Arrows!

[Caterpie]

Arrows!

Can arrows be recovered from enemies and used again as if they were fresh out of a quiver?
Is there a chance they break on impact or become useless for one reason or another?
Is there a check required to "fix" used arrows? Are any tools relevant/useful?

How do you usually handle this matter? Or does it ever come up?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Catullus64]

I believe the rule is that you recover half of all spent ammunition after a fight.
Either that, or I've conflated my own houserule with an actual rule.

[Unoriginal]

I believe the rule is that you recover half of all spent ammunition after a fight.
Either that, or I've conflated my own houserule with an actual rule.

It's the actual rule.

[BBQ Pork]

I believe the rule is that you recover half of all spent ammunition after a fight.
Either that, or I've conflated my own houserule with an actual rule.

That's what I always used.

It was quicker to calculate "half" than to force an archer to make item saving throws for each arrow that hit something, and calculate chances to find arrows that flew off into the terrain.

Sling stones though, I'd give 3/4 or better.

As a DM, how much time do you want to spend coming up with rules and rulings for it?

[Dualswinger]

Personally, I just hit every "ammunition" character with a small ammo tax whenever they gain treasure. This represents their taking the time to restock on necessary bits and pieces. Not very precise but good enough for me.

[JoeJ]

Yeah, recovering 1/2 is the rule. If you're running an urban adventure or a small dungeon near town, it's almost certainly not worth it to track arrows. In a megadungeon or during an extended wilderness trip you probably should track them because ammunition supply is one of the factors that should affect PC decisions.

[thoroughlyS]

Proficiency with Woodcarver's Tools allows a character to create five arrows per short rest and twenty arrows per long rest (Xanathar's Guide p.85).

[Caterpie]

Proficiency with Woodcarver's Tools allows a character to create five arrows per short rest and twenty arrows per long rest (Xanathar's Guide p.85).

Thanks for the thorough answer :smallsmile:

I didn't know about that thing in Xanathar's, that's actually quite interesting to me!

I’m getting a general vibe that inventory management is not a popular part of the game.

I appreciate all the answers, though. Thanks for taking the time to help out a crazy DM who wants to hold every single arrow against a strict criteria of reusability.

[JoeJ]

Thanks for the thorough answer :smallsmile:

I didn't know about that thing in Xanathar's, that's actually quite interesting to me!

I’m getting a general vibe that inventory management is not a popular part of the game.

I appreciate all the answers, though. Thanks for taking the time to help out a crazy DM who wants to hold every single arrow against a strict criteria of reusability.

I think inventory management has declined in popularity because the trend has been for smaller dungeons and no extended explorations. The chance of running out of food, water, or even arrows in a 5-room dungeon is too small to be worth bothering about. If you're doing a hexcrawl through the Fantastic Wilderlands Beyond, OTOH, you want the decisions about when and where to obtain necessary supplies to be made the players and not the DM, so tracking those things becomes relevant.

[ImproperJustice]

There are indestructible arrows in Xanathar’s as a common magic item.

Our Ranger makes very good use of them. Especially since we have been on the Isle of Dread for months and restocking is iffy.

[DarkKnightJin]

There are indestructible arrows in Xanathar’s as a common magic item.

Our Ranger makes very good use of them. Especially since we have been on the Isle of Dread for months and restocking is iffy.

One table Inplay at, the DM outright said characters that use ammo are considered to have an unlimited supply of the basic stuff. Specialty arrows/bolts still need to be tracked.

The other table, the Rogue found a Masterwork Light Crossbow, and has to keep track of his bolts. He got back about half(rounded up) after a fight last session. Since that was the first session he really was able to use it in such a way, I can't say how much bookkeeping that's going to be.

This is part of why I love cantrips as much as I do. You can't "run out" of magic like that.

[Willie the Duck]

I’m getting a general vibe that inventory management is not a popular part of the game.

Inventory management is and has always been popular with 2-3 small niches within the Gaming community:

People who can treat the encumbrance/scarce resources challenge as a mini-game and want to play that game to win (or personal high score, or whatever analogy works for you)
People who want the game to feel as real as possible
People who just like detail for its own sake.


Mind you, the game has made inventory management important to lesser and greater degrees in different editions:

In basic/classic and 1e (the gp=xp era), the amount of XP you could get from an adventure was (mostly) the proportion of your encumbrance you could dedicated to carting loot out of the dungeon (once you had 'liberated' it from its' previous keeper). The game system incentivized careful management of resources (and this was a codification of the mini-game I mentioned above.
It was doubly so for 1e in that training costs to level roughly equaled that same amount of treasure as you hauled out to reach the xp threshold. So don't overspend on arrows as that's coming out of your next when-you-can-level (and then you have to make hard choices about whether to waste some xp since you don't have enough gp, or do something drastic like sell off a magic item or the like).
Even after that, 2e had bowyer/fletcher non-weapon proficiency be the best low-level downtime money generator, so that stretched out how long the game incentivized caring about such things.
3e/PF/4e had the WBL issue, so in theory every GP was precious, but realistically arrows are a drop in the bucket after level 1

5e doesn't really have a (defined) use for gold, so there's really not much keeping people caring unless they want to. So arrow management is mostly a 'wandering 300 miles across a barren wasteland' kind of thing, unless your DM is using the more harsh encumbrance rules (in which case, you probably don't play a dex-based martial to begin with).

[Vogie]

Proficiency with Woodcarver's Tools allows a character to create five arrows per short rest and twenty arrows per long rest (Xanathar's Guide p.85).

This makes sense... a quiver only holds 20 arrows. I believe that's in the PHB.




This is part of why I love cantrips as much as I do. You can't "run out" of magic like that.

I could see a custom bonus action cantrip that turns 1 nonmagical arrow, dart, or bolt into a half-dozen or so of the same for 1 minute, a low-power, decidedly non-swift version of Swift Quiver. Minor Conjuration, Boltcraft, Fletchermancy or some such. That way it could be picked up by anyone with a 1 level dip in a spellcaster or Magic initiate.

Currently, the only way I can see that one can get infinite ammunition with no investment is 3 levels into Archfey Warlock, pact of the blade, Moon Bow invocation (UA) which states "When you draw back its string and fire, it creates an arrow of white wood, which vanishes after 1 minute".

[Coec]

In some games I've played the DM ruled that because I was an elf, all my arrows would break upon impact even those that missed. This way the arrows couldn't be used against me. It also made arrows an important resource. However once we got a bag of holding i just a 1000 arrows and never looked back.
Other games I was asked to roll a perception check to see if I successfully find half or not.

[Petrocorus]

The cantrip Mending can be used to recover broken arrows. That's probably the only reason to get such a situational cantrip for a PC.

[Talionis]

The cantrip Mending can be used to recover broken arrows. That's probably the only reason to get such a situational cantrip for a PC.

I second this idea. It can let you go from 1/2 to all arrows recovered. We houserule not to keep track though.

[Willie the Duck]

That would depend on whether the 50% recoverable shorthand is supposed to represent 'breakage' or 'you have no idea where it ended up.'

[Petrocorus]

That would depend on whether the 50% recoverable shorthand is supposed to represent 'breakage' or 'you have no idea where it ended up.'

Arrows are supposed to end up in your foes, not "somewhere".

[Crgaston]

Arrows are supposed to end up in your foes, not "somewhere".

Nice one :)

I use the Mending cantrip for this purpose as resource tracking is a thing in my main campaign. It probably averages 80% recovery because sometimes we have to move quickly after an encounter, or if it’s in a mountainous area or a swamp, my character is not going to slog around looking for arrows.

[Willie the Duck]

Arrows are supposed to end up in your foes, not "somewhere".

Emphasis on the 'supposed to.' Unless it says that the 50% loss is breakage, my assumption is that at least part of the loss is the scenario of 'you let an arrow fly. It doesn't hit, but goes off into the bushes. In the flurry of battle you don't see where it ends up.'

Adventuring in the wilderness, and dark caves and dungeons. With poor lighting. collecting your stuff post-battle. Before the era of high-vis orange gear (or honestly even conveniently obvious tropical bird feather fletching). I can see a lot of the loss being 'lost' not 'broken.'

[Vogie]

That would depend on whether the 50% recoverable shorthand is supposed to represent 'breakage' or 'you have no idea where it ended up.'

It could also be an attempt at an average. For example, if your party is fighting off a giant squid, you may recover very few arrows, if any - hits or misses, they're all in the sea; If the party takes on a gang of Robin-hood style bandits, which include an archer or three, you may actually net MORE arrows than you used... because you're taking their arrows.

[Willie the Duck]

It could also be an attempt at an average.

The word I would use is 'simplification.' I know 3e had some kind of 50% chance of loss (roll for each projectile). The idea fits with my perception that the 'secret underlying' biggest change in 5e is that they shifted from trying to appeal to the people who get excited about rolling a dozen d20 or percentile checks to those who consider it a distraction from the 'fun part of the game.'

[Grog Logs]

We also houserule that mundane arrows and crossbow bolts are unlimited. Magic arrows are tracked.

Smart workaround with mending, though.

Can someone explain to me why ranged characters are penalized by RAW? There is no RAW about melee weapons losing durability or breaking or needing whetstone sharpening (which can only be used X number of times). Similarly, magic foci don't run out of uses for cantrips. So, why the vesimulatude for ranged physical attacks but not anything else? This seems like one of those holdovers that should go.

I can see why a survival style game might want to track ammo, but shouldn't they also want to track weapon and armor durability? Do Dark Sun type settings add rules for these?

[gloryblaze]

We also houserule that mundane arrows and crossbow bolts are unlimited. Magic arrows are tracked.

Smart workaround with mending, though.

Can someone explain to me why ranged characters are penalized by RAW? There is no RAW about melee weapons losing durability or breaking or needing whetstone sharpening (which can only be used X number of times). Similarly, magic foci don't run out of uses for cantrips. So, why the vesimulatude for ranged physical attacks but not anything else? This seems like one of those holdovers that should go.

I can see why a survival style game might want to track ammo, but shouldn't they also want to track weapon and armor durability? Do Dark Sun type settings add rules for these?

It's an attempt at balance - ranged characters get to fight from relative safety far from the fray, and have more freedom with who they target. Melee characters put themselves in danger of bodily harm every time they fight, and they generally have to engage with enemy frontliners before they can get to the squishies, but they don't have to deal with ammo or cover.

[Crgaston]

We also houserule that mundane arrows and crossbow bolts are unlimited. Magic arrows are tracked.

Smart workaround with mending, though.

Can someone explain to me why ranged characters are penalized by RAW?


As an avid archer player, I’m ok with it because 5e Archery is really good. I mean, we get +2 to hit with the style, Bracers of Archery are only Uncommon, it counts for a rogues’s SA, based off Dex, you can be Not Next to The BBEG and still murder him, magic bows and arrows stack, Sharpshooter supported, etc., etc, etc.

It’s vastly superior to melee in every way 😈 so making it a little more resource intensive helps balance it out.

[Grog Logs]

...fight from relative safety far from the fray, and have more freedom


Not Next to The BBEG...It’s vastly superior to melee in every way 😈 so making it a little more resource intensive helps balance it out.

I suppose, but under most circumstances it seems like monsters can go for the squishies if they really want to, at least when you have hoards.

On the other hand, I haven't played a ranged chatter yet in 5e. Part of the reason is that in 4e, I found the lack of danger somewhat boring. But maybe part of that was due to playing a 4e Ranger using Twinned Strike nearly every turn with a longbow.

[JoeJ]

Can someone explain to me why ranged characters are penalized by RAW? There is no RAW about melee weapons losing durability or breaking or needing whetstone sharpening (which can only be used X number of times). Similarly, magic foci don't run out of uses for cantrips. So, why the vesimulatude for ranged physical attacks but not anything else? This seems like one of those holdovers that should go.

It's partly a matter of verisimilitude. In real life, arrows are much more fragile then melee weapons. You're also shooting them away from yourself rather than keeping them in your hand, so they're much more likely to get lost.

[Crgaston]

I suppose, but under most circumstances it seems like monsters can go for the squishies if they really want to, at least when you have hoards.

On the other hand, I haven't played a ranged chatter yet in 5e. Part of the reason is that in 4e, I found the lack of danger somewhat boring. But maybe part of that was due to playing a 4e Ranger using Twinned Strike nearly every turn with a longbow.


Yep, it really works best if you have melee characters distracting the baddies in the first place. Then they get in trouble and your archer has to go in and draw the enemy off the melee guys so they don’t die. (At least that’s often the case in my games.)

And then the archer gets clobbered.

Definitely adding Rogue levels to my current Ranger now that he’s hit 5th level so he can disengage.