D&D 5E The Beauty of Encumberance

[Yunru]

The other day I had my party come across an old vault full of gold. Suddenly the characters are emptying their pockets and making hard choices on what to take and what to leave. The Moon Druid even decided to load up until he couldn't move and spent the rest of the time in Wild Shape.

Truly, encumberance is a wonderful tool.

 

[Croesus]

The other day I had my party come across an old vault full of gold. Suddenly the characters are emptying their pockets and making hard choices on what to take and what to leave. The Moon Druid even decided to load up until he couldn't move and spent the rest of the time in Wild Shape.

Truly, encumberance is a wonderful tool.

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...

 

[Satyrn]

That's the beauty of a portable hole.

 

[Cyrinishad]

I've always used Encumbrance in my games... I can't imagine going without it. It makes decisions about transportation & resources relevant, and gets people away from the video game inventory mentality of "loot everything"... It's even relevant for day-to-day adventuring. The standard carrying capacity rules set your maximum weight at Strength x15, which is so high that every character can wander around fully equipped & carrying enough loot to look like one of those guys smacking coconuts together in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"... It's cartoonish at best.

Meanwhile, the Encumbrance rules reduce your movement at Strength x5, and further reduce movement/disadvantage at Strength x10... This is absolutely relevant in day-to-day adventuring, because the equipment in the standard "Explorer's Pack" weighs approx. 60 lbs... Weapons & Light Armor combined is 15-20 lbs... That means every character that has "standard" starting equipment is going to have their overland travel rate reduced if they don't have at least 16 Strength. Obviously, the players in my campaigns appreciate the value of a good horse.

 

[Blue]

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...

Exactly. The corollary to "only roll when the results matter" is "only bog down your players in bookkeeping when result matter".

 

[jayoungr]

What usually happens when my players encounter a giant hoard like that is that they turn to me and say "Okay, how much of this can we carry away?"

 

[Shiroiken]

Due to the... generous... nature of 5E's standard encumbrance, the real difficulty is often overlooked: carry capacity. Confused? Look at the amount that containers can carry, and then figure out how you're going to carry the containers (not the weight, but the actual method of holding them). Str characters can carry far more than they can reasonably hold, simply because they can't hold that many containers. To take as much as they can carry, they won't have a free hand to fight with (or cast spells, or carry a light, etc.). Oh, and if you're thinking that players can use rope to tie a bunch of bags together and carry the mess, that leaves that player needing to take an action (at least) to free themselves from the contraption before they can fight. The good part of this, is that they don't have to worry about the weight of armor and treasure, merely the containers they bring with them.

On another note, I'd bet that most people who feel that Dex is vastly superior to Str think that encumbrance is an unnecessary part of the game

 

[Kobold Stew]

the equipment in the standard "Explorer's Pack" weighs approx. 60 lbs...

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

 

[Ancalagon]

Exactly. The corollary to "only roll when the results matter" is "only bog down your players in bookkeeping when result matter".

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.

 

[transtemporal]

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.