[3.5] Tracking Consumables - Do/Don't?

[Thurbane]

Just curious,

I've recently started DMing a mini campaign (which is running about 6 weeks until more players are available for my main campaign to kick off).

As a player, I get quite annoyed when a DM makes me track the minutiae of things like Trail Rations over the course of adventuring. My philosophy as a DM is "look, just write the word rations anywhere on your character sheet and I'll assume you have some at any given time, OK?".

In spite of this, one of the players is still insisting on tracking his rations. I'm not mad at him or anything, just astounded anyone would bother to, given my fairly lenient stance on the whole matter.

Anyway, I digress - the question is, what, if any, of the following do your groups track in detail:


Ration levels
Mundane ammunition (arrows, bolts, sling bullets etc.) consumption
Encumbrance of coinage
The weird stuff: i.e. logistics of "how do I carry a 10 foot pole in a 5 foot wide cave without poking the adjacent party members?"

[Vhaidara]

It depends on your level. At level 1, it's a big deal, since money is so tight. For low Str characters (casters), it's actually an infuriatingly big deal (every day of rations = 1lb)

As soon as Handy Haversacks come online, it's just annoying though.

[Extra Anchovies]

One of the best games I've ever played was a short campaign in a group of five 1st-level experts (we had a fishmonger, a woodsman, a doctor, a ratcatcher, and a farmer). Our goal was to deliver the mail to the neighboring towns, and we had to overcome various natural hazards (wolves, chasms, etc.) on the way. Thankfully, one of us had a high enough strength that we really didn't need to worry about encumbrance, but the most fun part was keeping track of how much food we had to make sure we wouldn't starve. Every day my character (the fishmonger) and the woodsman would roll Survival to see if our traps and nets had caught anything, and we had a log of what exactly we had caught and how well-preserved it was (at one point we caught a crab, it was glorious).

I'm a huge fan of strategic management of resources; I own at Settlers of Catan and similar games. I'm also really, really into tracking encumbrance, rations, wealth weight, and logistics of carrying big stuff around. Whenever a DM gives us a magical doodad that we have to take back to whoever hired our adventuring party and my character is the one to carry it, my first question is, "How much does it weigh?"

The rest of my group is sorta alright with it. They usually stop at rations, encumbrance, and the logistics of carrying 10-foot poles, though. I'm the only one neurotic enough to pay attention to how much my money weighs.

[sleepyphoenixx]

We generally only track ammunition. Rations are only tracked when it's relevant (far from civilization, stranded on an abandoned island, etc.). Money is generally handwaved.
The weird stuff only when it becomes silly. Someone without a Handy Haversack or similar item carrying around a whole arsenal of 2 handed weapons or a whole bandit gangs worth of armor, for example.

[Fax Celestis]

For 200gp, you never need to track your food. Everlasting rations are one of those things I buy on every one of my characters.

[Extra Anchovies]

For 200gp, you never need to track your food. Everlasting rations are one of those things I buy on every one of my characters.

True. That, the collapsible pole, the decanter of endless water, the Handy Haversack/portable holes/bags of holding/etc., those all end resource management issues as soon as one of the party members has them (or one for each party member with the Rations). Low-level and/or low-magic games are the best for resource management anyways, though.

[HammeredWharf]

I don't. Maybe if, one day, I DMed a game about surviving on an uninhabited island or something similar, I'd track mundane consumables. However, that game would most likely not use D&D rules.

[lytokk]

I have my players track them, at least in the beginning before anyone can reliably take 10 and feed the whole party on a survival check. At that point it becomes a bit annoying. That is, unless they find themselves in a dungeon that will take them several days of travelling. Since the survival DC is (in my mind) going to get more difficult, unless they plan on eating the ogre they killed this morning. Ammunition is the same way. The group keeps a stockpile of arrows and such on the wagon and one of the players took a craft skill to make more arrows, so they're never really going to run out. But separate them from the wagon and its all tracked.

[dysprosium]

I think consumables are only important to keep track of in a game where resources are scarce like in a survival type game or adventure -- like water in a desert or blankets in a frostfell area.

I DMed a group that decided to play a "hardcore" game where part of it was keeping track of encumberance. Normally we don't bother.

If your players keep track of that stuff themselves more power to them.

[Brookshw]

The wierd stuff at most (though usually not). The exception being grim survival campaigns where you better believe you're tracking every morsel of food, sip of water, bullet etc. Not something for most games, more of a corner case.

[Chronos]

I draw the line at ten-foot poles. I actually have carried those around, and they're damned awkward even without being in an enclosed dungeon. So, even though I usually have a three-page equipment list even at first level to Macgyver from, the one thing I'll never carry with me is ten-foot poles (at least, not until I have some magic storage space that can contain them).

For rations, my general philosophy is to put a few days' worth on the sheet and then forget about them. We're almost certainly supplementing that with foraging, and will almost certainly be back in civilization before the food runs out, and the corner cases where we wouldn't be are too rare to worry about.

[OldTrees1]

Not only do I not track Rations or Ammunition, but I also assume every adventurer has standard adventuring equipment(50ft rope, torches, backpack, bedroll, ...) in addition to anything they write on their character sheet.

[ericgrau]

Anyway, I digress - the question is, what, if any, of the following do your groups track in detail:


Ration levels
Mundane ammunition (arrows, bolts, sling bullets etc.) consumption
Encumbrance of coinage
The weird stuff: i.e. logistics of "how do I carry a 10 foot pole in a 5 foot wide cave without poking the adjacent party members?"


Ammo only I think, sometimes money encumbrance. Weird stuff only if we notice it.

I think it's strange for your player to track rations when you don't require it. It won't lead to anything. But I wouldn't think it so strange for the DM to require it. Starvation can become a real part of the challenge of the game and a strategy in defeating a foe. Ditto for tracking for everything else. It adds dimension to the game and keeps it from being flat. But at the same time you need to be careful it doesn't bog down the game and never say "aha! You forgot to pack food, you starve!" I think a standard adventuring kit is a good thing to provide for your players. And when they're about to go on a long journey say "pack any food and water you need". Also gives the ranger and druid another purpose for their survival skill ranks, to extend the party's travel time. For that matter the survival skill is major for several other interesting wilderness challenges that many gaming groups miss out on: natural hazards, weather, directions, etc. And likewise taking advantage of such to hurt your enemy. As long as you have it all streamlined and figured out so it doesn't complicate things or slow the game down; that's the main legitimate reasons people avoid such things. But when you strip all of them away you are left with "Toss class features at foes until foes die. Repeat."

[Trasilor]

First, make sure you explain to the group (especially the player tracking all these things) what your stance is regarding tracking inexpensive consumables (rations, mundane ammunition, etc) and encumbrance (what should be counted, what isn't, etc). That way, if a player does want to keep track of these things - it is their choice.

Do not punish them for recording this, neither ignore it.

For me, the only time I take consumable resources into account is when they are scarce - shipwrecked, desolate locale, foreign environment, etc. Because, once they reach a certain level these things become trivial in their cost.

[ElenionAncalima]

It would depend on the campaign.

I think in a wilderness/survival type game, I would require players to track things like encumbrance and rations, because resource management becomes a big part of the game.

Most of the time, however, I find tracking encumbrance to be tedious (I have a DM who is a real stickler about tracking encumbrance, down to coins). As a DM, I am pretty lenient about it at low levels and try to get them a handy havesack or bag of holding ASAP. Generally, I only care about encumbrance if it is logic breaking (ie. "How exactly are you carrying 20 suits of armor"?). As for rations, if the PCs are going on a particularly long wilderness trip, I want to know how many rations they are taking, then they can subtract what they use at the end of the trip.

Generally my rule of thumb is:
I will be lenient regarding encumbrance, just don't take advantage of it.

[Dalebert]

One of the best games I've ever played was a short campaign in a group of five 1st-level experts (we had a fishmonger, a woodsman, a doctor, a ratcatcher, and a farmer). Our goal was to deliver the mail to the neighboring towns, and we had to overcome various natural hazards (wolves, chasms, etc.) on the way. Thankfully, one of us had a high enough strength that we really didn't need to worry about encumbrance, but the most fun part was keeping track of how much food we had to make sure we wouldn't starve.

I have a similar experience. Some of the most fun I've had in D&D was when we had low-level (i.e. no magic items of food creation, etc.) characters who had to cross some wilderness and a dessert. We came fully stocked but some enemies destroyed our water vessel and food. It was an interesting challenge figuring out how to survive with a combination of skills and magic. The DM gave us brownie points for casting sleep on some buzzards who were flying overhead and waiting for us to die and then purify food & water.

So I say track it when it's relevant. Sometimes it is. When it's easily replenish-able and the cost has become trivial, don't bother.

I think it's completely expected that you track encumbrance. It takes very little effort to slap that crap into a spreadsheet that automatically keeps up and just about everyone has an iPad or a laptop with them these days. Some folks like to use STR as a dump stat. That's fine, but guess what? Now you constantly have encumbrance issues. I know that from experience.

[Chronos]

Or you just ask the barbarian to carry most of your stuff for you.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Or you just ask the barbarian to carry most of your stuff for you.

You can, but that means you don't have access to it in combat. A wizard with 6 strength is going to have problems carrying even the most basic gear without going at least into medium load.
With a strength that low even your spell book and spell component pouch already take up a fourth of your light load capacity so you can pretty much forget about any kind of utility gear.
Just wearing something in every item slot is likely to put you into medium load already.

If someone wants to play that way he can expect that i will be paying extra attention to their encumbrance. If you're going to min-max all your strength away you're going to feel the downside.

[jjcrpntr]

As a DM I don't have my players track that stuff. Just about all of them have a good survival so I always figure I could waste time making them do a survival check to find food every night.

I don't make them track coin weight.

Ammo I just say if they are archers and take 1 rank in "craft fletching" or bowmaking or something like that, that the player is able to sit down at night and make the arrows that they used up that day.

The only time I would require my players to track this stuff is if they are in a dungeon where you wouldn't be able to find food, or stuff to make arrows with. Or in the case of loot, though I didn't catch it at the time, currently the party has 1 bag of holding (small) and they have a TON of loot they found and carried with them for months on end. So in the future I'll make them keep tabs on that stuff better.

[Aegis013]

As a DM, and my table has taken my approach on this, I tend to toss any rule out the window that feels like unnecessary bookkeeping or seems to get in the way of roleplay/plot/action/character development/etc. I mean, I might make a point of characters running out of food if they somehow get themselves stuck in a cave for a month, but finding food, shelter or etc is generally just assumed to be done off-screen for the sake of smooth game-play.

The particular things I usually don't bother with include:
Food/Water
Encumbrance
Volume of bags (I just say the Handy Haversack and other extradimensional containers are infinite, you basically can just fit bigger things in the more expensive ones, since the mouth is the only limiting factor)
Mundane ammunition
Aging
Sometimes crafting times - it's pretty common for me to just say "an indefinite amount of time passes between sessions, allowing you to craft without time limits".
Non-costly material components
Easier ways to Identify found magic items.
Dependent on setting, sometimes I'll waive the cost of most or all of the mundane gear, just asking people to be reasonable, since carrying 13 million 10 ft poles in your unlimited Haversack is a little curious, to say the least.

A few of these things have exceptions, if it's important for the feel of the game for them to be included. Yes, this does make some skills and whatnot pretty much junk. But these things, even the general plot of the game if relevant, is discussed with all players ahead of time, so there are hopefully no surprises.

[Telonius]

My philosophy on tracking consumables: It doesn't matter, until it does. If we're running a regular dungeon-crawl, tracking things like mundane arrows, etc, is just a pain. I issue a Handy Haversack to every first-level adventurer, not counted against WBL, because encumbrance is No Fun.

But, if we're doing something where the environment itself is part of the challenge - say, stranded in the middle of a desert, adrift at sea, caught on a glacier, whatever - then food is part of the consideration. I'll let the party know ahead of time that it's going to be tracked. That sort of tracking is (imo) completely reasonable and can add some good tension to a session.

Magical and special-material arrows would be a separate case, too, since those things cost more money or are a little bit more important mechanically.

[Thurbane]

Well, in my group it breaks down as follows:


Most DMs (besides me) DO ask you to track rations.
ALL of us track encumbrance - the sole exception is coinage. This generally gets ignored unless you come across a hoard the size of Smaug's.
Most of us track mundane ammo, although we tend to be pretty lax about it.
Only one of us worries about logistics of carrying weird gear.

...and in all cases, the DM trusts players to track their own stuff. If something seems very amiss, the DM might ask to double check a character sheet.

[jjcrpntr]

Well, in my group it breaks down as follows:


Most DMs (besides me) DO ask you to track rations.
ALL of us track encumbrance - the sole exception is coinage. This generally gets ignored unless you come across a hoard the size of Smaug's.
Most of us track mundane ammo, although we tend to be pretty lax about it.
Only one of us worries about logistics of carrying weird gear.

...and in all cases, the DM trusts players to track their own stuff. If something seems very amiss, the DM might ask to double check a character sheet.

My players are supposed to track encumbrance but I'm 100% sure none of them do. But just about all of them have enough strength that it probably wouldn't ever matter anyway.

[Dalebert]

Just wearing something in every item slot is likely to put you into medium load already.


It's true. I played a cloistered cleric. I rolled really good stats so it was hard to complain about the one 7. I dumped it in STR. A mithril shirt with Easy Travel was very high on my wish list before just about anything else. That and a handy haversack helped a lot but it was a huge issue until then. Any other armor, even leather, was out of the question.

[cobaltstarfire]

Every day my character (the fishmonger) and the woodsman would roll Survival to see if our traps and nets had caught anything, and we had a log of what exactly we had caught and how well-preserved it was (at one point we caught a crab, it was glorious).

This made me giggle, it reminds me of the time I killed a moose and quite a few fish and some beavers, with a lightning spell (rolemaster not D&D). Darn thing had been stalking us forever, I don't remember what led up to zapping the moose in the pond...but one of the other players had a high enough strength equivalent to throw large boulders, so we were quite good on food for a loooong time after that. (I also had a werewolf npc that kept bringing me meat in a failed attempt to woo my also werewolf, he eventually stopped at least...)


As far as tracking consumables goes, well all the games I have ran, the party had a wagon at their disposal, or a ship, so they were keeping track of their food and water and things.

I don't normally count the weight of clothing and coinage when they're poor. But if they're rolling in sacks of money like Scrooge McDuck I'm counting weight.

Unwieldy things like poles, well lets just say the npc's are going to be oggling the players whenever they're in town dragging around a pole. :smalltongue: I've never had to deal with that before but I've imagined how silly I'd make things for players if I had to.

[Thurbane]

I've thought about applying a houserule of a -2 circumstance penalty to Dex checks and Dex based skill checks when toting around extemely unwieldly items, but I don't want to be that guy.

[rexreg]

With regard to ammunition for ranged weapons, I have made deals w/, to this point, all of the DM's I've played w/ such that I need not track ammo expenditure. Every couple of sessions I tell him I throw 3 gp (or 2 or 5, depending) at a merchant to restock arrows. Done.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

It depends on the game and, within a game, on the circumstances. Urban adventure? Yes to keeping track of 15' ladders, no to rations or ammunition. Embarking on an extensive search of a high-altitude mountain range in the dead of winter on the eve of a snowstorm? Yeah, we're keeping track of everything. Generally I tell players that I'm not gonna be strict or keep track of stuff if it's trivial, and that if anything changes I'll let them know beforehand. If someone spends all their money down to the last cp at level 1 and doesn't have any rations or water or ammunition listed on their sheet, then I'll ask about it. Otherwise, mostly whatever.

[Jeff the Green]

In general, I don't track the first three and for the last one Rule of Fun takes precedence over common sense. Ten foot poles don't come up because I always go with collapsible poles and recommend my players do the same, but other niggly things like that aren't worth the effort.

Sometimes, in fact, I don't make my players track anything but magic items. I go with a combination of the Tools of the Trade class feature of the Shade Hunter (retroactively spend 10 GP/level one time between shopping trips) and d20Modern's wealth checks. Basically, if you want a mundane item (or cheap magic items at higher levels) that you could reasonably be carrying on your person or in extra dimensional storage you can make an Intelligence or Wisdom check, whichever is better. If you pass (the DCs are fairly low, so usually someone does) you have it.

I particularly use that when playing with my brothers and cousins. We're all in college or working now, so even though we're no more than a couple hours away we don't get to play much and favor one-shots. No one wants to spend time digging through item lists and counting coppers for a character you're going to play eight hours, so this makes it a lot easier.


For 200gp, you never need to track your food. Everlasting rations are one of those things I buy on every one of my characters.

I often go with a Travel Cloak. It's an additional 1000 GP, but it also gives you endure elements (cold only), fresh water or tea, and it works like a tent. It's more than you really need, but really handy.

One of my characters, on the other hand, adamantly refuses to get magical rations because she hates camping and never wants to think, "Oh, it's too far to the next inn so I'll just camp here for the night; I've got rations and it won't be that bad," because IT ALWAYS IS THAT BAD.

[Thurbane]

The Ring of Sustenance is a common piece of gear in our group:

A.) No food or water needs to be tracked.

B.) Less chance of getting caught asleep with the inevitable "around the campfire remnants" type random encounters.

[ericgrau]

I've thought about applying a houserule of a -2 circumstance penalty to Dex checks and Dex based skill checks when toting around extemely unwieldly items, but I don't want to be that guy.

Throwing out -2s willy nilly is totally encouraged in the DMG. No house rule required. In fact I'd be against a house rule for such a thing because then you'd have to spell out -2s and +2s for 1,000 different little things. If you have any house rule it should be "Don't go way overboard with anything nonsensical or I'll slap a -2 on it, RAW or no RAW (and technically the DM's arbitrary -2 is RAW). Likewise if you get creative I might give your action a +2". Just don't make it a -4 or a -10 or you will be that guy.

[amalcon]

The usual approach with my group is "We track all of this stuff for like 2 sessions, then the party buys a pack mule." That pretty much fixes the carrying capacity part. We tend to round treasure divisions down to a multiple of 1gp, and just say that the remainder pays for food + feed for the mule + lodging + replacement ordinary ammunition until the next treasure the party finds.

Nobody in my group has bought a (normal) 10' pole for a while, actually, because of the logistics of carrying one.

[Tohsaka Rin]

I always divided my total rations by 3, then tracked them by the day.

[Harlot]

Anyway, I digress - the question is, what, if any, of the following do your groups track in detail:


Ration levels
Mundane ammunition (arrows, bolts, sling bullets etc.) consumption
Encumbrance of coinage
The weird stuff: i.e. logistics of "how do I carry a 10 foot pole in a 5 foot wide cave without poking the adjacent party members?"


All of the above. If relevant. Which my players know.

Rations: If trekking in harsh territories, I ask them to track rations. They hardly ever buy a ring of sustenance or the like, for odd reasons, so this may eventually hurt them. Also create food & water spell takes up a spell slot and is not always prepared.
Ammunition: Surely - on a prolonged dungeon crawl is really relevant whether the archers still have ammo. Some builds shoot 8 arrows or more/round. they're bound to run out of arrows fast if they max it out all of the time.
Coinage: Hardly ever. Exept if for some reason they have no bag of holding, or/and have to fly away with it. In which case the sheer volume of coinage may become a factor.
Stuff: Absolutely! You insist on bringing 10 cubic feet of shapesand. OK. How?
Encumbrance: For characters with flight its pretty damn important, so yes, that is tracked as well.

Most of this is indeed mostly relevant at lower levels, but sometimes I use it to make PC's think about what they're doing. Adventuring should not be a walkover and making logistics matter is one way to make a less 'superheroic' narrative.

[Jeff the Green]

Ammunition: Surely - on a prolonged dungeon crawl is really relevant whether the archers still have ammo. Some builds shoot 8 arrows or more/round. they're bound to run out of arrows fast if they max it out all of the time.

The question, as I alluded to, isn't so much whether it makes sense or is realistic as whether it's fun. Archers already have enough stacked against them without having to worry about whether they're going to become useless before the end of the crawl—a uselessness not even rope trick can fix.

Of course, should I be playing an archer and had to track ammunition, I'd just buy some shapesand and make sure someone had a decent Wisdom score.

[Thurbane]

There's a lot of magic items designed around overcoming these kind of bookkeeping dilemmas: Heward's Handy Haversack, Bags of Holding, Portable Holes, Ring of Sustenance, Everlasting Rations, Survival Pouch (one of my favorites!), Quiver of Ehlonna...

Any other obvious ones I am missing? I'm sure there's a quiver that produces unlimited normal arrows, but I can't find it right now.

[Agincourt]

There's a Quiver or Plenty in the Dragon Compendium. p. 139

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

There's a lot of magic items designed around overcoming these kind of bookkeeping dilemmas: Heward's Handy Haversack, Bags of Holding, Portable Holes, Ring of Sustenance, Everlasting Rations, Survival Pouch (one of my favorites!), Quiver of Ehlonna...

Any other obvious ones I am missing? I'm sure there's a quiver that produces unlimited normal arrows, but I can't find it right now.

Gloves of Endless Javelins, too. Little different, but same concept.

[sleepyphoenixx]

The question, as I alluded to, isn't so much whether it makes sense or is realistic as whether it's fun. Archers already have enough stacked against them without having to worry about whether they're going to become useless before the end of the crawl—a uselessness not even rope trick can fix.

Of course, should I be playing an archer and had to track ammunition, I'd just buy some shapesand and make sure someone had a decent Wisdom score.

I generally just go with backporting PFs Durable Arrows (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/weapons/weapon-descriptions/ammunition/ammunition-bow-arrow-durable) to take care of mundane ammunition woes.
Because it's pretty much impossible to pack enough arrows for a dungeon crawl otherwise when you either don't have extradimensional storage yet or you'd need to buy a second haversack just for arrows.

[DeadMech]

None of the games I've played have been by the book about logistics and book keeping.

In one of them money was weightless paper if it came from civilization. Representing a certain value of trade goods or some such. Though anything we looted from the monstrous tribes would probably be precious metals with weight. There were some special rules about them not carrying value outside a countries borders but it never came up.

That game did get a bit rough with carrying capacity though. We were using different animal mounts and nothing akin to a mule existed for cheap transportation. I just took the animal cohort feat and we used the cash paid to us in advance to buy everyone else a mount if they didn't have one so we managed. We were doing a good two week journey on a scouting mission, outside suitable grazing land so after accounting for feed and rations for the trip plus a safe margin we occasionally had to juggle things between us but it never became too much of a problem. By the time if came to loot anything major we had already burnt allot of the dead weight. Feed bags are heavy, yo.

[Kol Korran]

It depends on the game (Setting, campaign, adventure, and players). My general question, as for any ruling is "Does it add to the game in anyway? Does it make it more fun?" If this is a survival game, where resources are scarce, and being economic and efficient is a big thing, then yeah- we'll track things down. But if it's your general high fantasy jig, then we won't. The focus is on something else altogether.

We usually tackle issues when there is some exaggeration or something outstanding. But this is the exception to the gaming experience, not the general rule.

[Sir Garanok]

Only when in wilderness/unable to buy food for a long time.
If we have a cleric he might simply create food&water once in a while and that's it.
If we have a character with Survival ranks close to adequate we don't bother making Survival checks.
In situations when a ranger throws 4/5(or more) arrows at full attack or unable to buy arrow/bolts
for a long period we do track ammunition.
No,even for large amounts of coin.
No

[bekeleven]

For 200gp, you never need to track your food. Everlasting rations are one of those things I buy on every one of my characters.

Travel Cloak from Magic of Faerun is only 1k more. Constant endure elements, gives food and water, and command words activates a tent.

Most of my characters buy a travel cloak + a belt of many pockets/hidden pouches, then I rigorously make sure I track where on the body I'm storing anything too large to fit into one of the pockets. All the same I've gotten very good at buying only tiny gear.

[Thurbane]

There's a Quiver or Plenty in the Dragon Compendium. p. 139

That's the one I was thinking of, thanks!