Easy Rule for Broken Arrows

Among the logistics of adventure gaming that I currently handwave is the depletion of arrows and other missile ammo. In practice it's too tedious, forgettable, and character-sheet-messy to cross off every arrow (and pick them up again).

So, if there is a thing that people are supposed to do, and they don't do it, and you think it adds to the play of the game, it's on you as the rules hacker/designer to make it easy. I think as long as people are buying arrows in lots of 12 or 20 they should pay attention to depletion. But until now I haven't come up with an easy rule that makes some kind of sense.

So happy, sucking up all your ammo.

Here it is:

1. If an arrow or crossbow bolt does damage but does not kill its target, cross it off; in effect it gets stuck in there and broken off by the still-alive creature. Sling bullets are hardier, so do not suffer this fate.
2. If the party flees the scene of a combat without time to rest and pick up missiles, anyone who shot missiles crosses off two if the fight was short, five if the fight was long, and more for epic fights. If a player thinks this is too many, they are free to keep track of their missiles one by one.

If your players are marking down TWELVE ARROWS or TWENTY ARROWS IN QUIVER, they can just cross off letters from those phrases as ammo gets depleted. Same goes for TWENTY BULLETS IN POUCH and TWENTY QUARRELS IN CASE.

Ammo Made Easy: Three Left on 3

Inspired by the cascading dice rule from Intwischa, but not really wanting to add another die roll to make it happen, I offer this way to track ammo in a d20 based game without tracking ammo, without rolling extra dice, and without the surrealism of "Surprise, you run out right now!"

• Assuming you start with a package of 16-20 ammo-bits, if you roll a 3 or 13 on the d20 to hit, you are down to 3 ammo-bits in that package until you can buy more ammo.
• You can't run out if you roll a 3 or 13 in the first three shots of your first encounter after stocking ammo.
• This assumes you're not retrieving missiles ... I guess it's not too much complication to say you run down only on a 3 if you retrieved missiles after the last battle, otherwise you run down on both numbers.

Together with some ideas for special missile weapon fumbles, I reckon this might justify one page in the Next 52. What do you think?

Broken Arrows

By coincidence, I had been thinking about one of the logistic aspects of the game this week that I seem to blow off in my campaigns - keeping track of ammo. Then Talysman writes about it so I feel I should share my thoughts.

Are most people overestimating how many arrows would be lost in combat, given enough time to recover them afterwards as part of the ten minute post-combat rest? This blog has 50% attrition, Talysman has 33%. It doesn't look like too many arrows would be broken even shooting against armor (here) so the main source of loss would be sticking in the wound and being broken off, being trodden on in combat, or just disappearing into the distance. It may be useful to overestimate these occurrences, though, if only to have ammo supplies play a meaningful part in an adventure.

Also topical for Valentine's Day.

In battlefield combat, of course, there is the factor of not wanting your enemy to easily pull out arrows or use them back against you, that led some historical archers to use arrows with the point intentionally loosened. Most of what adventurers are fighting, though, won't have bows themselves. The option can be given to loosen heads if needed, but it seems more important to explorers to be able to conserve arrow stores.

Here are a couple of ideas:

1. Track ammo supplies using toothpicks stuck in a piece of modeling clay, packing sponge, or styrofoam (personally I hate the sound of squeaking styrofoam so that's right out.) Pull your "arrows" out when you shoot them and turn them in if they break or are abandoned. Indicate special arrows (magic, silver, etc.) using marker on the tip.

2. Arrows, magic or otherwise, break immediately on a natural damage roll of 6; I also have a missile fumble that breaks the arrow. Otherwise, there is no need to have a fiddly "realistic" system or extra dice rolls to model what is ultimately just another aspect of logistics like food, water, and light source consumption. So, breakage and loss are abstracted after the combat; each archer loses 1 out of every 4 arrows shot, rolling d4 to see if there is any loss when a fraction of that is shot. If the party flees the battlefield, of course, losses are total. Magic arrows can be exempted from this due to superior construction, although they may be picked up by intelligent foes.

3. Arrow heads can be loosened to become unusable after any hit (including a hit that would connect with an unarmored target even if it missed due to armor) and 3/4 unrecoverable.

Shooting Arrows and Breaking Flasks

And now, some more house rules from my slowly-accumulating 52 Pages. 

The rules for missile combat have evolved since the days of the Assayer's Guild; I'm particularly satisfied with rolling to miss intervening figures and carrying through after a miss.

The grenade-like missile rules link up with the breakage rules to make flaming oil and the like much harder to use than is typically allowed for in the Molotov hobo tradition of Advanced and Basic D&D play. I'm in the Delta camp that way, but even more harsh when it comes to realistic breakage. Will a bottle of wine really shatter when it's thrown against a furry owlbear or unarmored wizard? If the flask you're using is that fragile, it will also need to check for breakage constantly; if you so much as fall down in melee, or bump against a wall. 

The direct-hit burning grenade is a fantasy, even if you allow (as I do) a higher-octane, expensive, volatile alchemical "greek fire" to be bought. Far more likely is that it hits the target, drops to the ground, maybe breaks there, and then gets lit by the wick. Far more foolproof is the use of burning oil actually allowed for in OD&D, to create an instant barrier deterring pursuit. In some ways, too, it's more "old school" to run from fearsome foes than to flambe them.