QQ&A: Dwindling resources
Managing supplies and resources is boring. That’s why so many parties do away with counting arrows.
Spell slots are big and flashy enough to be worth tracking. Other stuff, though, is just admin for its own sake.
It doesn’t have to be. Whether it’s a quiver full of arrows, a flask full of potions, or even something like sanity or stamina, there’s a more interesting way to do it.
I didn’t come up with this. Like many of my custom rules, I stole this from Giffyglyph’s excellent Darker Dungeons supplement for 5e.
I’m not sure what this concept’s name is. Let’s call it collapsing dice.
Instead of having a stat represented by a flat number (the number of arrows in the quiver, sanity points) you represent it by a standard dice size (for example, 1d8).
Important note: this doesn’t mean you roll a d8 to determine how many arrows you have. Your quiver’s fullness is at a d8.
Whenever you need to deplete this resource (you fire an arrow, you see a scary monster), roll the relevant dice. On a 2 or above, you’re fine. This means you’ll salvage the arrow later or you think about puppies instead of freaking out.
On a 1, you decrease the dice size:
d20 -> d12 -> d10 -> d8 -> d6 -> d4 -> 1Optionally, something also happens on a roll of a 1, no matter the dice size. In my current campaign, for example, areas of chaotic magic make it harder to cast spells. When they cast a spell, they roll a d8. On rolling a 1, they then roll on a Wild Magic Surge table.
The dice then drops a size, making a Surge more likely next time.
What happens when the dice size drops to 1? It depends. For a quiver, this is their last arrow. For sanity, maybe it means they have a psychotic break. When casting spells, it means every spell triggers a Surge.
It’s a fun system, more dynamic than the dull, flat crit/fail approach or tallying up ammo. Here, the risks change. Some areas are more volatile than others. The longer they go without resting and resetting their collapsing dice, the more dangerous and unpredictable play becomes.
Like I said, I’ve used this a bit in my current campaign. For my next one, I plan to use this everywhere I can fit it. I like it. It makes tracking resources fun and unpredictable, not yet another bit of accounting.