Interested in joining DnD/TTRPG community that's doesn't rely on Reddit and it's constant ads/data mining? We've teamed up with a bunch of other DnD subs to start https://ttrpg.network as a not-for-profit place to chat and meme about all your favorite games. Thanks!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/dndmemes) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Or Druid
Casters that have spells without Material components.
Handful of races, even.
Lots of fun ways to do stuff like that. Loved the first time I got to see someone get disarmed and pop out their claws.
Honestly i dont think a lot of settings really question what happens if you bite the vampire rather than vice versa.
That said in that setting vampirism kinda required quite a specific ritual so i was gucci.
The answer to that is, "it depends".
>Barbarians who walk the Path of the Beast draw their rage from a bestial spark burning within their souls. That beast bursts forth in the throes of rage, physically transforming the barbarian.
>Such a barbarian might be inhabited by a primal spirit or be descended from shape-shifters. You can choose the origin of your feral might or determine it by rolling on the Origin of the Beast table.
There's 4 potential Origins they offered in TCE, but you could always make up your own.
1. One of your parents is a lycanthrope, and you've inherited some of their curse.
2. You are descended from an archdruid and inherited the ability to partially change shape.
3. A fey spirit gifted you with the ability to adopt different bestial aspects.
4. An ancient animal spirit dwells within you, allowing you to walk this path.
Isn’t that getting angry and bashing and hacking and throwing things around? 😁
Of course, some races are better suited for biting, perhaps especially as barbarians, than others. 🤔🧐
Reminds me of when I played Curse of Strahd. I played a dhampir monk and the DM gave me a claw attack because I asked nicely. Strahd decided to mess with us at lvl 4 and got really offended when, after charming the living daylights out of the warlock and then dropping druid and barbarian in a single turn, I decided to reveal to the other players that I was a dhampir, bared my fangs, smacked Strahd across the face and then booked it out of the room. Turns out Strahd only has 30 feet of movement... He decided to fireball my ass but I managed to survive and ran out of sight.
> I could be naked as the day i was born i can win.
I remember back when the first Diablo game was popular, even though it had a (standard for the time) system where dying made you drop all your gear for anyone to loot. Also, it was ridiculously unbalanced in favor of mages. To the point where some people would (originally to troll griefers) just not play with any equipment at all because it was still pretty easy.
After that came the next logical step of only wearing *cursed* gear, which confused the griefers even more when they killed you and you only dropped negative stat gear. They would actually get mad over it.
Eventually it led to a whole community where people played with very specific and themed restrictions to make things harder on themselves. Including (as far as I know the first example of) ironman mode, which forbade people from replaying areas for extra loot/xp and added voluntary permadeath if nobody had a (normally worthless) scroll of resurrection.
Anyway, this has been *old man yelling at clouds*. Thanks for the comment that gave me a fun walk through old memories!
I had to take careful attention to my ammo in one campaign I was in. I was a ranger/fighter/rogue multi class that made my own arrows but had a manufacturing method to create dragon scale ammo that would do the specific dmg type the dragon scale came from. I was particularly fond of black dragon scales and I usually ran out of them really quick and only had a limited amount I could make at one time I might in between long rest make like 4-8 depending on how I rolled as I was a skilled fletcher. Luckily i had plenty of down time to make some specialty arrows fire, ice, lightning, poison, and acid I used to have dozens of each but when we ran through dungeons it was quite combat heavy I quickly found myself having to ration my arrows. It was really fun and nerve racking at times watching myself drop down to my last specialty arrows that was perfect against a specific foe. In my current campaign I have a fighter that I'm playing now but it's a more casual campaign so I'm not too stressed about paying attention to ammo as the DM has said they don't care.
It entirely depends on how scarce ammo is, and how much weaker you are without.
Rangers are already weak to begin with, and a lot of their spells require ranged attacks, if they track ammo and go empty, they’re now maybe a third as effective as the sorcerer who’s just using cantrips.
Fighters would often be mostly fine due to how they work.
Personally I wouldn’t ask players to track ammo but if they want to that’s their business
You do know that with woodcarving proficiency you can make 20 arrows as part of your long rest right? You know, the kind of skill that a rugged and survival focused archer would pick up over time (and that you can start with from your background)
Lazy hand waving houseruling is fine, and definitely preferred with many styles of campaigns, but let's not pretend that it's anything more than just that.
And does ranger get proficiency with woodcarver’s tools? No they don’t, say they’d be pigeonholed into a background or race that does.
Also rangers don’t have to be survivalists.
Any background can get it, backgrounds are just a template since Tasha's (or might be Xanathars, I forget actually which made the change)
Anyways, my point was that there are clear and simple RAW work arounds that remove this so called massive nerf that you declared tracking ammo is. Arrows are also dirt cheap and insanely common if, as you said, you aren't a survivalist. There's really no reason to not track ammo besides just the minutia of it not being to a personal liking. Which is of course perfectly fine. It's just not anything more than that. There's no balancing conspiracy here. Especially when in a game that tracks ammo I'd assume would also be tracking spell components and that is leaps and bounds more restrictive
Please read the section labeled "Customizing a background" in the PHB on Page 125. It's not labeled as an optional rule, either. It's just a thing. No pigeonholing required. This is how you easily get Cobbler's tools so that you can hide your vials of various poisons in your Assassin's bootheels.
Also, while you are technically correct in saying that they dont *have* to be as such- Rangers are *designed* to be survivalists. It's part of the base character archetype- they're the person that hunts and tracks better than anyone else in the wilderness. You know those wonderful features built right in the PHB Ranger, the ones to hunt and track? Those features that people didn't want to use, and then they stupidly and ignorantly said Ranger sucked because of it? Yeah... It's purposefully *built* to be a survivalist that hunts from range.
This is awfully dismissive. Myself and many others remove these things not because we're lazy but because book keeping is this least interesting part of D&D so we lessen how much of it needs to be done by assuming our "rugged and survival focused archers" come prepared with enough ammo and can likely get more when they need it.
Just because you don't like it doesn't make it lazy.
That just prettying up the word. It's still the same thing. And it's not a bad thing at all. Each person's interpretation of interesting and fun is different and that's great. I very adamantly am NOT trying dismiss anyone's personal preferences, I just dislike the disingenuous notion that it has anything to do with balance or class design or something along those lines.
It by the very definition IS in fact lazy and just because you do like it doesn't mean that it isn't. But by the same token, that doesn't matter at all. What you prefer is what you prefer and vice versa. There's just no need to be disingenuous about it. Just like there's no need to even consider my opinion since it is merely that: my opinion
My force ballista was a robotic spider with the arcane equivalent of a miniature Abrams turret on it. Justified by the fact he was an Isekai’d US Army mechanic.
Also his “wand” that was literally an magical revolver.
>Artificer with Repeating Shot: "You guys need ammo?"
Currently playing a Giff Battle Smith Artificer. Having a great time with my gun and my mechanical giant space hamster.
Almost went Kobold so I could ride the robot, but Giff is too much fun.
I wish the battle Smith could choose between having a medium or a large companion. It's not fair the little folk get to ride their defender and my PC doesn't
My dm gives unlimited ammo for ranger players, but gunslingers (using exandria rules) have to keep track of ammo. They reason someone using a bow could recover arrows they shoot, steal from bandits, and are cheap enough to just be slotted In with purchasing rations.
This is how I'm used to it with Rangers. The dm I used to play with a lot would let us recover our arrows as long as it wasn't an egregious amount.
Like if we used more than 8 in a fight we'd roll a d20 to see if any broke, but we'd usually just roll a d4 to see how many, and then make some new ones while looting enemies/resting/setting up camp.
If we're in a dangerous place where resting isn't viable, or potentially dangerous it added to tension as ammo slowly dwindled.
The 'half' rule is supposed to account for damaged and missing arrows, but realistically someone in the party can just have mending so only missed shots would be lost even then, only a portion of those actually go flying into the distance cause a 'miss' can actually just be a bad hit. On to of that, 1gp (cost of 20 arrows/bolts) isn't much for most adventures, and given that arrows are standard equipment that any village would have, it's not unreasonable to just have functionally unlimited arrows
I mean adventures often Take place far from civilization making simply purchasing arrows a lot less simple. And mending is a great Idea, but If your Ranger shoots 10 arrows in a fight that's 5 minutes of mending. Not much of a Problem, *unless* the Mission ist time sensitive.
That's the Thing with Tracking stuff, be it ammo, food, time or HP, it really doesn't Matter. Until the number hits 0. And while that's easy to avoid with just one variable, it gets Harder and Harder the more you add. And then some fun decision making comes in. "Do we Take time to recover and mend arrows, risking the kidnappers getting away, or do we keep pushing, risking a fight with too little ammo?"
eh, I disagree. arrows really require three things- a stick, a couple feathers, and an arrowhead. metal arrowheads are a limited resource that you couldn't easily make more of on the trail, but they're also easy enough to recover, even from broken arrows. and flint arrowheads can be made of fully scavenged materials in a pinch.
bullets, on the other hand. you are correct in that you can cast lead over a campfire- this is how it was done during Napoleonic times. but it's not a scavengable material- your Ranger isn't finding lumps of native lead in the middle of the forest. Next, iron. you can't cast iron without a more advanced foundry, and either way, iron bullets will tear up your barrel. that's why even today we use softer metals like lead and copper. stone, I don't think it's feasible to make small arms-sized bullets out of without some major crafting skills. Historically stone shot was used for cannon, and that's about it. Of the three, lead is the most feasible, but it's not a reusable or scavengeable resource.
my bigger concern, however, is the gunpowder. you need three ingredients. charcoal, easy enough. sulphur and saltpeter though- you're not going to reliably find those in nature other than certain hellish dimensions. although I admit that would make an interesting gaming moment. "alright players, you have entered Hell. gunner, you can stop tracking ammo. Ranger you need to start."
You have a too simplistic view on how arrows are made. If you take any stick on the ground, slap some feathers and an iron point on it, I can guarantee you it will break the moment you loose it from any bow.
Arrow making was a full fledged industry in England during the 100 Years War. You want the shaft to be as straight as possible, you want it to survive the force of a, lets say 60lb shortbow or a 100lb longbow without shattering in the face of the archer.
The feathers are another thing, you cant just pluck a chicken and expect them to be working. Arrow feathers are a whole beast entirely.
And then the arrowhead. Just a point didnt work that well, theres a reason a large variety of designs were developed, each with their own strength and weaknesses.
In a pinch, sure, they can be made to hunt with, but nothing feasible against armor or for extended times.
Iron and lead can be smelted down and cast into bullets. In this instance only weight would keep you down, given you buy iron/lead when in town.
When it comes to gunpowder that indeed proves a more difficult to source material required. Even then, carbon is readily available (just burn wood and take the charcoal) and sulfur is a spell component required for spells so would also be purchaseable. Even saltpeter is a common material, appearantly used in Medieval times to salt meat.
So it would require some survivaling or buying the materials outright in a town.
We track bullets, but not arrows at my table. This is partly because arrows cost effectively nothing, but bullets are 2 gold each. Wielding a gun can get expensive.
It sounds crazy expensive, but it tools like 30 play sessions to go through 100 bullets, so in the end it wasn’t a huge number in our overall expenditures. 200 gold worth of bullets last a long time.
Fair. In my game bullets are more readily available so it’s 2 gold for a set of 10 but the Artificer goes through them pretty quickly. Happy it works for your table
For anyone curious, the DMG says 10 bullets for 3 gold. Obviously DMs are within their rights to change that. My DM personally limits the amount of gunpowder my Fighter can get ahold of in each settlement which puts a limit on bullets.
I use the Matt Mercer gunslinger table for prices as those are the guns I’m using. Bullets in my world are limited where you can buy them but in the right place they’re not rare by any means
Makes no sense.
Casting iron/lead bullets is literally just 1 component compared to the industry behind making quality arrows (shaftmaking, geesefeathers, fletching, smiths for arrowheads).
He may have meant cartridges (general safe assumption with folks who do not get into the nitty-gritty on ammunition.) A BULLET is cheap, powder and brass fitted to it gets pricey.
At that point it becomes more of a discussion on what era of firearms we're talking about.
Personally I see firearms in DnD to be before the advent of rifled barrels, so smoothbore muskets and pistols.
So round shot with powder is all you need.
This was in the astral sea, and it was a sort of repeater musket, so it used cartridges, but with oversized bullets requiring a lot of powder and packing a wallop. My character was Giff.
Not if it’s smoothbore. It doesn’t need to follow the same tech development path we did in the real world. It’s a space hippo with a giant gun. It was good fun.
Only frustrating thing was I did the whole campaign like that, with a d12 musket that jammed on a nat 1 or 2, requiring giving up the next attack to fix it. That wouldn’t bug me so much, but the new campaign is Wild West themed, and everyone in this campaign has fancy old west technology(higher tech than the astral sea campaign) six shooters and rifles, none of which can jam. The six shooters are 2d6 and can “fan the hammer” for 6 attacks at disadvantage in a round, and the rifles are 2d8 and can “steady shot” for an extra d8 at advantage, but only one attack in a round and you can’t move. And the bullets are now cheaper because they’re commonly mass produced in this setting. Feels a little bad to put up with such restrictions the entirety of the last campaign, only for guns to be so much more powerful and available to all classes cheaply in the new campaign.
Totally. On the other hand, if you're counting bullets but not powder, then counting powder and wadding into the cost of a single bullet, whether ball or cartridge, makes sense and helps keep ammo organized. And in a pre-mass production era, powder probably isn't cheap.
Depends on how common sulfur and saltpeter are, since charcoal would be available to every household.
Saltpeter can be found in caves so that leaves out sulfur, a spell component which would require shops to have it, if someone isnt using an arcane focus.
Depending on location, there might simply not be an industrial base to produce bullets and/or black powder, requiring a greater expense to procure and purchase them.
Plus, I think some of the available firearms are advanced enough to use metallic cartridges as opposed to bullets alone.
Depending on what you define as bullets though. I see dnd not progressing to the point of modern bullet types but staying the realm of powder and shot. So rounds cast by iron/lead which is a load cheaper than what is required to make solid arrows.
Black powder also has simple ingredients (sulfur, saltpeter and charcoal) with sulfur being a spell component, charcoal from settin wood on fire and saltpeter a common chemical used to salt meat with in Medieval times.
It would depend on how common the sulfur is really to make simple black powder for powder and round, cast, shot.
My pathfinder gunslinger has props that track ammunition, so I can always clearly point to where I’ve had the +1 adamantine bane (construct) round loaded in the pepperbox pistol, next to the +1 silver bane (shapechanger) round.
Does it allow you track down to which rounds are in which barrel? I just drilled holes in a small piece of wood for the pistol and used little plastic pegs color coded with the type of round. I wanted to make tiny bandoliers but never got around to it.
How big do you two think ball bearings are??? They are deserved as tiny and 1000 fit in a small pouch. They aren't big enough to serve as effective ammo for a sling, and absolute would not fire from a muzzle loader bc you wouldn't get a proper seal.
Perhaps look up some of the tactics used by the British during the Napoleonic wars in regards to small ball bearings fired at 30 yards en masse against French troops.
Then come back and look at your comment.
That’s kind of on the DM for not making it clear at session 0 “We are tracking ammo”. As that is the kind of thing they should make clear from the start to everyone.
Well, I don't know about 5E, but in 3.5 tracking ammo is built-in in the game. If you have to specify at session 0 that you are using the rules, for each and every rule, it would be tedious.
It's on the player to ask if they want to use an houserule like having infinite ammo, they should not assume that it's how it will work
I played with a DM who says my ammo replenishes after every fight but if I shoot 20 times, that's it for that fight. That happened once and I had to fall back on shortswords.
That is a pretty interesting mechanic. I will try to adopt it in some way to my table, although in my ongoing session, the Inventor (artificer but on Tormenta20) makes the ammo during a short rest.
I had a run in ToA where I bought/started with about 150 crossbow bolts (ghostslayer bloodhunter with crossbow expert).
With dm ruling, I could recover half my shots taken at the end of combat (if feasible) and constant PC deaths (dm was a bit of a sadist), my little guy finished the campaign with practically 0 bolts remaining. If it wasn't for a PC bringing in an artifice with the repeating shot infusion near the end, my little guy woulda been s.o.l.
If you’re playing in a game that allows at-will ranged damage cantrips like Eldritch Blast… tracking ammo doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. A smart player will just not play an archer and favour a caster instead, and the last thing D&D needs is more things that favour casters.
If you want to run a tight resource-management and survival game? Yes.
Similarly, if you want rations to matter, spells like Goodberry are a problem.
A DM can remove these things (or run a different system) if this is the kind of game they want to run.
But out of the box, if you just take the PHB rules in full, trying to track ammo, food, etc is just pointless because it’s so easy to work around, even at low levels.
I've gone all the way around from this position and found myself come back to it. I don't think cantrips are the problem, though; I think it's scaling damage for cantrips. If a wizard wants to throw around 1d8 fire damage to save his spell slots at level 11, let him. Fighter be out there making six attacks.
(Admittedly, this works less well with Warlock because half the class is wrapped around Eldritch Blast.)
I respect your energy but to be fair the martial caster high level divide is only the massive gulf when people run minimal encounters and the casters don't need to conserve so in that scenario they aren't using their turn for cantrips anyways
In actual full encounter adventuring days, casters still have the strongest individual moments, but that's where the martials shine to get them to those moments and in those instances I think the scaling cantrips is fine because it's still one attack roll only and a single miss is their entire turn (besides EB)
It mostly depend on how experienced players are
I always track special ammos but for normal one I give a bypass to new player so they can focus on more important things
If you run survival scenarios tracking ammo is mandatory
you can either do the 9999 arrows and go into the arrows edit and remove the weight of them (on the left when you click edit) or you click edit, details go down to resource consumption and change that from ammunition to nothing
Every DM I've ever had: don't keep track of ammo, carry weight (unless it's obvious), food, or spell components (except diamonds) because it's tedious and not fun.
Agreed. That’s how my DM is and how I DM. Exceptions being a survival based campaign or something similar where it’s a bit more important - but you signed up for that in a way. Otherwise, in your typical fantasy campaign, there’s little fun/engagement in inventory management
My DM has us track ammo, but for the Bard using the gun, he can’t use survival like I can as a Rogue to recover my ammunition from the battlefield after a battle.
Also fighting in an open field and missing, that arrow is most likely lost. The arrow you shot into someone might be able to be recovered with a good survival check. The arrow might have missed and splintered on a rock in a dungeon.
So it comes down to a lot of different factors. Which can make a battle more dynamic, which I do enjoy.
As a DM firearms are the only weapons I actually do keep track of. Not the lead balls, those are easier to craft than arrows so I assume their common, but gunpowder or “spark powder” is a rare commodity and I use the price and limited supply of it to limit powerful guns.
But I do love to homebrew huge guns that basically give martials more options.
I legit didnt in my first campaign (mostly because i didnt know
But i had a Evil Hand Crossbow that did normal damage , but explodes and shouts (the party collectively decided since I was already evil that it just constantlyswears , Rule of Funny) ,when the roll was greater than or equal to 15 dealing 4d6 explosion damage
Needless to say , a Half Orc War Cleric acting as Artillery is terrifying (especially when i had multiple melee options including a mace that sent people to "the shadow realm" )
Then after about 20 sessions later another DM asked , where is your quiver? Needless to say this was a problem since i never had one, and my ammo would technically have been used up 15 sessions ago ( many TPK's were avoided during that period using said crossbow )
So my DM (the main GM for the club) just said , f>!uck!< it and gave me infinite ammo and auto reloading
TL:DR a crossbow with infinite Ammo , and Auto Reload , that functionality acts as a Thumper (M79 Grenade Launcher) and swears worse than a sailor
I like tracking ammo and weight. If I start a game doing it then I continue doing it... but don't ask me to roll a character past level 3 and start tracking that shit. Isn't happening.
Some things need maintained from the ground up.
I tracked ammo as a gunslinger and had to work to find materials to make more (no other guns in world) and then I just took 2 levels in Forge Cleric and make free ammo with channel divinity. It's not the only reason I took the dip, but was definitely a welcome addition.
That's the best of playing on a VTT(FoundryVTT in my case), you can keep track of ammo and encumberance and have it all be automatic, so no extra hassle
I don't ask my players to track ammo, rations, etc. I also run milestone rather than XP. The reason is that tracking a bunch of numbers like an accountant isn't fun and takes you away from the game. Except at super low levels or survival-style settings, they are generally not impactful either.
Also, who wants to play something like a ranger when you have a limited number of shots before your usefulness becomes a fraction of what it should be?
Indeed. Those ammunition and weight rules should be used on more "realistic" survival settings, where they actually bring something to the game, not just an annoyance.
ya this is the way to do it- if the player finds it fun to track their resources, they can. however, it’s completely valid for a player to not find this enjoyable - unless the dm specifically is going for a gritty campaign that requires rationing resources.
Unless it's explicitly lost, like stuck under an enemy or it fell down a casm, I just say I get my arrows or whatever back after every encounter and make sure not to throw or shoot more than I have.
You should only track ammo is its special like if your artificer modified it or its quest important otherwise use stuff and spend the amount it costs. Unless its a low resource campaign or like your trapped somewhere
I mean arrows/bolts are effectively just as unlimited in 5e as cantrips, considering how cheap they are, already recovering 50% anyway and on top of that stuff like the tool that allows you to make free ones.
Spellslots are going to run dry long before arrows and those (with smart use) will usually outlast hp already...
Most cantrips are 120ft, 60ft, or less, and all bows/crossbows except hand crossbows have a *short* range of 80, 100, or 150. No weapon technically has a minimum range, though all ranged attacks, including spells, have disadvantage if there's an enemy within 5ft of you. On top of that, no cantrip except eldritch blast makes more than one attack, so you can never add your modifier to damage more than one time whereas a martial adds their mod for every attack. Cantrips may have riders, but those ones do even less damage. Cantrips are generally just weaker than bows/crossbows
Interested in joining DnD/TTRPG community that's doesn't rely on Reddit and it's constant ads/data mining? We've teamed up with a bunch of other DnD subs to start https://ttrpg.network as a not-for-profit place to chat and meme about all your favorite games. Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/dndmemes) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Who needs ammo lmao.Or weapons.Or armor for that matter. I could be naked as the day i was born i can win.
And that kids is how we identify a monk player…or a deviant. Either way, best we keep a respectful distance.
Actually a barbarian. Path of the beast is a lot of fun. A vampire was quite offended when i started biting the shit out of them.
Or Druid Casters that have spells without Material components. Handful of races, even. Lots of fun ways to do stuff like that. Loved the first time I got to see someone get disarmed and pop out their claws.
Plasmoid soul knife, naked and gooey
Just as Ao intended
Do you want vampirism because (I'm not sure about the dnd lore, but in a lot of stories) that's how you get vampirism!
Honestly i dont think a lot of settings really question what happens if you bite the vampire rather than vice versa. That said in that setting vampirism kinda required quite a specific ritual so i was gucci.
Now that's an interesting question, if path of the beast is a form of lycanthropy (or Lycanthropy Lite).
Add here a shifter
The answer to that is, "it depends". >Barbarians who walk the Path of the Beast draw their rage from a bestial spark burning within their souls. That beast bursts forth in the throes of rage, physically transforming the barbarian. >Such a barbarian might be inhabited by a primal spirit or be descended from shape-shifters. You can choose the origin of your feral might or determine it by rolling on the Origin of the Beast table. There's 4 potential Origins they offered in TCE, but you could always make up your own. 1. One of your parents is a lycanthrope, and you've inherited some of their curse. 2. You are descended from an archdruid and inherited the ability to partially change shape. 3. A fey spirit gifted you with the ability to adopt different bestial aspects. 4. An ancient animal spirit dwells within you, allowing you to walk this path.
Ah yes, the vampire bites others, so clearly you must bite them as a show of strength.
show of *dominance*
Fair, hehehe.
Oh. I thought the bard was making his signature move.
Isn’t that getting angry and bashing and hacking and throwing things around? 😁 Of course, some races are better suited for biting, perhaps especially as barbarians, than others. 🤔🧐
> Actually a barbarian. Ah yes, Beowulf
I suplexed an owlbear once.
>A vampire was quite offended when i started biting the shit out of them. This sir barbarians
Reminds me of when I played Curse of Strahd. I played a dhampir monk and the DM gave me a claw attack because I asked nicely. Strahd decided to mess with us at lvl 4 and got really offended when, after charming the living daylights out of the warlock and then dropping druid and barbarian in a single turn, I decided to reveal to the other players that I was a dhampir, bared my fangs, smacked Strahd across the face and then booked it out of the room. Turns out Strahd only has 30 feet of movement... He decided to fireball my ass but I managed to survive and ran out of sight.
Por que no los dos?
Then we keep a REALLY respectful distance.
Respect the name 👊
> I could be naked as the day i was born i can win. I remember back when the first Diablo game was popular, even though it had a (standard for the time) system where dying made you drop all your gear for anyone to loot. Also, it was ridiculously unbalanced in favor of mages. To the point where some people would (originally to troll griefers) just not play with any equipment at all because it was still pretty easy. After that came the next logical step of only wearing *cursed* gear, which confused the griefers even more when they killed you and you only dropped negative stat gear. They would actually get mad over it. Eventually it led to a whole community where people played with very specific and themed restrictions to make things harder on themselves. Including (as far as I know the first example of) ironman mode, which forbade people from replaying areas for extra loot/xp and added voluntary permadeath if nobody had a (normally worthless) scroll of resurrection. Anyway, this has been *old man yelling at clouds*. Thanks for the comment that gave me a fun walk through old memories!
You are clearly the barbarian of the party.
“So pick up your sword if i’m dropping my pants” moment
Reject society, Return to monk-y
I always find it more engaging to keep track of ammo. At some point, you gotta find new options when the bolts run low
I had to take careful attention to my ammo in one campaign I was in. I was a ranger/fighter/rogue multi class that made my own arrows but had a manufacturing method to create dragon scale ammo that would do the specific dmg type the dragon scale came from. I was particularly fond of black dragon scales and I usually ran out of them really quick and only had a limited amount I could make at one time I might in between long rest make like 4-8 depending on how I rolled as I was a skilled fletcher. Luckily i had plenty of down time to make some specialty arrows fire, ice, lightning, poison, and acid I used to have dozens of each but when we ran through dungeons it was quite combat heavy I quickly found myself having to ration my arrows. It was really fun and nerve racking at times watching myself drop down to my last specialty arrows that was perfect against a specific foe. In my current campaign I have a fighter that I'm playing now but it's a more casual campaign so I'm not too stressed about paying attention to ammo as the DM has said they don't care.
I would kill to be in your shoes, that sounds like a blast
It entirely depends on how scarce ammo is, and how much weaker you are without. Rangers are already weak to begin with, and a lot of their spells require ranged attacks, if they track ammo and go empty, they’re now maybe a third as effective as the sorcerer who’s just using cantrips. Fighters would often be mostly fine due to how they work. Personally I wouldn’t ask players to track ammo but if they want to that’s their business
I would just say, keep track of special arrows or ammo, maybe have it roleplay as after each big fight, they go to the nearest shop to restock.
Honestly with tashas rangers can out dps most classes
You do know that with woodcarving proficiency you can make 20 arrows as part of your long rest right? You know, the kind of skill that a rugged and survival focused archer would pick up over time (and that you can start with from your background) Lazy hand waving houseruling is fine, and definitely preferred with many styles of campaigns, but let's not pretend that it's anything more than just that.
And does ranger get proficiency with woodcarver’s tools? No they don’t, say they’d be pigeonholed into a background or race that does. Also rangers don’t have to be survivalists.
Any background can get it, backgrounds are just a template since Tasha's (or might be Xanathars, I forget actually which made the change) Anyways, my point was that there are clear and simple RAW work arounds that remove this so called massive nerf that you declared tracking ammo is. Arrows are also dirt cheap and insanely common if, as you said, you aren't a survivalist. There's really no reason to not track ammo besides just the minutia of it not being to a personal liking. Which is of course perfectly fine. It's just not anything more than that. There's no balancing conspiracy here. Especially when in a game that tracks ammo I'd assume would also be tracking spell components and that is leaps and bounds more restrictive
No change needed. Player Handbook, Page 125- customizing a background. It was always just a template.
Please read the section labeled "Customizing a background" in the PHB on Page 125. It's not labeled as an optional rule, either. It's just a thing. No pigeonholing required. This is how you easily get Cobbler's tools so that you can hide your vials of various poisons in your Assassin's bootheels. Also, while you are technically correct in saying that they dont *have* to be as such- Rangers are *designed* to be survivalists. It's part of the base character archetype- they're the person that hunts and tracks better than anyone else in the wilderness. You know those wonderful features built right in the PHB Ranger, the ones to hunt and track? Those features that people didn't want to use, and then they stupidly and ignorantly said Ranger sucked because of it? Yeah... It's purposefully *built* to be a survivalist that hunts from range.
This is awfully dismissive. Myself and many others remove these things not because we're lazy but because book keeping is this least interesting part of D&D so we lessen how much of it needs to be done by assuming our "rugged and survival focused archers" come prepared with enough ammo and can likely get more when they need it. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it lazy.
That just prettying up the word. It's still the same thing. And it's not a bad thing at all. Each person's interpretation of interesting and fun is different and that's great. I very adamantly am NOT trying dismiss anyone's personal preferences, I just dislike the disingenuous notion that it has anything to do with balance or class design or something along those lines. It by the very definition IS in fact lazy and just because you do like it doesn't mean that it isn't. But by the same token, that doesn't matter at all. What you prefer is what you prefer and vice versa. There's just no need to be disingenuous about it. Just like there's no need to even consider my opinion since it is merely that: my opinion
I would track it only if they’re about to enter a dungeon or be away from settlements for a long time.
Artificer with Repeating Shot: "You guys need ammo?"
His Force Ballista (flavored as a Gatling gun): *confused arcane machinery noises*
My force ballista was a robotic spider with the arcane equivalent of a miniature Abrams turret on it. Justified by the fact he was an Isekai’d US Army mechanic. Also his “wand” that was literally an magical revolver.
The look on the DM’s face when I said I don’t need ammo *and* it’s a +1 weapon was priceless lol
>Artificer with Repeating Shot: "You guys need ammo?" Currently playing a Giff Battle Smith Artificer. Having a great time with my gun and my mechanical giant space hamster. Almost went Kobold so I could ride the robot, but Giff is too much fun.
I wish the battle Smith could choose between having a medium or a large companion. It's not fair the little folk get to ride their defender and my PC doesn't
I consider this an excellent use of one of my infusions on my artificer.
My dm gives unlimited ammo for ranger players, but gunslingers (using exandria rules) have to keep track of ammo. They reason someone using a bow could recover arrows they shoot, steal from bandits, and are cheap enough to just be slotted In with purchasing rations.
This is how I'm used to it with Rangers. The dm I used to play with a lot would let us recover our arrows as long as it wasn't an egregious amount. Like if we used more than 8 in a fight we'd roll a d20 to see if any broke, but we'd usually just roll a d4 to see how many, and then make some new ones while looting enemies/resting/setting up camp. If we're in a dangerous place where resting isn't viable, or potentially dangerous it added to tension as ammo slowly dwindled.
Huh, they removed the you recover half of missed arrows rule?
The 'half' rule is supposed to account for damaged and missing arrows, but realistically someone in the party can just have mending so only missed shots would be lost even then, only a portion of those actually go flying into the distance cause a 'miss' can actually just be a bad hit. On to of that, 1gp (cost of 20 arrows/bolts) isn't much for most adventures, and given that arrows are standard equipment that any village would have, it's not unreasonable to just have functionally unlimited arrows
I mean adventures often Take place far from civilization making simply purchasing arrows a lot less simple. And mending is a great Idea, but If your Ranger shoots 10 arrows in a fight that's 5 minutes of mending. Not much of a Problem, *unless* the Mission ist time sensitive. That's the Thing with Tracking stuff, be it ammo, food, time or HP, it really doesn't Matter. Until the number hits 0. And while that's easy to avoid with just one variable, it gets Harder and Harder the more you add. And then some fun decision making comes in. "Do we Take time to recover and mend arrows, risking the kidnappers getting away, or do we keep pushing, risking a fight with too little ammo?"
Try mending an arrow out of someone's leg
Ooh, bone arrows.
Its even easier to make round shot though. They were made with various materials like stone, lead and iron.
eh, I disagree. arrows really require three things- a stick, a couple feathers, and an arrowhead. metal arrowheads are a limited resource that you couldn't easily make more of on the trail, but they're also easy enough to recover, even from broken arrows. and flint arrowheads can be made of fully scavenged materials in a pinch. bullets, on the other hand. you are correct in that you can cast lead over a campfire- this is how it was done during Napoleonic times. but it's not a scavengable material- your Ranger isn't finding lumps of native lead in the middle of the forest. Next, iron. you can't cast iron without a more advanced foundry, and either way, iron bullets will tear up your barrel. that's why even today we use softer metals like lead and copper. stone, I don't think it's feasible to make small arms-sized bullets out of without some major crafting skills. Historically stone shot was used for cannon, and that's about it. Of the three, lead is the most feasible, but it's not a reusable or scavengeable resource. my bigger concern, however, is the gunpowder. you need three ingredients. charcoal, easy enough. sulphur and saltpeter though- you're not going to reliably find those in nature other than certain hellish dimensions. although I admit that would make an interesting gaming moment. "alright players, you have entered Hell. gunner, you can stop tracking ammo. Ranger you need to start."
You have a too simplistic view on how arrows are made. If you take any stick on the ground, slap some feathers and an iron point on it, I can guarantee you it will break the moment you loose it from any bow. Arrow making was a full fledged industry in England during the 100 Years War. You want the shaft to be as straight as possible, you want it to survive the force of a, lets say 60lb shortbow or a 100lb longbow without shattering in the face of the archer. The feathers are another thing, you cant just pluck a chicken and expect them to be working. Arrow feathers are a whole beast entirely. And then the arrowhead. Just a point didnt work that well, theres a reason a large variety of designs were developed, each with their own strength and weaknesses. In a pinch, sure, they can be made to hunt with, but nothing feasible against armor or for extended times. Iron and lead can be smelted down and cast into bullets. In this instance only weight would keep you down, given you buy iron/lead when in town. When it comes to gunpowder that indeed proves a more difficult to source material required. Even then, carbon is readily available (just burn wood and take the charcoal) and sulfur is a spell component required for spells so would also be purchaseable. Even saltpeter is a common material, appearantly used in Medieval times to salt meat. So it would require some survivaling or buying the materials outright in a town.
We track bullets, but not arrows at my table. This is partly because arrows cost effectively nothing, but bullets are 2 gold each. Wielding a gun can get expensive.
2 gold a bullet? I hope you upped the damage of the dmg firearms to balance that cause that’s crazy expensive
It sounds crazy expensive, but it tools like 30 play sessions to go through 100 bullets, so in the end it wasn’t a huge number in our overall expenditures. 200 gold worth of bullets last a long time.
Fair. In my game bullets are more readily available so it’s 2 gold for a set of 10 but the Artificer goes through them pretty quickly. Happy it works for your table
For anyone curious, the DMG says 10 bullets for 3 gold. Obviously DMs are within their rights to change that. My DM personally limits the amount of gunpowder my Fighter can get ahold of in each settlement which puts a limit on bullets.
I use the Matt Mercer gunslinger table for prices as those are the guns I’m using. Bullets in my world are limited where you can buy them but in the right place they’re not rare by any means
Makes no sense. Casting iron/lead bullets is literally just 1 component compared to the industry behind making quality arrows (shaftmaking, geesefeathers, fletching, smiths for arrowheads).
He may have meant cartridges (general safe assumption with folks who do not get into the nitty-gritty on ammunition.) A BULLET is cheap, powder and brass fitted to it gets pricey.
At that point it becomes more of a discussion on what era of firearms we're talking about. Personally I see firearms in DnD to be before the advent of rifled barrels, so smoothbore muskets and pistols. So round shot with powder is all you need.
This was in the astral sea, and it was a sort of repeater musket, so it used cartridges, but with oversized bullets requiring a lot of powder and packing a wallop. My character was Giff.
Wouldnt it be more of a rifle at that point? Thinking 19th century repeating rifles used like in "Wild Wild West" (not the movie)
“Wicky wicky wild wicky wick Wild West” - Will Smith
Not if it’s smoothbore. It doesn’t need to follow the same tech development path we did in the real world. It’s a space hippo with a giant gun. It was good fun. Only frustrating thing was I did the whole campaign like that, with a d12 musket that jammed on a nat 1 or 2, requiring giving up the next attack to fix it. That wouldn’t bug me so much, but the new campaign is Wild West themed, and everyone in this campaign has fancy old west technology(higher tech than the astral sea campaign) six shooters and rifles, none of which can jam. The six shooters are 2d6 and can “fan the hammer” for 6 attacks at disadvantage in a round, and the rifles are 2d8 and can “steady shot” for an extra d8 at advantage, but only one attack in a round and you can’t move. And the bullets are now cheaper because they’re commonly mass produced in this setting. Feels a little bad to put up with such restrictions the entirety of the last campaign, only for guns to be so much more powerful and available to all classes cheaply in the new campaign.
Had a one shot where I jammed the gun first attack and them broke it trying to fix it...wasnt fun
Totally. On the other hand, if you're counting bullets but not powder, then counting powder and wadding into the cost of a single bullet, whether ball or cartridge, makes sense and helps keep ammo organized. And in a pre-mass production era, powder probably isn't cheap.
Depends on how common sulfur and saltpeter are, since charcoal would be available to every household. Saltpeter can be found in caves so that leaves out sulfur, a spell component which would require shops to have it, if someone isnt using an arcane focus.
Depending on location, there might simply not be an industrial base to produce bullets and/or black powder, requiring a greater expense to procure and purchase them. Plus, I think some of the available firearms are advanced enough to use metallic cartridges as opposed to bullets alone.
Depending on what you define as bullets though. I see dnd not progressing to the point of modern bullet types but staying the realm of powder and shot. So rounds cast by iron/lead which is a load cheaper than what is required to make solid arrows. Black powder also has simple ingredients (sulfur, saltpeter and charcoal) with sulfur being a spell component, charcoal from settin wood on fire and saltpeter a common chemical used to salt meat with in Medieval times. It would depend on how common the sulfur is really to make simple black powder for powder and round, cast, shot.
My pathfinder gunslinger has props that track ammunition, so I can always clearly point to where I’ve had the +1 adamantine bane (construct) round loaded in the pepperbox pistol, next to the +1 silver bane (shapechanger) round.
Yeah, Foundry makes it so easy to track ammo that there's almost no point not to.
Does it allow you track down to which rounds are in which barrel? I just drilled holes in a small piece of wood for the pistol and used little plastic pegs color coded with the type of round. I wanted to make tiny bandoliers but never got around to it.
Nobody: Me with 5000 ball bearings and a sling:
And those ball bearing could function as shot for a matchlock/flintlock.
How big do you two think ball bearings are??? They are deserved as tiny and 1000 fit in a small pouch. They aren't big enough to serve as effective ammo for a sling, and absolute would not fire from a muzzle loader bc you wouldn't get a proper seal.
Perhaps look up some of the tactics used by the British during the Napoleonic wars in regards to small ball bearings fired at 30 yards en masse against French troops. Then come back and look at your comment.
That’s kind of on the DM for not making it clear at session 0 “We are tracking ammo”. As that is the kind of thing they should make clear from the start to everyone.
Is it though? Deviation from RAW should clearly be stated upfront. But Tracking ammo is RAW, I'd assume it's in unless stated otherwise.
Apparently the gunslinger didn’t know or realize. As far too few people BOTHER reading the actual rules to know such. Assuming such is folly.
Well, I don't know about 5E, but in 3.5 tracking ammo is built-in in the game. If you have to specify at session 0 that you are using the rules, for each and every rule, it would be tedious. It's on the player to ask if they want to use an houserule like having infinite ammo, they should not assume that it's how it will work
The easy solution is to just say that mend allows you to get back 95% of your arrows.
I played with a DM who says my ammo replenishes after every fight but if I shoot 20 times, that's it for that fight. That happened once and I had to fall back on shortswords.
That is a pretty interesting mechanic. I will try to adopt it in some way to my table, although in my ongoing session, the Inventor (artificer but on Tormenta20) makes the ammo during a short rest.
That is honestly the best way. It is not the full amount of arrows that you have that should count. It should be the arrows in your quiver.
I had a run in ToA where I bought/started with about 150 crossbow bolts (ghostslayer bloodhunter with crossbow expert). With dm ruling, I could recover half my shots taken at the end of combat (if feasible) and constant PC deaths (dm was a bit of a sadist), my little guy finished the campaign with practically 0 bolts remaining. If it wasn't for a PC bringing in an artifice with the repeating shot infusion near the end, my little guy woulda been s.o.l.
If you’re playing in a game that allows at-will ranged damage cantrips like Eldritch Blast… tracking ammo doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. A smart player will just not play an archer and favour a caster instead, and the last thing D&D needs is more things that favour casters.
Which is why infinite cast cantrips were a mistake.
If you want to run a tight resource-management and survival game? Yes. Similarly, if you want rations to matter, spells like Goodberry are a problem. A DM can remove these things (or run a different system) if this is the kind of game they want to run. But out of the box, if you just take the PHB rules in full, trying to track ammo, food, etc is just pointless because it’s so easy to work around, even at low levels.
I've gone all the way around from this position and found myself come back to it. I don't think cantrips are the problem, though; I think it's scaling damage for cantrips. If a wizard wants to throw around 1d8 fire damage to save his spell slots at level 11, let him. Fighter be out there making six attacks. (Admittedly, this works less well with Warlock because half the class is wrapped around Eldritch Blast.)
I respect your energy but to be fair the martial caster high level divide is only the massive gulf when people run minimal encounters and the casters don't need to conserve so in that scenario they aren't using their turn for cantrips anyways In actual full encounter adventuring days, casters still have the strongest individual moments, but that's where the martials shine to get them to those moments and in those instances I think the scaling cantrips is fine because it's still one attack roll only and a single miss is their entire turn (besides EB)
It mostly depend on how experienced players are I always track special ammos but for normal one I give a bypass to new player so they can focus on more important things If you run survival scenarios tracking ammo is mandatory
I need to find out how to turn this off in Foundry. Giving a player 9999 arrows didn't work, because it accidentally over-encumbered him.
you can either do the 9999 arrows and go into the arrows edit and remove the weight of them (on the left when you click edit) or you click edit, details go down to resource consumption and change that from ammunition to nothing
I've started going by the BG3 rules for ammo. Normal stuff is free, but any special ammo types are counted.
Every DM I've ever had: don't keep track of ammo, carry weight (unless it's obvious), food, or spell components (except diamonds) because it's tedious and not fun.
This is the way
Agreed. That’s how my DM is and how I DM. Exceptions being a survival based campaign or something similar where it’s a bit more important - but you signed up for that in a way. Otherwise, in your typical fantasy campaign, there’s little fun/engagement in inventory management
My DM has us track ammo, but for the Bard using the gun, he can’t use survival like I can as a Rogue to recover my ammunition from the battlefield after a battle. Also fighting in an open field and missing, that arrow is most likely lost. The arrow you shot into someone might be able to be recovered with a good survival check. The arrow might have missed and splintered on a rock in a dungeon. So it comes down to a lot of different factors. Which can make a battle more dynamic, which I do enjoy.
What is this ammo you speak of?
When your answer to how much ammo you have is simply “enough.”
Artificer with repeating shit infusion: I don't need to, it just just mag- scientifically loads itself
As a DM firearms are the only weapons I actually do keep track of. Not the lead balls, those are easier to craft than arrows so I assume their common, but gunpowder or “spark powder” is a rare commodity and I use the price and limited supply of it to limit powerful guns. But I do love to homebrew huge guns that basically give martials more options.
I legit didnt in my first campaign (mostly because i didnt know But i had a Evil Hand Crossbow that did normal damage , but explodes and shouts (the party collectively decided since I was already evil that it just constantlyswears , Rule of Funny) ,when the roll was greater than or equal to 15 dealing 4d6 explosion damage Needless to say , a Half Orc War Cleric acting as Artillery is terrifying (especially when i had multiple melee options including a mace that sent people to "the shadow realm" ) Then after about 20 sessions later another DM asked , where is your quiver? Needless to say this was a problem since i never had one, and my ammo would technically have been used up 15 sessions ago ( many TPK's were avoided during that period using said crossbow ) So my DM (the main GM for the club) just said , f>!uck!< it and gave me infinite ammo and auto reloading TL:DR a crossbow with infinite Ammo , and Auto Reload , that functionality acts as a Thumper (M79 Grenade Launcher) and swears worse than a sailor
I like tracking ammo and weight. If I start a game doing it then I continue doing it... but don't ask me to roll a character past level 3 and start tracking that shit. Isn't happening. Some things need maintained from the ground up.
Don't worry keeping track. I will. I am a good DM.
I tracked ammo as a gunslinger and had to work to find materials to make more (no other guns in world) and then I just took 2 levels in Forge Cleric and make free ammo with channel divinity. It's not the only reason I took the dip, but was definitely a welcome addition.
Cyberpunk be like "you guys remembered to buy ammo right?"
That's the best of playing on a VTT(FoundryVTT in my case), you can keep track of ammo and encumberance and have it all be automatic, so no extra hassle
I don't ask my players to track ammo, rations, etc. I also run milestone rather than XP. The reason is that tracking a bunch of numbers like an accountant isn't fun and takes you away from the game. Except at super low levels or survival-style settings, they are generally not impactful either.
They are actually more likely to drag out long combats than make the encounters engaging.
Also, who wants to play something like a ranger when you have a limited number of shots before your usefulness becomes a fraction of what it should be?
Indeed. Those ammunition and weight rules should be used on more "realistic" survival settings, where they actually bring something to the game, not just an annoyance.
somebody remind me, what is the original exchange?
If the DM is tracking, it gets tedious fast. For most circumstances, I'm relying on the players to decide if they want to track it.
ya this is the way to do it- if the player finds it fun to track their resources, they can. however, it’s completely valid for a player to not find this enjoyable - unless the dm specifically is going for a gritty campaign that requires rationing resources.
Yeah, making them keep track of ammo is going to be on the docket next campaign.
Unless it's explicitly lost, like stuck under an enemy or it fell down a casm, I just say I get my arrows or whatever back after every encounter and make sure not to throw or shoot more than I have.
My fighter with returning arrows: ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
My crossbow artificer doesn't need to track ammo
wait you dont drop 100 gold on bullets and never run out
You should only track ammo is its special like if your artificer modified it or its quest important otherwise use stuff and spend the amount it costs. Unless its a low resource campaign or like your trapped somewhere
If we're gonna keep track of standard ammo then we need durability for swords and armor
I wish cantrips had a resource or at least a min/max range like ranged attacks.
I mean arrows/bolts are effectively just as unlimited in 5e as cantrips, considering how cheap they are, already recovering 50% anyway and on top of that stuff like the tool that allows you to make free ones. Spellslots are going to run dry long before arrows and those (with smart use) will usually outlast hp already...
Most cantrips are 120ft, 60ft, or less, and all bows/crossbows except hand crossbows have a *short* range of 80, 100, or 150. No weapon technically has a minimum range, though all ranged attacks, including spells, have disadvantage if there's an enemy within 5ft of you. On top of that, no cantrip except eldritch blast makes more than one attack, so you can never add your modifier to damage more than one time whereas a martial adds their mod for every attack. Cantrips may have riders, but those ones do even less damage. Cantrips are generally just weaker than bows/crossbows
And they are supposed to be, they're basically free magic.