Things to Steal (Borrow): Resource Die

 This one will be a short one, because A. The concept is simple, and b. You'll love it, or hate it and go away. The concept for this week is the Resource Die from the Forbidden Lands, now the concept of a time keep mechanic isn't exactly a new concept, but I like the Resource Die from the Forbidden Lands for its simplicity, and that is where I first got exposed to the concept.

So, the Resource Die at its core is a die of any size, when you would expend a resource such as, light a torch, eat a ration, shoot an arrow, maybe even using a wand, you would roll the die, and if it rolled a 1-2 (Or any number you want), the die gets one size smaller, d12 --> d10 --> d8 --> d6 --> Gone. It's a simple way of tracking resources that also adds a little bit of tension, by the players not know how much they should push their luck, "Should we keep delving into the Dungeon? Our torches are on a d8, I'm not sure how much longer they'll last."

Now, there are flaws in the mechanic, which is why you'll love it or hate it. For one, it can feel a little silly when you're down to your 1d4 and ask your DM "How would I not know exactly how many arrows are left?" or you might get REALLY unlucky and only get 4 shots before your arrows run out, and because of this you have to suspend your disbelief a little bit, maybe in the heat of battle you forgot to keep exact count or that merchant sold you bad arrows, maybe some of the rations spoiled, or the torches burnt out faster than normal.

The second issue is it actually can slow the game down in some instances. For Example, I was running Out of the Abyss modified to be above ground for my Dragonlands setting, and the party was escaping a ravine via a lift that had to be manually operated by a crank at the ravine fortress or at the top of the ravine. In the fortress, Hobgoblins pushed against the crank to pull the party back down, at the top, the other freed slaves were doing their best to pull the party up. The poor party was stuck in the middle, slowly moving up and down in this life and death tug of war, thankfully one of the ranged characters was in the elevator, and fired off every single one of his arrows, all 40 of them (Making 40 Attack Rolls), and killed a few Hobgoblins, enough that they were able to escape. Now, making 40 Attack Rolls is already tedious, but imagine having to make 40 Resource Die checks as well to see if you ran out of arrows, that would bog things down like crazy.

I personally think this is a mechanic that should only be selected if the party will groove with the mechanic, but I think the value of this mechanic should not be understated, it's a great tool for randomly determining how long it will take before the party encounters a wandering monster, higher the die, safer the area, how long the Fighter has till he bleeds out, or how long the evil ritual will take to complete, so apply this mechanic where you think it will do the most good, I for one will be replacing the standard 50 charge wand with this mechanic.