characters can Use Objects, Hide, Search, or possibly use some Class Features. Other Actions may be taken with DM approval.

Long Rest: characters must consume one unit of Supplies to take a Long Rest. During a Long Rest, you can take most Actions, but are unable to cast leveled Spells.

Interruptions: being interrupted does not necessarily make you unable to complete a Rest. Normally, if you are forced to take Action or damage that would prevent a Rest, the time needed to complete that Rest is simply increased by 5 minutes for a Short Rest or 1 hour for a Long Rest. If, however, the interruption is longer than 10 minutes (Short Rest) or 2 hours (Long Rest), you must start the Rest all over again.

Supplies and Benefits:

Meager Supplies. These are Supplies scrounged from the environment with a Wisdom (Survival) check. This requires 1 hour of time per check. The base DC is 10, though the player may have advantage or disadvantage depending on how plentiful the area. The DC goes up by 1 for each roll made in the same area.

Note: the Natural Explorer ability of Rangers allows them to forage for a full unit of Standard Supplies. The Outlander Background allows you to find an additional unit of Meager Supplies, even if you fail a roll, but no more than 5 bonus Supplies can be found each day. The spell, Create or Destroy Water, does not create a unit of Meager Supplies, but does provide advantage on checks to forage for up to 10 checks.

Meager Supplies count as a half unit of Supplies and will often spoil quickly unless somehow preserved or cooked. You cannot take a Short Rest with Meager Supplies (though you can with two Units of these). You can take a Long Rest, but the benefits are reduced to that of a Short Rest. You do not regain Healing Surges. You do not suffer Exhaustion, but you do not remove a level of Exhaustion.

A Unit of Meager Supplies weighs one pound and without preservation, will spoil within 24 hours.

Note: the spell, Goodberry, in addition to it's healing benefits, counts as 1 unit of Meager Supplies when consumed. Create Food and Water, creates 30 units of Meager Supplies.

Standard Supplies. A Unit of Standard Supplies costs 5 sp and weighs 2 pounds. Standard Supplies allow for a maximum of 2 Short Rests per day. Standard Supplies spoil after 1 month. In desperation, you can divide this unit into two units of Meager Supplies.

Exceptional Supplies. Elven Waybread, Dwarven Mine Rations, Halfling Honey Cakes, and so on. These specially prepared trail rations cost 1 gold and weigh 2 pounds. Exceptional Supplies allow for a maximum of 3 Short Rests per day, and do not spoil for a year. In addition, after consuming a unit of these Supplies, you gain an additional Hit Die with a value of 1d6. You cannot have more than one such additional Hit Die at a given time. Further, you gain a +1 bonus on ranged or spell attack rolls for 24 hours. If need be, you can divide one unit of Exceptional Supplies into two Standard Supplies.


Note on Species

Some species require less food or drink, or don't eat or drink at all. They still require Supplies for things such as ammo or non-costly spell components, but obviously, encounter much less hassle when acquiring them.

If you require reduced water, add 1d4 to rolls made to forage for Meager Supplies. If you require no water, gain advantage on rolls made to forage for such.

If you require reduced food, a unit of Meager Supplies counts as a unit of Standard Supplies for you. If you require no food, a unit of Meager Supplies counts as a unit of Exceptional Supplies for you.

 

[Ondath]

I tried similarly complex rules for my 5e campaign, but if your characters don't like the bookkeeping for regular camp supplies, they provably won't like these rules either.

Have you considered looking at how Level Up does supplies as well? I think it's close to what you're going for, but a bit more streamlined.

 

[James Gasik]

I tried similarly complex rules for my 5e campaign, but if your characters don't like the bookkeeping for regular camp supplies, they provably won't like these rules either.

Have you considered looking at how Level Up does supplies as well? I think it's close to what you're going for, but a bit more streamlined.

Hm. I guess I don't need to spell out all the edge cases, if this seems too complex. Or just have them in my version of the rules.

 

[Shardstone]

I have rules that I use for my upcoming game. I basically split supplies into tiers (No Supplies, Bare Minimum, Well-Supplied, Heavily-Supplied). Each tier changes how resting works and can be used for different things, like getting allies, speeding up rests, getting more out of rests, and so on. You can also do hit-and-run attacks on other faction's supplies, crippling them over time.

 

[James Gasik]

I have rules that I use for my upcoming game. I basically split supplies into tiers (No Supplies, Bare Minimum, Well-Supplied, Heavily-Supplied). Each tier changes how resting works and can be used for different things, like getting allies, speeding up rests, getting more out of rests, and so on. You can also do hit-and-run attacks on other faction's supplies, crippling them over time.

That definitely sounds interesting. What I'm mostly doing here is attempting to consolidate various types of consumables and supporting my solution to short rests, where, instead of them taking an hour and having to figure out how to fit them into an adventure, giving players the ability to take a limited number of short rests per day whenever they want, and cutting down the time requirement.

So with standard supplies, you get 2 short rests per day, each takes 10 minutes. If you want to pay more, you can get 3 short rests per day.

 

[Shardstone]

That definitely sounds interesting. What I'm mostly doing here is attempting to consolidate various types of consumables and supporting my solution to short rests, where, instead of them taking an hour and having to figure out how to fit them into an adventure, giving players the ability to take a limited number of short rests per day whenever they want, and cutting down the time requirement.

So with standard supplies, you get 2 short rests per day, each takes 10 minutes. If you want to pay more, you can get 3 short rests per day.

I dig it! I think tying Supplies to rest, and then making it so you can "spend" supplies for more rests, faster rests, etc etc is the way to go with them. I feel like 5E is a little bit too divorced from hardcore survival mechanics to make super atomic supplies fun to track, but supplies in both your method and my method play better with the intent of the game.

 

[Lanefan]

You're going to, I think, need to detail somewhere exactly what each level of "supplies" represents in terms of actual objects (if other than just food and water); or else you're potentialy opening the door for some exploits where players want to include some suddenly-essential piece of minor equipment (a rope, a crowbar, a parka, etc.) under "supplies", and say they had it with them all along.

Even something as simple as the containers the food and water comes in can become essential equipment in the right situation. Having water implies you also have a waterskin or canteen or something to hold it, for example; highly relevant if, say, you want to scoop some magical liquid from a fountain sometime and take it home with you.

 

[ezo]

For a game I'm starting next month, I decided to try and make bookkeeping a little less tedious.

Out of curiousity, what do they find so tedious about it?

In my groups, unless the PCs are going to an area where food/water is scarce, we don't often worry about supplies as such anymore.

For groups that do worry about it, more often than not IME they grossly underestimate just how much supplies they would actually need, so I just think "why bother?"

 

[James Gasik]

You're going to, I think, need to detail somewhere exactly what each level of "supplies" represents in terms of actual objects (if other than just food and water); or else you're potentialy opening the door for some exploits where players want to include some suddenly-essential piece of minor equipment (a rope, a crowbar, a parka, etc.) under "supplies", and say they had it with them all along.

Even something as simple as the containers the food and water comes in can become essential equipment in the right situation. Having water implies you also have a waterskin or canteen or something to hold it, for example; highly relevant if, say, you want to scoop some magical liquid from a fountain sometime and take it home with you.

If it has a price tag attached to it, it's not supplies (but I know what you're talking about, story below). Supplies will cover rations, water, normal ammunition, and non-costly spell components only.

You do have a point about containers, but D&D has historically been pretty bad about the exact capacity of a given container (and even in cases where they do give numbers, some quick math can result in raised eyebrows).

I'm not worried about it too much, this system is intended to be abstract. If there's ever an instance where the party can acquire, as in your example, magical liquid, I'll burn that bridge when I get there (likely just by deciding in advance how much I want them to have, and have the excess lose it's potency or something, lol).

STORY TIME!

Back in my 2e days, a player of mine didn't want to go through the tedium of buying equipment and asked me if he could just set aside funds for "survival stuff", loosely defined as "everything I need to survive". I figured this was fair, he had ample carry capacity for most things, and I'd just deduct whatever he pulled out of there (this was before D&D had prebuilt gear kits, something I don't think I ever saw in a game before Earthdawn).

Lord knows I'd spent quite some time going over the PHB equipment list purchasing cloak pins for my cloaks and deciding if I wanted soft boots or high hard boots!

Things went fairly well for the first adventure. The second adventure, he produced a potion of healing which I didn't recall him having, but it was 2e- any pre-written adventure I used was usually brimming with swords +1 and potions of healing. I think it was the third adventure where he suddenly had a +1 dagger that I definitely knew he didn't have. I called him out on this and he said "it's in m survival stuff! It's everything I need to survive, and right now I need a magic dagger!"

I can laugh now, but at the time I wasn't amused at all!

 

[James Gasik]

Out of curiousity, what do they find so tedious about it?

In my groups, unless the PCs are going to an area where food/water is scarce, we don't often worry about supplies as such anymore.

For groups that do worry about it, more often than not IME they grossly underestimate just how much supplies they would actually need, so I just think "why bother?"

So our current game is going on hiatus, which is why I'm starting a campaign. 5e is not my system of choice, but it's what they're used to, so....

Anyways, the current DM doesn't seem to care about tracking ammo, rations, water, or even carry capacity. The party has 2 bags of holding (one cursed to give you a level of exhaustion for carrying it around, so we have it stashed in a safe location) and I'm pretty sure we're over capacity.

I track my own rations, crossbow bolts, and Healer's Kit uses and don't really pay it any mind.

I could continue with this laissez faire attitude easily, but three things prompted these rules.

1- our current group has a Ranger, and he has complained that he feels his Natural Explorer ability doesn't really do anything.

2- I wanted to test out limited short rests per day that can be taken without interrupting the flow of the game and thought giving players the option to decide how often they can rest with their wallet would be interesting.

3- I wanted to make exploration and travel matter a little more in this campaign.

4- I wanted a happy medium between tedious bookkeeping and "the heck with it".

The way I see it, the party will likely be able to keep themselves supplied a good 90% of the time without much fuss. Whether or not this becomes an issue when they're a few days out of town remains to be seen. They might also (by accident or design) game their way around the system (but I mean, you can do that already, so whatever). Mostly, I want to see if the group finds this interesting or not.

If they don't, it's not a big deal. It only took me 45 minutes to write it, lol.