How to track ammunition


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Houserule I didn't get a chance to use yet: Track quivers instead of arrows.

If you roll a 1 on an attack roll using an arrow, it was your last arrow from that quiver.


Tracking mundane ammo past the first few levels is effort that does not add to the enjoyment of the game. Once people have bags of hefty capacity and quivers of holds-a-lot, then they can easily buy lots of arrows a nd not worry about it.


LoneKnave wrote:

Houserule I didn't get a chance to use yet: Track quivers instead of arrows.

If you roll a 1 on an attack roll using an arrow, it was your last arrow from that quiver.

So wait a sec...if I pull an arrow out of a freshly filled quiver, and then roll a 1, does that mean I dump all the other arrows out and find a new quiver? That seems kinda stupid.


Brox RedGloves wrote:
LoneKnave wrote:

Houserule I didn't get a chance to use yet: Track quivers instead of arrows.

If you roll a 1 on an attack roll using an arrow, it was your last arrow from that quiver.

So wait a sec...if I pull an arrow out of a freshly filled quiver, and then roll a 1, does that mean I dump all the other arrows out and find a new quiver? That seems kinda stupid.

It's an abstraction. There isnt any tracking of a "freshly filled quiver", the only thing that register in that system are "nearly empty quivers" - if you pull an arrow out of a quiver and roll a 1 it means it was nearly empty. Anything else means it wasn't.

If you analyse any abstraction closely enough you get silly results. The thief picks a lock and the next morning the wizard can cast fireball...


Steve Geddes wrote:
Brox RedGloves wrote:
LoneKnave wrote:

Houserule I didn't get a chance to use yet: Track quivers instead of arrows.

If you roll a 1 on an attack roll using an arrow, it was your last arrow from that quiver.

So wait a sec...if I pull an arrow out of a freshly filled quiver, and then roll a 1, does that mean I dump all the other arrows out and find a new quiver? That seems kinda stupid.

It's an abstraction. There isnt any tracking of a "freshly filled quiver", the only thing that register in that system are "nearly empty quivers" - if you pull an arrow out of a quiver and roll a 1 it means it was nearly empty. Anything else means it wasn't.

If you analyse any abstraction closely enough you get silly results. The thief picks a lock and the next morning the wizard can cast fireball...

Then that means the the thief was actually a witch because she was made of wood!!!


I see a lot of opinions here. Lets look at some facts:

"A spellcaster with a spell component pouch is assumed to have all the material components and focuses needed for spellcasting, except for those components that have a specific cost, divine focuses, and focuses that wouldn't fit in a pouch."

Fact : For spell components which do not have a listed gp amount, the pouch *is* intended to be an infinite resource.

"Arrows come in a leather quiver that holds 20 arrows."

Fact : Since there is a number listed, arrows are not intended to be an infinite resource.

Abundant Ammunition is a 1st level spell that lets you have an infinite supply of arrows for a short time.

Fact : Since it is a spell (limited resource) and has a duration (limited resource), then the arrows they produce are not intended to be an infinite resource.

Endless Ammunition is a +2 Enhancement bonus for a ranged weapon. If you put it on a +1 bow, it costs you 16,000 gold. If you put it on a +5 weapon, the minimum cost is 48,000 gold.

Fact : Since neither gold nor the capacity for items to be enchanted are infinite, then neither are the arrows this enchantment replaces.

Not to sound too authoritarian (It won't let me use the word I'd like to here), but "Them's the Rules".

Now the great thing about D&D is that everyone plays differently, and no GM is beholden to follow any rule he doesn't like. What works for your group, works for your group, and who cares what anyone else thinks.

I'm just saying that having infinite arrows for free is very clearly *not* what the game designers intended. You can (of course) do it if you want, but the game is balanced through the use of rules. A high-level archer with limited arrows might not take that last iterative attack which needs an 18 to hit because he's down to his last quiver, whereas a the same archer with unlimited arrows will shoot six times even if he needs a natural 20 on each roll. He literally has nothing to lose.


Brox RedGloves wrote:
LoneKnave wrote:

Houserule I didn't get a chance to use yet: Track quivers instead of arrows.

If you roll a 1 on an attack roll using an arrow, it was your last arrow from that quiver.

So wait a sec...if I pull an arrow out of a freshly filled quiver, and then roll a 1, does that mean I dump all the other arrows out and find a new quiver? That seems kinda stupid.

No, it's just an abstraction (like combat already is.) Similarly it works in the reverse, you could roll 117 attacks (same odds as rolling back to back 1's) without rolling a 1 and never have to change your quiver.

...And ninja'd


Ithnaar wrote:

I see a lot of opinions here. Lets look at some facts:

"A spellcaster with a spell component pouch is assumed to have all the material components and focuses needed for spellcasting, except for those components that have a specific cost, divine focuses, and focuses that wouldn't fit in a pouch."

Fact : For spell components which do not have a listed gp amount, the pouch *is* intended to be an infinite resource.

"Arrows come in a leather quiver that holds 20 arrows."

Fact : Since there is a number listed, arrows are not intended to be an infinite resource.

Abundant Ammunition is a 1st level spell that lets you have an infinite supply of arrows for a short time.

Fact : Since it is a spell (limited resource) and has a duration (limited resource), then the arrows they produce are not intended to be an infinite resource.

Endless Ammunition is a +2 Enhancement bonus for a ranged weapon. If you put it on a +1 bow, it costs you 16,000 gold. If you put it on a +5 weapon, the minimum cost is 48,000 gold.

Fact : Since neither gold nor the capacity for items to be enchanted are infinite, then neither are the arrows this enchantment replaces.

Not to sound too authoritarian (It won't let me use the word I'd like to here), but "Them's the Rules".

Now the great thing about D&D is that everyone plays differently, and no GM is beholden to follow any rule he doesn't like. What works for your group, works for your group, and who cares what anyone else thinks.

I'm just saying that having infinite arrows for free is very clearly *not* what the game designers intended. You can (of course) do it if you want, but the game is balanced through the use of rules. A high-level archer with limited arrows might not take that last iterative attack which needs an 18 to hit because he's down to his last quiver, whereas a the same archer with unlimited arrows will shoot six times even if he needs a natural 20 on each roll. He literally has nothing to lose.

+1 this. Had a 9-10 zen archer run out of arrows in an area the group couldn't restock in. Every encounter got a little more tense for him because he had a resource he had to contend with.

This caused the investment in durable arrows and efficient quiver next time he was in a city. His two reasons were to keep his carrying capacity down so AC bonus applied and so he wouldn't have to worry about arrows again.

If I didn't make him track ammo, those purchases would have never happened. Also, that feeling of "running out of resources, need proper civilization" wouldn't have came through during that adventure in the campaign.


Ithnaar wrote:

I see a lot of opinions here. Lets look at some facts:

"A spellcaster with a spell component pouch is assumed to have all the material components and focuses needed for spellcasting, except for those components that have a specific cost, divine focuses, and focuses that wouldn't fit in a pouch."

Fact : For spell components which do not have a listed gp amount, the pouch *is* intended to be an infinite resource.

"Arrows come in a leather quiver that holds 20 arrows."

Fact : Since there is a number listed, arrows are not intended to be an infinite resource.

Abundant Ammunition is a 1st level spell that lets you have an infinite supply of arrows for a short time.

Fact : Since it is a spell (limited resource) and has a duration (limited resource), then the arrows they produce are not intended to be an infinite resource.

Endless Ammunition is a +2 Enhancement bonus for a ranged weapon. If you put it on a +1 bow, it costs you 16,000 gold. If you put it on a +5 weapon, the minimum cost is 48,000 gold.

Fact : Since neither gold nor the capacity for items to be enchanted are infinite, then neither are the arrows this enchantment replaces.

Not to sound too authoritarian (It won't let me use the word I'd like to here), but "Them's the Rules".

Now the great thing about D&D is that everyone plays differently, and no GM is beholden to follow any rule he doesn't like. What works for your group, works for your group, and who cares what anyone else thinks.

I'm just saying that having infinite arrows for free is very clearly *not* what the game designers intended. You can (of course) do it if you want, but the game is balanced through the use of rules. A high-level archer with limited arrows might not take that last iterative attack which needs an 18 to hit because he's down to his last quiver, whereas a the same archer with unlimited arrows will shoot six times even if he needs a natural 20 on each roll. He literally has nothing to lose.

Search the boards for anything about Endless Ammunition and you'll find it's pretty much universally hated because it's incredibly overvalued.

If you want to argue about price, lets review how 50 gold allows you to craft 3000 arrows. Do you really think you need to track that? They have prices for rations too, do you bother with those? They cost 5sp and weigh 1 lb. 1 arrow cost 3sp 33cp and weighs 3/20th of a pound. Sure, you'll use more arrows in a day than you will trail rations. But the cost isn't remotely relevant. The weight is more of a relevant factor since 200 arrows weighs 30 lbs. But between pack animals, bags of holding, and efficient quivers it's not relevant. I understand this is in game expenditures, and if you want to make sure a player picks up and purchases these things, sure. But once he has them, there's just not a point. You're basically talking about tracking for 3 levels where it *might* be relevant.

Edit: And just for a little extra math, a 20th level character with rapid shot, many shot, and haste will use 7 arrows a round. So, with 3000 arrows that equates to 428 rounds of combat. Let assume an average of 4 rounds of combat per fight, that's 107 combats. For 50 gp.


Claxon wrote:

Search the boards for anything about Endless Ammunition and you'll find it's pretty much universally hated because it's incredibly overvalued.

If you want to argue about price, lets review how 50 gold allows you to craft 3000 arrows. Do you really think you need to track that? They have prices for rations too, do you bother with those? They cost 5sp and weigh 1 lb. 1 arrow cost 3sp 33cp and weighs 3/20th of a pound. Sure, you'll use more arrows in a day than you will trail rations. But the cost isn't remotely relevant. The weight is more of a relevant factor since 200 arrows weighs 30 lbs. But between pack animals, bags of holding, and efficient quivers it's not relevant. I understand this is in game expenditures, and if you want to make sure a player picks up and purchases these things, sure. But once he has them, there's just not a point. You're basically talking about tracking for 3 levels where it *might* be relevant.

All I am trying to illustrate is that the rules that the game designers gave us clearly show that they didn't intend for arrows to be an unlimited resource. I'm not saying you have to play by those rules, I'm just being very clear about what they are.


And what I've been pointing out is that while the establish prices and you say they're not "unlimited" that 50 gp is enough to cover your archer's need for arrows for at least the majority of his adventuring career.

Make him pay it once, and be done.


Claxon wrote:

And what I've been pointing out is that while the establish prices and you say they're not "unlimited" that 50 gp is enough to cover your archer's need for arrows for at least the majority of his adventuring career.

Make him pay it once, and be done.

And once that shows up in a Pathfinder book and they remove the quiver capacity, arrow-making spells and enchantments, then those will be the new rules.

You seem to be arguing that the rules we have are bad rules and because of that, you don't want to use them. That's fine. You are free to not use any rule you want (or can convince your DM to ignore).

I'm not arguing whether the rules are good or bad, or whether they're unbalanced, too realistic or too expensive. I'm not arguing *anything*.

I'm making a factual statement : "These are the Rules." Use them or not at your own discretion, but beware that there may be mechanical, game balance and roleplay consequences, just as there may be for ignoring any other rule in the game.


Ithnaar wrote:
Claxon wrote:

And what I've been pointing out is that while the establish prices and you say they're not "unlimited" that 50 gp is enough to cover your archer's need for arrows for at least the majority of his adventuring career.

Make him pay it once, and be done.

And once that shows up in a Pathfinder book and they remove the quiver capacity, arrow-making spells and enchantments, then those will be the new rules.

You seem to be arguing that the rules we have are bad rules and because of that, you don't want to use them. That's fine. You are free to not use any rule you want (or can convince your DM to ignore).

I'm not arguing whether the rules are good or bad, or whether they're unbalanced, too realistic or too expensive. I'm not arguing *anything*.

I'm making a factual statement : "These are the Rules." Use them or not at your own discretion, but beware that there may be mechanical, game balance and roleplay consequences, just as there may be for ignoring any other rule in the game.

I'm not arguing that the rules are bad. What I'm arguing is, look at how miniscule the cost is, how little is required to craft them, and how easily the weight can be mitigated. If someone makes these minimal investments, there isn't a need to bother tracking them.


Quote:
I'm making a factual statement : "These are the Rules." Use them or not at your own discretion, but beware that there may be mechanical, game balance and roleplay consequences, just as there may be for ignoring any other rule in the game.

The reason I think they are bad rules is because the consequences for ignoring them are very limited.

Unrelated, I got into the same argument with my 5e group over the other players tracking each coin individually, instead of in GP price. Thank freaking god the DM doesn't actually enforce that because I'd go crazy.


Unless it's magical ammunition, like +1 Bane Arrows found on a foe, our group just don't care to track it. And why should we?

Maybe in extreme cases, like being on the high seas, on a deserted island, or on level 32 of a mega-dungeon, I would enforce it. That's about it.


Everyone seems to think that you have to track every single arrow or completely ignore tracking. Completely ignoring tracking to me does not make sense, but how much detail I require of my players depends on the character. If the character is a archer who dumped INT and did not put any skill points into craft then I will probably be pretty hardcore on tracking arrows. This is especially true at higher levels when the character’s rate of fire is higher than his INT. When the character is firing like he is a machine gun he should have taken that into consideration and gotten proper equipment.

If on the other hand the character spent points craft bow then I am going to cut them some slack. If the character also made investments in appropriate gear then I don’t worry about it that much. As long as the character has a way to restock his items it is not that big of a problem. One thing I do is to figure out how many rounds of arrows the character can go through at maximum rate of fire using normal arrows. If battle is going to take longer than that I will start tacking arrow. When I ran a long battle and the archer completely ran out of arrows she was getting worried. She had taken appropriate steps but no one in the party realized how many enemies there were. Let’s just say the body count was in the triple digits.


BigDTBone wrote:
logan grayble wrote:
I'm about to play an archer character for the first time in my group's next campaign. Although I'm a little unsure of the best way to keep track of my character's stock of arrows. When it comes to special arrows like Bane or Dragon-Slaying, then it makes sense to track them individually. But to people who have DMed archer players in the past, did you make them track all their mundane ammunition as well? Or did you just assume they had enough mundane arrows with the each day?

Buy a giant bowl and put it on the table. Go to a candy store and buy m&ms sorted by color. Assign each arrow type a color. Count out the correct number of "arrows" and dump them in your bowl. As you use them, eat them.

Arrow tracking achieved!

"Awww, I'm out of arrows, AND I've got diabetes now."


If you want to easily track arrows, just average it. Count up how many arrows miss, and they recover half that. So if, at the end of the fight, your archer missed with 4 mundane and 5 adamantine arrows, he recovers 2 mundane and flips to see if he gets back 2 or 3 adamantine arrows. If you want to add a bit more variability, or he fired off a lot of arrows, he can roll 2d6. 2 means he gets back none, 3-5 gets him 25%, 6-8 gets him 50%, 9-11 gets him 75%, and 12 gets him all his missed arrows. Ammo management is one of the few measures available to dampen the damage output of a well-built archer. No need to throw it out, but it can be streamlined so as not to drastically interrupt the game. All they need to do is track their misses with each type of arrow that could be recovered, not flip a coin for each and every one.


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Ithnaar wrote:

I see a lot of opinions here. Lets look at some facts:

"A spellcaster with a spell component pouch is assumed to have all the material components and focuses needed for spellcasting, except for those components that have a specific cost, divine focuses, and focuses that wouldn't fit in a pouch."

Fact : For spell components which do not have a listed gp amount, the pouch *is* intended to be an infinite resource.

"Arrows come in a leather quiver that holds 20 arrows."

Fact : Since there is a number listed, arrows are not intended to be an infinite resource.

...

There is another non-infinite resource. The time and effort of everybody at the table. While I understand that arrows are not an infinite resource, I prefer to spend my time on other things. Once the party has the gold for magic quivers and bags, then the cost of standard arrows is minor. The time to track it and keep it up is not.

Community & Digital Content Director

Removed some back and forth posts and derailing questions. Unless you're providing actual advice, take it to another thread.


Philo Pharynx wrote:
Once people have bags of hefty capacity and quivers of holds-a-lot, then they can easily buy lots of arrows a nd not worry about it.

Very true.

But you shouldn't give the archer type the de facto benefit of having those items if the player/character has not yet invested in those purchases.


How to get de facto benefit of Endless Ammunition: buy a sack with a long drawstring. Fill with 10 quivers. Drag behind you with your offhand. At the beginning of action, drop the string as a free action and shoot dudes. After combat, refill carried quivers from sack. Carry like 3 or 4 quivers, depending on your arrows/round output.

Extra credit: put 1 or 2 quivers on every party member who can spare the encumbrance, in case you have to run away and leave your arrow sack behind.


Claxon wrote:
Edit: And just for a little extra math, a 20th level character with rapid shot, many shot, and haste will use 7 arrows a round. So, with 3000 arrows that equates to 428 rounds of combat. Let assume an average of 4 rounds of combat per fight, that's 107 combats. For 50 gp.

And, those 3000 arrows weigh 150lbs.

It would also take (generously speaking)20+ efficient quivers to carry all of them.

If you're ok with just storing them until needed, a Bag of Holding or Portable Hole would suffice, but you wouldn't have easy access to them during combat.

It isn't just a matter of cost, or even weight. It's also about tactical access to combat resources.


Jaunt wrote:

How to get de facto benefit of Endless Ammunition: buy a sack with a long drawstring. Fill with 10 quivers. Drag behind you with your offhand. At the beginning of action, drop the string as a free action and shoot dudes. After combat, refill carried quivers from sack. Carry like 3 or 4 quivers, depending on your arrows/round output.

Intelligent DM play:

One of the mobs you're fighting makes the reasonable assumption that there is something valuable in the sack your dragging around. He sneaks around, grabs it, and runs off to see what he's stolen.


Saldiven wrote:
Claxon wrote:
Edit: And just for a little extra math, a 20th level character with rapid shot, many shot, and haste will use 7 arrows a round. So, with 3000 arrows that equates to 428 rounds of combat. Let assume an average of 4 rounds of combat per fight, that's 107 combats. For 50 gp.

And, those 3000 arrows weigh 150lbs.

It would also take (generously speaking)20+ efficient quivers to carry all of them.

If you're ok with just storing them until needed, a Bag of Holding or Portable Hole would suffice, but you wouldn't have easy access to them during combat.

It isn't just a matter of cost, or even weight. It's also about tactical access to combat resources.

I wasn't actually suggesting you carry around 3000 arrows at one time. A few hundred will do, and keeping your efficient quiver loaded with them and your handy haversack loaded with quivers means you really don't need to worry too much about running out, even in the middle of combat. Only in a protracted battle at high levels is it even likely you would need to reload your efficient quiver.

Otherwise, you restock between every combat. The same way everyone tops off their hp from the CLW wand between combats.


The idea that endless ammunition is worth +2 bonus is crazy. That means that property is costing you a minimum of 16,000 gp. For 16kgp you can buy a type 4 bag of holding, 2 efficient quivers, and 2400 durable arrows.

Also, you still have the ability to have someone cast GMW on your arrows.


Quote:

Intelligent DM play:

One of the mobs you're fighting makes the reasonable assumption that there is something valuable in the sack your dragging around. He sneaks around, grabs it, and runs off to see what he's stolen.

Excellent. I've removed a monster from combat as a free action, and I'm still carrying one or two encounters of arrows on myself, and my allies can supply another 2 or 3 encounters worth. And if I need more than that, we can go back to town or I can find the jerk who ran off with my arrows.

Intelligent DM play: fireball. Good try though.


logan grayble wrote:
I'm about to play an archer character for the first time in my group's next campaign. Although I'm a little unsure of the best way to keep track of my character's stock of arrows. When it comes to special arrows like Bane or Dragon-Slaying, then it makes sense to track them individually. But to people who have DMed archer players in the past, did you make them track all their mundane ammunition as well? Or did you just assume they had enough mundane arrows with the each day?

Just treat the quiver like a spell component pouch. Why should martials do the boring book keeping if the casters don't have to?


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The reason not to track mundane arrows is the same reason the Spell Component Pouch was introduced.

To get rid of unfun, unheroic and flow-breaking bookkeeping.

Before that spellcasters had to keep track of all individual spell components.

Yeah, spellcasters get much stronger then martials in the high-levels, BUT ... you have to play Bureaus & Spreadsheets 15min each time you go shopping.


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Saldiven wrote:
Jaunt wrote:

How to get de facto benefit of Endless Ammunition: buy a sack with a long drawstring. Fill with 10 quivers. Drag behind you with your offhand. At the beginning of action, drop the string as a free action and shoot dudes. After combat, refill carried quivers from sack. Carry like 3 or 4 quivers, depending on your arrows/round output.

Intelligent DM play:

One of the mobs you're fighting makes the reasonable assumption that there is something valuable in the sack your dragging around. He sneaks around, grabs it, and runs off to see what he's stolen.

In fact that is the worst kind of jerk dm.

First he made you track arrows, then when you bring along enough he takes them away. Congrats, you can pick on martials. That's like stealing candy from a child.


I do [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] on every character with a bow. As I fire, I tick the number of shots fired off. On my Archers, I have several of these lines. When I miss, I roll percentiles during other people's turns and then if any are recoverable, when combat is over I follow up with the GM. I don't get too much into the minutiae of encumbrance and track it in packs of 20 (ie I only care about the weight of 20: when I'm below 20, I count it as a full 3 lbs; when I'm at 0 I have 3 lbs less encumbrance). This to me is part of playing an archer. One of the important parts of the game is what happens when you've run out of arrows.

The argument that Endless Ammunition isn't worth +2 doesn't make sense to me. It's a never have to worry about mundane ammo again. That's worth at least a +1 and I didn't blink an eye paying for it on my PFS Inquisitor's Repeating Crossbow. Opportunity cost is a thing.


Tracking arrows -> tracking quivers -> action economy

Not tracking ammunition causes the most powerful martial style to be even more powerful. Oh noes! I must interrupt my 200' Full-Attacks to reload? Knot FARE!

If you want to play an archer and already be very powerful, ffs track ammo. No bonus actions for you.

How to track?
1 - Get a sheet of lined paper.
2 - Put the letter "Q" in the margin at the top left.
3 - In a column, in the margin, under that "Q", write the number "1".
4 - Continue to progress the column by furthering to write more numbers in accordance with how many quivers you've got.
5 - If any of your quivers have weird ammo, mark that next to the quiver number.
6 - Put a token of some sort on the number that relates to your equipped quiver.
7 - As you use ammo, put hash marks after its number for a hit.
8 - As you use ammo, put circles after its number for a miss.
9 - Roll break% for circles, put a hash mark on the circle if failed.
10 - Win


Claxon wrote:

I wasn't actually suggesting you carry around 3000 arrows at one time. A few hundred will do, and keeping your efficient quiver loaded with them and your handy haversack loaded with quivers means you really don't need to worry too much about running out, even in the middle of combat. Only in a protracted battle at high levels is it even likely you would need to reload your efficient quiver.

Otherwise, you restock between every combat. The same way everyone tops off their hp from the CLW wand between combats.

And when you need an extra 15 lbs of carrying capacity you just dump 100 arrows out of your handy haversack. Since you don't keep track of arrows, by dumping out a hundred arrows here and two hundred arrows there you can soon have a handy haversack that has a 5,000 lb carrying capacity. Nifty.

A Heward's Handy Haversack full of regular arrows is a Heward's Handy Haversack that doesn't have 12 flasks of oil, 10 bottles of holy water, 5 flasks of acid, 6 smoke bombs, 3 quivers of adamantine arrows, 4 quivers of silver arrows, 2 quivers of cold iron arrows, a quiver of whistling arrows and a back-up +1 mace on hand for when the player needs them. Once the handy haversack of copyright protected name has all the things it should have, the player can fit a few quivers of regular arrows in, but not enough to make keeping track of them pointless.

This doesn't mean you should keep track of arrows if you find the drudgery of accounting a distraction from your game, but that hand-waving away arrow tracking does have an actual effect on the game. Every quiver of arrows a player carries is 3 lbs that can not be used to carry something else and 1 gp that could be spent on something else and while 1gp isn't significant after 1st level, if enforced the weight rules will affect characters for much longer.


Drogos wrote:
The argument that Endless Ammunition isn't worth +2 doesn't make sense to me. It's a never have to worry about mundane ammo again. That's worth at least a +1 and I didn't blink an eye paying for it on my PFS Inquisitor's Repeating Crossbow. Opportunity cost is a thing.

You know that your last sentence is at odds with your previous sentences, right?


Abrisene: What kind of awful archer only equips 1 quiver at a time? Also, your imitation of archer players is downright insulting. There's no call for that.


LoneKnave wrote:
Drogos wrote:
The argument that Endless Ammunition isn't worth +2 doesn't make sense to me. It's a never have to worry about mundane ammo again. That's worth at least a +1 and I didn't blink an eye paying for it on my PFS Inquisitor's Repeating Crossbow. Opportunity cost is a thing.
You know that your last sentence is at odds with your previous sentences, right?

Well, I'm clearly a frigging idiot because I don't see what your point is. Help me better master the English language and be a little more explanative.


If I understand correctly, he's saying that for the price of Endless Ammo, you could've bought another, much more impactful weapon enhancement, or other moderately pricey magical item. That is, by getting Endless Ammo, you are giving up all the other things you could've bought with that gold.


I see. My tone didn't translate. I think that cost is something that ought to be gladly paid. I don't see how it's not as valuable, especially when people who are illustrating it's not a big deal, go onto explain the ways to get around it that have their own problems associated with them.


Yes, I understand that.

You give up the opportunity to have some other +2 effect on your weapon, instead of Endless Ammo. That +2 is the cost.

You value not having to buy about 1000 gold's worth of arrows (more than enough to kill multiple campaigns worth of enemies) the same as having +2 attack and damage with that weapon.

My point was, if someone here is not valuing opportunity cost appropriately, it's you.


Jaunt wrote:
Abrisene: What kind of awful archer only equips 1 quiver at a time? Also, your imitation of archer players is downright insulting. There's no call for that.

Um, every archer? o.O

How many quivers are you allowing a person to have equipped? Acrobatics check to balance a cask of 200 arrows on your head? Archers are not endless arrow machine guns, and trying to hand wave that they have a free +2 value enchantment is terrible cheese. Are you giving melee folk free Wounding or Holy enchantments?

You get 20 arrows each equipped quiver.
When they are gone, it's a Move Action to retrieve another quiver; then it's in hand and not ready for use.
After, I allow another Move Action to equip the quiver. Removing the other is implied.

If you want to play your archer as intended, you place quivers in fall-back positions, and prepare some out already around where you intend to fight. Else, it is finding cover to reload. Ya'know, behaving like an archer.


There is no rule that limits archers to 1 quiver equipped at a time.

Of course, there is no point in equipping 2 quivers when I allow them to balance arrow casks on their heads and give meleers free Wounding and Holy.


So for all the people here that say do not count arrows.
Do you extend this courtesy to every player at your tables. A player building a fighter around the spear or throwing axe. Or a thief throwing daggers do they all get unlimited ammo at your tables


Jaunt wrote:

There is no rule that limits archers to 1 quiver equipped at a time.

Of course, there is no point in equipping 2 quivers when I allow them to balance arrow casks on their heads and give meleers free Wounding and Holy.

There also isn't a rule requiring quivers, only that you get a free one everytime you buy 20 arrows; you can have 1000 arrows tucked into your hair and be ready to rock, RAW.

This isn't any sort of game I would take part in.
DnD, and its current incarnations, have always had resource management as a core part of its design. You track ammo, and pause to reload. It's the trade off for not having to run up to something to attack it.

Hell, I only grudgingly agree with Spell Component Pouches. If you can't be arsed to figure out what your spells need and buy/plan accordingly, then being a caster isn't for you. I truly miss the days of 2ndED and when in a seriously tight spot, trying to figure out what you can get done based on what you had on hand.

Not tracking ammo is at best, shockingly lazy.
At worst, it is blatantly cheating the Action economy under a hand-wave of "meh".


OldSmith wrote:

So for all the people here that say do not count arrows.

Do you extend this courtesy to every player at your tables. A player building a fighter around the spear or throwing axe. Or a thief throwing daggers do they all get unlimited ammo at your tables

Yes. Throwing is a bad combat style, and this is one of the reasons why.

I'll go even further. If your throwing weapon has an at least +1 enhancement (either by being naturally throwing or having the throwing enchant), it returns automatically to your hand. This saves the player from having to buy blinkback belts just to function.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
OldSmith wrote:

So for all the people here that say do not count arrows.

Do you extend this courtesy to every player at your tables. A player building a fighter around the spear or throwing axe. Or a thief throwing daggers do they all get unlimited ammo at your tables

Yeah. Just account for the weight and cost and you are good to go. If they are mundane and you lose some over just make an estimate of cost and replace them. Frankly when you have 20,000gp+. Wether you spent 10, 20, or 50 gold on arrows/daggers/javelins is not going to significantly change the campaign.

There is no mechanic to describe how you have Longspear, Great Sword, Warhammer, Longbow, Kukri worn so they are easily accessible in combat. Yet we assume they are. And they have no impact on your characters balance beyond your encumbrance load.

Yes if this were a combat simulator. All the knights would have squires/servants with pack mules carrying all this stuff for them. But there is little reason to bog down the story in such minutia in a world with no mechanics to compensate for them.

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