Yes, according to the rules, any pound of food is enough--doesn't have to be dry. 💥 ARORA: ghostfiregaming.com/BOWB_AR01_2022_5_002 ▶️ D&D IRL playlist: ruclips.net/p/PL1lMCvJ_l52XB_2Scg4M4cQwcJTklisNt
@@wolfiexii Oh good lord yes on the caffeine..I can attest to that myself before I kicked 90% of the stuff. The only caffeine I get in my diet now is the stuff in tea, I used to drink at least 4 cans of Mt.Dew a day and needed a minimum of 2 a day or I'd start getting headaches..I quit caffeine filled sodas cold turkey one day some years ago and the withdraw was horrific for me..severe headaches, body shakes, and whispers sounded as loud as yelling to me for a a good couple days till I got rid of all the caffeine in my system. Now that I take in lower amounts if any I don't suffer from the headaches I would have, I can go days without any tea that I couldn't go without a soda that was filled with caffeine.
For food carried dry, I would assume that it would count the dry weight, the water used would be from your water for the day. I would also point out that the pound of food isn't what you're using, but things that are more of rations options combined with some forage...
I would not be eating regular foods, but dehydrated survival foods. Pemmican, jerky, and the like. Stuff that is calorie rich, light weight, and longer lasting
If I ever do a D&D wilderness survival video, that's definitely what I'm going with for food! But this was about disproving the one pound rule which does not specify the type
I always assumed the 1 pound a day was the bear minimum needed to stave off starvation. Also I agree that the weight should be in dry ingredients and possibly more calorie dense.
In the group im playing with we just deduced, that the high cost for rations being as high as the daily income of the standard commoner only could mean the following: rations are exactly what you picture them to be: "...the weight should be in dry ingredients and possibly more calorie dense." Being longlasting and of high calorie density makes rations so expensive, and those properties are the reasons of one ration costing 1 silver.
Yeah unprepared weight, and use water out of your water budget to cook your rice with.....obviously 😎 And while you got gipped on your edible rice, you gained budget from the water lost due to cooking your veggies.
1 lbs of travel rations. Travel rations are a bunch of dried food typically and very calorie dense based on their descriptions (from previous editions, 5e sucks on its adventuring gear descriptions, heck many other systems have race specific travel rations of "yo this is what your typical traveling X would eat every day if they don't gather/hunt for fresh stuff). Pemmican, for instance, is incredibly calorie dense, lasts months, and doesn't take up much space. Dried sausages are quite dense as well. You definitely avoid eating 1 lbs of undried vegetables or fruits. Personally the 1 lbs per day is 100% bullshit for the hyper active lifestyle of an adventurer. I think there was a mix-up given that rations for a day weigh 2 lbs and that the "eat half" rule was supposed to be eat 1 lbs. This is what happens when multiple people write the same book and not enough cross-checking happens.
I definitely feel like the dried food should be weighed pre-cooking. Serving sizes on rice/pasta are typically in their dried form because water absorption varies. Also when you are carrying the food around, you are carrying it dried.
Yes, and the you use some of that same gallon of water to cook it, etc. When I’ve gone backpacking one decent option is those dried soup packets. They weigh next to nothing, mix with water, and make a filling meal.
I agree with this. I think the water should have come from the daily portion, as it would if you were traveling, but the weight should have been the dry weight.
@@BobWorldBuilder grain (rice, buckweat, etc) or pasta is a popular and old choice in my country when backpacking, and it was also the food of the army.
I think the food weight for hikers was a good thing to bring up as it probably would be most accurate for adventurers. They are moving around and would be carrying calorie dense foods.
The US Army's MRE weighs about 1Kg packaged and contains between 1,500 and 2,000 calories. This is sufficient food for a soldier for one day. When hiking, it is common to carry hardtack, rice, instant potatoes, mixed nuts (trail mix), summer sausage, flour, salt, pepper, sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, corn starch, and lard (for oil). You can mix flour, salt, sugar, and corn starch together to make a type of flatbread that you fry in the lard. You may even want to add brown sugar to it if you enjoy very sweet bread. this flatbread is sweet and calorie-dense and will allow you to put in a full day's work.
@@sarahmellinger3335 It's Dave Canterbury's recipe for breakfast bread/biscuits. RUclips Dave Canterbury (of dual survival fame) PATHFINDER OUTDOORS Channel and watch the whole video. He shows you how to make them in just a few minutes. In truth, he has LOTs of good videos worth watching if you're into camping or survival. All done with a budget in mind too.
Survival rations are equivalent to MREs, usually dehydrated fruits and meats. A better test would be getting a month's supply of MREs and having one of those per day.
As a former Marine stationed in the desert I would definitely affirm that while a bit light 1 MRE per meal will sustain a person at reasonably levels of activity. As for the water, 2 liters per person a day is the general standard but in hot environments like desert or jungle, 4 per day was the minimum.
@@BobWorldBuilder I'm pretty sure butter was _the_ foodstuff of a lot of the early arctic expeditions. It's apparently about ~3,200 calories per pound.
@@OliverCovfefe yeah! Salted lard is also a know travel food in colder climates, native to Ukraine. Add bread or crackers, or put it in your buckweat kasha!
not sure about the cheese tho, but calorie dense food in general is a surefire bet, unfortunately, what it doesnt account for is energy burned as youre doing various activities like walking and running around with weights(equipment) and fighting...
Yeah like actual rations that people took with them throughout irl history, salted/smoked pork/fish/chicken/beef, nuts, butter/cheese is my default as there's a reason to look forward to getting to the next Inn/Tavern/Fantasy Denny's
Sort of-the rule mentions rations but does not specify only rations, just a pound of food. definitely check out what I discovered about rations at the end! It made me angry haha
"Rations consist of dry foods suitable for extended travel, including jerky, dried fruit, hardtack, and nuts." from the PHB. Definitely very dense. Sidenote: I would also consider the rice should be counted dry. Going camping I usually dry/jerky all my meat and veggies and bring some sort of dense carbs like rough oatmeal or dried rye bread because it weighs a lot less and water is usally extremely accessable. Boiling the water first usually allows me to gather non-drinking water from the sea when sailing, from streams, or from rain collection so I don't have to use my drinking-water. Protein bars, dried fruit, and nutbars make good snacks and chocolate if I need extra fat while walking. Makes ½ kg food last a lot longer and I have to carry less in order to sustain myself properly. I usually also mostly travel during summer and fall so there's often a lot of nature snacks around. My rougue has really high nature and survival check and I usually roleplay my high checks while traveling in a group as being able to point out edible fruits, berries, roots, and other plants on the way as an explanation of why our group is able so travel fast for extended periods of time, even when there's no difficult terrain. As a DM I usually rule travel checks a little bit harder in areas where it's hard to find snacks, water, or shelter from the sun while traveling. (Travel is a good part of my campaign and my players seem to enjoy planning travel routes to get from A to B. Known bandit routes for loot or bounties, good hunting grounds for food, pelt, and other materials, and so on) 2.5 oz / 70 g hardtacks is ~260 calories 3.5 oz / 100 g jerky is ~410 calories 3.5 oz / 100 g dried fruit is ~360 calories, 510 if you eat dried bananas only 3.5 oz / 100 g mixed nuts is ~ 610 calories Only hardtack will net you 1665 calories Jerky 1860 Dried fruit 1630 mixed, 2355 from banana chips And a massive 2755 calories if you only eat mixed nuts. If you want to go wild and really like pecans then roasted pecan nuts can net you 3220 calories If you want to go the cheese route I recommend a fatty, dense cheese. From what I can see cheddar should give you 1955 calories from 1 lb It's not gonna be a fun ride if you're fighting or really exerting yourself, but you'll be ok for a long while
If we're talking about "survival" a pound of food per day is pretty good. And a gallon of water is over kill, as long as you're not sweating out a bunch of your water
A gallon isn't overkill if you consider that most travel rations are dried and heavily salted to last a long time. Things like grains, dried meats, salt, bread, heat, and exercise all rip the water from your body. A gallon is about right. Plus you don't drink all of it. You use part of it to make stews and such. Also, a waterskin contains half a gallon of liquid... so you will have to refill it over and over.
Consider that 1 pound is equal to 10 large eggs, roughly 32 slices of bacon, 16 slices of white bread, 10.5 servings of cheese, 8 servings of smoked Tuna, roughly 5 servings of potatoes, or basically the same amount in carrots... a pound of food is a lot when you break it down. You could literally eat 1 egg, 2 slices of bacon, 1 slice of bread, and 1 serving of cheese for every meal. And a carrot stick for a snack.
@@WhatIfBrigade I eat like this all the time and I have a very active job out in the heat. That's 5 servings of food at every single meal, plus a snack and a gallon of water. Most people drink less than 80 ounces a day. It is less about quantity and more about the quality of the food you eat.
1lb does seem a little small, but it would go further if it were dried meats, nuts, seed, bread, and cheeses which are way more calorie dense than fruit. Also, if we're talking weights some of the race weights seem way too light. Like a Halfing is only 40lbs!? Maybe the reason all the weights are so light is because they only eat celery.
I agree 40 lbs still seems a bit light but you do have to account for 3-dimensional scaling when dealing with smaller creatures which impacts weight a lot. For example, assuming similar density something 80% as large in all 3 dimensions would weigh only 51.2% as much. For halflings the biggest difference is height but they're also not as wide. Estimating 55% of human height, and 75% for the other dimensions, you'd get an expected ratio of about 31% which for a 180 lbs human would be 55 lbs and for a slender 125 lbs human it would be about 39 lbs, meaning 40 should definitely be on the lower end. I know you probably didn't expect a write up, your comment just sparked my curiosity
As everybody say, you should have used "ration" food, aka jerky, dried fruits, hardtack, sugar. Also, rice should be weighted dry BUT you can only use your daily gallon of water for cooking
I'm sorry Bob, I voted for "cooked weight" =( In my mind I have always equated "1 pound of food" with "1 pound of rations" in this case. So dried meat, dried fruit, nuts, pemmican... stuff you don't neccecarily need to cook to eat but is very high in energy.
I thought that is meant for dry foods you reasonably carry on travels and prepare during rests. Things like beans (weighted in dry travel state) rice(also) and similar things. The it never occured to me to consider the prepared weight, it was more of a "that much is what it weights on your carry weight" matter. Not "that is the mass you have to take in". It wouldn't make much sense since the weight is otherwise only used for carry, so, the amount should be calculated by carry weight of the unprepared foods, not the mass of the prepared.
@@BobWorldBuilder Since I only use 125g (~1/4 pound) of dry rice for one meal for me (+whatever I put on the rice) and usually don't eat very much during the rest of the day I think 4 times that, even without anything else on it, would be more than I could eat in a day. A bit one sided but more than reasonable to be filling. Now add a few things for variety like dried meat while still using rice as a base and the 1 pound sounds like a very normal amount.
@@IISheireenII Yeah adding dried meat, beans even veg and you could have some decently sustaining meals that you could for sure carry with one pound at least dry weight.
I'd also say that rules are there to indicate the minimum weight of rations you need to carry on your character to survive on them for X days in the wild. Bob's interpretation of "a character needs 1lb of food per day" seems to be that *any* 1lb of food is sufficient, which is clearly not a sensible ruling! How about 1lb of watermelon, or 1lb of cucumber? Clearly not enough calories to live off! We don't need to see Bob trying to live off 1lb of watermelon per day to know it's not possible! My interpretation would be that there exists a (non-magical) foodstuff which is sufficiently energy dense that you can get by on 1lb of it per day. i.e. adventurer rations. We know what's in adventurer rations from the manual, so I think that would be a better place to start for this experiment. (Interestingly, the rations item weighs 2lb, not 1lb, so the minimum a character needs per day may be half a pack of rations?) Edit: posted this before watching the last minute of the video... Rations (1 day), 2lb Rations consist of dry foods suitable for extended travel, including jerky, dried fruit, hardtack, and nuts.
If I had known that pole was about this challenge I DEFINETELY would have said weigh the rice dry. The rice has all the nutrients, the water just makes it less awful to chew and swallow, but you can totally eat rice dry so weighing it after being cooked seems mean :(
I'm not sure you interpreted the days without food before exhaustion rules right. I think the "minimum of one" applies to the total number of days, not the modifier added to the 3. So a character with either a -2 or a -3 CON modifier would have 1 day without food prior to exhaustion, not 4.
I agree with you. Like other abilities are based on ability modifiers have a minimum of 1 just in case you have a negative score. So minimum is probably 1 not 4.
I don't know what a CON modifier means since I'm not a DnD player, but how common (intentional or non-intentional) fasting is for you and how common heavy exertion is for you could easily affect how long you go "hungry" without negative effects. I fairly often go almost a whole day without eating before even feeling hungry when doing a normal day's work at a cabinet shop handling stacks of lumber. A moderate lunch (a sandwich or small can of ravioli) per day is often the only eating I do for several days at a time. It would take a couple of days of fasting after several days of normal eating for me to feel much effect from it beyond discomfort. When I first started this job, though, I ate like mad; I was hungry all the time until I got used to the work even though my average weight and fitness haven't changed. Some of my long-time co-workers start feeling pretty bad from hunger (headache, dizziness, weakness) just a few hours after eating since they're used to eating more. I'd take from this that unfamiliar activity should cost more food than familiar activity regardless of what it is since it requires adjusting musculature -- could this be what your con modifiers are: heavy activity and healing injuries? -- and a glutton should require more food than a beggar to avoid exhaustion effects even if they're of the same race or general height. Perhaps you could simulate the latter by using character and inventory weight (instead of size class or whatever) as a modifier for food requirements rounded to the nearest convenient unit for ease of gameplay, and assume the base rules apply to a fairly active human of average weight as a starting point. You could even go further to use strength as a modifier for how much food is required since muscle burns energy even when idle. Then again, all this math might be better reserved for background operations in a computer-based RPG. It probably depends on your tastes and who you're playing with. Everyone needs to have fun.
@@mailleweaver " I fairly often go almost a whole day without eating before even feeling hungry when doing a normal day's work at a cabinet shop handling stacks of lumber." this would just be mechanically represented as having a higher CON (and thus higher CON modifier). In DnD CON is basically "how much bad stuff can you experience physically?" CON impacts amount of time you can hold your breath, how well you can stomach drinking alcohol and ingesting poisons, how many hit points you have, etc.
It would be interesting to do an "adventuring test" where you combine the rules. You could put all your provisions for the day in a pack as well as having a load of equipment, hike for a couple of miles (the trip to the dungeon), do a 1-hour workout (time in dungeon), add some weight (loot) to the pack, then do another hike for a couple of miles (the trip back to town).
Every Meals Ready-to Eat (MRE) is 3k calories. We dont expect soldiers to eat a certain poundage of food, we need them to eat the correct amount of calories in every meal to keep up energy. If you can make that one pound add up to a lot of calories you could make it work...but I doubt D&D adventurers would be able to do such a thing, unless every Good Berry is 3k calories or more.
I live how this rumor is still spreading around... no... a single MRE is not 3k calories. They're closer to 1200 to 1500... actually look at the listed nutritional information. And yes, that stuff has to be accurate, it's a requirement for food packaging.
@@verselesscooking9416 The US Army MRE known as a FIRST STRIKE RATION (given to 11Bravos going out on patrols) sitting on the desk next to me has 2,900 calories in it. Only the less compact MREs are 1,500 calories. In fact, I just picked up a Beef Ravioli in Sauce MRE, and it has 2,000 calories in it (which IS on the high side for a normal MRE).
@@swaghauler8334 didn't k ow about the FSR's I was Air Force, just have experience with the MRE's good to know. Damn that's. Lotta food though. And the ravioli is quite high yes.
@@verselesscooking9416 First Strike Rations taste better than MREs too. I guess the Army figures if you're going to get killed, you might as well die on a full stomach. They are also more compact than MREs. One FSR will slide right into a cargo pocket.
The games I run tend to be pretty heavy on the survival & exploration and I've found the ration system so frustrating to manage that I have replaced it with my own system. I combine the food and water into a single "complete ration" that weighs 10lb and each character needs one per day. Since a gallon of water weighs 8.3lb that means you have 1.7lb of food. This makes it easy to plan ahead. Two characters that need to travel for 3 days need 6 "complete rations" which weigh a total of 60lb.
Water is really heavy, actually carrying your entire trip's worth of water is super impractical unless you're planning some kinda desert expedition. With a more realistic approach, someone would be more likely to rely on water they can find out in the wild.
I like this approach for dungeon crawling or short missions where foraging is not expected to occur. Carrying 3 days supply is fairly practical while foraging for food and water can supplement the diet for more calories and/or save the use of those rations for when they are most needed. ALSO: Most pack rations are dry and lightweight, reconstituted with the remainder of a a person's daily water ration, with that water 'consumed' during the cooking of beans, rice, bread rolls, biscuits, etcetera! Lookup 'Cowboy Trail Rations' to learn what they ate when working a cattle drive the a 'chuck wagon' was available and able to progress ahead of the herd to prepare a meal for the night and the daily morning meal. Those meals (2) worked out to be about ½ pound of dry goods per cowboy per meal. (The chuckwagon was necessary because it hauled a 1, 2, 3, or 4 weeks worth of meals on a drive.
If you only take complete rations from the start you pretty much couldn't do much more than 3 days for 2 people, water is heavy and in most environments common.
A house rule I'm implementing into a more survival-based campaign, instead of only needing 1 lb of food per day, you need to eat at least 1.5% of your character's body weight in food per day to avoid *rolling a DC8 CON save* for a level of exhaustion. I feel, while this isn't perfect, it's much more realistic.
Now you can see why drinks like wine and beer were so popular in history. They have a LOT of calories in them and do not spoil at room temperature. But Medieval wine and beer were denser and not quite as high in alcohol content as later Renaissance liquors.
I think you found the solution on the third day with the fruit and oatmeal, these are rules for travel away from civilization but pressume you're prepared in civilization where you can get prepared foods which will both last and are energy dense. It should consist of dried fruits and meats, dry rice and crackers, pemmican, not just what you would normally be eating. That also accounts for increased water intake since you won't be getting the water intake from foods. But also it doesn't make sense a 2ft tall Kobold needs the same amount of food as an 8ft Goliath, maybe the size categories should have different food requirements.
I think making powerful build also include food requirements, and then adding rules that 2 lb food per day for medium 1 for small and maybe 4 for large
size categories do change how much food you need, it's just in the DMG instead of the PHB since only NPCs will be in size categories other than small/medium. Admittedly it would make more sense for small and medium creatures to have a difference, though it wouldn't fit with 5e's pattern of increasing everything to be 4x as much per size category, and it does make gameplay smoother. Creature Size Food per Day Water per Day Tiny 1/4 pound 1/4 gallon Small 1 pound 1 gallon Medium 1 pound 1 gallon Large 4 pounds 4 gallons Huge 16 pounds 16 gallons Gargantuan 64 pounds 64 gallons
I've been in situations where I've only had belvita breakfast cookies and a sack of nectarines. Those cookies really are like human made Lembas. It's interesting when one can feel the calories activating and colors get brighter after breaking a fast.
Why so little meat? Fruit is mostly water, so it was not a wise choice. I've never heard of people weighing rice cooked... the poll voters are . Meat, eggs, bread, cheese... those are far more energy dense foods per weight.
@@BobWorldBuilder Jerky is great for the weight, but dang is it expensive. Might be better to get some meat and smoke strips over a fire at home. Then again... meat is getting really expensive, too; all food is.
@@sarahmellinger3335 Well said. Trapping is the best way to put food on the table, if you're having to hunt. Fertilizer is getting rarer as well, though, so living as a farmer is getting harder. Heck, mothers can't get baby formula these days.
If you're going to test potions, remember that medieval medicines were something like 50% strong liquor - half your quaffing volume should be vodka or whiskey! :)
I agree, a pound of fresh food, isn’t enough. As a backpacker, my trail rations are not heavy. And I don’t think you need to count the water in the rice. Also, RAW, rations are hard tack, jerky, oats and dried fruits. Totally doable. Ill do a video to prove it.
Yea the 1lb of food per day is so crazy. My husband and I love playing DnD but we are avid hikers and cannoers and will take 20 day trips at a time. Our food is 2.2lbs @min 2000cals per day per person and that's bare minimum The reason we weigh it is bc we gotta carry it / portage it :p but the calories are the key Not including fishing or anything along the way
Yup. 40 pounds a fortnight. That's our mantra. Just under 3 pounds a day. Going less than that, you better know what you're doing. EDIT: Peanut butter is my go to.
1+kg for 2000cals sounds heavy. Cold War west german army field rations where 1600g for 3800cals and that included comfort items and a heavy packaging (cardboard box and commercial grade packaging for the main dishes - the stuff was NOT weight optimised since german soldiers did not do multi day road marches back then)
@@mbr5742 Yeah dude, if they are anything like MRE's, that stuff is DENSE. Anyone who is looking for calories per pound, get some MRE's. Military rations for the US military.
@@josephbradshaw6985 EPA was funny. They used a lot of commercial stuff but looked at high calorie foods (Sorry vegetarians or vegans - you would have starved) and the stuff often was enriched with vitamins. The only stuff NOT containing animal fat was the jam.
As someone who has done a few week-long fasts in the past, I would say you can go a few days without food before suffering any side effects that would be significant enough to equate to a level of exhaustion in 5e. Although you will be irritable around day 2 or 3. But that does go away a couple days later when you are too tired to care. That's when I'd say the exhaustion levels kick in. So I think those rules are fairly accurate. My understanding of the 1 pound rule functions as a minimum. If you went more than a day or two with only a pound you probably would get hungry. But the substance of the one pound is important, too. You want a good amount of protein, more than apples and oatmeal and rice. Nuts and dried meat would help.
Literally spent the whole video screaming about the rations lol. As for potions, I can speak from experience; it can be pretty tough trying to drink one in heavy armor. Heavy gauntlets tend to restrict a bit of dexterity, and many types of helmets need to either be opened or completely removed to take a drink. What adds to the difficulty is whatever you're already holding; shield and/or weapon. As for real combat? It's just not happening. In game? I run it as a bonus action for self, action for other. Keeps everyone happy. 😁
Fun video! Going with dry weight definitely makes more sense. Things like dried fruit (and jerky) weigh less for sure and that’s one reason you need the water I’d say 😊
Hey just a thought, since in dnd most of the food is "travel food" that's meant to be carried around, most of it is dried food like beef jerky and raisins and stuff that should be a little more calorie dense than a piece of raw broccoli. What do you guys think?
Absolutely. It's ridiculously never stated, but the rules absolutely assume the food must be very dense just to work out in this role. They're clearly keeping it simple here to not over-complicate, but the RAW is very much stupid in how vague it is. Even with 1lb of dense food you are not gonna have a good time under strenuous activity for long. Considering the level of tech, 2lb is probably more realistic, given you actually will have your characters WANT to eat that, so a pound of just butter won't cut it, really. Also the figure of a whole gallon of water seems excessive in normal climate unless you are gonna really get sweating. Drinking two gallons seems honestly hard to facilitate for a character on any journey in the desert from the weight of all the water alone.
@@MrHodoAstartes the water weight is also a concern because they need to carry their own water, for a full day of hiking I only carry about 3l which is about 2/3gal and water is heavy which can add to that exaustion factor. Most people can't carry 2gal/9l or 9kg of water plus food and other supplies
@@Olivia-wr5op Presumably they'd only need to carry enough water for 1-3 days, depending on the availability of natural sources, unless it was scarce.
I don't know about your normal diet, but the headache could also be from a lack of processed sugar. I know when I've cut myself off from it, headaches are a big part of it. But as always, very entertaining video!
This was pretty typical food for me, but if it applies to natural sugars, I usually eat more fruit than was in here even though everyone's saying I ate too much fruit lol
As one of the people who voted for dry weight, I'm glad to see that you saw the light during your experiment. Also if you've ever tried to pack for any kind of wilderness trip that's going to last multiple days, it's the dry weight you worry about, because you're not going to double count your water.
Bob... we truly appreciate all you go through and put yourself through to make this game we love better! Your videos are so fun and enjoyable... thank you for "building" the way you do!
Congratulations, you figured it out in the end! While I may not have completely through-hiked the AT, I am an experienced backpacker. What you discovered on day 3 (weigh the dry food, and use water from the gallon to rehydrate/cook it.) is exactly what you should be doing for something like this. Another factor to consider is acclimation. The standard American diet is way, way bigger than our bodies actually need, but we’ve gotten used to it, so it takes time & training (such as through backpacking) to adjust our bodies to function optimally on a smaller diet + higher activity level.
Whaaaaat yall really voted to weigh the WET rice!? The weight of the water should count towards your gallon, not your food weight. Also, I'm starting to think that the "needs 1lb of food and 1 gal of water" is more of a minimum. Like obviously you could eat more if you wanted, but if you were in a survival situation 1lb is the bare minimum.
Should the weight of a water in an apple also not count toward your food? You count the weight of prepared food since that’s what you’re actually eating
@@declaniii6324 the weight of rations is for carrying capacity. You carry rice dry, and fresh apples with their water. Though an adventurer would probably be eating dried apples as well.
Commentary from Editor Bob was so on point in this video! Very interesting study, and I think the conclusion is correct. Thanks for putting yourself through this for inquiring minds!
Okay, so 1 gallon of beer has ~1600 calories, and 1 gallon of wine has ~3000 calories. "Water" could be a euphemism, anything could be in a waterskin. Maybe everyone is just hammered all the time in DnD? 🍺
I love this! Thanks for another very handy video! I think I would have stuck to food closer to what I'd actually bring for trail rations - jerky, dried fruit, nuts - or mush 'em all together for some pemmican. You're spending a bunch of that precious food weight on their water content - and if you were travelling, also having that much more weight to carry. I think the oatmeal was a better approximation - so long as you're also bringing a cooking pot along on your adventures. It seems like the moral of the story is your party needs to level up so somebody gets a nice mansion to camp in - or some of those fancy quick travel spells so nobody needs to carry around all their food and water anymore. :) Oh! And if we make it to the 5k likes for the potion vid (and I really hope you do!) - I'd love to see an underwater potion test as well.
good old create food and water. 45 pounds of food and 30 gallons of water all at the cost of 1 3rd level spell. ironically the spell says it is enough for 15 people so that's 3 pounds of food and 2 gallons of water each
I think, contextually, that the weight of the food is in your pack. So for things like eggs, you're going to lose out A LITTLE BIT based on the weight of the shell. However, for dry goods like rice, oatmeal, or flour, you're going to gain because you HAVE to add to it. It's worth noting, too, that experienced campers/hikers/travellers take advantage of what's around them, and would add things they found along the way to supplement their meals. So the pound of dry pancake mix becomes two pounds (or whatever) of cooked pancakes, but then also has blueberries gathered while hiking added to it. The half pound of dry rice becomes a pound when saturated, but gets supplemented with wild carrots and/or small game, eggs, et cetera that are gathered while traveling.
About drinking a potion, At our student home we did this experiment Downing 300ml (~10 fluid ounces) of different liquids We found that for the average person 7 seconds is the score to beat. Water being on the easy end, beer being the most average and beer mixed with fanta was nightmareworthy. Granted fizzing, particulates, alcohol and temperature can make a drink significantly harder to swallow, To the point that we found a sweet and fizzy alcoholic drink at lukewarm temperature to be challenging to down within a few minutes. It didn't help that the alcoholic ones made me sneeze. Our we choose 300ml, since our estimation was that potions in worst case scenario would be 150ml and as a downed PC you'd be able to get 1 administered After which you can drink a different one yourself within 6 seconds. So I'd say an action isn't unreasonable since I generally consider an action to take 3 to 4 seconds (since the entire turn takes 6)
I believe "one Ibs of food" is something more like MRE or food for an emergency bag (hope you don't need one) than XXI century daily food. But yes, by RAW it can be anything, and I also agree one Ibs is likely not enough on a daily base anyway.
Ha. I was totally right. Dry weight. Things like hard tack and beef jerky. Makes sense. The wisdom of the ancients. Adding water weight doesn't add nutrients. Btw... Emergen-C = Goodberry. I'll buy it. Scurvy is no way to go out.
@@BobWorldBuilder I think your apple was needed, but maybe smaller ones, like 4 per lb instead of 3 per lb. Or dried fruit instead. The way I look at it is taking into account what could be carried on that adventure, which also includes volume and perishability. Root vegetables and dried fruit are going to be less likely to slime in your pack than things like broccoli or soft fruits but still give you some fiber. You don’t have room in the pack for all your gear plus bulky hard boxes to protect said food. And, while typing this I just had a thought about economy of scale. It is harder to have good food for 1 person out of a lb of food, but with a party of 5, I bet that as long as the person carrying the grain and/or the cooking pot doesn’t fall off a cliff, there could be a kickass stew for 5 people using jerky, onion, carrot/parsnip, potato/turnip and some sort of grain. A quarter lb of food from each person. Then any that is left over seasons the pot of breakfast beans that you put in the coals to cook overnight. If you’re going to rely on dried beans for dinner, I think you’re going to have to stop and camp early and eat a bit late. Or change to lentils which cook faster. Nutrient/calorie dense, light weight, and maximizing economies of scale for party level food. Kudos on the pancake mix.
I know allot of people are talking about high calorie survival food. well I don't disagree I think the point of the video is that you may not always have the choice of food you're eating. And that the rules about exhaustion from one pound of any type of food are a little bit off. This was an awesome video. you can actually start to see the dark circles under your eyes at the end of day two even though you've been sleeping very well. I think by the way you're talking you can definitely see at least one level of exhaustion.
Just wanna point out, while I'm hardly an adventurer and live a mostly sedentary life, I do walk 3 miles straight every other day or so, and I mostly live off a couple cups of rice and a few eggs every day. Water I can't measure because I keep a 32 oz. bottle on my desk and refill it every time I empty it - maybe 3-4 bottles a day?
Hey BWB, great video. But also keep in mind that people can do a water fast for weeks on end. A great book to get more info: The Complete Guide to Fasting by Jason Fung. You're pretty thin, so you probably don't have a ton of body fat to live off of, but your body can/does adapt to not eating once you start down the fasting lifestyle. I routinely do multi day fasts and I'm fully active on those days, including running and weight lifting. Admittedly, I'm not hiking through dungeons and fighting monsters while carrying ~50 lbs of gear.. but still. Definitely do-able.
This was awesome, the variation between days and mid-edit feedback brings it home. I assume they mean one pound of dried rations, which probably varies more than water consumption per person. I think a small character on 1 lb of food, medium on 3, and large on 9 is pretty reasonable.
Just looked at the old Expert set, and in classic D&D a weeks standard ration weighs 200cn (converts to 20lb in that system), so just shy of 3lb of food a day, whereas iron ration (preserved and dehydrated) weighs 70cn (7lb, a pound a day). Sounds like at some point the difference between the two was forgotten. I can imagine living off 7lb of dehydrated food, I can't imagine living on a pound of fresh food a day,.
I'm pretty sure the 1lb rule is strictly for min-maxing survival purposes. You can also boil Pine needles to add vitamins to the water, should help satiate your hunger.
This was a great debunking of the any food rule! Differing requirements could actually be a really fun mechanic. Maybe something like: • 3lbs for "fresh" foods (uncooked grains, nuts & seeds, cured meat, etc.) • 2lbs for preserved/trail-ready foods (hardtack, pemmican, etc.) • 1lb for rations (MREs, powders, professionally dehydrated foods, etc.) It could be a really interesting dimensionality to survival! 3lbs/day is a lot, but the trade off is cheapness. Meanwhile, the *official* adventurer rations could be at a higher price point (bonus: cutting down on late game wealth creep), but that lighter load is really helpful for long campaigns or treasure hunting. I'd be very interested in seeing more tests like this in the future. A revisit with homemade rations from your new dehydrating skills would be very neat to see (and I imagine far less miserable). 😁
That seems brutal to me. I'm pretty sure I'm in the camp of people that eat closer to 4lbs of food per day normally. I do tend to eat more than most people I know though.
Can't seem to read the rules text for rations though. "Rations consist of dry foods suitable for extended travel, including jerky, dried fruit, hardtack, and nuts." Also rations are 2lbs, although you can go to half rations (1lb) without suffering exhaustion.
Yeah only dry food would have worked, but this was about disproving the RAW food requirement: one pound of food. Any food! Not just rations, and not just while traveling
Idk if you researched the effects of drinking so much water but one of the effects is increased pressure inside the skull on the brain so that's possibly where your reoccurring headache was coming from.
To be fair, the 1 lb. per day is probably taking in to account that adventurers on-the-go are eating rations and not fresh food. Dried meats and fruits pack a lot of calories in a very light weight. 1 lb. of beef jerky and raisins will be more calories than the equivalent weight of apples and toast. To be honest, I and my players do not go for the hyper-realistic rules of D&D. We don't track food unless it becomes an issue due to the story (The adventurers have to trek through a wasteland for 2 weeks!), nor do we track encumbrance and I've even allowed the ranger to stop keeping track of arrows because we both keep forgetting. I understand why some people use them but to stop the game to crunch numbers of weight, calories, etc., is just boring and I find, disturbs the fun of the game. Is this unrealistic? Yes, but again this is a game of casting fireballs and flying on dragons. It's not meant to be realistic. I love that there are these fiddly rules for those who like such things but they are not for our game group.
when it comes to this stuff i just use feel, for food we just say "ok you buy enough food for the trip it cost 2 gold" for encumbrance i just use logic a player without a bag of holding isn't going to be putting 3 swords, 4 full suits of armor, 3 crossbows and 1200 gold pieces in their travel pack, same with the Ranger and arrows after 2 or 3 dungeons i'll just say "you're starting to run short of arrows, you should pick some up in town". i think it's a nice balance no need to track anything but the players still need to plan for the journey ahead.
Yeah only dry food would have worked, but this was about disproving the RAW food requirement: one pound of food. Any food! Not just rations, and not just while traveling
I think is a number of days = 3 + con mod, minimum 1....as in the the whole equation has a minimum of 1, not just the con mod. That way, a character with a negative con mod isn't hemorrhaging nutrients and can survive a single day without eating (as opposed to 4)
As a lot of other people have commented, dried food lasts a lot longer, and weighs less. Stockfish doesn’t weigh much, is calorie and protein rich, and was one of Norway’s biggest exports since the viking age, and so would be readily available in a standard fantasy setting. Depending on the region, butter or blubber can be eaten together with it to add fat.
For comparison of rations in a pre-industrial society, British Army rations in the 1770's were (per person per day): 1 lb of pork, beef, fish, or cheese (meat or fish served fresh, 3/4lb if salted), 1lb of flour (loose, as bread, or as hardtack/ship's biscuit), 0.75 pints of peas or rice, and 6oz of butter or oil. Officers were often expected to supplement that with "forage" bought from the local population. That could be fruit or veggies, eggs, milk, pickled goods like sauerkraut, or more of what's already in their rations. If the officers didn't provide, the soldiers themselves used their own money for, or stole, extra food. To me, that's a good baseline for rations for someone out in the wilderness.
8:02 "is this the first level of exhaustion?" dunno, perform a save check and see if it's a bit harder than what you're used to. Take a shot of vodka and see if you instantly puke lol
In the ancient past most army rations consisted mainly of a daily grain ration which could be boiled as a porridge or ground into flour and made into bread. If we're talking South America the Incans had dehydrated potatoes which acted a lot like instant mashed potatoes except it was more commonly slices of potato rather than flakes or powder. There's actually a story about some troops having to ditch a bunch of these potatoes in a cold mountain lake in order to lighten their packs so they could catch up to fleeing enemies and even many years later people were pulling preserved potatoes out of the lake and eating them when their own food had run out. When you consider that maybe half of the water you are consuming would be in your food and that you are likely eating dry rations like hard tack or dried meats then the rules begin to make more sense. People wouldn't eat these foods as they came, but would likely cook them into stews or pottages to help make them more palatable, supplementing with fresh food wherever they could forage it.
Came here from your D&D rations video. I think an important thing to keep in mind is that the minimum food is a planning tool. If you're leaving for a week with a group of four you need to bring 28lbs of food with you. Because it's the weight of what you're carrying, it makes sense to use the unprepared weights of that food. In long-distance sailing we plan a minimum of 1.5gal of water per person per day. This is for drinking, cooking, hygiene, everything. Someone adventuring can probably get by with less.
If I recall the D&D 5e rules actually say your days without food counter is reset if you get 1 lb of food in a day. So you only need 1 lb of food every few days to not suffer exhaustion. To be clear that is don't eat any food for a few days then eat 1 lb in one day, repeat. Recovering from exhaustion from not eating is harder so don't skip food for you limit, do one less. That is if you got a Con of 12 for 4 days, eat on the fourth day to reset the counter. My first character with a Con of 16 only needed to eat a pound of food every 6th day. I told my gamemaster this. Then I told him I had the Outlander background that lets me automatically gather food and water for myself and 5 others every day as long as it is actually available in the landscape, no survival roll necessary. :p
Love that conclusion. It makes a lot more sense and frankly, 1 lb. a day seems like a straight-up oversight with rations weighing that much. I think they were trying to be overly simple for the sake of ease and avoiding listing a calorie count instead of weight. Fun fact: people in the Middle Ages didn’t eat breakfast unless they were going on a journey. They considered that the sin of gluttony. Not sure if that adds anything to this, but I was reminded of it.
This is false. Breakfast being a sin is highly disputed. Not only are the arguments for that shaky at best but we have multiple sources like bishop Berthold von Henneberg's food plan for his servants which specifically mentioned giving soup and bread in the morning.
The thing with adventuring and dnd food is, that rations mostly constist of things like hardtack, dried meat and dried fruits - things that have a much better weight/nutrition ratio. Most people would be struggling if they're eating only 1 lb of regular, everyday food, but with food like mentioned before, thats a whole different story. Also, the handbook tells that an adventurer "needs" 1 lb of food. I understand that as "1 lb is enough to sustain an adventurer". Doesn't tell if that adventurer is fed up. Also, most food contains at least some amount of water. So If someone tells me that an adventurer needs 1 gallon of water per day, I would think that the water inside of the things he eats, is already included. Soak a piece of dried meat in water and you'll see what I mean.
If it were me doing this challenge, I'd make three adjustments (on top of the whole "it's actually 2 lbs" thing you discovered at the end): 1. Use the dry weights of food, not the prepared weights; 2. Use the gallon of water in cooking the dry food; 3. Use calorie-dense "ration" style foods, such as cheese, nuts / nut butter, jerky / dried sausage, dried fruit, energy bars, dehydrated camping food, etc.
Don't forget that soups/stews/chillis/curries are a staple food of travelling. Utilizing your water, bread, dried foods, etc. to make a field ration to something a lot more filling. Although I would like to point out that something like an MRE is about 1 to 1.5lbs of food in an MRE and I recall generally eating 2 to three a day with constant snacking on leftover bits or candies from previous MREs throughout the day. Each one is well over 1000 kCal. And like historical field rations, it's prepared using some of your water for that day, though you're not ingesting that water.
"Rations consist of dry foods suitable for extended travel, including jerky, dried fruit, hardtack, and nuts." You just starved yourself for 3 days for no reason lmao.
Two thoughts: First, I would definitely go with dry weights, both for things like rice and for dried fruits. It seems most intuitive and reasonable to me to take the weights in terms of how you might look at it as a hiker packing your bag for a long trip or a quartermaster measuring out food rations to the troops -- that is, in terms of however the food would be packed for travel. Second, and more importantly, it seems to me that the root of the problem is really a lack of granularity in the starvation rules. It's a simple binary: Either you have enough food to avoid exhaustion, or you don't. But exhaustion isn't just getting worn out because you don't have enough nutrition to fully fuel your activities, it's a death spiral mechanic that will lead to death after only 6 days of consistently accruing it. Eating only 1 lb of food per day probably isn't enough to keep you firing on all cylinders during a physically taxing adventure, but it certainly IS enough to keep you from outright starving to death. What the system really needs in order to make sense is a two-tiered approach, with a minimum level necessary to avoid ACCUMULATING exhaustion, but also a higher "optimum" level which will see you taking some exhaustion if you don't meet it, but capped at only 1 or 2 levels of exhaustion as long as you're still above the minimum daily food intake.
Rations tend to be things like pymican, trail mix, and jerky. High calorie dried and preserved things. It’s likely your calories were way lower, but volume was close.
Fun fact. While the DMG states that a character requires a MINIMUM of 1 lbs of food per day, the Standard Ration that is 1 days food for 5 Silver is actually 2 lbs. This means that while the MINIMUM is 1lbs, the characters normally would eat more (2x more!), when possible. The rules are there to represent the threshold between just enough and too little. Also, bob eventually found out about the Tricks. Rations are Dry food and tack, representing more energy dense foods. For the first 2 days bob ate way to much fruit, which is like 60% water weight. This completely tanked your actual caloric intake and made it much more difficult than it needed to be!
Yeah only dry food would have worked, but this was about disproving the RAW food requirement: one pound of food. Any food! Not just rations, and not just while traveling
Standard rations for a lot of pre-modern militaries was 1 pound of hard tack and 1 pound of meat (typically salted pork or beef), plus some salt and a bit of oil of beans. the D&D rules definitely mean pre-cooked weight. I mean, from the SRD: Rations. Rations consist of dry foods suitable for extended travel, including jerky, dried fruit, hardtack, and nuts. Cost: 5 sp Weight: 2 lb.
DnD rations are like military rations used in the middle ages, or the food sailors took with them on ships, dry bread and dried meat, long lasting small and dense food. 1 pound of that would with 1 gallon of water would be enough to sustain an adventurer, sailors used to get only 2 dry breads per day, which is very light, they are palm sized pieces of condensed carbs and fiber, with the occasional worm inside, that's just free protein. They would eat them in the dark to not see if there were any insects inside.
Alright, I did, in fact, go ahead and try this at home. Here are the results after two days: One thing first; a gallon is a LOT of water. I used half of that gallon each of the first two days making a small pot of coffee and a a Potion of Stamina ( a green g-fuel energy drink) Day 1: Breakfast 7oz- 3 eggs 2 pieces of toast. Dinner- 9 oz 1 grilled boneless chicken thigh, 1 small head of romaine, tiny bit of dressing Day 2: Breakfast 4.1oz Takoyaki 1.5 oz empanada Lunch 2.1 oz empanada Dinner: 8.3 oz Instant ramen with bacalao (dried/salted cod) using more of that gallon of water. Honestly, I feel great. I walked 2 miles each morning and worked on my feet for 8 hours and was not more tired than normal. I should also add that I'm like 35 lbs overweight, so this is actually a lot less food than I would normally eat.
Yes, according to the rules, any pound of food is enough--doesn't have to be dry.
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When did that Aurora Kickstarter go up? cause if it was only a day or so ago or today, it got over funded pretty fast lol.
Depending on your normal diet you could be more suffering sugar and caffeine withdraws.
@@wolfiexii Oh good lord yes on the caffeine..I can attest to that myself before I kicked 90% of the stuff. The only caffeine I get in my diet now is the stuff in tea, I used to drink at least 4 cans of Mt.Dew a day and needed a minimum of 2 a day or I'd start getting headaches..I quit caffeine filled sodas cold turkey one day some years ago and the withdraw was horrific for me..severe headaches, body shakes, and whispers sounded as loud as yelling to me for a a good couple days till I got rid of all the caffeine in my system. Now that I take in lower amounts if any I don't suffer from the headaches I would have, I can go days without any tea that I couldn't go without a soda that was filled with caffeine.
CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!
For food carried dry, I would assume that it would count the dry weight, the water used would be from your water for the day.
I would also point out that the pound of food isn't what you're using, but things that are more of rations options combined with some forage...
I would not be eating regular foods, but dehydrated survival foods. Pemmican, jerky, and the like. Stuff that is calorie rich, light weight, and longer lasting
Ya that’s what I was thinking too. Adventuring rations wouldn’t have fresh apples etc.
If I ever do a D&D wilderness survival video, that's definitely what I'm going with for food! But this was about disproving the one pound rule which does not specify the type
Oh yeah for sure. Especially with how much food there actually is since its all dehidraited.
I think D&D also says this about rations.
To be sure, a lb of jerky really won't help you much. I could clear one of those bags for a meal. And it would also kill you at 27.
I always assumed the 1 pound a day was the bear minimum needed to stave off starvation. Also I agree that the weight should be in dry ingredients and possibly more calorie dense.
Haha "bear Minimum", get it? 😄
Ps: I'll see myself out...
In the group im playing with we just deduced, that the high cost for rations being as high as the daily income of the standard commoner only could mean the following: rations are exactly what you picture them to be: "...the weight should be in dry ingredients and possibly more calorie dense." Being longlasting and of high calorie density makes rations so expensive, and those properties are the reasons of one ration costing 1 silver.
Yeah unprepared weight, and use water out of your water budget to cook your rice with.....obviously 😎
And while you got gipped on your edible rice, you gained budget from the water lost due to cooking your veggies.
1 lbs of travel rations. Travel rations are a bunch of dried food typically and very calorie dense based on their descriptions (from previous editions, 5e sucks on its adventuring gear descriptions, heck many other systems have race specific travel rations of "yo this is what your typical traveling X would eat every day if they don't gather/hunt for fresh stuff). Pemmican, for instance, is incredibly calorie dense, lasts months, and doesn't take up much space. Dried sausages are quite dense as well. You definitely avoid eating 1 lbs of undried vegetables or fruits.
Personally the 1 lbs per day is 100% bullshit for the hyper active lifestyle of an adventurer. I think there was a mix-up given that rations for a day weigh 2 lbs and that the "eat half" rule was supposed to be eat 1 lbs. This is what happens when multiple people write the same book and not enough cross-checking happens.
I definitely feel like the dried food should be weighed pre-cooking. Serving sizes on rice/pasta are typically in their dried form because water absorption varies. Also when you are carrying the food around, you are carrying it dried.
Yes, and the you use some of that same gallon of water to cook it, etc. When I’ve gone backpacking one decent option is those dried soup packets. They weigh next to nothing, mix with water, and make a filling meal.
Lol, just finishes the video, yeh, he got there 😅
If only that was the majority opinion haha
I agree with this. I think the water should have come from the daily portion, as it would if you were traveling, but the weight should have been the dry weight.
@@BobWorldBuilder grain (rice, buckweat, etc) or pasta is a popular and old choice in my country when backpacking, and it was also the food of the army.
Looks like Bob has some great ‘Taste’ in video ideas!!
*slaps knee and shows myself out the door*
Can't wait to see what you 'cook' up next!!
We 'cannoli' do so much...
That what cheese said.
Love how the Handbook was in the cupboard like a cook book 😆
You mean it's not a cook book?
Thank you for commenting on that because it took forever to get that right lol
@@Dragonmdk To Serve Man is a cookbook!
4:00
"[...]This is the very face of hubris, and I was wrong."
Got me dying over here.
I think the food weight for hikers was a good thing to bring up as it probably would be most accurate for adventurers. They are moving around and would be carrying calorie dense foods.
Glad that made sense to you too!
The US Army's MRE weighs about 1Kg packaged and contains between 1,500 and 2,000 calories. This is sufficient food for a soldier for one day.
When hiking, it is common to carry hardtack, rice, instant potatoes, mixed nuts (trail mix), summer sausage, flour, salt, pepper, sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, corn starch, and lard (for oil).
You can mix flour, salt, sugar, and corn starch together to make a type of flatbread that you fry in the lard. You may even want to add brown sugar to it if you enjoy very sweet bread.
this flatbread is sweet and calorie-dense and will allow you to put in a full day's work.
@@swaghauler8334 can I get meurments on that flat bread
@@sarahmellinger3335 It's Dave Canterbury's recipe for breakfast bread/biscuits. RUclips Dave Canterbury (of dual survival fame) PATHFINDER OUTDOORS Channel and watch the whole video. He shows you how to make them in just a few minutes.
In truth, he has LOTs of good videos worth watching if you're into camping or survival. All done with a budget in mind too.
Personally I like to look at historical military rations I think that's a good idea what people would be carrying and eating
Survival rations are equivalent to MREs, usually dehydrated fruits and meats. A better test would be getting a month's supply of MREs and having one of those per day.
Yeah only dry food would have worked, but this was about disproving the RAW food requirement: one pound of food. Any food!
3 MREs per day, one wouldn't do it and you'd starve adventuring in no time.
As a former Marine stationed in the desert I would definitely affirm that while a bit light 1 MRE per meal will sustain a person at reasonably levels of activity. As for the water, 2 liters per person a day is the general standard but in hot environments like desert or jungle, 4 per day was the minimum.
I wouldn't equivocate traditionally dried foods to modern dehydrated food. MREs are no way comparable to hard tack and dried fruit/mean.
@@themonkeyhand My coworker regularly fasts for extended periods. We work actively in a factory and he has gone over 20 days without eating
You joke about a pound of butter, but that is one of the most calorie-dense foodstuffs known to man
Something something LARD LARD LARD
Maybe that would have helped lol
@@BobWorldBuilder I'm pretty sure butter was _the_ foodstuff of a lot of the early arctic expeditions. It's apparently about ~3,200 calories per pound.
@@OliverCovfefe yeah! Salted lard is also a know travel food in colder climates, native to Ukraine. Add bread or crackers, or put it in your buckweat kasha!
@@KennyEvitt yeah, it was
At 10:56, turtles=water and tortoises=land. Very important to know when building your world Bob ;)
Trust me, I am 100% certain that eastern box turtles live on land
All tortoses are turtles. Not all turtles are tortoses.
Good comment though, you made me look it up.
Isn't that meant to be assuming standard rations, which includes calorie dense meat and cheeses?
not sure about the cheese tho, but calorie dense food in general is a surefire bet, unfortunately, what it doesnt account for is energy burned as youre doing various activities like walking and running around with weights(equipment) and fighting...
Yeah like actual rations that people took with them throughout irl history, salted/smoked pork/fish/chicken/beef, nuts, butter/cheese is my default as there's a reason to look forward to getting to the next Inn/Tavern/Fantasy Denny's
*scoffs in rules lawyer*
Sort of-the rule mentions rations but does not specify only rations, just a pound of food. definitely check out what I discovered about rations at the end! It made me angry haha
"Rations consist of dry foods suitable for extended travel, including jerky, dried fruit, hardtack, and nuts." from the PHB. Definitely very dense.
Sidenote: I would also consider the rice should be counted dry. Going camping I usually dry/jerky all my meat and veggies and bring some sort of dense carbs like rough oatmeal or dried rye bread because it weighs a lot less and water is usally extremely accessable. Boiling the water first usually allows me to gather non-drinking water from the sea when sailing, from streams, or from rain collection so I don't have to use my drinking-water. Protein bars, dried fruit, and nutbars make good snacks and chocolate if I need extra fat while walking. Makes ½ kg food last a lot longer and I have to carry less in order to sustain myself properly.
I usually also mostly travel during summer and fall so there's often a lot of nature snacks around. My rougue has really high nature and survival check and I usually roleplay my high checks while traveling in a group as being able to point out edible fruits, berries, roots, and other plants on the way as an explanation of why our group is able so travel fast for extended periods of time, even when there's no difficult terrain. As a DM I usually rule travel checks a little bit harder in areas where it's hard to find snacks, water, or shelter from the sun while traveling. (Travel is a good part of my campaign and my players seem to enjoy planning travel routes to get from A to B. Known bandit routes for loot or bounties, good hunting grounds for food, pelt, and other materials, and so on)
2.5 oz / 70 g hardtacks is ~260 calories
3.5 oz / 100 g jerky is ~410 calories
3.5 oz / 100 g dried fruit is ~360 calories, 510 if you eat dried bananas only
3.5 oz / 100 g mixed nuts is ~ 610 calories
Only hardtack will net you 1665 calories
Jerky 1860
Dried fruit 1630 mixed, 2355 from banana chips
And a massive 2755 calories if you only eat mixed nuts. If you want to go wild and really like pecans then roasted pecan nuts can net you 3220 calories
If you want to go the cheese route I recommend a fatty, dense cheese. From what I can see cheddar should give you 1955 calories from 1 lb
It's not gonna be a fun ride if you're fighting or really exerting yourself, but you'll be ok for a long while
If we're talking about "survival" a pound of food per day is pretty good. And a gallon of water is over kill, as long as you're not sweating out a bunch of your water
Yeah, I would count 1 to 2 pounds as "half rations" with 3 to 4 pounds as full adventurer rations.
A gallon isn't overkill if you consider that most travel rations are dried and heavily salted to last a long time. Things like grains, dried meats, salt, bread, heat, and exercise all rip the water from your body. A gallon is about right. Plus you don't drink all of it. You use part of it to make stews and such. Also, a waterskin contains half a gallon of liquid... so you will have to refill it over and over.
Consider that 1 pound is equal to 10 large eggs, roughly 32 slices of bacon, 16 slices of white bread, 10.5 servings of cheese, 8 servings of smoked Tuna, roughly 5 servings of potatoes, or basically the same amount in carrots... a pound of food is a lot when you break it down.
You could literally eat 1 egg, 2 slices of bacon, 1 slice of bread, and 1 serving of cheese for every meal. And a carrot stick for a snack.
@@happilytwisted4675 Don't try it like Bob in the video! Maybe enough for sitting around, but not enough for hiking, super dangerous! Double it.
@@WhatIfBrigade I eat like this all the time and I have a very active job out in the heat. That's 5 servings of food at every single meal, plus a snack and a gallon of water. Most people drink less than 80 ounces a day. It is less about quantity and more about the quality of the food you eat.
1lb does seem a little small, but it would go further if it were dried meats, nuts, seed, bread, and cheeses which are way more calorie dense than fruit.
Also, if we're talking weights some of the race weights seem way too light. Like a Halfing is only 40lbs!? Maybe the reason all the weights are so light is because they only eat celery.
Yeah the fact that the same weight applies to all races is nonsense, but adding that level of detail would still be to much even for my taste
@@BobWorldBuilder Just say 1lb for small creatures and then DOUBLE it for each larger size class.
I agree 40 lbs still seems a bit light but you do have to account for 3-dimensional scaling when dealing with smaller creatures which impacts weight a lot. For example, assuming similar density something 80% as large in all 3 dimensions would weigh only 51.2% as much. For halflings the biggest difference is height but they're also not as wide. Estimating 55% of human height, and 75% for the other dimensions, you'd get an expected ratio of about 31% which for a 180 lbs human would be 55 lbs and for a slender 125 lbs human it would be about 39 lbs, meaning 40 should definitely be on the lower end.
I know you probably didn't expect a write up, your comment just sparked my curiosity
@@BobWorldBuilder Clearly. Halflings would eat that amount for first breakfast!
My 5 yo is about 40 pounds, i imagine a halfling to be her size, seems alright as an average
As everybody say, you should have used "ration" food, aka jerky, dried fruits, hardtack, sugar. Also, rice should be weighted dry BUT you can only use your daily gallon of water for cooking
That's a rough experiment lol.
Glad we have Bob to sacrifice his body and sanity for our D&D Science.
Isnt this how all game designers come up with mechanics?
@@BobWorldBuilder just an idea, when it comes to verifying fall damage use a body stand in of some sort.
@@chrisnotaperson8127 beat me to it
I'm sorry Bob, I voted for "cooked weight" =( In my mind I have always equated "1 pound of food" with "1 pound of rations" in this case. So dried meat, dried fruit, nuts, pemmican... stuff you don't neccecarily need to cook to eat but is very high in energy.
I forgive you haha
I thought that is meant for dry foods you reasonably carry on travels and prepare during rests. Things like beans (weighted in dry travel state) rice(also) and similar things. The it never occured to me to consider the prepared weight, it was more of a "that much is what it weights on your carry weight" matter. Not "that is the mass you have to take in".
It wouldn't make much sense since the weight is otherwise only used for carry, so, the amount should be calculated by carry weight of the unprepared foods, not the mass of the prepared.
I agree that dry weight is the only way to make this even close to reasonable!
@@BobWorldBuilder Since I only use 125g (~1/4 pound) of dry rice for one meal for me (+whatever I put on the rice) and usually don't eat very much during the rest of the day
I think 4 times that, even without anything else on it, would be more than I could eat in a day.
A bit one sided but more than reasonable to be filling.
Now add a few things for variety like dried meat while still using rice as a base and the 1 pound sounds like a very normal amount.
@@IISheireenII Yeah adding dried meat, beans even veg and you could have some decently sustaining meals that you could for sure carry with one pound at least dry weight.
I'd also say that rules are there to indicate the minimum weight of rations you need to carry on your character to survive on them for X days in the wild.
Bob's interpretation of "a character needs 1lb of food per day" seems to be that *any* 1lb of food is sufficient, which is clearly not a sensible ruling! How about 1lb of watermelon, or 1lb of cucumber? Clearly not enough calories to live off! We don't need to see Bob trying to live off 1lb of watermelon per day to know it's not possible! My interpretation would be that there exists a (non-magical) foodstuff which is sufficiently energy dense that you can get by on 1lb of it per day. i.e. adventurer rations. We know what's in adventurer rations from the manual, so I think that would be a better place to start for this experiment. (Interestingly, the rations item weighs 2lb, not 1lb, so the minimum a character needs per day may be half a pack of rations?) Edit: posted this before watching the last minute of the video...
Rations (1 day), 2lb
Rations consist of dry foods suitable for extended travel, including jerky, dried fruit, hardtack, and nuts.
I also agree that the practical use of the weight is on how much encumberance it would add to your backpack, so dry weight it is!
If I had known that pole was about this challenge I DEFINETELY would have said weigh the rice dry. The rice has all the nutrients, the water just makes it less awful to chew and swallow, but you can totally eat rice dry so weighing it after being cooked seems mean :(
I'm not sure you interpreted the days without food before exhaustion rules right. I think the "minimum of one" applies to the total number of days, not the modifier added to the 3. So a character with either a -2 or a -3 CON modifier would have 1 day without food prior to exhaustion, not 4.
That makes more sense, but the mechanic still doesn’t make sense! No food for a whole day having no effect even for someone with negative con is nuts!
I agree with you. Like other abilities are based on ability modifiers have a minimum of 1 just in case you have a negative score. So minimum is probably 1 not 4.
Thank you.
I don't know what a CON modifier means since I'm not a DnD player, but how common (intentional or non-intentional) fasting is for you and how common heavy exertion is for you could easily affect how long you go "hungry" without negative effects. I fairly often go almost a whole day without eating before even feeling hungry when doing a normal day's work at a cabinet shop handling stacks of lumber. A moderate lunch (a sandwich or small can of ravioli) per day is often the only eating I do for several days at a time. It would take a couple of days of fasting after several days of normal eating for me to feel much effect from it beyond discomfort. When I first started this job, though, I ate like mad; I was hungry all the time until I got used to the work even though my average weight and fitness haven't changed. Some of my long-time co-workers start feeling pretty bad from hunger (headache, dizziness, weakness) just a few hours after eating since they're used to eating more.
I'd take from this that unfamiliar activity should cost more food than familiar activity regardless of what it is since it requires adjusting musculature -- could this be what your con modifiers are: heavy activity and healing injuries? -- and a glutton should require more food than a beggar to avoid exhaustion effects even if they're of the same race or general height. Perhaps you could simulate the latter by using character and inventory weight (instead of size class or whatever) as a modifier for food requirements rounded to the nearest convenient unit for ease of gameplay, and assume the base rules apply to a fairly active human of average weight as a starting point. You could even go further to use strength as a modifier for how much food is required since muscle burns energy even when idle. Then again, all this math might be better reserved for background operations in a computer-based RPG. It probably depends on your tastes and who you're playing with. Everyone needs to have fun.
@@mailleweaver " I fairly often go almost a whole day without eating before even feeling hungry when doing a normal day's work at a cabinet shop handling stacks of lumber." this would just be mechanically represented as having a higher CON (and thus higher CON modifier).
In DnD CON is basically "how much bad stuff can you experience physically?" CON impacts amount of time you can hold your breath, how well you can stomach drinking alcohol and ingesting poisons, how many hit points you have, etc.
It would be interesting to do an "adventuring test" where you combine the rules. You could put all your provisions for the day in a pack as well as having a load of equipment, hike for a couple of miles (the trip to the dungeon), do a 1-hour workout (time in dungeon), add some weight (loot) to the pack, then do another hike for a couple of miles (the trip back to town).
Every Meals Ready-to Eat (MRE) is 3k calories. We dont expect soldiers to eat a certain poundage of food, we need them to eat the correct amount of calories in every meal to keep up energy. If you can make that one pound add up to a lot of calories you could make it work...but I doubt D&D adventurers would be able to do such a thing, unless every Good Berry is 3k calories or more.
If I ever do another D&D survival video, that’ll be the way
I live how this rumor is still spreading around... no... a single MRE is not 3k calories. They're closer to 1200 to 1500... actually look at the listed nutritional information. And yes, that stuff has to be accurate, it's a requirement for food packaging.
@@verselesscooking9416 The US Army MRE known as a FIRST STRIKE RATION (given to 11Bravos going out on patrols) sitting on the desk next to me has 2,900 calories in it. Only the less compact MREs are 1,500 calories. In fact, I just picked up a Beef Ravioli in Sauce MRE, and it has 2,000 calories in it (which IS on the high side for a normal MRE).
@@swaghauler8334 didn't k ow about the FSR's I was Air Force, just have experience with the MRE's good to know. Damn that's. Lotta food though. And the ravioli is quite high yes.
@@verselesscooking9416 First Strike Rations taste better than MREs too. I guess the Army figures if you're going to get killed, you might as well die on a full stomach. They are also more compact than MREs. One FSR will slide right into a cargo pocket.
The games I run tend to be pretty heavy on the survival & exploration and I've found the ration system so frustrating to manage that I have replaced it with my own system. I combine the food and water into a single "complete ration" that weighs 10lb and each character needs one per day. Since a gallon of water weighs 8.3lb that means you have 1.7lb of food. This makes it easy to plan ahead. Two characters that need to travel for 3 days need 6 "complete rations" which weigh a total of 60lb.
Water is really heavy, actually carrying your entire trip's worth of water is super impractical unless you're planning some kinda desert expedition. With a more realistic approach, someone would be more likely to rely on water they can find out in the wild.
I like this approach for dungeon crawling or short missions where foraging is not expected to occur. Carrying 3 days supply is fairly practical while foraging for food and water can supplement the diet for more calories and/or save the use of those rations for when they are most needed.
ALSO: Most pack rations are dry and lightweight, reconstituted with the remainder of a a person's daily water ration, with that water 'consumed' during the cooking of beans, rice, bread rolls, biscuits, etcetera!
Lookup 'Cowboy Trail Rations' to learn what they ate when working a cattle drive the a 'chuck wagon' was available and able to progress ahead of the herd to prepare a meal for the night and the daily morning meal. Those meals (2) worked out to be about ½ pound of dry goods per cowboy per meal. (The chuckwagon was necessary because it hauled a 1, 2, 3, or 4 weeks worth of meals on a drive.
If you only take complete rations from the start you pretty much couldn't do much more than 3 days for 2 people, water is heavy and in most environments common.
A house rule I'm implementing into a more survival-based campaign, instead of only needing 1 lb of food per day, you need to eat at least 1.5% of your character's body weight in food per day to avoid *rolling a DC8 CON save* for a level of exhaustion. I feel, while this isn't perfect, it's much more realistic.
Now you can see why drinks like wine and beer were so popular in history. They have a LOT of calories in them and do not spoil at room temperature. But Medieval wine and beer were denser and not quite as high in alcohol content as later Renaissance liquors.
Great point!
I think you found the solution on the third day with the fruit and oatmeal, these are rules for travel away from civilization but pressume you're prepared in civilization where you can get prepared foods which will both last and are energy dense. It should consist of dried fruits and meats, dry rice and crackers, pemmican, not just what you would normally be eating. That also accounts for increased water intake since you won't be getting the water intake from foods.
But also it doesn't make sense a 2ft tall Kobold needs the same amount of food as an 8ft Goliath, maybe the size categories should have different food requirements.
Great summary of the facts here!
I think making powerful build also include food requirements, and then adding rules that 2 lb food per day for medium 1 for small and maybe 4 for large
size categories do change how much food you need, it's just in the DMG instead of the PHB since only NPCs will be in size categories other than small/medium. Admittedly it would make more sense for small and medium creatures to have a difference, though it wouldn't fit with 5e's pattern of increasing everything to be 4x as much per size category, and it does make gameplay smoother.
Creature Size Food per Day Water per Day
Tiny 1/4 pound 1/4 gallon
Small 1 pound 1 gallon
Medium 1 pound 1 gallon
Large 4 pounds 4 gallons
Huge 16 pounds 16 gallons
Gargantuan 64 pounds 64 gallons
I've been in situations where I've only had belvita breakfast cookies and a sack of nectarines. Those cookies really are like human made Lembas. It's interesting when one can feel the calories activating and colors get brighter after breaking a fast.
Why so little meat? Fruit is mostly water, so it was not a wise choice. I've never heard of people weighing rice cooked... the poll voters are . Meat, eggs, bread, cheese... those are far more energy dense foods per weight.
Yeah I regret not buying some jerky
As a poll voter who saw this out of context, I wanted to carry more food as an adventurer vs. apply to real world biology
@@BobWorldBuilder Jerky is great for the weight, but dang is it expensive. Might be better to get some meat and smoke strips over a fire at home. Then again... meat is getting really expensive, too; all food is.
@@vanivanov9571 and bullets are getting expensive too if you want cheap jerky you either need to be a rancher or a archer at this point
@@sarahmellinger3335 Well said. Trapping is the best way to put food on the table, if you're having to hunt. Fertilizer is getting rarer as well, though, so living as a farmer is getting harder.
Heck, mothers can't get baby formula these days.
These Experimental Roleplaying Videos are great. I definitely think that "2lbs per day" includes dry ingredients rather than re-hydrated one.
If you're going to test potions, remember that medieval medicines were something like 50% strong liquor - half your quaffing volume should be vodka or whiskey! :)
151 rum would be my pick
Oh no
I agree, a pound of fresh food, isn’t enough. As a backpacker, my trail rations are not heavy. And I don’t think you need to count the water in the rice. Also, RAW, rations are hard tack, jerky, oats and dried fruits. Totally doable. Ill do a video to prove it.
Yea the 1lb of food per day is so crazy. My husband and I love playing DnD but we are avid hikers and cannoers and will take 20 day trips at a time.
Our food is 2.2lbs @min 2000cals per day per person and that's bare minimum
The reason we weigh it is bc we gotta carry it / portage it :p but the calories are the key
Not including fishing or anything along the way
Then you’re the real deal! That’s awesome!
Yup. 40 pounds a fortnight. That's our mantra. Just under 3 pounds a day. Going less than that, you better know what you're doing. EDIT: Peanut butter is my go to.
1+kg for 2000cals sounds heavy. Cold War west german army field rations where 1600g for 3800cals and that included comfort items and a heavy packaging (cardboard box and commercial grade packaging for the main dishes - the stuff was NOT weight optimised since german soldiers did not do multi day road marches back then)
@@mbr5742 Yeah dude, if they are anything like MRE's, that stuff is DENSE. Anyone who is looking for calories per pound, get some MRE's. Military rations for the US military.
@@josephbradshaw6985 EPA was funny. They used a lot of commercial stuff but looked at high calorie foods (Sorry vegetarians or vegans - you would have starved) and the stuff often was enriched with vitamins. The only stuff NOT containing animal fat was the jam.
As someone who has done a few week-long fasts in the past, I would say you can go a few days without food before suffering any side effects that would be significant enough to equate to a level of exhaustion in 5e. Although you will be irritable around day 2 or 3. But that does go away a couple days later when you are too tired to care. That's when I'd say the exhaustion levels kick in. So I think those rules are fairly accurate.
My understanding of the 1 pound rule functions as a minimum. If you went more than a day or two with only a pound you probably would get hungry. But the substance of the one pound is important, too. You want a good amount of protein, more than apples and oatmeal and rice. Nuts and dried meat would help.
Literally spent the whole video screaming about the rations lol. As for potions, I can speak from experience; it can be pretty tough trying to drink one in heavy armor. Heavy gauntlets tend to restrict a bit of dexterity, and many types of helmets need to either be opened or completely removed to take a drink. What adds to the difficulty is whatever you're already holding; shield and/or weapon. As for real combat? It's just not happening.
In game? I run it as a bonus action for self, action for other. Keeps everyone happy. 😁
Bread and jerky might have helped instead of fruit but no matter what this was hard and I'm impressed you stuck to it
Fun video! Going with dry weight definitely makes more sense. Things like dried fruit (and jerky) weigh less for sure and that’s one reason you need the water I’d say 😊
Hey just a thought, since in dnd most of the food is "travel food" that's meant to be carried around, most of it is dried food like beef jerky and raisins and stuff that should be a little more calorie dense than a piece of raw broccoli. What do you guys think?
Absolutely. It's ridiculously never stated, but the rules absolutely assume the food must be very dense just to work out in this role.
They're clearly keeping it simple here to not over-complicate, but the RAW is very much stupid in how vague it is.
Even with 1lb of dense food you are not gonna have a good time under strenuous activity for long.
Considering the level of tech, 2lb is probably more realistic, given you actually will have your characters WANT to eat that, so a pound of just butter won't cut it, really.
Also the figure of a whole gallon of water seems excessive in normal climate unless you are gonna really get sweating.
Drinking two gallons seems honestly hard to facilitate for a character on any journey in the desert from the weight of all the water alone.
@@MrHodoAstartes the water weight is also a concern because they need to carry their own water, for a full day of hiking I only carry about 3l which is about 2/3gal and water is heavy which can add to that exaustion factor. Most people can't carry 2gal/9l or 9kg of water plus food and other supplies
@@Olivia-wr5op Presumably they'd only need to carry enough water for 1-3 days, depending on the availability of natural sources, unless it was scarce.
I don't know about your normal diet, but the headache could also be from a lack of processed sugar. I know when I've cut myself off from it, headaches are a big part of it.
But as always, very entertaining video!
This was pretty typical food for me, but if it applies to natural sugars, I usually eat more fruit than was in here even though everyone's saying I ate too much fruit lol
The pancake thing was totally legit because you would be carrying the mix with you and that's the encumbrance they are using for the yardstick.
As one of the people who voted for dry weight, I'm glad to see that you saw the light during your experiment. Also if you've ever tried to pack for any kind of wilderness trip that's going to last multiple days, it's the dry weight you worry about, because you're not going to double count your water.
Fruit leather. Great for travel, can easily add veggies, concentrated nutrition
Only 50 seconds in the video and I'm like "Don't die, Bob!"
Playing D&D as a kid I thought I could avoid buying & carrying rations by cooking up & eating the remains of monsters I've killed. Orc steaks!
"Ork chops" are a good one too haha
Bob... we truly appreciate all you go through and put yourself through to make this game we love better! Your videos are so fun and enjoyable... thank you for "building" the way you do!
Thanks very much!
Congratulations, you figured it out in the end!
While I may not have completely through-hiked the AT, I am an experienced backpacker. What you discovered on day 3 (weigh the dry food, and use water from the gallon to rehydrate/cook it.) is exactly what you should be doing for something like this.
Another factor to consider is acclimation. The standard American diet is way, way bigger than our bodies actually need, but we’ve gotten used to it, so it takes time & training (such as through backpacking) to adjust our bodies to function optimally on a smaller diet + higher activity level.
Whaaaaat yall really voted to weigh the WET rice!? The weight of the water should count towards your gallon, not your food weight.
Also, I'm starting to think that the "needs 1lb of food and 1 gal of water" is more of a minimum. Like obviously you could eat more if you wanted, but if you were in a survival situation 1lb is the bare minimum.
Should the weight of a water in an apple also not count toward your food? You count the weight of prepared food since that’s what you’re actually eating
@@declaniii6324 the weight of rations is for carrying capacity. You carry rice dry, and fresh apples with their water.
Though an adventurer would probably be eating dried apples as well.
Commentary from Editor Bob was so on point in this video! Very interesting study, and I think the conclusion is correct. Thanks for putting yourself through this for inquiring minds!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Okay, so 1 gallon of beer has ~1600 calories, and 1 gallon of wine has ~3000 calories. "Water" could be a euphemism, anything could be in a waterskin. Maybe everyone is just hammered all the time in DnD? 🍺
I love this! Thanks for another very handy video!
I think I would have stuck to food closer to what I'd actually bring for trail rations - jerky, dried fruit, nuts - or mush 'em all together for some pemmican. You're spending a bunch of that precious food weight on their water content - and if you were travelling, also having that much more weight to carry. I think the oatmeal was a better approximation - so long as you're also bringing a cooking pot along on your adventures.
It seems like the moral of the story is your party needs to level up so somebody gets a nice mansion to camp in - or some of those fancy quick travel spells so nobody needs to carry around all their food and water anymore. :)
Oh! And if we make it to the 5k likes for the potion vid (and I really hope you do!) - I'd love to see an underwater potion test as well.
good old create food and water. 45 pounds of food and 30 gallons of water all at the cost of 1 3rd level spell. ironically the spell says it is enough for 15 people so that's 3 pounds of food and 2 gallons of water each
I'm totally going to do this at home, Bob. You can't stop me.
nooooooooooooo
I think, contextually, that the weight of the food is in your pack.
So for things like eggs, you're going to lose out A LITTLE BIT based on the weight of the shell. However, for dry goods like rice, oatmeal, or flour, you're going to gain because you HAVE to add to it.
It's worth noting, too, that experienced campers/hikers/travellers take advantage of what's around them, and would add things they found along the way to supplement their meals. So the pound of dry pancake mix becomes two pounds (or whatever) of cooked pancakes, but then also has blueberries gathered while hiking added to it.
The half pound of dry rice becomes a pound when saturated, but gets supplemented with wild carrots and/or small game, eggs, et cetera that are gathered while traveling.
Lol! Editor Bob has me dying 😅
Editor Bob knows what’s up!
About drinking a potion,
At our student home we did this experiment
Downing 300ml (~10 fluid ounces) of different liquids
We found that for the average person 7 seconds is the score to beat.
Water being on the easy end, beer being the most average and beer mixed with fanta was nightmareworthy.
Granted fizzing, particulates, alcohol and temperature can make a drink significantly harder to swallow,
To the point that we found a sweet and fizzy alcoholic drink at lukewarm temperature to be challenging to down within a few minutes.
It didn't help that the alcoholic ones made me sneeze.
Our we choose 300ml, since our estimation was that potions in worst case scenario would be 150ml
and as a downed PC you'd be able to get 1 administered
After which you can drink a different one yourself within 6 seconds.
So I'd say an action isn't unreasonable since I generally consider an action to take 3 to 4 seconds (since the entire turn takes 6)
Great job, Bob! Thanks for creating content that matches with our questions. And, thanks for taking one for the team! Keep up the great work, buddy! 💜
Any time!
I believe "one Ibs of food" is something more like MRE or food for an emergency bag (hope you don't need one) than XXI century daily food. But yes, by RAW it can be anything, and I also agree one Ibs is likely not enough on a daily base anyway.
Just want to point out that 1 meal MRE is 18 to 26 ounces
@@AndrewJHayford That's with packaging, condiments, and toiletries. I think without all that it would be under a pound.
Ha. I was totally right. Dry weight. Things like hard tack and beef jerky. Makes sense. The wisdom of the ancients. Adding water weight doesn't add nutrients. Btw... Emergen-C = Goodberry. I'll buy it. Scurvy is no way to go out.
Yeah I definitely should’ve bought some jerky, and not eaten like any fruit lol
@@BobWorldBuilder I think your apple was needed, but maybe smaller ones, like 4 per lb instead of 3 per lb. Or dried fruit instead. The way I look at it is taking into account what could be carried on that adventure, which also includes volume and perishability. Root vegetables and dried fruit are going to be less likely to slime in your pack than things like broccoli or soft fruits but still give you some fiber. You don’t have room in the pack for all your gear plus bulky hard boxes to protect said food. And, while typing this I just had a thought about economy of scale. It is harder to have good food for 1 person out of a lb of food, but with a party of 5, I bet that as long as the person carrying the grain and/or the cooking pot doesn’t fall off a cliff, there could be a kickass stew for 5 people using jerky, onion, carrot/parsnip, potato/turnip and some sort of grain. A quarter lb of food from each person. Then any that is left over seasons the pot of breakfast beans that you put in the coals to cook overnight. If you’re going to rely on dried beans for dinner, I think you’re going to have to stop and camp early and eat a bit late. Or change to lentils which cook faster. Nutrient/calorie dense, light weight, and maximizing economies of scale for party level food. Kudos on the pancake mix.
I know allot of people are talking about high calorie survival food. well I don't disagree I think the point of the video is that you may not always have the choice of food you're eating. And that the rules about exhaustion from one pound of any type of food are a little bit off. This was an awesome video.
you can actually start to see the dark circles under your eyes at the end of day two even though you've been sleeping very well.
I think by the way you're talking you can definitely see at least one level of exhaustion.
Thank you so much for understanding my approach to this haha
Just wanna point out, while I'm hardly an adventurer and live a mostly sedentary life, I do walk 3 miles straight every other day or so, and I mostly live off a couple cups of rice and a few eggs every day. Water I can't measure because I keep a 32 oz. bottle on my desk and refill it every time I empty it - maybe 3-4 bottles a day?
I should point out I'm a level 0 human "fighter", 5'10" and about 200 lbs - weight depending on the day - with a broad, bulky build.
Hey BWB, great video. But also keep in mind that people can do a water fast for weeks on end. A great book to get more info: The Complete Guide to Fasting by Jason Fung. You're pretty thin, so you probably don't have a ton of body fat to live off of, but your body can/does adapt to not eating once you start down the fasting lifestyle. I routinely do multi day fasts and I'm fully active on those days, including running and weight lifting. Admittedly, I'm not hiking through dungeons and fighting monsters while carrying ~50 lbs of gear.. but still. Definitely do-able.
This was awesome, the variation between days and mid-edit feedback brings it home. I assume they mean one pound of dried rations, which probably varies more than water consumption per person. I think a small character on 1 lb of food, medium on 3, and large on 9 is pretty reasonable.
I think the one pound rule was more for a bare minimum requirement than a typical day for adventurers
Just looked at the old Expert set, and in classic D&D a weeks standard ration weighs 200cn (converts to 20lb in that system), so just shy of 3lb of food a day, whereas iron ration (preserved and dehydrated) weighs 70cn (7lb, a pound a day). Sounds like at some point the difference between the two was forgotten. I can imagine living off 7lb of dehydrated food, I can't imagine living on a pound of fresh food a day,.
these are so entertaining. I really want to see you chug some potions
I'm pretty sure the 1lb rule is strictly for min-maxing survival purposes.
You can also boil Pine needles to add vitamins to the water, should help satiate your hunger.
This was a great debunking of the any food rule! Differing requirements could actually be a really fun mechanic. Maybe something like:
• 3lbs for "fresh" foods (uncooked grains, nuts & seeds, cured meat, etc.)
• 2lbs for preserved/trail-ready foods (hardtack, pemmican, etc.)
• 1lb for rations (MREs, powders, professionally dehydrated foods, etc.)
It could be a really interesting dimensionality to survival! 3lbs/day is a lot, but the trade off is cheapness. Meanwhile, the *official* adventurer rations could be at a higher price point (bonus: cutting down on late game wealth creep), but that lighter load is really helpful for long campaigns or treasure hunting.
I'd be very interested in seeing more tests like this in the future. A revisit with homemade rations from your new dehydrating skills would be very neat to see (and I imagine far less miserable). 😁
That seems brutal to me. I'm pretty sure I'm in the camp of people that eat closer to 4lbs of food per day normally. I do tend to eat more than most people I know though.
Great work man, really got me and my group thinking.
Glad to hear it!
Let's just take a moment to appreciate that Bob just has the Player's Handbook in his cabinet
Can't seem to read the rules text for rations though.
"Rations consist of dry foods suitable for extended travel, including jerky, dried fruit, hardtack, and nuts."
Also rations are 2lbs, although you can go to half rations (1lb) without suffering exhaustion.
Yeah only dry food would have worked, but this was about disproving the RAW food requirement: one pound of food. Any food! Not just rations, and not just while traveling
Idk if you researched the effects of drinking so much water but one of the effects is increased pressure inside the skull on the brain so that's possibly where your reoccurring headache was coming from.
could be however i've had doctors tell me to drink a gallon of water a day.
To be fair, the 1 lb. per day is probably taking in to account that adventurers on-the-go are eating rations and not fresh food. Dried meats and fruits pack a lot of calories in a very light weight. 1 lb. of beef jerky and raisins will be more calories than the equivalent weight of apples and toast.
To be honest, I and my players do not go for the hyper-realistic rules of D&D. We don't track food unless it becomes an issue due to the story (The adventurers have to trek through a wasteland for 2 weeks!), nor do we track encumbrance and I've even allowed the ranger to stop keeping track of arrows because we both keep forgetting. I understand why some people use them but to stop the game to crunch numbers of weight, calories, etc., is just boring and I find, disturbs the fun of the game. Is this unrealistic? Yes, but again this is a game of casting fireballs and flying on dragons. It's not meant to be realistic. I love that there are these fiddly rules for those who like such things but they are not for our game group.
when it comes to this stuff i just use feel, for food we just say "ok you buy enough food for the trip it cost 2 gold" for encumbrance i just use logic a player without a bag of holding isn't going to be putting 3 swords, 4 full suits of armor, 3 crossbows and 1200 gold pieces in their travel pack, same with the Ranger and arrows after 2 or 3 dungeons i'll just say "you're starting to run short of arrows, you should pick some up in town". i think it's a nice balance no need to track anything but the players still need to plan for the journey ahead.
Yeah only dry food would have worked, but this was about disproving the RAW food requirement: one pound of food. Any food! Not just rations, and not just while traveling
I think that characters should have to eat 2% of their own body weight per day to avoid exhaustion.
Day 4 -
Grace - "Hey bob, didn't we have leftover pizza and veg?" "oh"
Bob is just covered in pizza crumbles
I think I've NEVER seen a wild turtle outside of documentaries. Are they even real?
14:21 You filthy power gamer.
I think is a number of days = 3 + con mod, minimum 1....as in the the whole equation has a minimum of 1, not just the con mod. That way, a character with a negative con mod isn't hemorrhaging nutrients and can survive a single day without eating (as opposed to 4)
As a lot of other people have commented, dried food lasts a lot longer, and weighs less. Stockfish doesn’t weigh much, is calorie and protein rich, and was one of Norway’s biggest exports since the viking age, and so would be readily available in a standard fantasy setting. Depending on the region, butter or blubber can be eaten together with it to add fat.
You can use pool noodles as weapons when performing battle tests so you don't hurt each other and don't hold back at the same time.
I agree you need more than a pound of food a day.
I like this series
Good stuff Bob
For comparison of rations in a pre-industrial society, British Army rations in the 1770's were (per person per day): 1 lb of pork, beef, fish, or cheese (meat or fish served fresh, 3/4lb if salted), 1lb of flour (loose, as bread, or as hardtack/ship's biscuit), 0.75 pints of peas or rice, and 6oz of butter or oil. Officers were often expected to supplement that with "forage" bought from the local population. That could be fruit or veggies, eggs, milk, pickled goods like sauerkraut, or more of what's already in their rations. If the officers didn't provide, the soldiers themselves used their own money for, or stole, extra food. To me, that's a good baseline for rations for someone out in the wilderness.
8:02 "is this the first level of exhaustion?"
dunno, perform a save check and see if it's a bit harder than what you're used to. Take a shot of vodka and see if you instantly puke lol
In the ancient past most army rations consisted mainly of a daily grain ration which could be boiled as a porridge or ground into flour and made into bread. If we're talking South America the Incans had dehydrated potatoes which acted a lot like instant mashed potatoes except it was more commonly slices of potato rather than flakes or powder. There's actually a story about some troops having to ditch a bunch of these potatoes in a cold mountain lake in order to lighten their packs so they could catch up to fleeing enemies and even many years later people were pulling preserved potatoes out of the lake and eating them when their own food had run out. When you consider that maybe half of the water you are consuming would be in your food and that you are likely eating dry rations like hard tack or dried meats then the rules begin to make more sense. People wouldn't eat these foods as they came, but would likely cook them into stews or pottages to help make them more palatable, supplementing with fresh food wherever they could forage it.
Congratulations Bob, you made a new fad weight loss program: The D&Diet.
4:38 and there’s the flaw of the imperial system right there.
Came here from your D&D rations video. I think an important thing to keep in mind is that the minimum food is a planning tool. If you're leaving for a week with a group of four you need to bring 28lbs of food with you. Because it's the weight of what you're carrying, it makes sense to use the unprepared weights of that food. In long-distance sailing we plan a minimum of 1.5gal of water per person per day. This is for drinking, cooking, hygiene, everything. Someone adventuring can probably get by with less.
If I recall the D&D 5e rules actually say your days without food counter is reset if you get 1 lb of food in a day. So you only need 1 lb of food every few days to not suffer exhaustion. To be clear that is don't eat any food for a few days then eat 1 lb in one day, repeat. Recovering from exhaustion from not eating is harder so don't skip food for you limit, do one less. That is if you got a Con of 12 for 4 days, eat on the fourth day to reset the counter.
My first character with a Con of 16 only needed to eat a pound of food every 6th day. I told my gamemaster this. Then I told him I had the Outlander background that lets me automatically gather food and water for myself and 5 others every day as long as it is actually available in the landscape, no survival roll necessary. :p
Love that conclusion. It makes a lot more sense and frankly, 1 lb. a day seems like a straight-up oversight with rations weighing that much. I think they were trying to be overly simple for the sake of ease and avoiding listing a calorie count instead of weight.
Fun fact: people in the Middle Ages didn’t eat breakfast unless they were going on a journey. They considered that the sin of gluttony. Not sure if that adds anything to this, but I was reminded of it.
Yeah definitely oversimplification!
This is false. Breakfast being a sin is highly disputed. Not only are the arguments for that shaky at best but we have multiple sources like bishop Berthold von Henneberg's food plan for his servants which specifically mentioned giving soup and bread in the morning.
The thing with adventuring and dnd food is, that rations mostly constist of things like hardtack, dried meat and dried fruits - things that have a much better weight/nutrition ratio.
Most people would be struggling if they're eating only 1 lb of regular, everyday food, but with food like mentioned before, thats a whole different story. Also, the handbook tells that an adventurer "needs" 1 lb of food. I understand that as "1 lb is enough to sustain an adventurer". Doesn't tell if that adventurer is fed up.
Also, most food contains at least some amount of water. So If someone tells me that an adventurer needs 1 gallon of water per day, I would think that the water inside of the things he eats, is already included.
Soak a piece of dried meat in water and you'll see what I mean.
Dnd rations are probably based on pemmican, which is basically old time preteen bars. A single pound can contain something like 4000 calories.
If it were me doing this challenge, I'd make three adjustments (on top of the whole "it's actually 2 lbs" thing you discovered at the end): 1. Use the dry weights of food, not the prepared weights; 2. Use the gallon of water in cooking the dry food; 3. Use calorie-dense "ration" style foods, such as cheese, nuts / nut butter, jerky / dried sausage, dried fruit, energy bars, dehydrated camping food, etc.
Don't forget that soups/stews/chillis/curries are a staple food of travelling. Utilizing your water, bread, dried foods, etc. to make a field ration to something a lot more filling. Although I would like to point out that something like an MRE is about 1 to 1.5lbs of food in an MRE and I recall generally eating 2 to three a day with constant snacking on leftover bits or candies from previous MREs throughout the day. Each one is well over 1000 kCal. And like historical field rations, it's prepared using some of your water for that day, though you're not ingesting that water.
3:34 in one of the Mangas for "Appleseed" butter was actually rationed to the human occupants of the city due to its caloric density.
"Rations consist of dry foods suitable for extended travel, including jerky, dried fruit, hardtack, and nuts."
You just starved yourself for 3 days for no reason lmao.
Yeah only dry food would have worked, but this was about disproving the RAW food requirement: one pound of food. Any food! Not just rations
Two thoughts:
First, I would definitely go with dry weights, both for things like rice and for dried fruits. It seems most intuitive and reasonable to me to take the weights in terms of how you might look at it as a hiker packing your bag for a long trip or a quartermaster measuring out food rations to the troops -- that is, in terms of however the food would be packed for travel.
Second, and more importantly, it seems to me that the root of the problem is really a lack of granularity in the starvation rules. It's a simple binary: Either you have enough food to avoid exhaustion, or you don't. But exhaustion isn't just getting worn out because you don't have enough nutrition to fully fuel your activities, it's a death spiral mechanic that will lead to death after only 6 days of consistently accruing it. Eating only 1 lb of food per day probably isn't enough to keep you firing on all cylinders during a physically taxing adventure, but it certainly IS enough to keep you from outright starving to death. What the system really needs in order to make sense is a two-tiered approach, with a minimum level necessary to avoid ACCUMULATING exhaustion, but also a higher "optimum" level which will see you taking some exhaustion if you don't meet it, but capped at only 1 or 2 levels of exhaustion as long as you're still above the minimum daily food intake.
I think the absolute least you can eat in Oregon Trail is 2lbs per person per day, which makes D&D rules even more interesting
8:02 'is this the first level of exhaustion?' yes. Did you eat that snack? You didn't get your full pound of food in.
Rations tend to be things like pymican, trail mix, and jerky. High calorie dried and preserved things.
It’s likely your calories were way lower, but volume was close.
I suppose having more calorie dense foods would be balanced by the added exercise of adventuring.
Fun fact. While the DMG states that a character requires a MINIMUM of 1 lbs of food per day, the Standard Ration that is 1 days food for 5 Silver is actually 2 lbs. This means that while the MINIMUM is 1lbs, the characters normally would eat more (2x more!), when possible. The rules are there to represent the threshold between just enough and too little. Also, bob eventually found out about the Tricks. Rations are Dry food and tack, representing more energy dense foods. For the first 2 days bob ate way to much fruit, which is like 60% water weight. This completely tanked your actual caloric intake and made it much more difficult than it needed to be!
Yeah only dry food would have worked, but this was about disproving the RAW food requirement: one pound of food. Any food! Not just rations, and not just while traveling
Standard rations for a lot of pre-modern militaries was 1 pound of hard tack and 1 pound of meat (typically salted pork or beef), plus some salt and a bit of oil of beans. the D&D rules definitely mean pre-cooked weight. I mean, from the SRD:
Rations. Rations consist of dry foods suitable for extended travel, including jerky, dried fruit, hardtack, and nuts.
Cost: 5 sp
Weight: 2 lb.
DnD rations are like military rations used in the middle ages, or the food sailors took with them on ships, dry bread and dried meat, long lasting small and dense food. 1 pound of that would with 1 gallon of water would be enough to sustain an adventurer, sailors used to get only 2 dry breads per day, which is very light, they are palm sized pieces of condensed carbs and fiber, with the occasional worm inside, that's just free protein. They would eat them in the dark to not see if there were any insects inside.
Alright, I did, in fact, go ahead and try this at home. Here are the results after two days:
One thing first; a gallon is a LOT of water. I used half of that gallon each of the first two days making a small pot of coffee and a a Potion of Stamina ( a green g-fuel energy drink)
Day 1: Breakfast 7oz- 3 eggs 2 pieces of toast.
Dinner- 9 oz 1 grilled boneless chicken thigh, 1 small head of romaine, tiny bit of dressing
Day 2: Breakfast 4.1oz Takoyaki 1.5 oz empanada
Lunch 2.1 oz empanada
Dinner: 8.3 oz Instant ramen with bacalao (dried/salted cod) using more of that gallon of water.
Honestly, I feel great. I walked 2 miles each morning and worked on my feet for 8 hours and was not more tired than normal.
I should also add that I'm like 35 lbs overweight, so this is actually a lot less food than I would normally eat.