missile fire in the 1-minute combat round

[stonetoflesh]

In "Melee in D&D" in Dragon #24, EGG wrote:

Each melee round is considered to be a one minute time period, with a further division into ten segments of six seconds each for determination of missile fire, spell casting and the striking of multiple telling blows. Note that during the course of a round there are assumed to
be numbers of parries, feints, and non-telling attacks made by opponents. The one (or several) dice roll (or rolls) made for each adversary,
however, determines if a telling attack is made.

For those of you OD&D referees who use the 1-minute combat round (especially those who only use the 3 LBBs with no supplements), how do you envision missile fire working in this abstract system? Is the PC with a bow firing multiple arrows, and the roll determines if one landed a telling blow? Is he only shooting one arrow, but taking lots of time trying to find an opening, then reloading? If the shooter is firing multiple arrows, how do you track the number of arrows expended in a round?

[Deleted]

Actually, unless they're firing magic arrows I don't worry about it. With magic arrows I figure it's "wait for the perfect shot" because, you know, magic.

[scottenkainen]

I have written a house rule before that someone with a missile weapon expends 1-6 pieces of ammunition per combat round. I'm just terrible at implementing it (I was much more into DM bookkeeping when I was a younger man).

[talysman]

Since missile fire during melee is pretty unlikely anyways, I figure it's OK to assume the ranged attacks at the beginning of combat occurs at a faster pace. Still, to reflect the fact that archers aren't just firing one or two arrows before everyone closes for melee, I do have a rule where, at the end of the combat, archers roll 1d6 per volley for the number of arrows lost, maybe 2d6 per volley if they were unable to recover undamaged arrows afterwards. Magic or silver arrows, like gronan said, don't count.

[archersix]

I used to worry about this stuff. That's why I got into GURPS back in the 90's. One second combat rounds, everything makes 'sense'. But then I got tired of 3 seconds of combat taking waaaay too long to get through in real time. So I started playing and running D&D again. Now I don't sweat the small stuff like this or falling damage, or stuff like that.

Don't take this in any way as an attempt to belittle your question. If you want to account for more arrows being loosed per round, go right ahead. 1d6 sounds good to me. My recommendation (and I know you didn't ask for it), is just to not worry about it!

[stonetoflesh]

Thanks for the replies everyone, I appreciate the food for thought. I'll probably do something like 1d6 or 1d10 (depending on the length of combat) + [number of combat rounds] for arrows used.

[Scott Anderson]

After combat, each archer throws 1d6. If the roll comes up a "1", he's out of arrows. I use a similar house rule for bandages and disguise kits, for instance.

They can forage for arrows after the battle, too.