Weight encumbrance rules

[watchwood]

I'm kind of wondering: How often do the D20 weight and encumbrance rules actually get used?I've played in quite a few different campaigns, and I honestly can't think of a single one in which we actually tracked the weights of our gear compared to the encumbrance limits. Half the time we even handwave movement speed reductions from small size and heavy armour.

(The reason I'm asking is because I'm working on a scifi expansion mod for Pathfinder. Among other things, I'm thinking about houseruling and streamlining the speed/weight/encumbrance rules.)

[Seerow]

Generally it is only worried about for the first few levels, and even then only for low strength characters. Once you get your first bag of holding, every group I've been in just stops tracking it.


That said, despite that I do still like keeping carrying capacity, moreso because high strength characters get really high lift/push values, and it's fun to take advantage of that. Without clear rules, it's easy to imagine a DM saying a 30 strength character can only lift a few hundred lbs, as opposed to over a ton.

If anything I'd bump up the scaling (x4 every 5 levels instead of every 10, starting at 18), and put an emphasis on the max lift/drag values rather than the encumbrance. Really highlight just how strong those high strength characters are and encourage people to take advantage of it.

[watchwood]

Honestly the exponential increases to lift/carry capacity always struck me as quite silly when the damage increases are all very much linear.

Since it's a military scifi campaign, what I was thinking of doing was changing it so that each characters speed was equal to his strength stat +20, and assigning each item a bulk value which detracted from his based speed to get his effective speed. (A machine gun might have a bulk rating of 4, for instance)

Maximum lift capacity I was just going to set to 10 lbs per point of strength, for the sake of simplicity.

[BowStreetRunner]

I have always tracked encumbrance on my characters. With tools like HeroForge, it's not hard to keep on top of it. Some campaigns, the DM has simply expected it. With others, they were satisfied if we estimated. But I have never played with one who ignored it.

[Seerow]

Honestly the exponential increases to lift/carry capacity always struck me as quite silly when the damage increases are all very much linear.

Maximum lift capacity I was just going to set to 10 lbs per point of strength, for the sake of simplicity.

Well the way I figure it is all attributes scale pretty exponentially in terms of how effective they are vs the actual +X benefit of it. I mean 6 to 14 represents the vast majority of normal humans. 18 represents the best in history. Every 4-5 points is a huge jump. You don't think of Einstein as just being a +4 better than the average joe, you think of him as exponentially smarter, even though that manifests as a +4 in game mechanics.

It's the same thing for strength. The +x bonus scales the same as the other stats, to keep numbers somewhat reasonable and relatively balanced. On the other hand, carrying capacity isn't tied to anything in particular, and is allowed to go nuts as a result. The formula 3e uses actually works pretty well when you consider the range of an average human's carrying capacity. A level 1 human barbarian with 18 base strength and raging is nearly a dead even match for maximum carrying capacity with the world record, which makes sense given a normal person is only going to have probably 1 more stat boost past starting points, if he's lucky.


And seriously 10lbs per point of strength is pathetic. 100lbs for an average guy is probably all right, but 180lbs being the max lift for the strongest normal people out there? Lame. 300-400lbs being the limit for most high level enemies? Seems weak.



Since it's a military scifi campaign, what I was thinking of doing was changing it so that each characters speed was equal to his strength stat +20, and assigning each item a bulk value which detracted from his based speed to get his effective speed. (A machine gun might have a bulk rating of 4, for instance)


Honestly if you're wanting military sci-fi, I'd really recommend a different system as your starting point. Have you looked at Shadowrun?

[Reality_Czech]

Typically, the only time I deal with encumbrance limits in my game is when PCs start picking up other people. Apart from that it's usually simpler to just let them carry what gear they want.

[watchwood]

Honestly if you're wanting military sci-fi, I'd really recommend a different system as your starting point. Have you looked at Shadowrun?

I've never played Shadowrun. I've played World of Darkness, which I understand is similar.

I've decided to start off with a d20 system mostly because of my familiarity with it, and that of my usual gaming group with it. (plus, we already have the books for 3.5 and Pathfinder and that makes writing materials simpler)

If the whole thing takes off, I'll probably start converting it to other game systems. If not, I'm not too worried about it. Making money off of it would certainly be nice, but it's mostly a hobby project. :P

[Calimehter]

We've always kept track of it in our campaigns, especially given how often we start at 1st-3rd level. That said, we're not sitting there doing a bunch of math every time we pick up a cask of ale. Usually, we look pretty hard at all the numbers when getting starting gear, and from then we just keep an eye on how much gear changes and as long as it stays "close" we are good.

[KillianHawkeye]

Usually, most characters don't need to worry about this unless they are looting an entire dungeon or a dragon's hoard. However, smaller characters or those with abyssmal Strength scores (or both!) need to keep an eye on the weight of their gear until they get some extradimensional storage.

[yougi]

Personally I enforce them on everyone. The players keep track of it, and after every night I calculate the weight of whatever loot they got. You'll be surprised how quickly they can get up there.

And even with a bag of holding, I still ask them to write down what's in the bag and what isn't: the bag could be destroyed, and if the barbarian is carrying the bag, and you split, just tell me exactly how you plan on eating with your rations in his bag?

Overall though, I realized the other day that the rogue in my party was not keeping track of his encumbrance, and that with his 12 in strength, he was in medium load (aka +3 Max Dex) from his armor, weapons and other goodies he wanted to keep on him.

[hex0]

Well the way I figure it is all attributes scale pretty exponentially in terms of how effective they are vs the actual +X benefit of it. I mean 6 to 14 represents the vast majority of normal humans. 18 represents the best in history. Every 4-5 points is a huge jump. You don't think of Einstein as just being a +4 better than the average joe, you think of him as exponentially smarter, even though that manifests as a +4 in game mechanics.


I'd image that Einstein etc. would have leveled up to at least level four, plus age bonuses to mental stats. :smallcool:

But, I do agree with you completely.

My two cents: Check weight encumbrance more when a character is split off from the group. In a group, they would generally balance their weight much better, one would assume.

[fryplink]

I tell my players just to be reasonable; I use the threat of using those rules to get them to solve the problems of carrying things. They usually have a cart (I usually rule that the cart can store everything they adventure with, unless I want transporting loot to be a plot point) and I just make them choose the things not in the cart

[Kuulvheysoon]

Heh.

I've been running a low-magic primitive desert campaign and (for once!) enforcing the encumbrance rules as a way to emphasize the gritty feel of it.

It bothers one of my players to no end - this is the kind of player who will loot everything. And I mean everything. We're talking about looting mundane longswords at 11th level everything.

[Salanmander]

I keep track of weight for all of my characters, and encumbrance is often a significant factor in making character generation choices. I often favor dex-based builds, and like being super prepared. This leads me to buy lots and lots of mundane things ("Ooh, manacles, those might be handy!"), and I often need to pay careful attention to not fall into medium encumbrance.

At this point it's just part of my char-gen process, so I even do it for high strength characters where it probably won't come up.

[NotScaryBats]

I am a very loose DM and have never given encumbrance a second thought. That seems to put me in the minority, if this thread is to be believed.

I game with friends, and we mostly learned together, so none of us worry about 'em either.

Here on GitP, I've PbP with people who range the gamut from obsess over every detail to relax and go with it.

[gr8artist]

I don't enforce it for my group, either. They have three bags of holding and a river boat to store stuff on. They go into a lot of abandoned temples and long-lost dungeons. We usually say they leave everything on the floor and pick it up on the way out. Only if they're being chased out or something do they lose the loot they found inside but didn't take immediately.
Loot weighs too much to worry about. I only check their permanent gear, if anything.

But in our other campaign, the DM is enforcing weight and encumbrance rules. I spent my first 8000 gold trying to get my rogue down to light load. That was an eye opener.
Fortunately, it's a goof campaign, and we have a 22 STR centaur in the group. He doubles as our pack mule, thanks to the quadruped carry cap rules.