Ammunition tracking

What's your preference for the way ammunition is handled in a ttrpg system?
Do you want every bullet and arrow your character carries to be tracked and accounted for accurately? Do you prefer if it's more or less treated as infinite for the sake of speed or simplicity?
Are there any methods between those two extremes that you prefer, or have otherwise played with and have thoughts about?

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  1. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I always treat "regular" ammo as infinite and only keep track of "special" ammo (magical arrows, explosive rounds, etc).

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      I don't play any systems that use usage dice for ammo by default, but it's an idea I've considered adapting for other systems. Otherwise what said.

  2. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Depends on the genre

    If it’s post apoc by god am i having the players count every bullet

    If it’s modern I just have them count magazines and the number of bullets in the current mag
    Or a little more granular the bullets in used mags the players chose keep with them if they want to save ammo

    Mag tracking works
    Most players are willing to toss used magazines
    It’s not complicated tracking magazine capacity going down for ever bullet shot
    Load a new one in and refresh

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      Best:
      >My way
      Shit:
      >Anyone else's way

      has it right

      Tracking ammo matters to games that care about that sort of thing. That's why D&D has, essentially, done away with it (and all the new RPGs will also do away with it). IMHO the more survival elements are a part of what the group does or the more the game aims toward realism, the more you should track ammo.

      I think tracking ammo accurately is truly the chad way. But another middle ground is to track ammo as "usage dice" such as in Black Hack or Forbidden Lands. It's an okay middle ground where your ammo slowly runs out but it creates a sort of uncertainty by abstracting how much you fire. Dungeon World (as other anons pointed out) abstracts this a bit, but you'll lose ammo as part of a condition. FFG games do something similar, where your ammo runs out when you roll a despair, for instance.

      I think ignoring it completely is for weak minds

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        >implying nu DnD is an improvement over OSR

  3. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    >preference

    No tracking at all. You just get without ammo when needed by the plot.

  4. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    All Flesh Must Be Eaten has an ammo/ magazine tracking sheet, as the ZM I keep track of everyone's ammo. It's not really a hassle and it's always fun when someone goes to fire and I tell them that it just goes click. Characters with some firearm knowledge I'll thell them that "the slide locks open after you fire" or something like that to let them know they are empty, unless they are severely panicked or popping them off like crazy where they probably wouldn't notice in the moment.

    I would only really keep track of ammo if it lent itself to the mechanics or the theme of the game. Zombie survival where ammo is scarce and in precise calibers is important, Twilight is a military role playing game so ammo tracking is important to because there is an entire system for it. For shit like DnD it probably doesn't matter as much (you fletch some more arrows while camping yadda yadda)

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      >All Flesh Must Be Eaten has an ammo/ magazine tracking sheet, as the ZM I keep track of everyone's ammo. It's not really a hassle and it's always fun when someone goes to fire and I tell them that it just goes click.
      That's actually pretty cool

  5. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I'm intrigued by Dungeon World's system. Instead of worrying that you have 5 bullets, you just abstract it out to actions. Thus one "ammo" is enough to trade single shots with orcs all day but that's only enough for one trick shot that kills the orc sneaking up behind the cleric.
    I haven't fully grokked all of Dungeon World's rules yet though so my interpretation might be wrong.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      Dungeon World is shit though. Like even worse than PbtA games. You might as well be playing a freeform game. Dungeon World is just some math presented in a void calling itself a game.

      DW doesn't even have rules for how turn order works, bro. It's THAT shit. It's unironically one of the few games on the marker that's legitimately worse than DnDogshit 5e.

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        >u might as well be pwaying fweefowm

        • 5 months ago
          Anonymous

          I can see the tears running down your face as you typed this copium

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      Our DM's homebrew system took a few cues from Dungeon World, including the ammo thing. Ammo is technically not strictly tracked and just firing fof an arrow/bullet once a scene won't really count against you, though if you're in a longer firefight you might be told to mark off 1 ammo after the scene's over. Or if you roll a Threat(generally if you roll badly enough the DM feels like there should be a Threat, but there's other ways to get them) you might lose an ammo for whatever reason is narratively appropriate.

  6. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Nah.
    You rolled a nat 1 and you are out of ammo for the fight, but dig some out after the fight is done. Keeps range gays in check without a bunch of book keeping.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      This
      Heavily abstracted, functionally infinite, still leads to neat moments where the archer has to switch tactics.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      Fine, I'll just bring second bow and switch when first runs out of ammo. ;^)

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous
      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        Unironically how Fire Emblem bows work.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      >his players can't be trusted to track ammo in an honest and expedient manner
      One reason why I play solo.

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        Lol, worst nogames cope possible

        • 5 months ago
          Anonymous

          >my games test skill and luck
          Seems pretty yesgames to me, gaybait.

          • 5 months ago
            Anonymous

            > jerking off to porn is the same as sex
            can you imagine?

            • 5 months ago
              Anonymous

              This comparison doesn't work, because sexual intercourse inherently requires at least two people, by definition of intercourse. While all a game needs to be a game by definition is to have a structure of rules in an activity decided by the strength, skill, and/or luck of the participants.
              You get nothing, you lose; go die, sir.

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                Even if we grant that solo gaming is definitionally gaming, you're still a nogames if you don't have an actual gaming group. For example, you'd be a nogames if you only played MTG but were giving your opinion in a TTRPG thread, for similar reasons. Your opinion is irrelevant, because it's not informed by actual experience playing an actual game with an actual group. Your experience is not indicative of what anyone who has actually engaged with the hobby has experienced.

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                > Plays solo chess
                > Thinks winrate impressive or matters

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        >thinking it's a matter of honesty or efficiency at all

        • 5 months ago
          Anonymous

          If efficiency isn't a problem, then why are you crying about "bOoKkEePiNg"?

          • 5 months ago
            Anonymous

            Because the book-keeping is pointless if the players can simply buy 400 ammo. Them being efficient about it doesn't matter if the entire system is pointless regardless.
            Better to use an abstracted system that actually gets those interesting moments where a character runs out of ammo, rather than just counting on the players to be bad at ammo management.

            • 5 months ago
              Anonymous

              How exactly do you carry 400 ammo, anon? Hmm? A quiver typically carried 25 arrows. Picrel is a guy with 100 arrows. You see how absurd that is?

              Maybe you meant bullets. A decent chest rig has about 8 mag pouches for rifles (so 8x30 is 240 rounds of rifle ammo) and 5 pouches for handgun (5*15 or 75 rounds of pistol ammo). That shit is heavy, too. Loaded mags alone probably weigh 40 pounds. That's ignoring any other gear you might be carrying in your ruck, strapped to you, the steel (or ceramic) stuffed in your plate carrier. The shit adds up. So now you've got to think about the implications of all that weight when you can't just "return to town" to buy ammo. How far are you gonna make those mags last? In an extended firefight, you're going to need to suppress your enemy, right? This aint some call of duty one shot one kill bullshit. So you crack a round off every half second or so while your buddy flanks. Empty one mag, then a second while you push up on their location to finish them. Adrenaline's pumping and you could see the tango swinging his czech-made AK in your direction so you dump into him. Now you're down 25% of your total ammunition and that's your first firefight of the campaign. Hopefully you have enough for the next and hopefully it's not lasting longer than this.

              When you start to think about the implications of weight and ammunition, you see how it adds to story and tension. I don't see why people would handwave it

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                >How exactly do you carry 400 ammo
                In a Kiepe. I believe English calls it "pack basket".

                Also Vz.58 is not an AK.

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                It basically is an AK.

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                No, anon. Don't make me field strip my Vz and AK just to show you they're nothing alike. A Vz 58 has more in common with a Beretta handgun than an AK.

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                The Czechs are massively autistic and ensured the vz. 58 and the AKM do not share a single part right down to the magazine.

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                It's more like parallel evolutions that converged in some aspects, both Vz.58 and AK were inspired by StG44, both reached similar outward shape, and due to demand for ammo compatibility within Warsaw Pact both used same ammunition (image plucked from wikipedia)

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                >both Vz.58 and AK were inspired by StG44
                Mechanically AK is closer to an M1 Garand than an StG. Visually the H&K lineup is close and the planned StG45 would've used a roller-delayed action, similar to G3s.

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                >I don't see why people would handwave it
                An abstracted system is different than handwaving it. Handwaving it is saying that you have infinite ammo and it doesn't matter at all.

                The abstracting is assuming that the character is carrying enough ammo, but not too much, and has some extra somewhere that they can restock from between fights, but can also run out mid-fight. Them running out is decided by chance, rather than by tracking, because tracking encourages things like your pic where somebody is wearing multiple quivers to carry a hundred arrows in order to avoid ever being in danger of running out.
                This could further be added to with an abstracted resource die system where restocking a quiver can chip away at long-term supplies of ammo if one is expected to be in the field for extended periods.

                The purpose is exactly what you said. It adds to the story and tension when the character runs out of ammo. Using abstracted, narrative-style mechanics to decide that the character has run out of ammo will actually result in those situations occurring.
                This is not a binary between 'strict book-keeping' and 'ignore completely'.

                >How exactly do you carry 400 ammo, anon?
                You don't need 400 arrows all at once, so thanks for demonstrating a pic of a guy who will never run out of arrows in a single fight and could probably get away with half as many.
                The remainder is just a matter of recovering arrows fired, gathering more arrows from enemies, and having any sort of pack animals or hirelings. Which the party will have if you're dealing with remotely 'realistic' encumbrance and logistics.

                Note that you have now drastically decreased the efficiency of this bookkeeping system as now not only do the players have to track the numerical total of their ammunition, but also how they're carrying each individual piece of ammunition. It has gone from a number to track to an arrow-jenga minigame.

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                I think genre and tone is the most important factor to deciding this.

                A horror or survival game should track exact amount and those amounts should ideally be small.
                Having 4 rifle bullets or 6 arrows should matter.

                For war story 40k or a more standard fantasy dungeon crawl. An abstract system is perfect (Like Blackhack or W&Gs salvos), running out should matter but ammo will be common enough that you run into the ammo shuffling and stupid book keeping problem
                this anon describes.

                For stuff like more modern heroic D%D games or cyberpunk and modern systems, tracking anything beyond specialised ammo (Fire arrows, rockets, grenades) is a total waste of time and spoils the fun. Having your legendary hero run out of arrows fighting a horde of orcs is boring and a street punk should blast full auto on every gun they have as much as possible.

  7. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    It depends on the system and the setting. There isn't a one size fits all way of doing it.

    For the 5e game I run we use a virtual tabletop with macros for tracking ammo expenditure, so keeping track of ammunition (and other consumables) is easy and I enforce it. None of the current party members use ranged weapons, however, which has led to the party accumulating hundreds of arrows over the course of their adventure as they loot them from slain foes.

  8. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Depends on the scale of the game's combat rounds.
    If you're doing very short periods of time and low abstraction combat then counting ammunition is necessarily important.
    If you're doing longer chunks of time and more abstraction less granular counting is required.
    This then gets balanced against how much resource management the game is about, or how cinematic its trying to be.
    PBTA recourse points can be fun if you're tying to make an action movie and occasional tense ammunition related moment.
    Counting arrows in an osr dungeon crawler is worth doing, especially at lower levels as part of encumbrance and risk/reward.
    I like skirmish wargame style ammo rolls for those though.
    Really depends on what you're up to.

  9. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Depends on which of my games it is.
    For games with guns, I make abstractions where I want, but ultimately, ammo counts do matter.
    Magazines, shell packs, and grenades all fully-load bullet-based guns, shotguns, and launchers respectively. The amount in each mag/pack isn't tracked, this is abstracted; one item always reloads its matching weapon to full capacity.
    The ammo count of the gun itself is what matters, and there's usually an aspect of randomness to how many bullets/shells are spent on a single attack. This alters how effective the attack is, too.
    There's also the resource management aspect; do you use the cool scrap you just got to make an ammunition item because you're almost out, or will you make a weapon out of it?
    If I made ammunition infinite, I'd need to reduce the damage the weapons deal, and make other balance alterations that I don't care to do.

    For games with arrows, not only do I track individual arrows, but arrows with different enchantments and applied poisons, too. This is also important for balance and resource management.

  10. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    >What's your preference for the way ammunition is handled in a ttrpg system?
    My homebrew, you get to shoot each gun once, if you hit, it's always instakill and you always magdump.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      >My gun is the Dai Lung Magnum, it has 10 shots - I write this down on a piece of paper.
      >I take a shot, and when I do I make a mark on the sheet
      >When the sheet's marks total the ammo capacity I know I am out of ammo

      But what about your spare ammo?!
      >I write down how much ammo I have
      >Whenever the weapon is reloaded I deduct the difference between remaining ammo and the weapon's ammo capacity
      >The weapon is now loaded

      But how do you know that ammo is available for use and isn't in the wrong magazine or in a carrying box or-
      >I assume that whatever ammo I am carrying is in an appropriate form for quick reloading unless specified otherwise

      With these simple tricks you too can track ammo like a pro! Alternatively do this:

      Which is better.

  11. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Ammo management is best left to videogames where everything is kept track of for you.

  12. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Every shot is tracked. My players aren't morons and this isn't hard.

  13. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    For medieval/fantasy I simply adjust (if necessary) ranged damage enough that it only contributes chip damage and then don't bother tracking ammo at all unless it's special. For modern/sci-fi I simply don't bother tracking. That's it.

  14. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I don't play DnD anymore so I tend to use supply dice like Free League tend to put in their systems.

    Range from D6-D12, if you roll a 1 or 2 you decrease to the next die down. If you want more than D12 arrows you need another inventory slot which starts at D6.

    Less book keeping and still makes ammo scarce enough that you can worry about running out

  15. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I let players keep track of ammo, and I throw popcorn at them when they "forget".
    The wizard has to keep track of his sack of weeds and eyeballs, there's no damn reason you can't keep track of some wooden sticks.

    Ammo is a countdown timer to being defenseless. It adds tension to combat.

  16. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Freaking Twilight 2K style hell yeah

  17. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I use a homebrew system that can be configured into multiple genres, so it varies by tone and genre.

    When I am using the old school dungeon crawling configuration, I track ammunition for my players closely with them only knowing how many arrows, bolts, or wand charges they have left during a resting turn.

    When running the space-fantasy version, the player tracks the number of rounds in their firearm closely, as reloading takes a meaningful amount of time. Each reload is a rolled usage die.

  18. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Yes. Most of my players can count, so we use something called 'math' and 'writing', using tools called 'pencils' to keep count of what they have left. It isnt that difficult once you learn how. Seems beyond some players though.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      Yeah, alright, Einstein. But if John has 23 arrows, and uses two of them, how many does he have left, Mr Masters In Mathematics?

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        See, that's your problem, letting the players amass arrow into double digits. are they powergmaers or something? Stick to single digit amounts for everything and it's easier to keep count.

        • 5 months ago
          Anonymous

          >Digits
          >Amount
          >Count
          In English, professor!

  19. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I played a zombie survival game with a few of my friends and handed them actual rounds in a magazine for their guns, usually matching what they had. So one guy had a magazine for an AK and the other for a Beretta, final one had a cylinder for a .38 revolver. They had to eject a cartridge for every round they expended in game and load more from a bag full of extra ammo which was their overall reserves. With the price of ammo now I don't think I could really afford to do that again.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      You gave your whole table lead exposure.

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        Lol you israelites will guzzle jizz out of dirty wieners at the bus station but panic about lead sealed inside of copper jackets, really makes you think

        • 5 months ago
          Anonymous

          dude.

          Freudian slip.

          • 5 months ago
            Anonymous

            Not sure what part of accurately mentioning that israelites guzzling jizz out of dirty wieners at the bus station was a slip but whatever israelite

  20. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    if you roll badly you have to reload or the gun jams or it's a dud, or if you roll really badly it gets stuck in the barrel

  21. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    By the bullet for my current zombie homebrew. I don't worry about magazines or clips as much because I'm trying to emulate old survival horror games. Every attack represents one shot, but you can gamble additional shots up to the gun's RoF in the form of D6 'bullet dice'. They hit on a result of 6 so long as the initial skill roll also succeeded, and each hit strikes a random body location.
    Otherwise, I would use Free League's Resource Dice system.

  22. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Coming from Cyberpunk 2020 and Twilight 2000 2e, I track every bullet and magazine. There are dedicated stats on the character sheet, so there's absolutely no reason not to do it. I dislike systems where it's abstracted, such as in Alien or even Twilight 2000 1e.

  23. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Fantasy?
    Track every arrow. You can pick them back up after using anyway so you don't need so many

    Post apoc?
    Every bullet, but caliber is obscured to small/med/high/shotgun

    40k, other sci-fi
    Only for reloading

    Cyberpunk
    No

    Horror
    Absolutely. You are lucky if your revolver has a full drum

  24. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Is there a way to have usage dice, using only D6s?
    Basically, an series of rolls with increasingly likely probabilities.
    Roll 1, then roll 2 or less, then roll 3 or less etc... would work, but the smallest probability would only be 1/6, which isn't very low.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      The systems I've seen that use it typically use rolls of 1 or 2 on a die that gets progressively smaller, rather than having a wider range of rolls. One example for rations I've seen is having it go from a d10 down to a d2 (with the d2 basically being an auto-failure) and the math works out where that's roughly 2 weeks of food. Or applying that to the context of arrows, 14 shots.

      The odds of a 1 on a d6 is technically lower than a 2 or less on a d10 and d8, though obviously once you roll that 1 the odds grow a lot faster. There's less room to slowly increment, so the system is more volatile overall.
      I would expect that would make for less than a dozen shots, if you're rolling the die for each shot. That still could be sufficient, provided that there are ways of scavenging for ammo after a battle.
      A way to have it be more generous would be to use 2d6. If you start it with 4 or less, that's similar odds to 1- on a d6, but from there the way the odds scale when incrementing by 1 is closer to the d10 system I mentioned above. If you then cap it at 8 (with that representing the last use before the character is out) then you get quite close,.

      The d6 method might work better if you do want ammo fluctuating a lot, with the characters being more likely to run out mid-battle, but then having more ways of replenishing after. The 2d6 method might work better for more of a long-haul, where managing shots for a fight is less important than managing them across an entire mission.

  25. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Usage dice are moronic.
    >Take a shot
    >Mark off 1 ammunition
    vs.
    >Take a shot
    >Roll usage dice
    >Knock the usage die down a step if you roll badly, rolling a smaller die next time
    Unless you are dumber than a fricking half-starved Somalian child soldier, you shouldn't have any issue just tracking a goddamn number.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      It's not a question of difficulty in tracking. It's having a purpose to the tracking.
      Tracking shot by shot works in the context of a post-apocalyptic or survival game where the party might have a dozen pieces of ammo between them. It doesn't work as well if the players ever have an easy way to stockpile.
      Usage dice simply abstracts the system to make it so running out of ammo is always a risk via narrative mechanics. It's no more moronic than having a wound system in place of hitpoints. They simply fulfill different functions.

  26. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I'm a gun autist, so I like tracking every individual round of ammunition, what I have in each magazine, how many magazines and where they're stored.

  27. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I have been playing around with an idea of preparing ammo for the day's adventures during a Rest.
    Characters with ranged weapons, whether bows or guns would need to maintain their weapons by cleaning/tightening components.
    Ranged character must take the action to maintain weapons and, as a part of this, consume 1 magazine/quiver to allow for enough ammo for the day's fight.
    Another version is that after a combat encounter, 1 mag/quiver is consumed if at least 1 round was fired.
    Neither is ideal and both need refinement but it allows tracking in a such less autistic way.
    Needs refining for post-apoc though, moments like Mad Max 2 gyrocopter pilot scene are too good to miss.

  28. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    For fantasy
    >away from your baggage train - ammo, food and light sources get tracked individually
    >with your baggage train and hirelings - infinite ammo

  29. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I prefer not tracking ammunition at all unless it's special in some way, because up to a certain point it's useless bookkeeping.
    It's especially funny if the system we're playing pays lip service to the idea that ammunition might be a problem without it actually being a problem.
    unfortunately it also pays lip service to the troons, so you're all about to >LANCER me.

  30. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    >What's your preference for the way ammunition is handled in a ttrpg system?
    Bean counting (unless the game is built with ammo abstraction, eg mutants & masterminds). Why the frick has become such a burden to have a modicum of resource management in the scene is beyond me.

    Irl i only met ONE gm that enforced that moronness and was a fricking 5e one and the most reviled as railroady fricker of my area, even the zoomers playing pf2e here keep track of ammo.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      >t. zoomer pretending to be an oldgay
      Bean-counting is fine. Your posturing is laughable. And the reason why most people avoid bean-counting is because a) it's tedious and b) in vast majority of games, you never actually run out of ammo, thus making the tedium worthless waste of time.
      Tell me, when was the last time you actually run out of bullets or arrows in a game? Because last time I saw this happening, it was T2k game in '17, and we had really fricking bad rolls, so going full auto turned out to be an even bigger waste of ammo than it is irl. But my character had on him grand total of one spare mags, and the half-empty one in the gun, so going out was predictable. And guess what happened then? I picked a gun from a guy I just shot and continued from there on. I didn't know how many rounds are inside, but that didn't matter

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        >The pot calling the kettle black
        If your dopamine receptors are burnt to the point of consider 'tedious' some blink-of-eye calculation you shouldn't trow the zoomer accusation so lightly fren. That said In my post i acknowledged instances where the bean counting is counterintuitive (for the sake of genre conventions) and i do agree that some battle of attrition games are not properly designed (for example if a pc uses a machinegun shouldn't be immediately aware of how much ammo he's left with).

  31. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Special stuff tracked, normal ammo is just "eh it feels like you should run out soon" if they've been slinging a lot of lead in a short time

  32. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Consider the following
    >Twilight 2000
    Literally every bullet counts, and it's setting-specific, too. If you aren't keeping track of your ammo, your GM is able to declare you're out whenever he feels like it.
    >Call of Cthulhu
    No special mechanics or rules, but obviously you need to know when your revolver will say "click" instead of "BANG!", unless you plan to get your face eaten out
    >Hollow Earth Expedition
    You have ammo on a non-mandatory tracker, and with specific builds, you can even cheat out and have extra ammo that's not accountable, already in your gun, lock and loaded
    >2d20
    Ammo isn't even a thing, you shoot as long as you feel like it, but you have special Ammo Resource, which only goes out when you fumble your roll or when doing some special move (like saturating the entire room with bullets)

    All of those systems are perfectly fine and viable in their own context. All of them are dreadfully bad in any other context.
    Oh wow, it's almost like unless setting, tone and actual mechanics are specified, your thread is just bullshit discussion abut nothing in particular.

  33. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    A critical failure (or equivalent) means the mag has run dry. Anything more complicated is frippery.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      I hate systems like this
      >full mag, bad roll
      >oops looks like we're empty teehee
      PbtA tier tardation

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        You magdumped the sky, duh.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      Totally moronic and fitting of a system written by communist slaves

  34. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    If my mage has to keep track of mana, you gotta keep track of arrows. Write it down...

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      This, you let them stop tracking ammo, next time they want to stop tracking hitpoints.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      the caster equivalent to tracking individual arrows is actually making spell components and spellbooks things the caster has to worry about, which is something nobody does outside of the same few games that would track individual arrows

  35. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Unless its a critical plot point or gritty section of the adventure then they always start combat fully stocked, but they have to account for their ammo in the combat.
    So if they have 20 arrows then they pretty much always have 20 at the start of a fight, and from there I expect them to keep track. Since they can make multiple ranged attacks per turn it runs down quicker than you'd think, so this isn't like an instance of 1 shot per turn being dragged out over 20 turns that would be a pedantic waste of time.

  36. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I track it all

  37. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I use the GeneSys RPG mechanics for it, since those are pretty simple but effective.

    * All consumable items either have a Limited Use: X, or Consumable trait. Arrows and various ammo are Consumables, Grenades are Limited Use.
    * Limited Use: you can only use it x number of times.
    * Consumable: All items have an HP/Durability. When a Consumable item reaches 0 HP/Durability, the user runs out of ammo.
    * Special cases are magical/superior items and returning items. Consumables with the returning trait dont run out, rather they can "fall" on the battlefield and just need to be picked up and re-equipped/loaded. Magical Items have a Magical X or Superior X trait, or whatever works for your game. They just increase the consumable items' HP/Durability by X.

    When user fails by some extreme degree, then you can trigger a step of damage to the consumables' durability.

    Pretty simple, and it works well even in my heavy survival-mechanic hexcrawl without me or my players killing game with inventory management.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      Looks terrible

  38. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I charge my players an estimated ammo charge based on what I know to be the ahead of them but treat standard ammunition as infinite. Special Ammo (think magical, enchanted, or armor piercing, EMP, Hollow Point, dragons breath) the ammo must be purchased separately and tracked. to transition to special ammo the weapon must be cleared and reloaded, requiring an action (wording dependant on playsystem) to do so. then its deducted from the total per round of combat dependant on the following:

    In modern or scifi i assume that the number of dice rolled (lets say 2d8) is the ammount of bullets that are fired during a combat action. the combat action would strip two rounds off their total. when a weapon is purchased it is assigned an ammo capacity, Handguns are typically 14, Revolvers are 6. Shotguns 5, Sniper Rifles 3, SMG/Carbine Rifles 30. ammo capacity can be changed through player purchased mods, or weapon variants, but thats another conversation.

    i track who runs which type of weapon, and how many rounds of combat. after 5 turns i tell my players running a shotgun they must spend their next action reloading or switch to a different weapon. same goes for my handgun users at 14.

    I want to force my players into a situation where they must face the risk of having to reload in combat. this will be especially important if we are doing a building clearing event.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      >track who runs which type of weapon, and how many rounds of combat. after 5 turns i tell my players running a shotgun they must spend their next action reloading or switch to a different weapon. same goes for my handgun users at 14.
      That isn't even the right number of fricking rounds for almost every example of common handgun or shotgun god damnit frick

  39. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    As a player I like to keep track of my ammo/rations/other such expendable resources and spend my currency on things like daily necessities and non-numbers important items/equipment (i.e. clothing sets or utensils) and ensure my character is doing regular healthy daily habits. Even though my usual GMs don't tend to require such or really track it. >inb4 someone reminds me I'm an autist

  40. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Always track every bullet and arrow. If they're annoyed by the bookkeeping they'll invest in a quiver of infinite arrows or some such.

  41. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    What about recovering ammunition for bolts and arrows? What kind of rules do you guys use for that? There's so many factors that go into if you can recover an arrow that I feel like just a simple roll isn't good enough.

  42. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    track every arrow
    D&D is a logistics game in addition to everything else it does

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