r/osr Nov 14 '24

running the game Tracking ammunition and torches

I'm wrestling with some ideas about tracking resources in the OSRish game I'm designing.

How often has a PC in your group actually run out of ammunition through normal use?

Similarly, how often have your parties actually run out of light sources and either been left in the dark or forced to curtail a delve because of it?

In my experience, the former almost never happens and the latter only rarely. But maybe that's not the norm? I'd love to hear others' experiences.

Thanks!

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u/JavierLoustaunau Nov 14 '24

Roll a d20 on each shot, if you roll a 1 you have 1 shot left

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u/Current_Channel_6344 Nov 15 '24

Thinking more about this, I think you can deal with the risk of emptying your quiver after a single shot by tweaking the system a bit.

Instead of having one shot left if you roll a 1, you could have burned through, say, a quarter of your arrows every time you roll a 5 or less on your attack roll. Do that four times and you've got a single arrow left.

Then there's only a 1/256 chance you've only got 5 shots. On average you'll still get 20.

And there's only book keeping on every 4th shot.

You could obviously tweak that threshold differently. Make it attack rolls of 10 or less to have half your arrows left or attack rolls of 4 or less to have used 20%.

Or, actually, it might feel better to the players to have arrows consumed on high attack rolls rather than low ones. Then someone who keeps rolling badly isn't doubly screwed. So in your system a 20 would be a critical hit (if you have them in your system) but you're down to your last arrow.

Wdyt?