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Talakeal
2014-11-09, 12:00 AM
I found that it was way too much effort to track every little thing, but I still wanted to keep encumbrance in the game as an advantage for stronger characters and a limiter on shenanigans. So I switched to a simpler and more abstract system.

Basically weight units for gear are measured in "stones".

Clothing, jewelry, boots, cloaks, gloves, belts, spell components, and coin pouches are weightless unless abused.
Potions, ammunition, torches, a yard of rope, and small odds and ends are 1/10 of a stone.
Skill tools are 1 stone.
One handed weapons are 1 stone. 2 Handed weapons are 2 stones.
Shields are 1 stone. Tower shields are 2 stones.
Light armor is 1 stone, medium armor 2 stones, and heavy armor 3 stones.

An average person can carry between 1-10 stones before suffering any encumbrance penalties. (In 3.5 I use 5 plus or minus your strength mod).


Half of my group loved it because it made it so much easier. The other half lost it because they thought it was the stupidest thing they had ever seen that a long sword and a dagger didn't have different weight values. Most people I talk to never used encumbrance any way and never thought about it.

What are your thoughts?

Vitruviansquid
2014-11-09, 12:14 AM
Systems that don't or barely relate to the core action of your game should be highly abstracted. You don't want a game about slaying dragons to be bogged down by players calculating how badly they're encumbered.

If it was a game about, say, wilderness survival, where it's important to know how much of what supplies you're carrying, then encumbrance shouldn't be abstracted.

BWR
2014-11-09, 12:31 AM
I see what you're aiming for but have a few issues.
What is abuse? carrying one extra cloak? Two? 3 entire sets of extra clothes? Four?
Skill tools are a problem: a mason's tool set weighs a lot more than scribe's. A farmer's tool set is a lot more unwieldy than a doctor's.

Plenty of games don't have encumbrance rules at all and get along just fine - you might want to consider just scrapping the thing altogether and just ask your players to not be unreasonable in the amount they carry.

Talakeal
2014-11-09, 12:48 AM
I see what you're aiming for but have a few issues.
What is abuse? carrying one extra cloak? Two? 3 entire sets of extra clothes? Four?
Skill tools are a problem: a mason's tool set weighs a lot more than scribe's. A farmer's tool set is a lot more unwieldy than a doctor's.

Plenty of games don't have encumbrance rules at all and get along just fine - you might want to consider just scrapping the thing altogether and just ask your players to not be unreasonable in the amount they carry.

Honestly I have never had to worry about clothing abuse, but I imagine it would be a GM call at the point where you couldn't wear anymore.


As for skill tools, it is only for the few things you carry with you. For a farmer that might mean a hoe and trowel and a bag of seeds or animal feed, not a plow and the mule to pull it.


I prefer to keep it in because it is an important balancing factor. For example, the mage in my group wants to have a minimum strength score yet at the same time carry around hundreds of potions, scrolls, and wands. Likewise being able to versatility among weapons and armor for a case by case basis is a nice benefit to strength.

DeadMech
2014-11-09, 01:15 AM
If a group doesn't want to use the default encumbrance rules then chances are an even more abstracted version isn't going to be much better.

Though considering I use mythweavers for my sheets, which auto-calculates weights after you fill in the info, I don't find tracking weight to be all that bothersome. In fact an abstract weight system like your proposal would ironically increase the amount of bookkeeping I needed to do. Looking up new weights from whatever notes the DM has made available instead of just looking off the SRD or my books, which I'll have to look at anyway for other rule information. Figuring out my weight limit based off of the new equation. Arbitrating with the DM over if it's reasonable for my character to pack one or two spare outfits, if having a sack to hold my rations separate from a sack for clothes and a sack for coins and a sack for some other items...

As it is I'm the player that tracks weight even if no one cares. And on my days off I tend to reorganize my possessions in whatever manner makes sense to me at the time. I'm sure if I had to do all that with pen and paper I'd be less happy about the bookkeeping but as it is I find it a nice way to kill some time on my day off before bed.

Frozen_Feet
2014-11-09, 01:21 AM
Lamentations of the Flame Princess has a pretty neat abstract encumberance system. It's pretty similar to yours, with some important differences. Most of the things you list as weighing "1 stone" would count as one item in LotFP, and for each five items a character carries, they get one encumberance point. For wearing medium or heavy armor, they also get one or two encumberance points, respectively. "Over-sized items", like two-handed weapons, shields etc. are counted separately, with each incurring one encumberance point. Finally, there are non-encumbering items, basically those you list weighing as 1/10 of a stone or weightless. You can have as many as you can fit (=write names of) in a small box on the character sheet.

0 or 1 encumberance is non-encumbered, 2 is lightly encumbered, 3 is moderately encumbered, 4 is severely encumbered and 5 is overencumbered.

oxybe
2014-11-09, 02:09 AM
I tend to not care much when it comes to tracking encumbrance. Unless you're trying to carry five ladders, three kinds of polearms and both mule+cart on your back, I find most PCs aren't really carrying enough things that would cause problems in game. It might not be realistic, sure, but keep in mind: elf wizards. Or the fact that most PCs quickly reach a point where even the mundane ones are surpassing world records on a lackluster attempt.

If they're trying to shove an iron portcullis into a kitbag, I have a problem, but as long as they keep it within reason I generally don't care.

The game's never really been broken when it comes to asking the question "Do the players have a spare set of boots or an extra dagger on-hand?".

Plus, this is the reason the bag of holding exists: I've never really met anyone in person who actually liked the encumbrance rules in any edition. A handy haversack, bag of holding or portable hole is often one of the first things most characters buy so they don't have to deal with this system.

Kaemon
2014-11-09, 04:19 AM
Is not a bad idea, and this way you can kinda avoid a Barbarian carrying around 10 extra weapons (ever seen a movie with a guy carrying that on his back, all at hand's reach?) on top of his normal equipment...
But I can see how some players can have problems with this. Imagine someone that wants to make a not-so-strong rogue that has a dozen knives on a chest-belt (not sure how you call those in English) so he can throw them? With your rules he gets encumbered by just 5 of them even if he is naked...
And even if you decide to move daggers and knives into the 1/10 category... What about someone that wants to play a warrior with a dozen swords, because he likes that concept?

Maybe you could just use common sense and just tell players that they can't carry X item because makes little/no sense if they abuse the weight system, and leave them alone if they don't? Not sure.

I like the idea of your units, but if some people don't like it, I wouldn't suggest to force it.
By the way... On the case of the Barbarian carrying around 10 extra weapons, how do you guys go about how long it takes him to get the correct one? (Or searching for something in a bag of holding for that matter). Do you assume its at "hand" and easy to get, or do they have to spend extra actions "searching" for it? (I have no clue, I'm pretty newbie on this matter).

Talakeal
2014-11-09, 04:33 AM
Is not a bad idea, and this way you can kinda avoid a Barbarian carrying around 10 extra weapons (ever seen a movie with a guy carrying that on his back, all at hand's reach?) on top of his normal equipment...
But I can see how some players can have problems with this. Imagine someone that wants to make a not-so-strong rogue that has a dozen knives on a chest-belt (not sure how you call those in English) so he can throw them? With your rules he gets encumbered by just 5 of them even if he is naked...
And even if you decide to move daggers and knives into the 1/10 category... What about someone that wants to play a warrior with a dozen swords, because he likes that concept?

Maybe you could just use common sense and just tell players that they can't carry X item because makes little/no sense if they abuse the weight system, and leave them alone if they don't? Not sure.

I like the idea of your units, but if some people don't like it, I wouldn't suggest to force it.
By the way... On the case of the Barbarian carrying around 10 extra weapons, how do you guys go about how long it takes him to get the correct one? (Or searching for something in a bag of holding for that matter). Do you assume its at "hand" and easy to get, or do they have to spend extra actions "searching" for it? (I have no clue, I'm pretty newbie on this matter).

I personally have thrown weapons count as one category lighter than normal weapons. If a guy wanted to carry around a dozen swords I would recommend he use some sort of magic to boost his carrying capacity, because that isn't going to fly either by either my rules or my common sense.

This system is only for items which are actually carried at hand as equipment. If a guy wants to simply lug around a duffel bag full of dozens of swords he can, but he won't be able to draw or sheathe them in combat.

Nagash
2014-11-09, 05:03 AM
I found that it was way too much effort to track every little thing, but I still wanted to keep encumbrance in the game as an advantage for stronger characters and a limiter on shenanigans. So I switched to a simpler and more abstract system.

Basically weight units for gear are measured in "stones".

Clothing, jewelry, boots, cloaks, gloves, belts, spell components, and coin pouches are weightless unless abused.
Potions, ammunition, torches, a yard of rope, and small odds and ends are 1/10 of a stone.
Skill tools are 1 stone.
One handed weapons are 1 stone. 2 Handed weapons are 2 stones.
Shields are 1 stone. Tower shields are 2 stones.
Light armor is 1 stone, medium armor 2 stones, and heavy armor 3 stones.

An average person can carry between 1-10 stones before suffering any encumbrance penalties. (In 3.5 I use 5 plus or minus your strength mod).


Half of my group loved it because it made it so much easier. The other half lost it because they thought it was the stupidest thing they had ever seen that a long sword and a dagger didn't have different weight values. Most people I talk to never used encumbrance any way and never thought about it.

What are your thoughts?

meh I just use commonsense and ignore the encumbrance.

If your character is carrying around a reasonable amount of gear? Fine.

If your character is trying to tote back 20 suits of armor, 50 weapons and 20,000 gold coins as well as trade goods after an adventure? Uh no. Go get a wagon or something.

But tracking every little thing is just way too much hassle. I dispensed with it back in AD&D and have never seen any reason to start doing it again since.

BWR
2014-11-09, 05:18 AM
As for skill tools, it is only for the few things you carry with you. For a farmer that might mean a hoe and trowel and a bag of seeds or animal feed, not a plow and the mule to pull it.


You haven't seen the farms I have, then. Every farmer I've come across has a ton of tools they use, even excluding things like plows and tractors and whatnot. Hoes, rakes, shovels, picks, axes, knives, spikes, scythes, hammers, saws, etc. etc.

Frozen_Feet
2014-11-09, 08:06 AM
Yeah, but farming tends to be stationary and they have a specific tool shed for all those things.

Me, I've always liked encumberance. It adds a level of logistics and planning to the game that would otherwise be absent. I know people dislike them, but in this case, people are wrong. :smalltongue: It's the same as with keeping track of time, food, drawing maps, lighting... it's a lot of book keeping if you don't know how to do it, but when even one of those factors is absent it radically changes the game. Failure to keep track of them also contributes to absurd, verisimilitude-breaking situations. In freeform games, the most common is "day that lasts forever", where events take place after one another but no-one stops to think how much time they would've taken. In D&D, you end up with "15 minute workday" when the environment simply doesn't react or change according to logic. Several genre-approriate and dramatic occurrences can only happen by GM fiat. In respects to encumberance, no real choice between two precious but hard-to-carry treasures can happen if encumberance is not enforced. So on and so forth.

And for all the people saying "magic can handwave it" or "sure, but on the other hand, elf wizards", those are not universal things across RPGs. Plenty of games and settings I play in are high magic, but resource tracking is still important part of them. You can't have proper survival horror if you never have to worry about how many bullets you have left, or whether carrying your pal to safety is worth risking getting outrun by zombies. Besides, I find it improves roleplaying when players have to actually *think* how to get that dragon's horde to safety, rather than just saying "and they arrived in the city with all the treasure".

SiuiS
2014-11-09, 08:15 AM
I'm with frozen feet. The backpack mini game is good for the game, good for the genre.


ACKS uses stone weight. It works wonderfully, and breaks down into "armor is X stone, weapons are Y stone, small items and weapons are 1/Z stone" and makes keeping track as easy as "do I max this skill or only put half points in it?" When tracking skill points.

Yora
2014-11-09, 08:15 AM
Encumbrance is kind of necessary if you're playing a campaign in which travel speed and running out of supplies can become relevant. In many campaigns, that would never come up, and those really don't have much, if any, use for encumbrance.

But I really enjoy games in which the players have to decide how much stuff to carry with them, or if they instead want to be faster. This gets particularly interesting when it comes to getting treasure out of places that have not been completely cleared of all enemies. If you can take all day to carry everything outside and then take a week to drag the full bags back to town, then it doesn't matter what the encumbrance would be.
But in some campaigns, PCs are venturing into hostile territory where there are enemy forces that are actual threats to them, and would be looking for them, instead of just staying permanently in their lair and doing nothing unless someone comes to them to fight them. And in those campaigns, it's often quite important to decide what things to carry, and what to dump and leave behind.

Counting weight by pound is just way too fiddly to be practical. Abstracting weight to much simpler units is a huge improvement in that regard, and I think every group that wants to include encumbrance in some way should do it.

DigoDragon
2014-11-09, 09:45 AM
My past D&D group would follow the encumbrance rules up until they all buy Bags of Holding. After that they ditch keeping track, unless someone is trying to drag along some suits of full plate or other ridiculousness like that. More generally, we just went with encumbrance rules and tried keeping track, even in non-D&D games.

Though with those we usually didn't need to carry much I noticed... maybe D&D was our hoarding game?

Honest Tiefling
2014-11-09, 10:40 AM
Maybe if half of the people had some issues, make it a teensy bit more complex (Divide weapons up a bit more). But this is the type of system I'd prefer to use, because it makes carrying capacity still an issue, but not one that makes me not want to add up numbers because too many numbers.

Then again, I've heard of players trying to carry around boulders in their pockets and buy 1 of every mundane tool to fit into their backpacks, so I really need a short and sweet system to get people to knock it off.

Talakeal
2014-11-09, 03:18 PM
You haven't seen the farms I have, then. Every farmer I've come across has a ton of tools they use, even excluding things like plows and tractors and whatnot. Hoes, rakes, shovels, picks, axes, knives, spikes, scythes, hammers, saws, etc. etc.

Yes. Basically I divide tools into fields tools and workshops. You carry around a few of the basic tools that you will need in the field, and you keep everything else for major tasks back at your home base.

A blacksmith carrying around a hammer, tongs, and a few whetstones allows them to make field repairs, but they are going to need to go back to their forge to actually craft a suit of armor.

Telok
2014-11-09, 03:53 PM
It bothers me when D&D characters carry around 200 arrows, 100 lbs of coins, fifteen looted swords, twenty potions, and ten wands. On the 11 Str sorcerer. Who never even bought a sack, much less a backpack or any magic storage.
And yes, he pulls out anything he's carrying as a "move action".

I dunno, I don't play D&D like it was a video game and it bothers me when people do so. DPS/DPR, "boss mobs", creatures that attack untill dead for no reason, vendor trash magic items as loot. I find the lack of imagination in a game about imagination to be depressing.

I guess I'm saying that I find the encumberance stuff a bit more immersive, a bit more rational and logical, and a part of the game that brings it away from a meaningless cycle of fight-loot-sell that some people seem to play it as.

BWR
2014-11-09, 04:21 PM
Yes. Basically I divide tools into fields tools and workshops. You carry around a few of the basic tools that you will need in the field, and you keep everything else for major tasks back at your home base.

A blacksmith carrying around a hammer, tongs, and a few whetstones allows them to make field repairs, but they are going to need to go back to their forge to actually craft a suit of armor.

OK, so a farmer was a bad example since you aren't going to see much by the way of mobile farmers since agriculture is pretty stationary but to take your example of a smith - a couple of hammers of various sizes, some tongs and a few other minor things like whetstones, files and pincers etc, will be far more bulky and weighty than a scribe's few pens and brushes, a small collection of inks and some leaves of paper or membrane. A set of thieves tools is probably not going to weigh nearly as much as a set of climbing gear with ropes and hooks and spikes and whatnot. Having just one weight cost for two different things where one can weigh up to ten times as much as the other doesn't make much sense.

Talakeal
2014-11-09, 05:07 PM
OK, so a farmer was a bad example since you aren't going to see much by the way of mobile farmers since agriculture is pretty stationary but to take your example of a smith - a couple of hammers of various sizes, some tongs and a few other minor things like whetstones, files and pincers etc, will be far more bulky and weighty than a scribe's few pens and brushes, a small collection of inks and some leaves of paper or membrane. A set of thieves tools is probably not going to weigh nearly as much as a set of climbing gear with ropes and hooks and spikes and whatnot. Having just one weight cost for two different things where one can weigh up to ten times as much as the other doesn't make much sense.

The system measures bulk as much as weight. A single hammer may weigh ten times as much as a dozen scrolls and a bottle of ink but it is much easier to carry around.

But as I said, the system is intentionally abstract, and a lot of players do have a problem with the minor discrepancies it causes.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-11-09, 06:26 PM
Reminds me a bit of how Torchbearer did it, although Torchbearer also makes it more spatial. Items take up "slots". Most items take up one slot, some take up more (like a coil of rope). You have a limited number of slots on your person, though you can wear a backpack to get more slots. On your character sheet, you record what you've got in each slot.

It treats inventory space as a resource, rather similarly to how Deus Ex (the original game) worked.

Jay R
2014-11-09, 07:16 PM
I rigorously enforce encumbrance for starting characters, because at that stage it really matters, and the players have time to fiddle with it.

But I then arrange for them to find a bag of holding fairly soon.

valadil
2014-11-09, 07:22 PM
I want encumbrance to matter in a game. I don't want to track the weight of everything. In my opinion, abstract encumbrance is the only way around this.

But I've never actually played in a game with it. Or if I have, it was forgettable.

I came up with an abstract system for it too. I think it'd play similarly to yours. I don't call my units of encumbrance stones. They're just lines on a page. You get one item per line and characters have varying numbers of lines. The idea was to model inventory grids in video games. Those always seemed like a reasonable way to do encumbrance, but I wouldn't want to draw them every time my pack shuffled around.

Instead of having items use more lines, I think I was planning on having separate lists for small, medium, and large items. That way your small spell components could fit in a medium pouch that was stored on your large backpack. Or something to that effect. It kind of broke down when I tried to think about small items in a heavy slot.

Talakeal
2014-11-09, 11:14 PM
Instead of having items use more lines, I think I was planning on having separate lists for small, medium, and large items. That way your small spell components could fit in a medium pouch that was stored on your large backpack. Or something to that effect. It kind of broke down when I tried to think about small items in a heavy slot.

I kind of like that idea. Something like a backpack is a large item that can hold 10 medium items, or a pouch is a medium item that can hold 10 small items. That's pretty cool.

Kadzar
2014-11-10, 02:01 AM
I've come across two good systems for this. The first is the anti-hammerspace item tracker (http://rottenpulp.blogspot.com/2012/06/matt-rundles-anti-hammerspace-item.html), which turns your inventory into a bunch of slots, rather than one big sack of all your accumulated crap.

The second is Stars Without Number (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/86467/Stars-Without-Number-Free-Edition)'s system, which gives all items an encumbrance value: most things are 1 encumbrance, unless they're large or heavy, like a two-handed weapon or heavy armor, in which case they're 2 encumbrance. Very small things don't count against encumbrance unless you have a lot of them.

Then you can have half your strength value in readied items, which means you can draw or use them as part of an action, and you can carry your full strength value in stowed items, which means you need to take a full round to dig them out.

Aedilred
2014-11-10, 05:22 AM
As a GM in PbP games, I manage and enforce encumbrance at least to some extent. As a player in pen-and-paper games, I buy a cart.

Fortunately, I've never been in a position where either of these solutions hasn't been good enough. In principle I'm in favour of stuff to deal with all the aspects that improve the verisimilitude of a setting, although when it comes to minute fiddly tracking, even if I can be bothered, a lot of people can't.

Jay R
2014-11-10, 09:23 AM
Mathematically, the general form of the knapsack problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem) is NP-hard - which is a mathematical way to say it takes too much time to solve it. It's usually solved approximately, by heuristics.

The non-mathematical equivalence is that tracking both weight and size for packing takes way too much time, and should be approximately solved by heuristics. If somebody wants to grab something in a hurry (a weapon, wand, spell component, etc.), I want to know where it's being kept. You don't walk around with four large weapons on your belt, or three staffs in your hands.

But except for specific items, I ignore it, like most players and DMs.

valadil
2014-11-10, 10:27 AM
I kind of like that idea. Something like a backpack is a large item that can hold 10 medium items, or a pouch is a medium item that can hold 10 small items. That's pretty cool.

Hopefully I'll get around to finishing that system some year. Feel free to steal it if it works for you.

Jay R
2014-11-10, 02:16 PM
Hopefully I'll get around to finishing that system some year. Feel free to steal it if it works for you.

When you design a system, have somebody playtest it by trying to optimize encumbrance with it. That's how you'll find the problems.

Lord Torath
2014-11-10, 02:39 PM
I enforce encumbrance at character creation, and at low levels. Once someone has a bag of holding or a pair of pack horses it becomes less of an issue.

As a player, I always try to keep my encumbrance low enough to still permit full-speed movement.

Knaight
2014-11-10, 05:11 PM
I generally favor just not having codified encumbrance systems. If there is one, having it get in the way less than tracking every pound is nice. Torchbearer comes to mind here - it generally works off of volume, backpacks and similar really matter a whole bunch, so on and so forth.