Recovering your investment?

[DwarfFighter]

What needs to happen for a character to recover and reuse a Thrown weapon during a fight?

[nickl_2000]

You to declare that you are picking up the weapon (or the DM will just assume you did). Thrown weapons don't break like ammunition does. Its the same as if you dropped a weapon to draw something else during a battle.

The only time it has ever been an issue for us was when we had a series of battles in a row where we didn't have time to pick up in between.


And yes, the battlefields at my table are littered with dropped and thrown weapons at the end of combat.

[DwarfFighter]

After you throw a weapon, where do you go to pick it up?

[Amnestic]

Same place you do for (half your) ammunition, presumably. Generic "the battlefield". Dependent on the fight/terrain.

[Zhorn]

After you throw a weapon, where do you go to pick it up?
personal take:
If it hit the enemy, then it is recovered on the ground (or imbedded in the enemy if it was a killing blow) at the location at the time of the attack.
If it was a miss, it is found at some generic distance behind the target or a space or two sideways from them, relative to the direction it was thrown from and how the miss was narrated.

when playing on a battlemap, I'll sometimes but a small generic token or a dice on the field to mark the location if the player makes a habit of fetching weapons in combat.

Outside of combat we usually just assume the character picks up their weapons, unless the weapon has been throw to a difficult to reach place (on a ledge, up high, in a pit, or across a gap with no simple path to retrieve it) in which there will be a short interaction on how they manage to retrieve it. If there's no risk, then it's just what they are doing while the rest of the party is looting, bandaging, or post-fight RP'ing, played for laughs, fluff, or flair (post-fight tension relief to reset the player's mindset out of combat-brain). If there is some danger, then the retrieval is played more seriously as the player is fetching it during a ticking clock, doing a risky climb/jump, or needing to spend resources.

[Mjolnirbear]

In battle: ask DM where your knife is now. Move there and object interaction to pick it up.

After battlefield: "I pick up all my knives" to DM.

The in battle answer will slow stuff down and potentially annoy the DM or other players if it happens every turn. So the best answer is "bandolier of knives" so that you don't run out of knives to throw and your DM says you can just assume you get all your knives back once the fighting's done.

[Abracadangit]

In battle: ask DM where your knife is now. Move there and object interaction to pick it up.

After battlefield: "I pick up all my knives" to DM.

The in battle answer will slow stuff down and potentially annoy the DM or other players if it happens every turn. So the best answer is "bandolier of knives" so that you don't run out of knives to throw and your DM says you can just assume you get all your knives back once the fighting's done.

Yep, that's my method.

Conversely, if the PCs are in some kind of prison break or royal masquerade ball scenario where their weapons have either been removed or are detained elsewhere, THEN it's a you-have-what-you-can-find scenario. But otherwise, a knife bandolier/dart supply works kind of like a "projectile focus," if such a thing existed. You have the bandolier, you have knives. You don't have the bandolier, you don't have knives unless you pick some up, and then we're counting those.

In the event that we're in counting mode and you throw one and want to pick it up, I'd rule you can move over it and object interaction to grab it.

[DeadMech]

In battle after using a thrown weapon if it's important to recover during battle you'll have to ask where it ended up after the attack. Your DM may or may not be nice and put it somewhere convenient.

If there is a chance that the DM isn't going to put it somewhere convenient (embedded in a flying dragon, down off the side of a mountain cliff face, On the far side of a wall) then maybe reconsider using anything you can't afford to lose.

[Christew]

I had a player who wrote a Roll20 macro to determine how much ammo he could recover after an encounter (because that kind of verisimilitude made him happy).

As a DM, unless we are doing a resource scarcity thing, I want you to be able to do what your character is designed to do and I don't want to devote table time to searching the battlefield for spent ammo. Chalk it up to "things that happen offscreen." +1 for bandoleer of knives.

[DwarfFighter]

So there are no actual rules beyond rules for picking up loose objects. How about throw weapons being stuck in targets body or shields?

[Cheesegear]

After you throw a weapon, where do you go to pick it up?

That's up to your DM. Thrown weapons can be tricky, precisely because they are recoverable - even potentially during the same combat in which they are thrown. This used to happen a lot at one of my old tables with a +1 Spear. If the character throws it, it will deal damage. Yes, the character has two more Spears, but those Spears aren't magical, and for the purposes of this combat (i.e; The hostile can only be hurt properly by magical weapons), it really, really matters that the character get that, specific Spear back.

I also had another similar situation regarding a Javelin of Lightning. It was the only magical weapon that the character had...And the character threw it...But also now the character really needs it back in the next round.

If you 'hit', it may be in the creature, or it may drop in the creature's space.
If you miss...Did you miss because you rolled a '2' and the Javelin went sailing through to the back wall? Or did you roll a '17', which only 'missed' because it bounced off of the Knight's Plate armour and clattered to the ground? Or is it a throwing axe that's now wedged into a Goblin's Shield?

There are no rules for recovering a thrown weapon during combat. Which means unfortunately, "DM's discretion."

[Mastikator]

So there are no actual rules beyond rules for picking up loose objects. How about throw weapons being stuck in targets body or shields?

Just pull them out when combat is over? If the wizard can explode things with his mind then the fighter can pull a frigging dagger out of a frigging corpse

[DwarfFighter]

During the fight is what matters, after is not a problem.

[Amnestic]

There's no official rules so far as I know, so if it came up in my game I'd say that if it hits, it's in the enemy's square, if it misses, it's in a random square somewhat near the enemy you tried to hit, maybe 5-15' away.