Bows are OP until you have limited arrows
this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2025
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I have an invisible mage hand that can pick the keys out of the jailers pocket. If you want me to roll for collecting every arrow… I will
One dice at a time
We play with the we don't track arrows and encumbrance unless you start trying to steal all the doors in the dungeon. The stealing of doors did happen with a group before I joined. We keep the rule just in case
Stealing doors is easy, you just have to open it and then it becomes a jar. Jars are easier to carry away than doors.
Always climb to the highest point in a dungeon to surveil it. Then gather up all you saw, use that saw to cut through the damn doors.
Did reinstitution of the encoumbrance rules quell the door thieving, or just make them keep paperwork on it?
As a Door Thief, mildly.
At a certain point encumbrance leads to a system of value density to prioritize overall loot carried; however loot goblins will also prioritize shenanigans such as stealing doorknobs or swapping doors or assigning high value to mundane items like stools for collection purposes.
I think my next character will specialize in some sort of loot golem.
We just buy 50 rations and a barrel of booze session 1 and it some how never runs out unless there's a crazy party. I think once we had some travel session that fast forward months of travel where he managed resources for a bit.
Any kind of inventory management like arrows and food is way too sweaty and has never engaged a single player ever unless the whole point of the campaign is this exact mechanic. It's a waste of time and energy and I don't play with anyone that insists on doing it.
Mostly, I agree. However, part of why it has a cost is to be a sink for gold. Sure, it's not much, but it does add up. However, there are better ways to handle it than to track arrows.
Just make your players occasionally pay for upkeep of their gear when they're in town. This could be themes as repairs for weapons an armor, more arrows, spellcasting supplies, food, etc. This does two things. You can give them more value in rewards and it makes them feel like they're actually adventurers, not just game characters.
Alternatively, scale rewards down. They don't have to know about it, but if they're not paying for supplies then they're going to get more value than is expected (by the rules).
Or, the final option, just ignore it. It theoretically adds up to a lot of value over the course of the game, especially for spellcasting, but who cares? If you notice they have enough money that they stop worrying about it then you can do something.
part of why it has a cost is to be a sink for gold. Sure, it's not much, but it does add up. However, there are better ways to handle it than to track arrows.
Magical arrow subscription service, never run out as long as your payments are up to date
Battle is a fun time to discover your auto-renew didn't work and your arrows will now only shoot 3 feet before disappearing.
...wait I think I'm ready to DM
Every group I've been in the archers just bought more than they could ever use and someone in the party could carry the extras. Like every time they go back to town they drop 5 gp for 100 arrows.
There's a moment when it can add tension. You find three silver arrows in an old fort, hole up for the night, and then hear the horrible howl of a werewolf ring out.
Or you're lost in the desert, trying to ration your water until you can find an oasis.
I've played Westmarches games where you do a little pre-adventure "we need to go X hexes so we're wanting Y supplies to get there and back". But its more a cost of failure than a drama element.
It's because D&D used to be a dungeon crawler but nobody does that anymore, yet tradition insists the dungeon crawler mechanics remain.
For a game with no attachment to tradition, try Draw Steel
i like to borrow from other systems and treat quiver and gold as stats to be checked against. i can ask you to roll a stat check against quiver. if you fail, you are currently out of arrows and will need to perform some action to no longer be out of arrows (including long rest, just assuming part of long rest is fletching or whatever, it doesn't need to be focused on too hard). on critical success or failure, the player's stat can go up or down permanently, and a player can trade a wealth point for an inventory point in town.
generally it works really well at letting players focus on role play by not requiring them to maintain a running tally.
Or you could save on rolls and say you're out of arrows on a natural 1.
the big thing is just that your inventory management can just be a number and you don't have to think so hard about it if that's not something you or your players find joy in while playing make believe together
Im a forever DM. We play DND for fun not inventory management, anything tedious like that just isn't what I want to spend time in a game on.
Yeah, it's like encumberance in video games. Usually just makes things tedious and if there's no work around it stops being fun.
I don't mind encumberance that much. I think it's necessary if you're making any attempt at balancing the economy. Without it the player returns back to town with every bit of loot from the dungeon to sell, and the economy doesn't matter anymore.
However, any game that has an encumberance mechanic absolutely has to have a weight/value sort and display. I don't know why this is so hard for them to implement. Bethesda games never do, and I'm playing Tainted Grail (I've heard lots of good things, and it's alright so far) and it doesn't. With any amount of playtesting they'd get overencumbered, try to figure out what to drop and instantly realize they want to drop the highest weight/value items, and there's no way to view this! How do you not add it?
Easy fix: Have more money as loot instead of otherwise nearly worthless items that sell for small amounts of money for flavor.
Well, for most games it isn't useless items. Most of it just isn't useful to you. Either your gear is better, or it's for a combat style you don't use, or it's consumables like potions.
I'm talking about the things you can't use, like bowls and trinkets and other stuff that games frequently include as 'white' items that literally cannot be used. Those things that exist to be sold to vendors.
They have been in many of the roga I have played. In the rpgs that don't have them, there isn't a vendor that buys stuff and no 'economy' that exists.
In SP RPG games it's stupid. I'm just going to make however many trips back and forth it takes to empty the dungeon anyway. Might as well let me do it in one shot so I can get on to the next thing. I get it in survival crafting type games (within reason) but no reason games like skyrim or fallout need an encumbrance mechanic when you need a fuckload of stuff to level your crafting skills.
Will you really go back? I suspect that 99.99% of players won't. It's more effective to go somewhere new, where you get XP, a fresh shot at better loot, and maybe different quests.
Sure, you can ruin the economy in many ways, such as hoovering up every bit of loot. It isn't balanced around that though, and can't be. It's the correct assumption almost always that players won't return for loot that was left, because it's less valuable than doing a new dungeon.
Yes, I go back. Why would I say it's annoying and wastes a ton of time if I didn't have experience with it? I've had a lot of conversations with other people who are the same way so I think you are underestimating how annoying it is. As far as moving on to the next place, what do you get? One boss chest, with a single magic item that may or may not be good for you? You still have to pick up the incedental crap to sell for gold and crafting materials. If you just rely on the few decent items you get that would take even longer. Regardless, there's no economy to ruin in games like skyrim or fallout. You're the only one there with a bunch of mindless NPCs, they don't trade with each other and their inventory resets after a few days. Selling them a ton of crap is completely meaningless to the world as a whole.
I don't think you understand game design if you can't understand what's meant by "ruining the economy." It means that the player gets so much money that there's essentially no use for it anymore. They can buy anything that's available without concern. For example, in Morrowind you can craft potions with ridiculous value, then use that to pay for levels from trainers and buy the best items, then pay for enchanting to make them even better. It trivializes the game.
The only option at that point is to just limit what can be purchased. That's a much worse solution than balancing the game's economy so the player has options to spend money on, but critically they can't buy everything. Video games are about making decisions. If you don't have to decide anything than why not just watch a movie? The game needs to present you with options, and you need to choose what you will and won't do. The economy is a great place this can happen in a game that's balanced well.
The first thing I disable in every RPG.
Going through a dungeon and having to stop every couple of rooms to throw away stuff really loses your immersion.
Bonus point is that it also accumulates wealth more easily.
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Our rule was always that if you bought 50 of something like food or ammo, you don't have to track how many you've used, we'll just assume you're well stocked and resupplying offscreen. The limit only comes back if the party is overtly cut off from resupply, like if they are shipwrecked on an uninhabited island.
This means you can easily have a limitless supply of normal arrows but still have to track your silver arrows, smoke bomb arrows, etc. Or you can invest the money to just have a limitless supply of whatever specialty item you think is worth the cost.
Converts my one electrum to 50 cp. Now I have infinite money!
And that's how the party ends up on the run for counterfeiting.
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