"Wait, that didn't work right" - the Dysfunctional Rules Collection

[TuggyNE]

IIRC in d&d the "weight" is not "mass" but "how hard it's to carry around" so even object that doesn't actually need any strength to carry (because it has so low density it floats in the air) still would have "weight" because it needs space. Or something.

Weight != mass != volume != motion drag. I suspect they were looking for mass, i.e. the amount of material there, but I suppose if you really majorly mess up units you could imagine it was volume. (I've never heard of anyone measuring volume in pounds, though, so that's puzzling.)

If they really were trying to abstract away all those things into a single metric of carrying difficulty, though, they should have called it something more sensible (and largely made up) like "stones"* or perhaps "lugs". And in any case, I can't figure out how that would actually solve the problem at hand: something that floats in air and has only 1% of the mass is just not going to be very difficult to carry by any measurement, unless it's too voluminous to use.


*I am aware that a stone is a real unit of measurement, but no one in most parts of the world is likely to know how much it is or even exactly what it is, so it works well enough.