Quote from: Old Aegidius on March 15, 2023, 02:59:09 AM
Assuming we're discussing AD&D, all that spring to mind are HP and spell slots (and arrows).

And any number of buffs, anti-buffs, and multi-round actions, regardless of the system.

QuoteHP is fairly disconnected from the sim.

I would dispute that. I am aware of all the arguments and that that topic needs its own thread. I'm simply saying it's in dispute and cannot be treated as true for purposes of this discussion.

QuoteAs for the only resupply happening at the start/end of the adventure, I'd question that. If the group brings a pack animal and cart with them on an adventure, they can bring as many arrows as they please.

You can question it all you want. All you'd be doing is tinkering with the definition of adventure. Bring a cart, don't bring a cart, at some point you have to resupply. No matter what you call it, no matter how you spin it, that's the timescale upon which ammo will be economized.

QuoteIf the players scavenge enemies, won't they find usable arrows?

Sometimes. Not very often. Most monsters don't use weapons. The ones that do don't always have ranged weapons. And when you find ones that do, they're not necessarily hauling carts full of arrows in tow. Generally not enough to replace what's lost.

QuoteI'd argue HP is just about tension/pacing and so it's about the game, not the sim. It affects player psychology only so long as the player suspends their understanding of the rules and tries to role-play their HP loss as if it's more than what the rules actually model. 1 HP is the same as full HP as far as your ability to continue fighting. All that matters round-to-round is the likelihood that the next round the incoming hits will drop you. Tracking HP tilts the percentages so the odds of survival drop as rounds wear on, but that's about it.

If you agree that the hit point mechanism means a diminishing survival probability, how is that just an affect on psychology? How is it suspending understanding the rules to make different choices in the face of lower probability of survival.

QuoteYou could model that a dozen different ways and it wouldn't necessarily need to track something like HP.

If you can name even one, then do so. Because I'm strongly suspicious that there's going to be shenanigans as to what constitutes "something like HP." If survival probability is diminishing rather than fixed, there has to be something tracking where it's at. Like if a character begins with a 100% chance of survival, then after one hit is knocked down to 44%, then knocked down to 11%, then down to 2%, I would call that "something like HP."

Quote]I assume players carry around so many arrows because the rules make it pretty clear that they're cheap, plentiful, fairly easy to transport, and a great strategy. Given how often people need things like carts to haul loot out of a dungeon, it's reasonable to carry a spare quiver or two there. That's 60 arrows total (20 on you, 40 in the cart) and for only 5 gp each (OSE prices). Bring a porter and you won't even need to go back to the cart. Lose the quivers because the porter is swallowed whole? 10 gp. No big deal. I'll point out that I'm not arguing that you shouldn't model running out of arrows. I think that's an important part of the sim. I'm arguing AD&D with arrow tracking does not support this properly due to the way the game works (and the prices are structured).

Cheap? I wouldn't call 1-2 months salary cheap. Plentiful? Where in the rules does it say that? Easy to transport? The standard 60 arrows for war amounts to 120 enc. Added to whatever standard equipment a soldier is going to be carrying, that's not necessarily a nothing-burger. Great strategy? I don't know about all that. Frequent cart hauls of loot? I have so many questions

Going back for more arrows? I think there you've just ceded the argument. Great. You never technically run out of arrows. But making a trip to the cart and back, facing wandering monsters, is certainly a price to pay for almost running out of arrows. And there it is. It matters.

QuoteIn the fictional world we're trying to sim, there's presumably no magic matter replicator responsible for the existence of these arrows so scarcity is being used colloquially here. If you neither control the supply nor the consumption of arrows and rely on the honor system however, you effectively do have a matter replicator because a player runs out of arrows when they decide to run out. There is dissonance between what the game ought to model about the fictional world and what is actually modeled. IMO it's a bigger problem for the sim than any abstraction, but YMMV.

I've already stated in my previous post that I do, in fact, control supply (via blacksmith count) and consumption (assumed NPC consumption) within a flexible range so that I don't have to micromanage players restocking supplies. But I also indicated that if they do go hog wild, the cost in time and gold will skyrocket. A party of 6 with 4 bow-users who try to buy up 60 arrows each is going to eat up the monthly production of 8 blacksmiths. I'm not making up those numbers. It's in the rules. It's up to the DM to use them.

QuoteAnd yes, I'd say it's quite meticulous to track 1 GP per arrow in a game where GP = XP and it takes many thousands to make it past the first couple levels (during which you might fire maybe 100 arrows).

GP =/= XP. You can get XP other ways. And not every GP gained comes with an XP attached.
Training cost the first couple of levels won't leave you with surplus GP
And bow use is going to be under-represented in low level dungeon crawls.

QuoteYou could just budget it and it would have the same effect. That's what you're going to have to do anyway when players get to name level and they have their little force of yeomen out there training. You're not going to be arrow tracking them, and it's doubtful you'll want to arrow track the local smiths.

DMG requires a certain minimum number of smiths to support your henchmen, hirelings, and followers at that level. That's all hashed out in detail, no need to speculate over it.

QuoteDepending on how much HP bloat you're dealing with (which edition), as the GM you have a decent idea how much damage people have taken or healed much like you have a decent idea how many spell slots the players are burning. I have had GMs who track damage on their side of the screen and it works pretty well in terms of immersion and preventing metagaming, though there are tradeoffs.

All of this can be said of ammo as well.

QuoteIt's worth considering though that people hate HP bloat and I think it's the same basic significant figures problem. Tracking 1 HP does feel kind of pointless when you have 100 HP and hits tend to deal 4-12 damage. 1 HP when you have 10 is important because we've shifted the decimal point. Hopefully that makes it clear what I'm saying.

The purpose of 100 hit points has nothing to do with having a nail-biting battle where you come close to losing them all. It's for staying the course in longer adventures.

Take a crazy high level party or more or less typical makeup. Imagine them on a really long, continuous adventure. Wilderness, plane-hopping, whatever. No taking a week or a month or even a day off. Take a close look at the 1E spell recovery rules. I assume 12 hours of daily down time to set up camp, sleep, etc. Spellcasters can't replenish all of their slots daily. If a cleric uses and re-memorizes healing spells to maximize healing, and you account for other odd abilities within the party, such as a Paladin's lay on hand, add up total daily renewable healing, then divide it by the number of party members, it tops out at roughly 15 hp per party member of renewable daily healing.

That's it. No matter how many hit points you have, you really only get to lose 15 per day on average. That's all that's sustainable. Otherwise you will eventually run out. Having 30 hit points gives you a nice safety buffer above and beyond 15. Anything beyond that is for longevity of the journey. Same is true for any potions or spell slots beyond that which can be renewed daily. They're nice to have in case you're having a bad day. You can't rely on them as a regular thing.

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 15, 2023, 10:04:21 PM
And any number of buffs, anti-buffs, and multi-round actions, regardless of the system.

My recollection of round-by-round tracking and the associated headaches are mostly from my time with 3e onwards. Invisibility is a good example - lasting 24 hours in 2e but mere minutes in 3e. Haste is 3 rounds + 1 per level in 2e so a minimum of 8 rounds by the time you can cast it. Most combats will be over by then (especially hasted). My last AD&D campaign ended in 2021 and I wasn't playing a caster in that one so perhaps I'm just forgetting, but I've taken a Wizard in 2e through lvl 12 and the durations weren't really a limiting factor. Never played a cleric or druid to name-level so maybe they have different worries.

QuoteGoing back for more arrows? I think there you've just ceded the argument. Great. You never technically run out of arrows. But making a trip to the cart and back, facing wandering monsters, is certainly a price to pay for almost running out of arrows. And there it is. It matters.

You're going to go back to the cart to sleep from time to time, yeah. It's unwise to sleep in the dungeon, after all. When you get back to camp, you're not going to be dry on arrows or any other resource (or else you're generally dead soon anyway). You face the wandering monster rolls no matter what because you have to go back and sleep. There is no additional intrinsic risk added by taking extra arrows or taking a cart.

If your resupply point is near the entrance to the dungeon, or held by a porter, that's quite different than if your only resupply point is in town, back through the wilderness. The cost and effort of setting up the equivalent of a makeshift FOB is fairly minimal compared to the costs of NOT doing it. It's easy to do even in the dungeon. You place your cache, do your work, and retrieve the cache on your way out. Rinse and repeat.

QuoteIf you agree that the hit point mechanism means a diminishing survival probability, how is that just an affect on psychology? How is it suspending understanding the rules to make different choices in the face of lower probability of survival.
...I'm strongly suspicious that there's going to be shenanigans as to what constitutes "something like HP."

Because there is no consequence until you hit 0, and not even any risk until you get low enough that you could drop from a bad round. If I'm at 40 of 50 HP, my marginal risk of death is functionally the same as if I'm at 50 HP in almost every situation. Your odds of death each round only increase when you're at low enough HP that the enemies you're facing could plausibly drop you (This is one reason why HP bloat is awful and the game is more exciting at lower levels). It's more important to do all the set-up for the battle (scouting, securing path of egress) than to actually fight it round by round past the early levels. The things that kill you are almost always the save or die situations, death traps, and ambushes which block retreat. Death from HP loss is not very common in my experience past early levels.

I think I've miscommunicated about HP, sorry. Modeling increasing statistical odds of death will require tracking a number somewhere. It just doesn't require tracking HP as a resource you lose through attrition. An example: roll 1d20 for every hit you take, and any single result less than the damage taken kills you. Each subsequent hit, roll 1d20 for each hit taken thus far and any less than the current damage kill you. Your odds of death increase over time as you take hits but attrition isn't the key factor. You'd probably want to pair with DR or something for fighter-types.

QuoteCheap? I wouldn't call 1-2 months salary cheap. Plentiful? Where in the rules does it say that? Easy to transport? The standard 60 arrows for war amounts to 120 enc. Added to whatever standard equipment a soldier is going to be carrying, that's not necessarily a nothing-burger. Great strategy? I don't know about all that. Frequent cart hauls of loot? I have so many questions
...A party of 6 with 4 bow-users who try to buy up 60 arrows each is going to eat up the monthly production of 8 blacksmiths...
...GP =/= XP. You can get XP other ways. And not every GP gained comes with an XP attached...
...DMG requires a certain minimum number of smiths to support your henchmen, hirelings, and followers at that level...

1-2 months salary of a peasant won't feel cheap to a peasant. Peasants aren't hauling treasures out of the underworld. The players are, and they will never struggle to pay for arrows beyond the 1st session or so. On the scale of the hundred or thousands you'll earn fairly quickly, a few GP is a pittance spent only infrequently. Compare arrows to anything else on the price sheet and they're cheap. In terms of encumbrance, you can bring a cart with a pack animal or draft horse. It will pay for itself in a session or two. You don't carry the encumbrance yourself - no need for 60 arrows on your person pretty much ever. You can carry any extras in the cart.

Generally, the GP that produces XP is the kind of GP you earn by shooting arrows. My point about GP and XP is that the rule is that you get XP for retrieving GP from the dungeon. The XP scale is a good ballpark indicator of how much GP the game expects you to collect by the end of level 1. Ditto any training costs.

If you clamp down on arrow supply, then that's great! If there are no arrows in town and they all need to be made on-demand, then there's a time cost and now the only question is whether or not time is costly (we'll get to that). Most games I've played, there are arrows in-stock someplace and you had mentioned a supply chain of some kind so I figured you were describing a situation like that.

My point about Yeomen is that you won't generally be arrow tracking them individually but rather as a unit. You'll take the scale, figure out how many arrows they use up per month training vs. deployed, and you'll figure out how many fletchers/smiths need to support them to keep them in fighting condition. That determines the recurring cost. This same scaling & modeling can be done on the micro-scale with budgeting quivers and it will largely have the same effect. You'll be thinking in quivers at scale anyway, so why not consider quivers at the micro-scale?

QuoteTake a crazy high level party or more or less typical makeup. Imagine them on a really long, continuous adventure. Wilderness, plane-hopping, whatever. No taking a week or a month or even a day off...

If time is at an extreme premium, then sure that can be a tax on resources. Let's explore that premise. What exactly is forcing my hand? I know GMs often hate the idea of the party sitting in town waiting for a bundle of arrows or taking a day off, but what's the problem? Is there an actual reason we can't stay in town for a month and recuperate between adventures? Is there some specific reason when we're encamped outside the dungeon that we simply must delve each and every day? We're generally better positioned to repel attackers while fresh and posted up in our encampment out in the open than we would if we tried to fight the enemies on their home turf in the underworld. If that were not the case, then why haven't they come out and killed us the first night we made our presence known? If we brought a cart we have what we need in terms of essential supplies. All I need to do is ensure our bills are cheaper than what we're taking in and we're making a tidy profit that sustains operations. No need to make HP sustainable if our GP is sustainable.

The kinds of situations I see most often that force this time pressure are contrivances from adventures or the GM acting for the sake of the game/story (not the sim). Even the designers know the resources only make sense if you somehow force people to go for long stretches of time without any opportunity to stop. If you force 10 combats without a chance to even recover arrows, yeah you'll run out. Why would I ever voluntarily burn more resources than my replacement rate unless there was a pressing need? You give me 5 spells per day, I'm limiting my engagements so I don't hit empty. If you give me 20 arrows, I'm limiting my engagements so I don't make more than 20 shots. The 20 shots aren't generally the bottleneck.

If arrows are super scarce and/or super expensive, tracking arrows can make sense. If HP remained low and healing/resurrection spells weren't really viable, then HP makes sense. If your good equipment is super expensive to buy and maintain (or you're operating at scale like at name-level), then GP makes sense. If spells are scarce but have big potential effects, spell slots make sense. AD&D makes the most sense at low levels near the start of the game where these premises are more true. As levels are gained, the game starts to fall apart (until name-level where things start making sense again because you have to scale).

Quote from: Old Aegidius on March 16, 2023, 05:26:56 AM
You're going to go back to the cart to sleep from time to time, yeah.

If you're only tapping the cart when you go for a nap at night, then yeah, I could see you blowing through a sheaf of arrows. Not in a dungeon because dungeons generally are not the best environment for using bows. But under conditions where you can take full advantage of a bow's range, you will usually get 1 to 3 rounds of missile fire, depending on exact range, encounter distance, and movement rates involved, before enemies close to melee. That's 2 to 6 arrows per encounter. If you average 4 over 6 encounters, that's a sheaf. That's not an extraordinary amount of encounters for a day's adventure. If you encounter enemies who have arrows that you can collect later, the entire fight might happen at range, and you'd end up expending more than just the 2 to 6 arrows.

Quote1-2 months salary of a peasant won't feel cheap to a peasant.

It's not 1 to 2 months salary for a peasant. That's for a specially skilled mercenary. For peasants it's 5+ months salary. Arrows are far from cheap.

QuoteIn terms of encumbrance, you can bring a cart with a pack animal or draft horse. It will pay for itself in a session or two. You don't carry the encumbrance yourself - no need for 60 arrows on your person pretty much ever. You can carry any extras in the cart.

60 arrows refers to soldiers at war. You want to add horses, you're paying for horsemen archers or hobilars rather than foot archers, and you're now also paying for horses. And each horse counts as an extra man for purposes of determining how many blacksmiths you need to maintain their equipment.

QuoteGenerally, the GP that produces XP is the kind of GP you earn by shooting arrows. My point about GP and XP is that the rule is that you get XP for retrieving GP from the dungeon. The XP scale is a good ballpark indicator of how much GP the game expects you to collect by the end of level 1. Ditto any training costs.

Not really. I wouldn't expect PCs to have accumulated enough GP to afford training by the time they have enough XP to level. The idea is to get them to sell off their magic items. Money to burn is not high on the list of things I would expect low level adventurers have.

QuoteIf you clamp down on arrow supply,

I don't. I merely observe what's already in the rules. And even if I didn't, it doesn't matter. You made the claim that the rules don't fit the setting and are forwarding your own experiences as evidence. Well, your experience is not relevant evidence to your point if you are not observing these rules. And without evidence, all you have is a series of absurd claims.

QuoteMy point about Yeomen is that you won't generally be arrow tracking them individually but rather as a unit. You'll take the scale, figure out how many arrows they use up per month training vs. deployed, and you'll figure out how many fletchers/smiths need to support them to keep them in fighting condition. That determines the recurring cost. This same scaling & modeling can be done on the micro-scale with budgeting quivers and it will largely have the same effect. You'll be thinking in quivers at scale anyway, so why not consider quivers at the micro-scale?

No, that's not how I do things. I observe the guidelines in the DMG. When not involved in active engagements, the DMG assumes various smiths are doing basic repair, replacement, and upkeep in the background. But when actually deployed, anything lost must be replenished subject to the limitations of the crafting abilities listed for these smiths. In order to know what that is, I have to track those.

Do I track them individually? Yes and no. It's not the right question. Because when I'm engaging scores of troops, I'm having large numbers do the exact same thing at the same time. Firing off 6 volleys of arrows crosses off 6 arrows off of each archer. I don't need to literally track them individually in order to track ammunition with the exact same precision as if I did track them individually. And that is a direct scale invariance.

QuoteIf time is at an extreme premium,

"Extreme" is vague whether you underline it or not. But the real problem word here is "if." If time isn't at a premium, it's not an adventure. It's a leisurely stroll.

One thing I'll add in about the scarcity of arrows.

I've been going through the Calendar of Closed Rolls looking for prices of stuff in the middle ages and there were several instances of the King of England giving direction to gather a certain amount of sheaves of arrows from his Sheriffs and they were not able to fulfill the full amounts.

Once I looked into how arrows were made, there is a lot more to them than just the arrowhead.  The shaft has to be made of seasoned wood with the grain going a particular way.  Then it has to be turned by hand to be tapered, so the the rear diameter is 1/2 inch and the front diameter is 3/8 inch.  The feathers then need to be gathered from geese (peasants could actually pay their taxes with goose feathers) and tied/glued to the shaft.

Quote from: LordBP on March 16, 2023, 06:08:25 PM
One thing I'll add in about the scarcity of arrows.

I've been going through the Calendar of Closed Rolls looking for prices of stuff in the middle ages and there were several instances of the King of England giving direction to gather a certain amount of sheaves of arrows from his Sheriffs and they were not able to fulfill the full amounts.

Once I looked into how arrows were made, there is a lot more to them than just the arrowhead.  The shaft has to be made of seasoned wood with the grain going a particular way.  Then it has to be turned by hand to be tapered, so the the rear diameter is 1/2 inch and the front diameter is 3/8 inch.  The feathers then need to be gathered from geese (peasants could actually pay their taxes with goose feathers) and tied/glued to the shaft.

It depends. Which by the way is reason why you should really take with a grain of salt this idea of the price of a sheaf of arrows being the same as a longbow. Near as I can tell, there was a wide variety of methods for making bows and making arrows. For arrows, what you cite is on the most time-consuming end of the spectrum, which clocks in at around 2 hours per arrow. So a 12-hour work day will churn out only 6 arrows. On the opposite extreme, there were types of arrows and methods that would allow a fletcher to churn out 100 per day.

For bows, you also find a huge range. On the short end is 2 hours. Same as the long end for arrows. If you match that bow with those arrows, yeah, I could easily buy that their prices would be very similar. But on the opposite extreme, some composite bows could take up to 4 years to make. Now that's not going to be solid labor time. There's at least a 1 year lead in time where you just have to allow the materials to do their thing. But when it comes to the actual labor, it's a lot more than just 2 hours. And even just the prospect of waiting a year, tying up those resources,  There is just no way the idea that the price on that bow will be the same as a sheaf of arrows even remotely passes a smell test.

I look at it like this. About 20 years ago, I mail ordered this off-brand acoustic guitar because it was cheap. I'm not going to pay serious money for a guitar I don't get to play first. The base model was $60. I got the electric-acoustic version that was $90. My brother got the 3/4 size version for $30. But the strings I used in general at the time were the most top of the line strings I could find. $15 per set. A "sheaf" of strings, 6 per set, would be 4 sets. And that would cost $60. Same as the base-model of this guitar. And by the way, this combo works out phenomenally. It sounds great. And both my guitar and my brother's guitar are still in use today and stay in tune really well when you use good strings.

However, if I ever suggested the price of a guitar is typically equal to four sets of strings, people would look at me like I'm crazy. It's not a generalizable data point. A "sheaf" of average quality strings is probably going to be in the ballpark of 5% the price of an average quality guitar.

So what's going on in D&D? What types and methods are being assumed for bows and arrows? It's spelled out in the DMG. Longbows and composite bows are assumed to be the kind that need the 1 year lead-in time and then takes up anywhere from 6-15 days of labor time. As sure as I can be of anything, there's no way that bow ever sold for the same amount as a sheaf of arrows. As for type and method for arrows, it's less clear. Only that a bowyer/fletcher/arrowsmith can make them, and that you need one of them for every 80 archers. And of course the note about how many arrowheads a blacksmith can make, but the blacksmith is assumed to be able to do that while keeping up with ordinary day to day demands.

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 16, 2023, 08:41:22 PM

Quote from: LordBP on March 16, 2023, 06:08:25 PM
One thing I'll add in about the scarcity of arrows.

I've been going through the Calendar of Closed Rolls looking for prices of stuff in the middle ages and there were several instances of the King of England giving direction to gather a certain amount of sheaves of arrows from his Sheriffs and they were not able to fulfill the full amounts.

Once I looked into how arrows were made, there is a lot more to them than just the arrowhead.  The shaft has to be made of seasoned wood with the grain going a particular way.  Then it has to be turned by hand to be tapered, so the the rear diameter is 1/2 inch and the front diameter is 3/8 inch.  The feathers then need to be gathered from geese (peasants could actually pay their taxes with goose feathers) and tied/glued to the shaft.

It depends. Which by the way is reason why you should really take with a grain of salt this idea of the price of a sheaf of arrows being the same as a longbow. Near as I can tell, there was a wide variety of methods for making bows and making arrows. For arrows, what you cite is on the most time-consuming end of the spectrum, which clocks in at around 2 hours per arrow. So a 12-hour work day will churn out only 6 arrows. On the opposite extreme, there were types of arrows and methods that would allow a fletcher to churn out 100 per day.

For bows, you also find a huge range. On the short end is 2 hours. Same as the long end for arrows. If you match that bow with those arrows, yeah, I could easily buy that their prices would be very similar. But on the opposite extreme, some composite bows could take up to 4 years to make. Now that's not going to be solid labor time. There's at least a 1 year lead in time where you just have to allow the materials to do their thing. But when it comes to the actual labor, it's a lot more than just 2 hours. And even just the prospect of waiting a year, tying up those resources,  There is just no way the idea that the price on that bow will be the same as a sheaf of arrows even remotely passes a smell test.

I look at it like this. About 20 years ago, I mail ordered this off-brand acoustic guitar because it was cheap. I'm not going to pay serious money for a guitar I don't get to play first. The base model was $60. I got the electric-acoustic version that was $90. My brother got the 3/4 size version for $30. But the strings I used in general at the time were the most top of the line strings I could find. $15 per set. A "sheaf" of strings, 6 per set, would be 4 sets. And that would cost $60. Same as the base-model of this guitar. And by the way, this combo works out phenomenally. It sounds great. And both my guitar and my brother's guitar are still in use today and stay in tune really well when you use good strings.

However, if I ever suggested the price of a guitar is typically equal to four sets of strings, people would look at me like I'm crazy. It's not a generalizable data point. A "sheaf" of average quality strings is probably going to be in the ballpark of 5% the price of an average quality guitar.

So what's going on in D&D? What types and methods are being assumed for bows and arrows? It's spelled out in the DMG. Longbows and composite bows are assumed to be the kind that need the 1 year lead-in time and then takes up anywhere from 6-15 days of labor time. As sure as I can be of anything, there's no way that bow ever sold for the same amount as a sheaf of arrows. As for type and method for arrows, it's less clear. Only that a bowyer/fletcher/arrowsmith can make them, and that you need one of them for every 80 archers. And of course the note about how many arrowheads a blacksmith can make, but the blacksmith is assumed to be able to do that while keeping up with ordinary day to day demands.

I'm talking historical and not a certain game.

You can look at this book to see that at one point the cost of a sheaf of arrows and a longbow were about the same (within a couple of pence) in England (1350s).

Page 56 and 199 have the prices paid.
https://archive.org/details/calendarofcloser06grea/page/56/mode/2up

Page 601 and 602 have the prices paid.
https://archive.org/details/calendarofcloser10grea/page/600/mode/2up

Quote from: LordBP on March 16, 2023, 09:19:07 PM
I'm talking historical and not a certain game.

I'm talking historical, too. History is a diverse thing. And I'm taking it a step further to what time what place and what tech is being referenced by the game.

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 16, 2023, 01:49:41 PM
If you're only tapping the cart when you go for a nap at night, then yeah, I could see you blowing through a sheaf of arrows. Not in a dungeon because dungeons generally are not the best environment for using bows.

My presumption is that the majority of the fighting is happening in the dungeon. If you're fighting in the wilderness, I would assume you're bringing your cart along, and that means you have a chance to top off your quiver between battles. How many battles are you facing in the wilderness that you are also electing to walk the entire time?

QuoteIt's not 1 to 2 months salary for a peasant. That's for a specially skilled mercenary. For peasants it's 5+ months salary. Arrows are far from cheap.

I don't care what profession we're using for comparison. The party doesn't work those professions - they're adventurers whose proceeds far outstrip the wages a mercenary or a peasant or almost any other mundane profession. The price of arrows is cheap or expensive relative to your income. A cheeseburger at McDonalds is cheap to most people, but they're expensive for people who are flat broke. Past the first session or so, players are already taking in amounts of gold that would be life changing for common folk. Hence the jokes people have made for decades about how people really should retire before mid levels anyway.

Quote60 arrows refers to soldiers at war. You want to add horses, you're paying for horsemen archers or hobilars rather than foot archers
...Well, your experience is not relevant evidence to your point if you are not observing these rules. And without evidence, all you have is a series of absurd claims.

You don't use the bow while riding the horse. You use a mule or a horse to pull a cart or carry your bags and the cart/bags have your surplus equipment. If you're at war you need a wagon train of supplies or you can't go far anyway.

I don't see how what I'm suggesting is absurd. Arrows come in quivers of 20 and are affordable relative to anything else on the price sheet. You spend 1 or 2 arrows per round, meaning you have 10-20 rounds of fire in a single quiver. You or the enemy won't generally survive 10-20 rounds in any single combat, so you have an opportunity to scavenge, recover, or refill arrows after any engagement. The goal is to avoid a prolonged or moving engagement in the first place. Any time you think you need gobs of arrows for some reason you can haul them in a cart (which I assumed was standard practice but apparently this is disputed). I personally find it more absurd that characters feel some kind of constant time pressure to push push push until exhaustion, that they don't bring any surplus supplies, and that animals and carts are not part of the core experience.

Quote"Extreme" is vague whether you underline it or not. But the real problem word here is "if." If time isn't at a premium, it's not an adventure. It's a leisurely stroll.

In a dungeon crawl: What is forcing me to delve until exhaustion? What is forcing me to never skip a day of delving so I'm constantly running low on spell slots and supplies? The kinds of things that force that tend to be contrivances of the GM or the adventure to make things challenging (aka not a simulation but rather a game). That's not a big deal in itself, but if we're constantly trying to actively undermine the players then that kind of antagonism is corrosive to a believable sim. If the GM tells me "it's an adventure, not a stroll" then I'm not really hearing a compelling argument for playing against my character's interests and walking myself into a problem when it's perfectly avoidable with a little planning and patience.

Maybe my experiences are totally aberrant. Maybe there are tons of tables out there sweating bullets about whether or not they can afford the next bundle of arrows in town at level 2 or 3. Maybe! If you tell me that's your experience, then ok! Not much point in debating your experience.

In my experience though, these are not concerns, arrows are not a limiting factor of the party, and a pinch of preparation and planning totally removes these arrow-scale considerations from affecting your group past the very start of the game (until name level).

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 16, 2023, 09:27:27 PM

Quote from: LordBP on March 16, 2023, 09:19:07 PM
I'm talking historical and not a certain game.

I'm talking historical, too. History is a diverse thing. And I'm taking it a step further to what time what place and what tech is being referenced by the game.

But you're talking about composite bows. Not the self bows used in England. Most people hear longbow and think English longbow, not a composite bow.

Quote from: S'mon on March 17, 2023, 07:27:10 AM
But you're talking about composite bows. Not the self bows used in England. Most people hear longbow and think English longbow, not a composite bow.

No. I talked about those, too. I covered the entire range and asked, okay, what is D&D doing. And the one in the PHB doesn't seem to be a self bow. And I don't think you get to speak for "most people." Are "most people" even aware of just how long a long bow is?

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 17, 2023, 07:58:15 AM

Quote from: S'mon on March 17, 2023, 07:27:10 AM
But you're talking about composite bows. Not the self bows used in England. Most people hear longbow and think English longbow, not a composite bow.

No. I talked about those, too. I covered the entire range and asked, okay, what is D&D doing. And the one in the PHB doesn't seem to be a self bow. And I don't think you get to speak for "most people." Are "most people" even aware of just how long a long bow is?

I was going by So what's going on in D&D? What types and methods are being assumed for bows and arrows? It's spelled out in the DMG. Longbows and composite bows are assumed to be the kind that need the 1 year lead-in time and then takes up anywhere from 6-15 days of labor time
Also, don't be a dick.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on March 16, 2023, 11:35:18 PM
My presumption is that the majority of the fighting is happening in the dungeon.

Saying you don't run out of arrows when doing things where a bow is of minimal use is like saying you don't run out of lamp oil outdoors in broad daylight. To make the claim that you don't need to track arrows, you absolutely must do so with the presumption that you're actually doing things the bow is good for. You don't get to choose the venue.

That does not preclude the dungeon. We've had "dungeons" that were a network of massive caverns covered with glowing moss so that light and space permit full bow function. So when you automatically have to pivot to wilderness the second it's suggested that bows might actually be useful, you're confessing that you know full well your argument does not hold.

QuoteIf you're fighting in the wilderness, I would assume you're bringing your cart along, and that means you have a chance to top off your quiver between battles. How many battles are you facing in the wilderness that you are also electing to walk the entire time?

The supply is what you have in your cart, not your quiver. The resupply occurs when you reach town, not when you reach your cart. The relevant timescale is the trek, not the battle. And yeah, if you've strayed outside of civilized lands, it's going to be a long walk.

QuoteI don't care what profession we're using for comparison. The party doesn't work those professions - they're adventurers whose proceeds far outstrip the wages a mercenary or a peasant or almost any other mundane profession. The price of arrows is cheap or expensive relative to your income. A cheeseburger at McDonalds is cheap to most people, but they're expensive for people who are flat broke.

I used the archer because using arrows is the nature of the profession. The fact that 1st level adventurers in your game are rich and can easily afford expensive things just means they can easily afford expensive things. If arrows were cheap, you wouldn't need to be rich to afford them.

QuoteYou don't use the bow while riding the horse. You use a mule or a horse to pull a cart or carry your bags and the cart/bags have your surplus equipment. If you're at war you need a wagon train of supplies or you can't go far anyway.

I don't see how what I'm suggesting is absurd.

It's because you miss key details that flip the conclusion on its head.

For instance, just right here, you stating that you can't go far without a wagon train. I can give the devil his due. It sounds reasonable on the surface. After all, supply lines are a vital consideration in war making. Fuck yeah, I want supplies. Juice me up with supplies. Cut me off from supplies and I'm not going to get far.

The problem is the fact that war wagons and carts o' plenty don't travel well over rough terrain. The second you go off-roading, they're going to slow you down. And even then, you better be sticking to hills, grasslands, and maybe deserts. Even if you just throw packs on horses, you're not getting through dense forest. In these cases, you can't go far with a wagon train.

So in truth the matter depends on terrain. Your claim is just not valid because it assumes facts not in evidence. It's absurd because we would have to assume our enemies in war just happened to put roads exactly where we want to send our soldiers. And for PC adventurers, the world would have to be so dungeon-delver friendly that we've got roads that are well-maintained, not overgrown, leading right up to the dungeon entrance where we can park our carts just outside.

QuoteArrows come in quivers of 20 and are affordable relative to anything else on the price sheet. You spend 1 or 2 arrows per round, meaning you have 10-20 rounds of fire in a single quiver. You or the enemy won't generally survive 10-20 rounds in any single combat, so you have an opportunity to scavenge, recover, or refill arrows after any engagement. The goal is to avoid a prolonged or moving engagement in the first place. Any time you think you need gobs of arrows for some reason you can haul them in a cart (which I assumed was standard practice but apparently this is disputed). I personally find it more absurd that characters feel some kind of constant time pressure to push push push until exhaustion, that they don't bring any surplus supplies, and that animals and carts are not part of the core experience.

In 1E, arrows come singly or in dozens. Quiver is not a fixed unit. It's just the thing that holds the arrows, and quiver will typically carry anywhere from 12 to 60 arrows, although on the higher end they're going to be packed in there and not loose for quick access.

Arrows are affordable IF you can afford them after you've invested most of your starting gold in a good bow. 1E is very careful in its pricing so starting characters actually do have to make certain choices. For fighters, the big choice is whether to get good armor or a good bow. Once the highest priority items are chosen, starting PCs typically have very little left over for odds and ends. A dozen arrows costs the same as a tinder box. A sheaf of arrows the same as a backpack. These are legit choices players have to make for starting PCs.

The RoF on a bow is 2. That means you get 6 rounds of fire out of 1 dozen arrows, 12 rounds out of 2.

1E makes the numbers super easy to crunch for how long a battle will last, because AC is equal to the number of hits in 20 you will take from a level 0, then you adjust that number upwards according to the skill of the attacker. So an orc, for instance, with its 6 AC being attacked by a 1st or 2nd level fighter will take 7 hits out of every 20 shots. With an orc's d8 hit points and an arrow's d6 damage, it's usually going to take a second hit to kill the orc. So we're already talking an average of a half dozen arrows to take down 1 orc. 4 orcs will run a sheaf out.

QuoteIn a dungeon crawl: What is forcing me to delve until exhaustion?

Well, first I never said it had to be a dungeon crawl. Second, exhaustion is vague. In the rules, fatigue applies to forced marches. Which is fine, considering wilderness adventures was one of the possibilities I listed. Or do you mean exhausting hit points, or exhausting arrows, or exhausting spells? Or is it just being used in a hyperbolic sense with no specific meaning at all?

Because let's be clear. I never said anything at all about going to the point of exhaustion. I just said there's a limit of how long a quest characters can take on, and hit points above and beyond those recoverable daily plus a safety buffer add to the staying power of the character. And that is the relevant context in which to analyze the higher hit point ranges.

QuoteWhat is forcing me to never skip a day of delving so I'm constantly running low on spell slots and supplies? The kinds of things that force that tend to be contrivances of the GM or the adventure to make things challenging (aka not a simulation but rather a game).

Same thing that's forcing you to go off to a dungeon, taking advantage of the complimentary valet parking for your cart, to lose all your hit points to 4 orcs just so you can say at least you didn't run out of arrows.

Which is nothing at all.

Nothing is forcing you to do it. You do it because you want the cartfulls of treasure guaranteed to all new characters on their first quest.

Well, if you want the cartfulls of artifacts and relics down on the 13th dungeon level, you better have some stamina in you, because you're not going to be able to run back to your cart every time you fall below 80% of your maximum arrows. There's no contrivance in that.

Just like there's no contrivance in that there are some places in the heart of the wilderness, full of dangerous creatures, where there are no roads for carts, no towns, that take several weeks or even months to get to, especially when you account for the possibility of getting lost, where it just so happens the thing you want could be found.

In fact, if it weren't that way, I would call it contrived. If there's something of great value with a nice clear road straight to it, why hasn't someone else already taken it? That it's suspended in stasis just waiting for adventurers to come along, that's contrived. Buried 13 levels deep where no wimp that can't stand to be more than an hour's walk from their cart will ever dare to go is a perfectly uncontrived reason why it doesn't look like a WalMart at 2AM on Black Friday.

QuoteMaybe my experiences are totally aberrant. Maybe there are tons of tables out there sweating bullets about whether or not they can afford the next bundle of arrows in town at level 2 or 3. Maybe! If you tell me that's your experience, then ok! Not much point in debating your experience.

In my experience though, these are not concerns, arrows are not a limiting factor of the party, and a pinch of preparation and planning totally removes these arrow-scale considerations from affecting your group past the very start of the game (until name level).

It's got zero to do with differences in experience. If that's all it was, you could at least understand what I'm saying. Like why some journeys would be long. Or why a longbow would even have a 21" range when lantern light only gives you 8". I mean that alone should have been a hint to you that making arguments about dungeon crawls to make a case about arrows is itself babbling nonsense. You should be able to see that regardless of what your personal experiences might have been. Even if that's the only way you've ever played the game, that absurdity is what you should be questioning.

But let's not get away your claim that the rules are at odds with the simulation here. That's the bit that's relevant to thread, not the finer points of D&D. The real problem is you continue to make bad assumptions that completely invert the conclusion, and every single one of those bad assumptions are contradicted by something that can be found in the rulebooks.

Quote from: S'mon on March 17, 2023, 12:12:43 PM
I was going by So what's going on in D&D? What types and methods are being assumed for bows and arrows? It's spelled out in the DMG. Longbows and composite bows are assumed to be the kind that need the 1 year lead-in time and then takes up anywhere from 6-15 days of labor time
Also, don't be a dick.

You're the one being a dick. If you can't be bothered to read the whole post, don't reply. That's disrespectful. Especially when you get it wrong.

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 17, 2023, 01:23:30 PMSaying you don't run out of arrows when doing things where a bow is of minimal use is like saying you don't run out of lamp oil outdoors in broad daylight.

Which is highly relevant given that dungeon crawling is the original style of play which classically pre-occupies much of the campaign. I acknowledged earlier there are specific circumstances where tracking your arrows may be the thing to do - frequent overland battles in deep forest would be an example, just as you're at risk of running out of water in a long overland trek through the desert. I pointed out players can avoid the problem and asked why they're walking into this problem.

Most published modules which sprint to mind keep the adventuring site relatively close to civilization. In B2, you can take a road about 3 miles east and only a quarter mile offroad to reach the caves of chaos. It's 15 miles by road from Gosterwick to Arden Vul (the cliffside road at the very end at least poses a challenge for carts). Barrowmaze and others do better, shortening the distance to something like 10 miles, but it's fully offroad through circumstances very dangerous for animals or a cart. Almost everything tends to be a day's worth of travel out of town or less.

QuoteIt's absurd because we would have to assume our enemies in war just happened to put roads exactly where we want to send our soldiers. And for PC adventurers, the world would have to be so dungeon-delver friendly that we've got roads that are well-maintained, not overgrown, leading right up to the dungeon entrance where we can park our carts just outside.

Since nations often trade, yes roads to strategic locations probably exist. Those roads aren't always the most direct route or the fastest route, but they're reliable. You don't need a road to the dungeon entrance, you just need terrain which renders it plausible enough to be worth the effort. If the game includes charts of things like your horse breaking its ankle from taking a bad step or your cart breaks an axle or whatever, that's fantastic! Exactly why you shouldn't bring a cart everywhere you go.

QuoteOr do you mean exhausting hit points, or exhausting arrows, or exhausting spells? Or is it just being used in a hyperbolic sense with no specific meaning at all?

Yes, resource exhaustion, not forced marches. If I'm level 5 or level 20 I just have to worry about whether or not my plan is sustainable and repeatable. That means optimizing for the resources that matter. If I can now lay on hands twice per day instead of once, that only really matters if I was pacing myself on the basis of that resource. Ditto arrows, HP, anything else. The limiting factor for an adventure is almost always spell slots, from my experience. Adding more arrows to the quiver just prevents the "gun" from going "click" when you pull the trigger, and if it ever went "click" in the first place you've probably screwed up somewhere along the way as a player or as a group. If you survive that mistake, your goal as a player is to eliminate that entire aspect of the game from ever surfacing ever again by applying a little forethought and planning. It's within your power. Once you are aware of this the only thing that re-introduces the problem to the game is the antagonism of the GM, or player laziness/error. Sometimes there are actual rules, which is a lovely thing to find.

QuoteBut let's not get away your claim that the rules are at odds with the simulation here. That's the bit that's relevant to thread, not the finer points of D&D.

I agree the finer points of D&D RoF rules are not crucial to the discussion, so we'll move on. I can understand what you're saying. I'm not sure if you can understand what I'm saying or why I'm saying it, especially since you suggest I'm babbling nonsense, saying things with no significance. You speak of respect but are not demonstrating it. I encourage you to engage more kindly and I'll do the same.

I'm not suggesting the rules are at odds with the simulation, I'm trying to highlight some things about the sim in AD&D (and other games). I'm suggesting the level of simulation introduced by arrow-tracking neither significantly impacts the game nor does it model anything meaningful about the underlying dynamics of the world. Sim rules tend to model some things in great detail and then totally drop other aspects of the sim that actually make the world interesting, that make these details meaningful, that make the world make sense. People run out of arrows in real life. Because arrows are expensive. Because recovering arrows is easier said than done. Because it's a lot of physical effort to actual lug around arrows, to handle the logistics I've described with a cart, because all of this is a playbook I can describe to you but putting it into practice in real life is a complex endeavor. The sim doesn't model this and tracking arrows 1-by-1 doesn't do anything to resolve the issue. That's my problem.

In an RPG, I'm the perfect master of my mind. Effort in RPGs is cheap, because you say you do a thing and it happens (or you roll). You say you wait for some time to pass and some time passes. You can eat nothing but gruel because you never have to taste it. You can pass a month in town because you're never bored - you're playing a game and you skipped the boring parts. You can run my playbook because characters never get tired, cut corners, or surrender their routines because they're pissed off about the dice game they lost last night. You never have to worry about sleepless nights, boredom, anxiety, or all the rest that drive people to engage in the world in ways which are suboptimal and create interesting bumpiness and texture. If these things ever come to the fore and start to matter, it's because the players decided to make this a problem for themselves. If you have arrow problems it's because you decided you wanted to have arrow problems. Or maybe it's because the GM is being a little antagonistic with the players (to the benefit of the game and to the detriment of the sim).

To incorporate these things into the sim properly requires things like event tables, rules that focus on the underlying dynamics of human situations, rules that make a player's translation of their will into their character's actions less perfect. People in real life fail to rotate and replenish their stock of supplies, they fail to maintain their equipment, they let their ego get in the way of their job. All kinds of mistakes. The questions asked by the game are trivial. Do you maintain your equipment, as of course you should? If you stand watch, do you get sleepy and fuck up? When you try to execute on your plan, do you forget something? Cut a corner because you get lazy? When you spend a month in town, do you get bored and do something stupid? Can you handle the absolute skin-crawling grime of camping in the wilderness and crawling through a grave for days on end without a chance to wash off the dirt?

This is all to say nothing about what happens when you play the rules straight and see what happens when you scale up. AD&D holds up wonderfully compared to almost any modern game. That's probably because of its roots in wargaming, and the statistical foundation of the game. You need to hit scale in AD&D for the rules to kick in and start doing the useful stuff it's trying to model. It's great when get there - a lot of fun. It's great at low levels where everything is so threadbare that sheer scarcity makes everything interesting (as you say, do I buy a backpack or a bow?). At the mid levels where the levels drag on and you're neither hitting scale nor facing scarcity? Not as good.

Not everything needs something like a stat. But it needs to raise issues to the fore that are the parts of imperfect reality which complicate otherwise perfect play. Have the rules challenge players in the kinds of ways you'd see an antagonistic GM do it, and make sure these rules scale. It needs to make sense so if I run 10 thousand iterations of the sim the world hasn't collapsed from all the wagon axles breaking on rainy days. I'd like to see more games attempt to model this a bit more, and try to do so with core rules that worry more about the dynamics and the modeling and how things scale than perfectly modeling or describing something like terminal velocity.

Quote from: Itachi on March 14, 2023, 09:35:11 AMAs with all media, just like I want different things from different genres (horror x comedy movies, individual x team sports, euro x ameri boardgames, etc) I also expect different things from different TTRPGs. So sure, I'll want to track ammo on more gritty/sim games like Twilight 2k or Runequest, but not necessarily when playing narrative/drama games like Monsterhearts or Vampire 5E.

This was the point I was trying to make about simulating a genre. If I was running a game based on a gritty dungeon expedition, I'd track arrows. If the game was about Robin Hood type characters, then tracking arrows wouldn't be a high priority on the things I'd need to simulate.

The main issue is that the more difficult you make one particular weapon to use, then the less likely players are to use that particular weapon. So if players are required to track each arrow and can only carry a handful, then bows will be less popular. Similarly, if the rules give swords a breakage chance and swords can be worn down which reduces damage over time, the players might switch to only using maces.

This means that tracking arrows cannot be considered without also considering all the other factors being simulated combat: armor wear, weapon damage, encumbrance, etc. You also need to consider the genre and feel the game is going for. IOW, whether you should track arrows or not has almost nothing to do with how expensive arrows historically were.