Comments on: Ration Tracking System

By: myke

myke — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:06:22 +0000

Why not just limit the Extended Rests to what you stated, and don’t base it off rations? And just have it as a cap? This avoids the whole possible magic item complications. The problem with just throwing more encounters at them, is that its time consuming..

By: Vorghyrn

Vorghyrn — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:39:28 +0000

My point was : when you have a magic item that makes appear each day food and water for 5 M creatures (sorry, i can’t remember the name of that object), you can not say to them that the food is rotting faster because, food appears exactly at the moment they need. Of course you can say that the dark energy of Shadowfell is also corrupting magical food but it’s simply negate this advantage to the PC, which, as you often repeat, is not a good thing…

You can also say that a part of the food only is corrupted, but it is starting to make hard calculation, when the system is suppose to be light.

And outside of Shadowfell or such dark places, how explaining the misfonction of the magical stuff

I like the idea of giving the PC skill challenge for finding what they need (which is also proposed in the rules) but i have the feeling that a “cheated” solution can easily be fund throught magic. That why i am saying that system is good as long as PC don’t top magical stuff/ritual that provide them food and water (of course there is also other thing but less vital than food and water). If you have ideas about this…

By: Mike Shea

Mike Shea — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:00:16 +0000

@Vorghryn: The concept is that traveling to the darker places of the world – necrotic tombs, the Shadowfell, the Feywild, or the other outer planes – treats mortal food differently. While good rations might last a long long time while traveling normally in the mortal world – they tend to rot far quicker while in the Shadowfell. Only certain rations designed to be eaten by mortals in these worlds can last and there is a limit to that.

The housekeeping is rather simple. Give out a 3×5 card for the party with so many boxes on it – one for each days worth of rations the party has. They check them off each time they fully rest.

By: Vorghyrn

Vorghyrn — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:50:20 +0000

The idea seems good but it fait to deal with magical item that gives enought food and water for 5 M creature per days… or perhaps i miss something ?

How to deal with that ?

By: Balhaza

Balhaza — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:58:49 +0000

It seems that Grimmshade (I read that as Grimm Shado…) beat me to it. Not trying to be a rules lawyer here, but the other thing is that the book has rations noted down as Journeybeard, the magical bread baked by the Elves of Middle Earth for Frodo and gang to bring to Mordor. So I would assume those are hardy rations that would take much to foul them.

I would not recommend this system for new DMs because the less players and the DM have to do housekeeping, the more play there is. I have employed a similar resting similar before, giving each possible scenario for resting a rating – excellent to poor, even for taverns. The ratings then denote how much healing the characters receive from the rest. Poor rest recovers only 2 healing surges and a healing surge value of hit points and so on. Naturally, adventures will occur in poor resting locations and almost always lay at least a day or two away from civilisation…

That said, I understand where you are coming from, and it is indeed annoying if the players are resting every three encounters. I think using a skill challenge to replenish resources – arrows, health, rations, water, – is an excellent idea and that can easily segue into more hooks and adventure plots – in the Shadowfell, as the PCs are stumbling around looking for a place to rest and to gather something edible to ease their hunger, they find something, cairns, a tablet, or even a path, tied to their current mission and story.

By: Grimmshade

Grimmshade — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:48:34 +0000

Extended Rests can only be taken once every 12 hours, and then they require at least 6 hours time for the actual rest. So each extended rest cycle takes at least 18 hours of PC time. To me this is basically self limiting; I don’t see the need to impose extra record keeping into the process. Also, if PC’s are abusing Extended Rests, just make the encounters they face more difficult.

By: EliodeGM

EliodeGM — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:11:42 +0000

I’m thinking that the packs get marked off when they use their extended rest; and if they don’t have any more Ration Packs then arrows run out, food spoils. Everyone drops a few arrows when they run through a forest or take a fall, your packed lunch gets squashed when you’re caught in a trap, you have to keep your reagents dry when fording a river, finding really good stones for your sling takes time that you just might not have during an intense cross country march.

I have no problem rationalising the reduction in expendable materials. I’m trying to figure out the cost to the party to buy these as a pack. I figure there could be a good guide to cost them per teir.

By: Mike Shea

Mike Shea — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:18:31 +0000

The purpose of a system like this is to keep the players from taking extended rests every third battle but without the forced mechanic of “it’s not safe to rest here and you can’t leave until you’ve accomplished X”. This gives the players the option to choose when they rest but to know that they can only do so a limited number of times.

It also gives you something else to attack with skill challenges. Longer travels use up more rations – evil necrotic doorways can spoil what you have. It’s like adventure-long healing surges.

There are a lot of magic items that would make this obsolete in the mortal world but by the time your players reach that level – they should also be entering the Feywild and Shadowfell where it is easy to explain that normal rations aren’t available and the ones you bring don’t last as long.

By: geek ken

geek ken — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:30:27 +0000

It’s an interesting take on extended rests. I imagine it all depends on what your players expect out of a game. I really thing WoTC has adopted the philosophy of ‘here’s the rules, change what you will.’ I feel there’s nothing wrong with tweaking how you run extended rests if your player’s are on board.

I like the idea of diminishing returns rather than having a hard cap though. Maybe once the good provisions are out, the group is down to water, jerky, and hardtack. They can eek out survival, but extended rests aren’t as restful (maybe dock off a healing surge or two). It’ll give the players a little wiggle room if they need a little more preparation time for that last crypt run, but still not be at 100% until they resupply (and take some serious downtime resting somewhere comfortable).

By: mike

mike — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:18:30 +0000

though i like the idea behind it, i think its pointless. there are a lot of magic items in the game that make this pointless, ive awarded these to my players as group items.

also, these guys are heroes, even at level 1 they are known somewhere. by the time they are level 12, people should be asking for autographs, kissing babies, and will be given free dinners etc.

Not to mention the rituals they can perform.

again i like the idea behind, it but