Skip to content

Arrows, bolts and bullets

OK, I know one should not look for logic in a game where it is possible to cast Fireballs ... but ... I am a bit annoyed by the way the ammunition is managed in the game. It is possible to have quivers with up to 240 arrows (and I do not count the arrows that you can have in your equipment). I do not know the weight of an arrow, but if one take 100 grams, we arrive already to 24 kgs of arrows. This is pretty unrealistic. Same thing for bolts and bullets.
There is always the possibility that the bowman will get back the arrows that did not touch, or that the slinger will take pebbles or small stones.
I think the simplest thing would be to give some weights to arrows, bolts an bullets. It is always possible to Rplaying and restrict the number of munitions that a character can carry.
I would be interested to get comments and ideas on this subject.

Comments

  • GallengerGallenger Member Posts: 400
    In the original BG arrows were limited to stacks of 20. In general, players responded to this limitation by jamming their inventories full of arrows. Because you would have 60 active in the quiver in total, and then several hundred or so in your inventory. So, all you were functionally accomplishing from a gameplay perspective was to force players to fiddle with their inventories more often and limiting the amount of gear they could carry in total, as arrows took a bunch of space.

    In general the modding community moved *away* from such mechanics by providing containers for misc items.

    In the original iteration of BG it was often impossible to carry out all the loot you found in a given location because you simply didn't have enough inventory slots to carry that much stuff. It was also virtually mandatory to have a "base" - some people still play this way - where you stashed your excess consumables so as not to have them take up inventory slots.

    In the end it makes little difference to me whether I have to walk back to a drawer to grab the consumable I want before taking it to a given place and using it, as opposed to simply having it in a container or especially large stack somewhere on my person.
    JuliusBorisovSkatanleeux
  • SkatanSkatan Member, Moderator Posts: 5,352
    Rigel wrote: »
    OK, I know one should not look for logic in a game where it is possible to cast Fireballs ... but ... I am a bit annoyed by the way the ammunition is managed in the game. It is possible to have quivers with up to 240 arrows (and I do not count the arrows that you can have in your equipment). I do not know the weight of an arrow, but if one take 100 grams, we arrive already to 24 kgs of arrows. This is pretty unrealistic. Same thing for bolts and bullets.
    There is always the possibility that the bowman will get back the arrows that did not touch, or that the slinger will take pebbles or small stones.
    I think the simplest thing would be to give some weights to arrows, bolts an bullets. It is always possible to Rplaying and restrict the number of munitions that a character can carry.
    I would be interested to get comments and ideas on this subject.

    I won't argue with your logic, because I do agree with it, but from a playing point of view it would just diminish the fun out of the game for me personally. I love these tweaks and changes that have been added bit by bit, increasing the pace of the game and adding much to convenience. For me, adding just one or two realistic things doesn't add value. It's all or nothing, so either it would be impossible to walk around with 240 arrows but also equally impossible to walk around with 2 or more plate mails in your pockets, or it should be possible to do both and more. Limiting just one side of the coin is meh.
  • kjeronkjeron Member Posts: 2,367
    Minimum weight in-game is 1 lb. for 1 item. Per PnP, arrows and bolts weigh 0.1 lbs, bullets and darts aren't given a weight.
    You could scale up all weights/limits 10-fold, then set arrows/bolts to weigh 1.
    However, ammunition not having weight does help balance out not being able to recover used ammunition, especially for throwing weapons, which would likely remain usable hit or miss.

    Weight is irrelevant with containers though, do to how they were implemented, as the items are no longer in the character's backpack.
  • AaezilAaezil Member Posts: 178
    Sounds great till your low str archer cant wear armor and carry enough arrows at the same time without being encumbered.
  • jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,822
    Rigel wrote: »
    I do not know the weight of an arrow, but if one take 100 grams...
    Looking it up ... modern hunting arrows typically weigh something like 0.06 pounds. Traditional military arrows would likely be somewhat heavier; humans are big game, and wooden shafts are heavier than carbon fiber. The official D&D standard of 0.1 pounds per arrow looks pretty accurate. As a mass in grams, that would be about 45.

    The game, however, is not set up for weights of fractional pounds, so it rounds arrows down to zero.
    Aaezil wrote: »
    Sounds great till your low str archer cant wear armor and carry enough arrows at the same time without being encumbered.
    Consider Imoen, for example. She has strength 9, for 50 pounds carry weight. Studded leather weighs 25 pounds. A short bow weighs 2, and a short sword weighs 3. Three full stacks of arrows would be another 24 pounds at 0.1 pounds/arrow, bringing her total to 54 pounds and encumbered.
    Later on, when she picks up some enchanted armor, that gets lighter. Or, if she dual-classes to mage, robes are much lighter. There wouldn't be much weight left to use on her inventory, but at least she could carry a full set of equipment.

    The archers with warrior classes generally have higher strength, so they wouldn't have a problem carrying lots of arrows. If you're using Minsc or Kivan as an archer, they would have plenty of carry weight to spare with their 18+ strength.

    In practice, this would be more tedium than anything, shuffling arrows between characters to balance weight. I'll take the game's weightless ammunition as an acceptable break from reality.
    Skatan
Sign In or Register to comment.