How do people handle resources in there games?

Specifically I am refering to D&D 5E, I find players handling their resources can be a bit of a choir through the system etc. Spells, rage and the like. I don't know an easy way to stream line this process and wonder if you guys did.

My Barbarian uses his third token bar as his rage tracker. I generally track concentration with a token icon and manually update the number of rounds remaining with a number in that icon. For spells I have converted The Arron's ammo tracker to subtract the spell slot used from the character sheet tracking.

A lot of it needs to be built on player trust, as a GM there are only so many things that you are capable of tracking. I also personally don't want this to become a video game, where everything is completely automated for you either. So in my opinion I don't sweat resource management that much, but I will ask some questions that will hopefully keep people honest, such as "Okay Mr. Wizard, how many spell slots did you use during that last fight?" or "Mr. Ranger, you must be getting pretty low on arrows at this point right?". This shows that you are softly tracking people and making them responsible for their own resource usage. At the end of the night I ask that anyone who has taken notes on paper regarding resources, update their character sheet in appropriate places regarding their resource usage (assuming we break outside of a long rest). That is how I handle it at least, seems to work pretty well if you have reasonable players.

Fair enough. You make a good point Kevin on how to treat it :)

I treat resources very similar as Kevin does but sometimes even less. If the group is going through woodlands and there is a ranger or a woodsman type then I don't even worry about tracking foodstuffs. I just sweat the big stuff. Arrows and such, I just assign a simple target number and a once a session I will have the player roll to see if he still arrows. Each session I subtract a specific number till he rolls over it and at the end of that session he is out of arrows. This is making the assumption that the player is retrieving arrows throughout the game. If he isn't then the number subtracted from the target number is more.

Pat, that's an interesting mechanic for the arrows. It's kind of like SpyCraft 2.0's gear picks: "What are the chances I happen to have X on me.." Rolls over target number... "Yup, you've got one." Marks off a gear pick...

That is what inspired me to make it. I got tired of the resource management needed in the games so I wanted something simpler. On the average, it comes in close to how most games run.

I don't play 5e, but I have a lot of resources to juggle with my massively multiclassed Pathfinder rogue. I use the status icons for tracking how many uses of an ability I have. One thing I deeply miss from Gametable is their 'attribute' system. No character sheets or token actions, instead you'd set an attribute on a pog, and when you moused over the pog you'd see all the set attributes in a hover-box. I miss that sort of post-it-note system.

(I smell a suggestion.... =D )

Kevin said: A lot of it needs to be built on player trust, as a GM there are only so many things that you are capable of tracking. This. Most internet pug players however always have their own interpretations and seem to believe the GM is mainly a tool for their enjoyment which is pretty funny actually.

This may be unrelated, but is there anyone who uses a mechanic similar to the arrow mechanic for buying gear? I'm running a Cyberpunk 2020 game right now, and I don't want to mess with tracking money. I'm trying to work out a mechanic whereby their Special Ability could be used in a check to buy something, rather than tracking all those eurobucks, but haven't worked out the details of it. That's fishing for suggestions, by the way, if anyone didn't notice that. :)

Hi Gozer, your idea reminds me of how Resources are handled in the original Marvel Superheroes RPG (the FASERIP system). There to make a purchase you make a roll (like a skill check) and if you're successful you buy the item. If you get a lower-tier success you can also be given the item but you then take a penalty to all further resource checks until you've had time to build up your funds again (so in Cyberpunk I imagine run a job and your resources replenish). To tailor it a little to your setting (I'm only really familiar with Shadowrun in this genre so bear with me if I'm miles off) I'd suggest that various jobs and various purchases could come with a chance of a +1 to the "Resources" skill. In Roll20 you may even wish to keep visual track of this by creating a card deck of Eurobucks and then assigning some to players. When they fail a purchase skill check you deduct a buck. When they succeed in the job the employer, fence, whatever, gives them +1 or +2 Eurobucks cards. That way you can keep a quick visual check on your players' wealth at a glance. If Cyberpunk has a charisma/negotiation type skill-stat you could maybe use that to offer a bonus on the purchase roll. Similarly a relevant contact might mean a bonus to the roll. I've just started running Dungeon World and I am thinking of doing this for ammo etc.

So how would we tie this into roll20? Let's get some macro's crunching here otherwise this thread has to get moved out of the main forums and taken somewhere else. I will admit that I was at fault for not mentioning this earlier (I liked the subject and had a brain fart about my mod duties) so let's steer it to roll20 related. My idea was a simple macro that involved [[1d10+{@ability}>?{assigned target|15)]] or something like that. Suggestions

Right now, here's what I've worked out. I'm assuming each character has about 30% of their monthly salary (which is decided by their character's Special Ability attribute). So, when a character wants to make a purchase, they run the following macro: /me tries to buy ?{Item|Item} for ?{Price|0} eb... /w gm [[round(?{Price|0}/@{selected|Monthly Income}*100)]]% of monthly income /w gm Target Number [[{round(?{Price|0}/@{selected|Monthly Income}*100)-(@{selected|Finances})}]] The player puts in a name of an item and a price, then the GM (me) gets whispered what percentage of their monthly income the item(s) cost. (Me math no good) Then that plus or minus a modifier (Finances) becomes the target number to beat when they make the purchase, which also gets whispered to the GM. The character then has to make a second roll of 1d10+Special Ability+the attribute that ability links to (have a macro for that as well), then the GM says, you bought it, or not. Then, the percentage of the income they paid for the item (for a successful purchase) gets subtracted from their Finances. Eventually, they run out of money. When they get paid, you zero out Finances again (or simply add to it). Every session that goes by without a purchase, the character can be considered to be saving money, and gain a +1 to Finances. I wanted to do the whole thing as a saving throw type roll, but I couldn't figure out how to get the inequality to work. The derived target number vs. a roll of the character's special ability + attribute + d10. The d10s explode, by the way. Anyway, what do you think? @ Alan - that's exactly the system I was thinking of when I started thinking about this. Yes, the Finances attribute gives me some flexibility in around how much the player can afford at that time. If you spend all your disposable income buying a nice new assault rifle, you're going to have trouble buying bullets for it...