D&D (2024) What type of ranger would your prefer for 2024?

[Vaalingrade]

usually it's ignored, but some session(s) you end up in a desert, arctic, trapped in dungeon.
and it last's only few minutes every adventuring day.
it's additional way to attrition parties resources.

Yup, there's the problem.

 

[James Gasik]

A friend of mine once came up with a complicated "resource" system for this game he was running, which took place in an Arabian-inspired setting with a large desert. You would have to make skill checks or purchase resources which would be expended on your journey. He made allowances for spellcasters, allowing them to convert spell slots into stockpiled resource points, figuring that was the best way to translate "endure elements" or "goodberry" into his system. The Druid (with help from the Cleric) destroyed this system utterly. The Druid's Survival was high enough that they often critically succeeded and provided enough Resources for the day. If they failed to do so, they could expend a spell slot or two to make up the difference. Since not every day had encounters, the casters were able to convert spell slots into Resource points. We generally left the desert better supplied than when we entered it, and that's when the casters saw a note in the DM's rules for "selling excess Resources".

After awhile the DM started wondering why we had so much gold to work with, at which point the Druid's player produced his spreadsheet, tracking Resources gained and Resources sold. Over the course of seven sessions, the two casters had generated a couple of thousand gold pieces while making sure the party never suffered in the wilds.

I should point out that this wasn't just their doing alone; when the DM told us his pitch for a setting, everyone made sure to have Survival trained for their characters, and one player even chose a race that required less water to survive that the DM had made!

The system was scrapped and the campaign ended two sessions later; the DM had apparently thought we'd make a bunch of clueless scrubs, spending much of our time trying to not die in the desert and was unprepared for a party of five survival experts and two spellcasters.

TLDR; making survival rules that people want to engage with is harder than one might suppose. Never underestimate a players natural desire to optimize any aspect of play. If you tell an archer that he can make arrows with a skill check, expect that player to suddenly become the world's best fletcher, and never need to track arrows again!

The only way you can make tracking resources viable in a game is if you make the task so difficult that one has to optimize, and even then, players will do it. It just makes logical sense to do so ("If X happens my character dies, so I better do what I can to prevent X").

 

[Emberashh]

To be fair, I also hate spell components, including for the same reason that I hate tracking arrows, torches, rations, and encumbrance.

When a player wants to create a magic item, I sometimes send them on a quest to acquire unusual ingredients. But they are never random. Most of the stuff, like wood or metal, or artisan equipment, they can purchase.

Well thats the fun part, spell components are only function of doing really esoteric stuff with spell creation. You don't need them to Cast.

And other trackables are things where they can be streamlined without disinclision, and incentivized to further sweeten the deal.

Trading having to occasionally tick off a used Arrow for regularly getting bonuses for rolling high is a good trade imo, and it feels great in practice, as the boons are tracked individually while the losses are just one and done; you see a 1 in your pile of dice, you make a tick mark and you're done.

In other words, adding up bonuses is fun. Adding up losses sucks. Abstract the latter and set it so it doesn't always happen (this is fantasy, we can allow for arrows to not always be running out, and can even rationalize an automatic gathering to explain the non-losses when they happen), and go full-tilt into the former.

 

[Yaarel]

Well thats the fun part, spell components are only function of doing really esoteric stuff with spell creation. You don't need them to Cast.

And other trackables are things where they can be streamlined without disinclision, and incentivized to further sweeten the deal.

Trading having to occasionally tick off a used Arrow for regularly getting bonuses for rolling high is a good trade imo, and it feels great in practice, as the boons are tracked individually while the losses are just one and done; you see a 1 in your pile of dice, you make a tick mark and you're done.

In other words, adding up bonuses is fun. Adding up losses sucks. Abstract the latter and set it so it doesn't always happen (this is fantasy, we can allow for arrows to not always be running out, and can even rationalize an automatic gathering to explain the non-losses when they happen), and go full-tilt into the former.

I know some players are into this kind of thing. The Shadowdark game makes torch counting a central selling point of the setting (to my eyerolling).

But I suspect the vast majority of players find micro-accounting to be less than "fun".

 

[Reef]

This all reminds me…does anyone remember The Wilderness Survival Guide? Man, I wanted that book so bad. And when I finally got it, I loved it. Rules for weather, terrain, temperature, and how it all would affect travel and combat. Rules for foraging and hunting in different terrains, and even for how much food and water a halfling needed versus a half-orc. It was glorious, and I immediately implemented all of it.

It lasted all of about two sessions before we realized it was nothing but a huge amount of book keeping, and half the players were bored silly every time it came up. We quickly went back to “You stock up on rations on your way out of town and a day later reach the dungeon”.

Anyway, my point being, that this sort of thing has been tried before, and I’m pretty sure that if it had been more popular with the general community than it was with my group, it wouldn’t have disappeared into the mists of time.

 

[Emberashh]

I know sum players are into this kind of thing.

But I suspect the vast majority of players find micro-accounting to be less than "fun".

Its not accounting.

 

[Reef]

Its not accounting.

Not to you perhaps, but it’s does appear that some of us feel it is.

 

[Yaarel]

Its not accounting.

And other trackables are things where they can be streamlined without disinclision, and incentivized to further sweeten the deal.

Trading having to occasionally tick off a used Arrow for regularly getting bonuses for rolling high is a good trade imo, and it feels great in practice, as the boons are tracked individually while the losses are just one and done; you see a 1 in your pile of dice, you make a tick mark and you're done.

In other words, adding up bonuses is fun. Adding up losses sucks. Abstract the latter and set it so it doesn't always happen (this is fantasy, we can allow for arrows to not always be running out, and can even rationalize an automatic gathering to explain the non-losses when they happen), and go full-tilt into the former.

Sounds like accounting.

 

[Emberashh]

Not to you perhaps, but it’s does appear that some of us feel it is.

What you and they have an issue with is that what you're used to with these sorts of mechanics is them being arbitrary numbers you track because the system tells you to, and not because they actually matter to anything in the system.

And thats fine. Arbitrary resources that have no bearing on anything else in the game isn't good design.

That isn't what my game does.

 

[Emberashh]

If the problem was "accounting" then surely your opinion is to abstract things like health, slots, etc out of the game entirely.

If it isn't, then the reason why you want those things retained is the same thing Im telling you sets the mechanics in my game apart.

They matter.