D&D General The nitty gritty

[Stormonu]

I meant the minutiae: safe location, watches, interruptions at night spoiling rest benefits, etc.

Ah, okay - I do have the party make a Survival check to find a good resting spot, ask about watches and roll for chance encounters during the night that can interrupt a rest. I used to also call for Con checks from those on watch, but I've now set the DCs to about 5 as 10 was too ridiculously hard. I've dinged party members on recovering spells and/or HD if they don't have a bedroll or tried to sleep in armor.

I've had more than one occasion that the party's camp has fallen afoul of something during the night, including ambushes, but its usually been just enough to keep the party mindful about sleeping out in the wilderness.

 

[billd91]

I meant the minutiae: safe location, watches, interruptions at night spoiling rest benefits, etc.

And not being able to take more than 1 long rest in a 24 hour period. I definitely keep a mind on that one.

 

[Deset Gled]

Separating "time" and "rests" would be hard for our group. We absolutely keep track of short and long rests, but are very bad and figuring out how long things actually take. It is very common for us to get lost and have to ask "okay, so what time is it?" type of questions. Likewise, water is just assumed to be part of rations.

Encumbrance was something we had been very sloppy about when we played on paper, but have been much better (if not good) about since switching to VTT.

We would track light sources, but in the last two 5e campaigns I don't think there has been a single character without Darkvision.

 

[overgeeked]

Depends on the game. 5E basically nothing as it’s pointless to do so. Old-School or OSR games, all of it.

 

[Reynard]

We would track light sources, but in the last two 5e campaigns I don't think there has been a single character without Darkvision.

Do you enforce the penalties for darkvision?

 

[Deset Gled]

Do you enforce the penalties for darkvision?

I guess I don't always know? Our DM uses the Roll20 tools to only reveal things as we explore. I trust that they only show the parts of the map that we're supposed to be able to see in dungeons. We trust the small stuff, like there are appropriate light sources in castles, and that DM describes color appropriately. It has, on occasion, come up that one character's darkvision may have a longer/shorter range than someone elses. But that is only discussed where it's meaningful, like being able to spot approaching enemies.

IME, this falls into the category of things that only matter if some members of the group have different abilities than others. If one (or more) members of the party saw the world differently, in a way that mattered to gameplay, we would track it. But when everyone is the same, it means the details are dealt with more loosely (for the sake of the story/game/plot/whatever)

Conversely, things like ammunition, equipment, etc, are always different for each character.

 

[Stormonu]

Depends on the game. 5E basically nothing as it’s pointless to do so. Old-School or OSR games, all of it.

In Ye Olden Days (before 1989), the only thing we tracked torches for was for burning off green slime or as a weapon. Characters died with the original Iron Rations that had been bought at character generation. B/X didn't require spell components, and I glossed over them when I carried over to 1E. I sometimes tracked Encumbrance (in coins), but always forgot to also track the weight of actual coins being carried - I'd only remember when the party got back to town to get their coinage converted and gems cashed in. Ammunition tracking was the player's responsibility and one day I got "caught" flat-footed when a player asked me if I was tracking the orc mob's ammunition and realized I hadn't been (that was also when I found out the party archer had 5 quivers, supplementing replacements from the enemies he'd downed).

When 2E came along, I started tracking it all as part of my new edition learning. Six months later, I stopped, wasn't worth it.

We did track who had wine/beer in their wineskins, though.

 

[overgeeked]

In Ye Olden Days (before 1989), the only thing we tracked torches for was for burning off green slime or as a weapon. Characters died with the original Iron Rations that had been bought at character generation. B/X didn't require spell components, and I glossed over them when I carried over to 1E. I sometimes tracked Encumbrance (in coins), but always forgot to also track the weight of actual coins being carried - I'd only remember when the party got back to town to get their coinage converted and gems cashed in. Ammunition tracking was the player's responsibility and one day I got "caught" flat-footed when a player asked me if I was tracking the orc mob's ammunition and realized I hadn't been (that was also when I found out the party archer had 5 quivers, supplementing replacements from the enemies he'd downed).

When 2E came along, I started tracking it all as part of my new edition learning. Six months later, I stopped, wasn't worth it.

We did track who had wine/beer in their wineskins, though.

Yeah. It really was the Wild West of RPGs back in the 80s. We mixed and matched things, too. It was so much fun.

 

[Reynard]

I guess I don't always know? Our DM uses the Roll20 tools to only reveal things as we explore. I trust that they only show the parts of the map that we're supposed to be able to see in dungeons. We trust the small stuff, like there are appropriate light sources in castles, and that DM describes color appropriately. It has, on occasion, come up that one character's darkvision may have a longer/shorter range than someone elses. But that is only discussed where it's meaningful, like being able to spot approaching enemies.

IME, this falls into the category of things that only matter if some members of the group have different abilities than others. If one (or more) members of the party saw the world differently, in a way that mattered to gameplay, we would track it. But when everyone is the same, it means the details are dealt with more loosely (for the sake of the story/game/plot/whatever)

Conversely, things like ammunition, equipment, etc, are always different for each character.

I meant the disadvantage on perception rolls and attacks. If you guys have darkvision but no light sources, you aren't going to be very effective at dungeon delving.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

We track rests, time (loosely) and encumbrance since D&D beyond already does that. I find encumbrance is essentially a non-issue since 5E is absurdly generous with carrying capacity. The only time in our current game it's ever been an issue for is for the 6 strength pixie when she was trying to drag a dying character out of fire.

I do track special ammunition (fire arrows, ricochet rounds, etc), potions, scrolls, and other magic/alchemical consumables.