Documenting Your Food/Water

[Cowboy_ninja]

I'd like to hear thoughts, habits regarding keeping track of food and water during a campaign.

My group has always been one to ignore the hassle of keeping track of food and water for our characters during a campaign. It just always seemed trivial.

However, I'm building an desert/waste adventure using SandStorm, and there is a lot of heat, dehydration, and thirst rules that make up a big part of what makes the desert scary.

So any tips you can share on documenting food/water would be great

[Story]

Grab a spell component pouch. I'm sure some of the stuff in there is edible, and there's an infinite amount by RAW.

As for practical solutions, there's tons of ways to do it with magic. The cheapest is probably a wand of Create Water.

[Vaz]

In low magic campaigns keeping stock of provisions is a good way to have fun in noncombat situations. Rather than ~DC15 Survival Check to gather food, actually go out and hunt. Admittedly, if the group isn't keen for that, forcing them to say "i drink 37.4 ml of water leaving 62.6 ml for the rest of the party" is going to slow it down.

Instead say something along the lines of you are beginning to feel the effects of the heat; test for dehydration or take water on board. If they have no water, or create water spells for the day; well dumb adventurers get what they deserve. Even if its not a numerical effect, instead increase "bandit raids" on the party to represent animals and bandits taking advantage of the weak.

At high levels, I wouldn't even bother; they are hardy enough to reach that far, i'd just waive it and assume that someone somewhere had access to food and water. How? A wizard did it.

[Toy Killer]

I would only document it in the event that it was important. If the players are going through a particularly tough patch in terms of supplies. as has been stated, higher levels don't typically care, but if the party was trapped in a Rod of Security, or what have you, then it may be useful.

[AlchemicalMyst]

You write them down...

All joking aside that really is the best way IMHO. Determine what a character must eat and drink to survive and just keep track of how many days they have left. Just don't make it come down to, "You drink x amount of water from your waterskin, now if we add this number, divide by this, account for your weight and exertion, carry the 3, cross the t's and dot the i's you have y amount of fl oz left." haha

When in a populated area most GMs just say, "It will cost you this much per day to stay fed and watered unless you want to dip into your trail rations."

[Fates]

I assume that my players are keeping fed with negligible amounts of money unless food's not regularly available. Typically, this is over long voyages, as the campaign I'm running right now has a lot of sea-faring, but the players are usually able to handle this by fishing. If their sailors decide they don't want fish anymore, and they can't find any merchant ships to pillage (the players aren't exactly on the upper side of the alignment chart), they just find a port and buy some ham or something. It's really not too hard to monitor the amount of food they have- I just do it by how much food/how many people/how long; IE the players go to market and buy enough ham to feed the entire crew for a month. I just place some abstract price on that, the PCs haggle, and then they're off again.

[Morcleon]

Buy a Ring of Sustenance. It's 2500 gp (3750 if you stack it), and you no longer need to eat or drink. You also get an extra 6 hours of adventuring as a bonus. :smallbiggrin:

We've never documented it... I'd probably just have my PCs write down food and water in units of 'days'. :smallsmile:

[Lord Vukodlak]

Typically its to much of a bother unless the party is on a long journey or in a place where basic food and water is unavailable its safe to assume they can acquire the food they need using monthly lifestyle costs.

But your in a desert so it becomes more of an issue. When the party is traveling between locations, for simplicity's sake I'd say have the cost of trail rations include the cost of one days supply of water. Though each day of water is going to be atleast another 4lbs of weight to carry.

Eventually it won't matter a party constantly faced with the hassle of heat and water will solve that problem using magical gear ASAP.

[Slipperychicken]

I've learned to only track rations when the DM bugs me about it. Then I just track days remaining. If my PC takes particular foodstuffs from a feast, I might add another days' rations if it's enough to constitute a murder-hobo's daily nutrition (otherwise just mention my character eats it it later on and make the gable giggle a bit).

I used to take it a lot seriously, before I realized that most players and DMs simply don't care. Much like encumbrance in that way.

[Gandariel]

there's an item in the DMG which costs like 300 gp and gives free food every day. Every caster can cast Create water.

Seriously, after a few levels this shouldn't even be considered

[Amnestic]

Buy a Ring of Sustenance. It's 2500 gp (3750 if you stack it), and you no longer need to eat or drink. You also get an extra 6 hours of adventuring as a bonus. :smallbiggrin:

We've never documented it... I'd probably just have my PCs write down food and water in units of 'days'. :smallsmile:

There's also the Travel Cloak (Magic of Faerun). 1200gp, provides trail rations 3/day, 2 gallons of either cool water or hot tea, endure elements against cold and can turn into a one person tent 1/day.

Ring of Sustenance isn't that much more expensive, but if you're on a tight budget that 1300gp between the two can make the difference.