D&D 5E The Beauty of Encumberance

I strongly hinted to my level 4 party that since they were heading into the mountains and would be farther away from civilization than they ever had been that they'd have to tell me everything they were buying (and they were wealthy enough to afford any mundane outdoor gear) and how and where they were transporting it.

They decided on buying just one mule to go with the donkey they already had. They were crushed, both because they liked their new mule and because they lost half their carrying capacity, when one of the animals was killed by a griffon. They lost half of their healing kits (which are required to regain HP during a short rest), half their food, all of their cooking equipment, half of their clothing, etc.

It sucked. A lot. However, it was one way to add some complications short of character death. And I'm always looking for some ways to add complications that aren't death.

guachi said:

I strongly hinted to my level 4 party that since they were heading into the mountains and would be farther away from civilization than they ever had been that they'd have to tell me everything they were buying (and they were wealthy enough to afford any mundane outdoor gear) and how and where they were transporting it.

They decided on buying just one mule to go with the donkey they already had. They were crushed, both because they liked their new mule and because they lost half their carrying capacity, when one of the animals was killed by a griffon. They lost half of their healing kits (which are required to regain HP during a short rest), half their food, all of their cooking equipment, half of their clothing, etc.

It sucked. A lot. However, it was one way to add some complications short of character death. And I'm always looking for some ways to add complications that aren't death.

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We hand wave too much! This adds a level of grit and bad assery that I realize I love!

Ancalagon said:

As in, not making strength a dump stat? Enforce encumbrance - and not the basic rule, the one with light and heavy encumbrance. Suddenly strength isn't a dump stat anymore! Quelle surprise.

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Nope. If the only thing that can make Strength not a dump stat is enforcing boring bookkeeping on the players, the game is designed poorly and I'm not going to steal fun and time doing accounting instead of roleplay and adventure in order to enact a stopgap workaround.

Anyway, I can easily say "you're not strong enough to carry all that because you dumped your strength" without needing player to total and retotal what they are carrying. "Well, I got that extra mace, but I went through two days of rations so I'm still not slowed."

But really, I more have my players saying "I don't think I'm strong enough to carry that, we have to figure a way to move that out of here". Ah, trust.

I dislike encumberance. ALOT.

Though, I wouldn't be opposed to a ability check resolution to carrying anything over a certain base carrying capacity. I also wouldn't mind that base capacity being less than what is currently allowed as a characters maximum carrying capacity.

transtemporal said:

Yeah. I basically just had a two week long argument about this with my group. Generally, I try to give them enough carrying capacity via strategically placed bags of holding that we never need to worry about this, but... they happened to sack a castle that had a huge chunk of loot. Like about a 100k gold all up and I noted they only had capacity to carry at best, about a tenth of it.

What ensued was a hand-wringing examination of the encumbrance system with rules lawyering and submissions to the judge about why it's mean to give out too much loot. I've totally taken this on board as a player request and resolve to give out less of all types of treasure in future, but in the mean time they came up with all kinds of plans to remove it including wagon trains, summoned creatures and hiring mages to teleport it out. I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it completely hilarious.

In the end, they figured out a way to do it in several trips using the Cubic Gate they looted. Kinda regretting giving them that now. Oh well.

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Reminds me (in a totally different way) that we drove my DM crazy in a 2E game back in college. We normally nickled and dimed everything, taking every last copper whenever we could.

During one adventure we got off track by following a red herring, and it turned out we found ourselves in a dragon's lair instead of the villain's. After a VERY nasty fight, we slew the dragon... and had a horde on our hands. We didn't have time to take it back to town, and we didn't have any portable holes or available bags of holding (we had one, but it was already full with stuff for the actual villain's lair). We just cast Detect Magic and searched the pile for gems and jewlery, leaving somewhere in the range of 10,000,000 gp worth of coins. We had more capacity, but we couldn't afford to be slowed down by it, so we went with highest value:weight ratio, plus magic items. The DM's jaw hit the floor

Side story (I'm old and ramble; deal with it): our halfling player left the group shortly after (work related), so he set up with the DM that his character was going to hire townsfolk to go back to the lair with him and cart it all back, trip by trip. We were gone from that town for about 6 months game time, and returned to find him enshrined as mayor for life (with a gold statue of him in the town square), and it was now a vibrant trade city. However, the entire economy was borked, with copper replacing gold due to the deflation of gold and silver. We had to sell our gems and jewelry to get copper so we could buy stuff in the town (unless we wanted to buy it with gold at 200x normal price), because gold was all we had

Blue said:

Nope. If the only thing that can make Strength not a dump stat is enforcing boring bookkeeping on the players, the game is designed poorly

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It's called an excel spreadsheet. It's not hard You do it once - heck you can save your basic kit from one adventurer to the next - and you go "ok, I have 7 pounds to spare" and don't touch the rest much. Can you manage 7 pounds of equipment? It's not like "oh noes, I found a dagger now I have to recalculate all my gear!?!". Do you have spare room, or do you not. If yes, great. If not, decide what you will leave behind.

edit: I will concede however that the dex supremacy *is* a problem.

But really, I more have my players saying "I don't think I'm strong enough to carry that, we have to figure a way to move that out of here". Ah, trust.

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A lot of people have no idea how heavy their stuff is...

Croesus said:

Situations like this are the only time I enforce encumbrance. For the day-to-day adventuring, it's not worth the effort. But when it forces players to make choices that matter...

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I use the very cool equipment tracking sheet that you can find here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1232

It's amazing, and my players keep track of day-to-day adventuring gear using it. (It uses the more realistic and gritty alternative encumbrance rules.) Now, my players enjoy details like this. We've been playing together for years and enjoy keeping track of the specifics. If I were running a short campaign with people who were new to the game, I wouldn't bother.

But if you do want to run a campaign using the details of encumbrance, it really pulls in and highlights other rules and abilities, like strength scores, the use of mounts to carry gear, spells like tenser's floating disc, and magic items such as bags of holding and portable holes. It makes all those things important.

And the above sheet makes keeping track of gear much simpler and actually fun, so I highly recommend it if you go that direction.

Ancalagon said:

It's called an excel spreadsheet. It's not hard You do it once - heck you can save your basic kit from one adventurer to the next - and you go "ok, I have 7 pounds to spare" and don't touch the rest much. Can you manage 7 pounds of equipment? It's not like "oh noes, I found a dagger now I have to recalculate all my gear!?!". Do you have spare room, or do you not. If yes, great. If not, decide what you will leave behind.

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So am I doing this at the table with my handwritten character sheet? Am I emailing the DM between sessions to ask how heavy the set of gold goblets we found are because it didn't come up (and now she needs to take tiem to figure it out), and then to the other players to juggle who's carrying what treasure around so someone can carry it?

What is the reward for all of this? If it's just stopping STR from being a dumpstat then any accounting is too much work to inflict on all of the players for that minuscule bit of reward.

1: Stopping strength from being a dump stat is not minuscule. 2: see the OP

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Kobold Stew said:

i
I really wish the PHB has provided weights for the standard packs.

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You know that's a great point... So, I figure this is as good a thread as any to quantify the weights for the standard packs for everyone's convenience.

Burglar's Pack = 48 lbs.
- Backpack = 5 lbs.
- Bag of Ball Bearings = 2 lbs.
- 10ft. String = 0 lbs.
- Bell = 0 lbs.
- Candles = 0 lbs.
- Crowbar = 5 lbs.
- Hammer = 3 lbs.
- 10 Pitons = 3 lbs.
- Hooded Lantern = 2 lbs.
- 2 Flasks of Oil = 2 lbs.
- 5 Rations = 10 lbs.
- Tinderbox = 1 lbs.
- Waterskin = 5 lbs.
- 50ft. Rope = 10 lbs.

Diplomat's Pack = 36 lbs.
- Chest = 25 lbs.
- 2 Scroll Cases = 2 lbs.
- Fine Clothes = 6 lbs.
- Bottle of Ink = 0 lbs.
- Ink Pen = 0 lbs.
- Lamp = 1 lbs.
- 2 Flasks of Oil = 2 lbs.
- 5 Sheets of Paper = 0 lbs.
- Perfume = 0 lbs.
- Sealing Wax = 0 lbs.
- Soap = 0 lbs.

Dungeoneer's Pack = 62 lbs.
- Backpack = 5 lbs.
- Crowbar = 5 lbs.
- Hammer = 3 lbs.
- 10 Pitons = 3 lbs.
- 10 Torches = 10 lbs.
- Tinderbox = 1 lbs.
- 10 Rations = 20 lbs.
- Waterskin = 5 lbs.
- 50ft. Rope = 10 lbs.

Entertainer's Pack = 38 lbs.
- Backpack = 5 lbs.
- Bedroll = 7 lbs.
- 2 Costumes = 8 lbs.
- 5 Candles = 0 lbs.
- 5 Rations = 10 lbs.
- Waterskin = 5 lbs.
- Disguise Kit = 3 lbs.

Explorer's Pack = 59 lbs.
- Backpack = 5 lbs.
- Bedroll = 7 lbs.
- Mess Kit = 1 lbs.
- Tinderbox = 1 lbs.
- 10 Torches = 10 lbs.
- 10 Rations = 20 lbs.
- Waterskin = 5 lbs.
- 50ft. Rope = 10 lbs.

Priest's Pack = 26 lbs.
- Backpack = 5 lbs.
- Blanket = 3 lbs.
- 10 Candles = 0 lbs.
- Tinderbox = 1 lbs.
- Alms Box = 1 lbs.
- 2 Blocks Incense = 0 lbs.
- Censer = 1 lbs.
- Vestments (Fine Clothes) = 6 lbs.
- 2 Rations = 4 lbs.
- Waterskin = 5 lbs.

Scholar's Pack = 12 lbs.
- Backpack = 5 lbs.
- Book of Lore = 5 lbs.
- Bottle of Ink = 0 lbs.
- Ink Pen = 0 lbs.
- 10 Sheets of Parchment = 0 lbs.
- Bag of Sand = 1 lbs.
- Small Knife (Dagger) = 1 lbs.