Incorporating Torchbearer Ideas in 5E

[HidesHisEyes]

I've been reading the rules to Torchbearer. As an overview in case your unfamiliar with it, it's a dungeon crawling game which puts the logistics of dungeon crawling centre stage, so the game revolves around keeping track of supplies and encumbrance, making sure you have a light source and so on - all the things that often get handwaved in D&D games. So it's really about the gritty reality of being someone who delves into dungeons for a living. If you've played it then correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the impression I get of the game.

It's not exactly rules light, and to be honest I can't see myself putting in the time to actually run it. But I'm aware that not everyone does handwave that kind of thing in D&D. I myself do, but I'd like to incorporate a bit more of the logistical stuff if I can.

To me it seems there's a larger issue which is that, as someone pointed out in a thread recently, D&D is a power fantasy. PCs don't get hungry, they don't get tired, they just kick ass with ever more powerful abilities. In a 5E game, the way I and many people play 5E, I think tracking supplies and light sources doesn't add much to the game besides extra book-keeping, and imposing exhaustion for not eating or whatever is just a random punishment.

So does anyone have tips for incorporating this kind of thing into D&D in a way that's engaging without burdening the rules too much. I'm especially interested in any mechanics that abstractify things like supplies and light sources and inventory capacity to the point where they matter but don't create much more "work" for either players or DM.

[Malifice]

My Pcs must eat, drink, use torches, spell components etc as they go.

The players deal with the logistics. The DM just tells them to cross off the item.

[JackPhoenix]

You can't really have it both way. Either you ignore tracking supplies, or you're adding more work for someone.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Turn the supplies into a critical failure mechanic - whenever someone rolls a 1 on a skill check (not combat, critical fails in combat are bad), roll another die for supplies: 1 = rations, 2 = light source, 3 = rope, 5 = ammunition, etc, etc. When that supply comes up, someone in the party has run out (roll randomly when more than one person has that stuff).
This may not be immediately apparent - you don't notice your food has got wet and mouldy until you come to eat it, you don't notice your last arrows are warped until you try to use them.

It stop you having to keep track, but adds a level of survivalism to the game.

[mephnick]

The fact that no one uses encumberence and everything that entails from it is really sad. 5e basically killed it with its ridiculous carry limits (the variant 5xSTR is much better) but I feel it adds more to the game then it costs in effort. It's the main thing that's led to a devaluing of Strength and the removal of problem solving in modern D&D. Who cares about hirelings, horses and wagons when you can carry everything you find? Who cares about planning for a dungeon when you don't have to carry food, water, torches and ammunition that will take up space for loot? Who cares about securing your stuff in a bank or a fort? Let's remove an entire layer of the game because we're too lazy to make some marks on a sheet. Then people have the gall to complain that STR has no value. It's like everyone that handwaves exploration and complains that Rangers are no good. End rant.

Try tracking all this stuff. You might actually find it adds something to your game. You can just use normal D&D rules for it, though you'll have to use 5e's variant.

[Bloodcloud]

I've been reading the rules to Torchbearer. As an overview in case your unfamiliar with it, it's a dungeon crawling game which puts the logistics of dungeon crawling centre stage, so the game revolves around keeping track of supplies and encumbrance, making sure you have a light source and so on - all the things that often get handwaved in D&D games. So it's really about the gritty reality of being someone who delves into dungeons for a living. If you've played it then correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the impression I get of the game.

It's not exactly rules light, and to be honest I can't see myself putting in the time to actually run it. But I'm aware that not everyone does handwave that kind of thing in D&D. I myself do, but I'd like to incorporate a bit more of the logistical stuff if I can.

To me it seems there's a larger issue which is that, as someone pointed out in a thread recently, D&D is a power fantasy. PCs don't get hungry, they don't get tired, they just kick ass with ever more powerful abilities. In a 5E game, the way I and many people play 5E, I think tracking supplies and light sources doesn't add much to the game besides extra book-keeping, and imposing exhaustion for not eating or whatever is just a random punishment.

So does anyone have tips for incorporating this kind of thing into D&D in a way that's engaging without burdening the rules too much. I'm especially interested in any mechanics that abstractify things like supplies and light sources and inventory capacity to the point where they matter but don't create much more "work" for either players or DM.

Before incorporating new stuff, always ask yourself why you want to introduce it, how it would play out and how it would affect the experience. Tracking encumbrance and ration and stuff would be a great idea in out of the abyss for exemple. In princes of the apocalypse? It seems superfluous.

Make it important if you have a long trek and want to incorporate rarity of supply in your game. Track it if you have a way to make it important and part of the core plot and challenge. Otherwise, I'd advise handwaving.

[JackPhoenix]

The fact that no one uses encumberence and everything that entails from it is really sad. 5e basically killed it with its ridiculous carry limits (the variant 5xSTR is much better) but I feel it adds more to the game then it costs in effort. It's the main thing that's led to a devaluing of Strength and the removal of problem solving in modern D&D. Who cares about hirelings, horses and wagons when you can carry everything you find? Who cares about planning for a dungeon when you don't have to carry food, water, torches and ammunition that will take up space for loot? Who cares about securing your stuff in a bank or a fort? Let's remove an entire layer of the game because we're too lazy to make some marks on a sheet. Then people have the gall to complain that STR has no value. It's like everyone that handwaves exploration and complains that Rangers are no good. End rant.

Try tracking all this stuff. You might actually find it adds something to your game. You can just use normal D&D rules for it, though you'll have to use 5e's variant.

Funny thing: while I don't really bother the players with it that much in my games (technically, I expect them to keep track of their ammo and rations, but don't check if they are not skipping on it, or check if their encumberance values fit), I'm really anal about that as a player, to the point of counting encumberance for single coins and keeping track of specific spell components (even if they are non-costly, and yes, I've declared that my component pouch ran out), even if the DM doesn't care about that stuff at all. Or the appearance and state (i.e. damage to) all outfits my characters own.

[Tanarii]

Encumberance is already somewhat important under two major circumstances in 5e:
1) Rations and Water matter, and it's a long journey.
2) recovering treasure matters, and there's a lot of it.

Unfortunately they built in tons of easy workarounds to #1, especially magical solutions. Those cost resources, but not significant ones by mid-level, the typical way the game is played.

They also made treasure relatively light as easy to carry. Often, one character can carry 2500 gp (50 lbs) no problem.

Which brings us to the third problem, a reasonable encumberance system is optional. The 'let's ignore encumberance, but pretend we aren't' rule is the standard.

If you want a system designed for classic D&D / AD&D 1e style dungeon delving (or torchbearer dungeon delving), you can do it. You definitely need to use the optional encumberance rule.

From experience, you'll want to take a hard look at Create Water and Goodberry spells and decide if you want to axe them. As well as consider changing coin weight to classic's 10 per lb, and reintroducing XP for GP (at a ratio). These aren't necessary components, but they're worth thinking carefully about.

[Stan]

From experience, you'll want to take a hard look at Create Water and Goodberry spells and decide if you want to axe them.

At least they're burning up spell slots which is a limited resource that players care about.


Many (most?) players don't like tracking logistics. WOTC knows this and that's why they've been increasingly toning down logistics. 50 coins/lb already greatly overestimates the weight of coins and underestimates the buying power of precious metal. 50 lb of gold should make someone wealthy for life.

Like most things that are matters of varying taste, I think it's best to ask players how they want to handle it. I used to like it in the AD&D days but it bores me now. I tell players to not even track mundane ammo - they buy a quiver of arrows at startup and it lasts for their adventuring career. They're assumed to be collecting/repairing/buying off camera.

For a long trek or siege where supplies matter, you can ask if anyone wants to plan what to have and track usage. If no one wants to do it, you can assume that the characters are more into it than the players and use skill rolls to see if they had remembered to bring a given thing. The skill would vary depending on the environment and item but you could always default to Int or Wis rolls, with the difficulty determined by item rarity, usefulness to class, and possibly even alignment. Water is a given. landshark repellent is unlikely. It rewards certain character types without adding a bunch of rules.

[Beelzebubba]

I've been reading the rules to Torchbearer. As an overview in case your unfamiliar with it, it's a dungeon crawling game which puts the logistics of dungeon crawling centre stage, so the game revolves around keeping track of supplies and encumbrance...

Torchbearer is basically 'Moldvay Basic D&D refined'. We did all that stuff in many of my AD&D games in the 80's too - close tracked time, consumables, encumbrance, light sources, hireling morale (with the effect on their pay), and random monster encounters. It all fit together to create tense, high-risk, calculated play.

It's a very different game.

To me it seems there's a larger issue which is that, as someone pointed out in a thread recently, D&D is a power fantasy. PCs don't get hungry, they don't get tired, they just kick ass with ever more powerful abilities. In a 5E game, the way I and many people play 5E, I think tracking supplies and light sources doesn't add much to the game besides extra book-keeping, and imposing exhaustion for not eating or whatever is just a random punishment.

Well, old D&D was a first-person war game. 5E is cinematic fantasy. They appeal to fundamentally different urges.

So does anyone have tips for incorporating this kind of thing into D&D in a way that's engaging without burdening the rules too much. I'm especially interested in any mechanics that abstractify things like supplies and light sources and inventory capacity to the point where they matter but don't create much more "work" for either players or DM.

5E has a bunch of optional rules that help. Much longer 'long rest' times, overnight rest recovering only half hit dice and not hit points, things like that. But, I don't think you can get the satisfaction of the groggy 'resource mastery' mini-games without the bookkeeping. The encumbrance, expense, resource consumption - and the time pressures those creates - all feed off of each other, so you can't really just pick part of it and expect it to create that old school vibe.

You also need several mechanics that are gone now to ramp up the pressure. Wizard spell re-memorization was 15 minutes per spell level - so blowing a 6th level spell meant 90 minutes to get it back. Random monsters that stumbled in during rests (or those re-memorizations) meant you couldn't stand still too long. The deadliness of the monsters being highly variable meant you always had to be ready to retreat, and generally have an extremely solid plan of where to go and how to get out before delving. Healing was much less effective, so you'd always be looking out for ways to 'win' without fighting. It generally resulted in pressing on and never really being back to full strength, ever.

I mean, an auto-calculating PDF character sheet helps the drudgery a bit, but it's more about the interplay of your supplies (the more equipment you brought, the less loot you could grab), time (move too fast and you get in over your head, move too slow and your strength gets sapped by random encounters), and resource management (leaving to re-stock gives the dungeon denizens a LOT of time and breathing room to prepare).

Hopefully that gives you an idea of the kind of factors to balance with whatever rules you think up.

[Tanarii]

At least they're burning up spell slots which is a limited resource that players care about.

True. That's why I don't axe them.

Like most things that are matters of varying taste, I think it's best to ask players how they want to handle it. I used to like it in the AD&D days but it bores me now. I tell players to not even track mundane ammo - they buy a quiver of arrows at startup and it lasts for their adventuring career. They're assumed to be collecting/repairing/buying off camera.

I make no value judgement about people that don't enjoy this style of play. OTOH, despite it's limitations, it's clear the 5e Devs were aware this very old-school style of play is a thing, and made it possible for 5e to be adapted to it. 5e feels like a blend of 3e innovations, then rolled back in some places towards Classic D&D where 3e took them a bit too far.

Well, old D&D was a first-person war game. 5E is cinematic fantasy. They appeal to fundamentally different urges.

I agree 5e certainly isn't Classic, but I disagree that it's automatically 'cinematic fantasy'. 5e is closer to Classic D&D than, for example, 3e or 4e are. Those two editions are particularly Combat-as-Sport & 'Cinematic Fantasy'. The Devs clearly were aware of what they were doing, as indicated by strongly promoting Theatre of the Mind, and the built-in flexibility for DM adjudication of resolution.

[HidesHisEyes]

Thanks for all the insights everyone. I will go on exploiting the magic of handwavium for now and ask the players if they'd like to figure out some basic logistics rules for future games.

[Vogonjeltz]

I've been reading the rules to Torchbearer. As an overview in case your unfamiliar with it, it's a dungeon crawling game which puts the logistics of dungeon crawling centre stage, so the game revolves around keeping track of supplies and encumbrance, making sure you have a light source and so on - all the things that often get handwaved in D&D games. ...
To me it seems there's a larger issue which is that, as someone pointed out in a thread recently, D&D is a power fantasy. PCs don't get hungry, they don't get tired, they just kick ass with ever more powerful abilities. In a 5E game, the way I and many people play 5E, I think tracking supplies and light sources doesn't add much to the game besides extra book-keeping, and imposing exhaustion for not eating or whatever is just a random punishment.

So does anyone have tips for incorporating this kind of thing into D&D in a way that's engaging without burdening the rules too much. I'm especially interested in any mechanics that abstractify things like supplies and light sources and inventory capacity to the point where they matter but don't create much more "work" for either players or DM.

First of all, D&D doesn't handwave anything you said. There are rules for Supplies, Encumberance, AND Light sources.

If you don't actually use them, that's you doing the handwaving, not the system. If you want to use them, as you claim, the solution is simple, easy to implement, and obvious. Stop your handwaving!

Encumberance is already somewhat important under two major circumstances in 5e:
1) Rations and Water matter, and it's a long journey.
2) recovering treasure matters, and there's a lot of it.

Unfortunately they built in tons of easy workarounds to #1, especially magical solutions. Those cost resources, but not significant ones by mid-level, the typical way the game is played.

They also made treasure relatively light as easy to carry. Often, one character can carry 2500 gp (50 lbs) no problem.

Which brings us to the third problem, a reasonable encumberance system is optional. The 'let's ignore encumberance, but pretend we aren't' rule is the standard.

If you want a system designed for classic D&D / AD&D 1e style dungeon delving (or torchbearer dungeon delving), you can do it. You definitely need to use the optional encumberance rule.

From experience, you'll want to take a hard look at Create Water and Goodberry spells and decide if you want to axe them. As well as consider changing coin weight to classic's 10 per lb, and reintroducing XP for GP (at a ratio). These aren't necessary components, but they're worth thinking carefully about.

I think it's the seemingly prevalence of ignoring basic rules that causes devaluation of various classes (i.e. the Ranger) that actually get major benefits from reducing the impact of those same rules.

Burning spell slots to avoid dying of starvation really isn't a minor cost, that's a big deal. And if we use the basic encumberance rules, anyone who uses Strength as their dump stat (i.e. Wizards) is actually going to be capped out, or over their limit just from their starting equipment.

Forget treasure, they can barely lug the basics.

Like most things that are matters of varying taste, I think it's best to ask players how they want to handle it. I used to like it in the AD&D days but it bores me now. I tell players to not even track mundane ammo - they buy a quiver of arrows at startup and it lasts for their adventuring career. They're assumed to be collecting/repairing/buying off camera.

It depends on the type of game as to whether I prefer encumberance or not.

For example, in Fallout or Diablo, I basically hate it. When you can carry 10+ different guns including multiple heavy weapons and other parts of armor, it's gone well outside the bounds of plausibility, and those games aren't in any way balanced such that having reasonable encumberance limits (or really...any limits) make sense in-game. The real explanation is to limit the inventory interface to something managable. Once you've got a billion and one things it's going to cause computing problems.

Pen and Paper RPGs aren't like that, the real reason to limit things based on encumberance is to avoid having to endure absurd levels of suspension of disbelief. It's the same reason I don't say all Humans have darkvision.

It makes the decision to pick a particular race have a meaningful impact on the game. In the same way, the decisions about what equipment to bring has a meaningful impact on the outcome of the game. Do you carry that treasure? Or do you instead carry those rations for the journey back through the wilderness? Risk vs Reward calculations.

When you start to remove those decisions, the game starts to get less interesting than it can be.

[Thrudd]

First of all, D&D doesn't handwave anything you said. There are rules for Supplies, Encumberance, AND Light sources.

If you don't actually use them, that's you doing the handwaving, not the system. If you want to use them, as you claim, the solution is simple, easy to implement, and obvious. Stop your handwaving!



I think it's the seemingly prevalence of ignoring basic rules that causes devaluation of various classes (i.e. the Ranger) that actually get major benefits from reducing the impact of those same rules.

Burning spell slots to avoid dying of starvation really isn't a minor cost, that's a big deal. And if we use the basic encumberance rules, anyone who uses Strength as their dump stat (i.e. Wizards) is actually going to be capped out, or over their limit just from their starting equipment.

Forget treasure, they can barely lug the basics.



It depends on the type of game as to whether I prefer encumberance or not.

For example, in Fallout or Diablo, I basically hate it. When you can carry 10+ different guns including multiple heavy weapons and other parts of armor, it's gone well outside the bounds of plausibility, and those games aren't in any way balanced such that having reasonable encumberance limits (or really...any limits) make sense in-game. The real explanation is to limit the inventory interface to something managable. Once you've got a billion and one things it's going to cause computing problems.

Pen and Paper RPGs aren't like that, the real reason to limit things based on encumberance is to avoid having to endure absurd levels of suspension of disbelief. It's the same reason I don't say all Humans have darkvision.

It makes the decision to pick a particular race have a meaningful impact on the game. In the same way, the decisions about what equipment to bring has a meaningful impact on the outcome of the game. Do you carry that treasure? Or do you instead carry those rations for the journey back through the wilderness? Risk vs Reward calculations.

When you start to remove those decisions, the game starts to get less interesting than it can be.

Exactement. I was thinking to myself: doesn't 5e have rules for all this stuff already? Am I missing something? True, 5e is quite a bit more lenient than AD&D was, but it already has rules for how much stuff characters can carry, how much things weigh, penalties for carrying too much stuff, getting lost and finding food and water in the wilderness, what happens if you don't have food and water or go without rest, how long different light sources last and how much light they cast.
5e is not "cinematic power fantasy" by default - it definitely has enough rules to let it get close to an AD&D dungeon crawly game (which is what Torchbearer is recreating/expanding on).

As was said earlier, if you really want to go that direction, institute XP for gold (returned to civilization from the dungeon), reduce the XP awards for monsters a bit, maybe increase the XP requirements for levelling, require training time and maybe training costs for gaining levels (no levelling in the middle of an adventure while still in the dungeon).

[Tanarii]

Burning spell slots to avoid dying of starvation really isn't a minor cost, that's a big deal. And if we use the basic encumberance rules, anyone who uses Strength as their dump stat (i.e. Wizards) is actually going to be capped out, or over their limit just from their starting equipment.

Burning a spell slot is only a big deal on days when you're going to be experiencing an adventuring day's worth of spell resources needed.

And the basic encumbrance rule, Str 8 is 120 lbs carried. Very few classes come close to that with their starting equipment. Clerics and other Medium Armor wearer might, or those carrying a Hunting Trap.

Variant Encumberance is another matter. Dumping Str to 8 is a choice that needs to be more seriously considered.

[mephnick]

Variant Encumberance is another matter. Dumping Str to 8 is a choice that needs to be more seriously considered.

And races with Powerful Build become very useful.

One thing I do is let characters proficient in Athletics move the encumbrance levels to x6 and x11 (instead of x5 and x10) but otherwise keep the variant as is. Not much, but a little bit of bonus.

[Zorku]

The fact that no one uses encumberence and everything that entails from it is really sad. 5e basically killed it with its ridiculous carry limits (the variant 5xSTR is much better) but I feel it adds more to the game then it costs in effort. It's the main thing that's led to a devaluing of Strength and the removal of problem solving in modern D&D. Who cares about hirelings, horses and wagons when you can carry everything you find? Who cares about planning for a dungeon when you don't have to carry food, water, torches and ammunition that will take up space for loot? Who cares about securing your stuff in a bank or a fort? Let's remove an entire layer of the game because we're too lazy to make some marks on a sheet. Then people have the gall to complain that STR has no value. It's like everyone that handwaves exploration and complains that Rangers are no good. End rant.

Try tracking all this stuff. You might actually find it adds something to your game. You can just use normal D&D rules for it, though you'll have to use 5e's variant.

Yora's worldbuilding thread/blog for (her?) campaign setting has a nice post for this
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/shows...2&postcount=43

That post introduced me to how Lamentations of the Flame Princess deals with encumbrance (and I like Yora's tweaks more, so I'll gonna paraphrase that.) You can carry X "Stones" worth of items without suffering encumbrance. X is your Strength. One stone is any item that weighs more than 5 pounds, or one bundle of items (quiver w/ arrows, 1 week of rations, etc,) and it's an extra stone when you go past around 30lbs or if the item is really bulky or such. Light/Medium/Heavy armor is 2/4/6 stone. Being lightly encumbered drops your travel speed to 75%, and being heavily encumbered drops you to 50%. You can typically forage enough food to keep yourself fed, but it will mean going off of the road and traveling more slowly. If it's less than 1 stone don't bother to count it (as long as you don't intentionally try to carry an unrealistic number of these weightless items.)

She's also using gold* hauled out of dungeons as the primary source of xp, so wandering monsters offer no grist of that sort and are all around annoying to deal with, and thus to be actively minimized. If I picked up the right details from the inspirational reading, you run into a wandering monster every hour in a dungeon and most exploration tasks (that passive perception trap check we do,) eat up 10 minutes. In the wilderness roll 1d6 1-3 times per day (1 is like farmlands, 3 is like right next to an agitated orc outpost,) and there's an encounter if the party rolls a 1.

*Not so much gold coin. More like paintings and antique furniture. Have fun with that encumbrance system.


All of this polices the 5mwd... right up until one PC knows the create food and water/goodberry spell :/
Yora's setting is a pretty major revamp of (2e?) but I think I'd just homebrew that create food or water must be done at consecrated sites, creates 1d4 rations, and it takes you most of a day to consecrate a suitable structure. Not quite sure how to impose a similar limit on good berry. Hopefully nothing else screws with the rations economy too much. (Ranger or hermit background mostly remove the 5e speed penalty for foraging, but with these rules you've got hirelings/pack animals to carry your stuff, and foraging only results in so much food, so how much time do you really want to spend off of the road...)

Funny thing: while I don't really bother the players with it that much in my games (technically, I expect them to keep track of their ammo and rations, but don't check if they are not skipping on it, or check if their encumberance values fit), I'm really anal about that as a player, to the point of counting encumberance for single coins and keeping track of specific spell components (even if they are non-costly, and yes, I've declared that my component pouch ran out), even if the DM doesn't care about that stuff at all. Or the appearance and state (i.e. damage to) all outfits my characters own.

How do you judge how many components fit in the pouch? Seems like 5e just wants it to be a different flavored focus.

Burning spell slots to avoid dying of starvation really isn't a minor cost, that's a big deal.

I've heard a couple of people say things like this but I'm not quite sure what they're picturing. In my head, there's a simple pattern that will emerge for travel: try to hang on to one spell slot during random encounters, then create food and water/goodberry when the party makes camp.
You're sort of down 1 spell slot in order to do this, and then you've got 15/10 people worth of food (or 5/10 horses worth,) and water that lasts for 24 hours. You eat 1 ration worth (conceptually a late lunch and supper, as spending much more than 8 hours walking tends to cause exhaustion effects, and the miles per day listed in the book line up nicely with 8 hours worth of walking speed travel,) go to bed, then rouse thyself and eat breakfast. If you've got a little leeway for carrying stuff (and you do cause you're gonna wanna haul some treasure,) then you pack up your lunch for the next day, and nobody has to be careful about saving a spell slot for this the next day. This sustains a 5 player party at level 5/1 with no need for rations, or a 4 player party with a horse/mule at a cost of a ration for the horse every other day.

If they carry any amount of actual rations on them then it seems like they don't really have to be very careful about saving that spell slot, as there would only be a few days that were likely to demand the slot's use.

Is this radically different from what you picture?

It depends on the type of game as to whether I prefer encumberance or not.
For example, in Fallout or Diablo, I basically hate it.

It seems like you could really use automated hirelings in those games. Fallout 4 had the ever so slightly elegant solution of giving you an interface that counts all of the contents of your nearby boxes, so designers could just do some more aggressive inventory merging when players want to look at all of their crap. Playing unidentified item tetris is fun for a minute, but you can mostly automate that after a certain point. Keep the runners back in the really hectic areas but have them walk behind you picking up the strangely golden and coin shaped blood that spews out of each demon that you kill, and then high tail it back to the settlement when they've filled up most of their capacity with non-junk.

Cookie clicker games know how to do the math for most of this. You mostly just need assets for the idiots adventurers pay to come along with them that aren't good for anything buy carry capacity... and incentive to deviate from the formula that tells you what features are critical for game feel, or not so many little side projects like this that you never get the game to a functional state.

[HidesHisEyes]

Yeah, I'm coming around to the idea of actually just using the variant encumbrance rules and tracking things. I always just thought it looked like a massive headache, I don't really like bookkeeping, and I thought there had to be a faster, more abstract way of making logistics matter. But the more I think about it the more it seems simplest to just use the rules as written. I'll give it a try. Thanks for the input people.

Regarding goodberry and create food/water, I have to agree with those who are pointing out that spell slots don't really matter for the majority of a long journey, since assuming you have one long rest before you get to the actual dungeon you are getting that spell slot back.

Overland travel still seems generally problematic, actually. What's the point of one random encounter a day on a five-day journey, since you're gonna have a long rest between each one? This is why I have tinkered with the idea of making rations REQUIRED to get the benefits of a rest - one for a short rest, three for a long rest (and they're fluffed as like general "travel supplies" not specifically rations). That way to save your rations on a long journey you might need to sometimes treat camping for the night as a short rest instead of a long rest, so a whole five-day journey effectively becomes an adventuring day. Not sure how that would line up with the ration economy as per the PHB.

[mephnick]

Overland travel still seems generally problematic, actually. What's the point of one random encounter a day on a five-day journey, since you're gonna have a long rest between each one? This is why I have tinkered with the idea of making rations REQUIRED to get the benefits of a rest - one for a short rest, three for a long rest (and they're fluffed as like general "travel supplies" not specifically rations). That way to save your rations on a long journey you might need to sometimes treat camping for the night as a short rest instead of a long rest, so a whole five-day journey effectively becomes an adventuring day. Not sure how that would line up with the ration economy as per the PHB.

I switched to gritty realism and just tell the players that short rests still only take an hour, but you only get 2 per long rest, choose whenever you want and deal with it.

[HidesHisEyes]

I switched to gritty realism and just tell the players that short rests still only take an hour, but you only get 2 per long rest, choose whenever you want and deal with it.

But a long rest takes a week? That sounds like it limits them a little too much for my liking. Maybe I could do that but allow them more short rests though.

[mephnick]

But a long rest takes a week?

I do a few days in a safe location. A week is quite long, yeah. I do lots of travel/exploration, so the normal rest rules are basically useless to me. I've found this to be a pretty balanced way of running that type of campaign. It also fixes some of the problems of doing dungeons in gritty realism as the players xan take the short rests on the same day if they really need to.

[HidesHisEyes]

I do a few days in a safe location. A week is quite long, yeah. I do lots of travel/exploration, so the normal rest rules are basically useless to me. I've found this to be a pretty balanced way of running that type of campaign. It also fixes some of the problems of doing dungeons in gritty realism as the players xan take the short rests on the same day if they really need to.

That's pretty cool.

I've also started wondering if gritty realism (or some version of it) could help you get more done in a session. I find at mid-higher levels combat is dragging on a bit, and I wonder if I made easier fights - specifically, enemies with fewer hit points - but made resting harder so that players had to be more careful with their resources - could I fit more fights into each adventure, and thus each session, this way? Has anyone tried this?

I ask because I just ran a session which I had intended to be an entire one-shot adventure and we had to end halfway through because it got so late IRL. It wasn't entirely because of combat taking ages, but it was largely that.

[qube]

So does anyone have tips for incorporating this kind of thing into D&D in a way that's engaging without burdening the rules too much. I'm especially interested in any mechanics that abstractify things like supplies and light sources and inventory capacity to the point where they matter but don't create much more "work" for either players or DM.

I played a survival desert campaign - and I used tokens for water & food.

As for lightsources - before entering a dungeon, the DM could mark how much lightsource they have with them (ex. 10 hours worth) - and when the DM decides they reach the point of 7 hours, he informs the party their torches are running low; and at the mark of 10 hours, he informs the party they are without torches at all.

As for carrying capacity ... That's always a bummer. Best I can think of, is

• each player knows his 'modified carrying capacity' (carrying capacity, with permanent gear (armor, cloths, weapons, spellbook, ...) substracted) and round down to the lowest 5 lb
• create varios 5 lb tokens (maybe cut out cardboard pieces; or if you're a magic-player, perhaps a card, a card sleave & a piece of paper in front of it); each representing 5 lb. For example, 5lb worth of food, 5lb worth of water. Heavy items can have a marker they count for 2 cards or something.
• you can houserule that 1 days worth of food for the party weighs 5lb, and one days worth of water is 5lb worth of water. (technically one requires 1 ration & 1 gallon of water per person per day, but meh)

[Tanarii]

[*]you can houserule that 1 days worth of food for the party weighs 5lb, and one days worth of water is 5lb worth of water. (technically one requires 1 ration & 1 gallon of water per person per day, but meh)[/list]

One day's supplies, ie One ration and One Gallon of Water (2 waterskins), weighs 12 lbs. 2 lbs for the food, and 10 for the waterskins. So 10 lbs as a 'house rule' for one day's supplies is already pretty close. Although 5lbs and 5lbs for food/water is pretty far off the mark.

IMX the most common way for players to run into trouble is only having one waterskin (1/2 a day's requirement) and no Cleric or Druid to cast Create Water.

[Cybren]

Burning a spell slot is only a big deal on days when you're going to be experiencing an adventuring day's worth of spell resources needed.

And the basic encumbrance rule, Str 8 is 120 lbs carried. Very few classes come close to that with their starting equipment. Clerics and other Medium Armor wearer might, or those carrying a Hunting Trap.

Variant Encumberance is another matter. Dumping Str to 8 is a choice that needs to be more seriously considered.

Well, pack animals are cheap enough that you can start with one if you wanted to, BUT, that's another resource management system, as now you either need to carry food for them or are limited to areas where your animal can graze. This is my kind of D&D though, so I'm all about it.

[Tanarii]

Well, pack animals are cheap enough that you can start with one if you wanted to, BUT, that's another resource management system, as now you either need to carry food for them or are limited to areas where your animal can graze. This is my kind of D&D though, so I'm all about it.

Oh yeah, I have no problem with that. It's just something players don't think about unless you point out to them that maybe they need to get some extra water for their week long trip, or figure out if they're comfortable foraging while traveling (with attending 'automatically surprised' penalty), or want to dedicate a spell slot it occasionally (if Cleric/Druid is available).

I was pointing out that it'd be closer to the PHB to count 10lbs of food and water combined, rather than 5lb of food and 5lb of water separately. If you're counting separately, you need 10 lbs of waterskins. Water is HEAVY. As it should be.

[Armored Walrus]

I was all set in my campaign to add food and water management, navigation checks to avoid getting lost, and ammunition shortages to the current adventure arc. Then a new player joined and happened to take the Outlander background, so a food and water shortage is now no longer an option. I do, however, feel sure they will run out of ammunition before they can complete their tasks, so at least I have that. (The party is in the Outlander's home terrain, so no, I won't be able to just say the land won't support it. He's a lizardfolk fighter, and they are in his swamp.)

[KorvinStarmast]

The fact that no one uses encumberence and everything that entails from it is really sad.

Our group uses it all the time, since Roll20 makes for easy bookkeeping. It matters for movement in combat. (Also makes that one bag of holding insanely valuable.)

Torchbearer is basically 'Moldvay Basic D&D refined'. We did all that stuff in many of my AD&D games in the 80's too - close tracked time, consumables, encumbrance, light sources, hireling morale (with the effect on their pay), and random monster encounters. It all fit together to create tense, high-risk, calculated play.

It's a very different game.

And it's not hard to do. I used to make my char sheets on green engineering graph paper, with little boxes to check off for arrows, potions, rations, In Pencil. Easy Peasy.

Well, old D&D was a first-person war game. 5E is cinematic fantasy.

The latter is a good assessment, the former partially good. OD&D had a lot of room to move in that regard ... really depended on the table.

[Tanarii]

Then a new player joined and happened to take the Outlander background, so a food and water shortage is now no longer an option. I do, however, feel sure they will run out of ammunition before they can complete their tasks, so at least I have that. (The party is in the Outlander's home terrain, so no, I won't be able to just say the land won't support it. He's a lizardfolk fighter, and they are in his swamp.)

Wanderer is a great background, provided you don't mind being automatically surprised for foraging. And don't have to worry about mounts / pack animals.

[Cybren]

Wanderer is a great background, provided you don't mind being automatically surprised for foraging. And don't have to worry about mounts / pack animals.

Or NPC hirelings. Also, there are limits, it won't do much good within a multi-day dungeon crawl, or exploring other large regions that don't reasonably provide food, like the caldera of a volcano or something equally Metal that you might experience in D&D