Heroes vs. gravity

I'm torn. On the one hand, I completely ignore encumberance except by armour in 3.5, and will almost certainly do the same in 4e. On the other hand, it's much easier to ignore something like that than it is to add the rules into the system if it doesn't already have them.

On balance, I'm going to go with "leave it as-is".

Encumberance is strange. It counts only weight, which is just one factor of mobility. Try to carry big paper box from say fridge. Than try to cary a girl in arms. Finally try a backpack with a 50kg load. It will definitely hinder your movement in different ways and sometimes not that much.

I would simply count only weapons/armor into encumberance based on some size category and strenght. Micromanagement of every potion, waterskin and such is really boring.

Alnag said:

Encumberance is strange. It counts only weight, which is just one factor of mobility. Try to carry big paper box from say fridge. Than try to cary a girl in arms. Finally try a backpack with a 50kg load. It will definitely hinder your movement in different ways and sometimes not that much.

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Yes and no. The weights of items (particularly weapons) given in the PHB tend not to be accurate, but instead describe more how the object in question hinders your movement. It tends not to do that terribly well, but that's because the system is hacked together rather than because it only counts the raw weight of items.

Sammael said:

Encumbrance should be simplified and made more abstract. It should be a function of both volume and weight. I am in favor of the WP system proposed above.

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It kind of already does.

EDIT: Ack, beaten to the punch.

Szatany said:

Am I the only one who thinks that encumbrance rules are more trouble then they are worth? I'd love to see a simplified system where only meaningful items have abstract weight (like longsword - 1 weight point), and a character can carry a number of WP equal to his Str score.

Later I will start a similar thread about upkeeping gold, but have to think it through first.

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IME the encumbrance system never gets used as is.. which means it either should be ditched or revamped. Most complaints I have heard is that it takes too much time to calculate.

I think an abstract system using WP's would suffice, and the abstractness could include both weight and ungainlyness. I have yet to look at the PC's IMC regarding encumbrance, but they haven't had a chance to really get lots of stuff yet.

Of course, if you use a Medium LSword as the 'base', you would need fractional WPs.. and the WP would have to depend on the character as well.
Perhaps double for one size larger, half for one size smaller. Dagger = 1/2 WP. Normal outfit = 1/2 WP .. etc..

Anyway...

I've never seen encumbrance rules used except for low str wizards.

I like the encumbrance rules. I use the encumbrance rules. It's not difficult. Like bonuses and everything else, having a place on the CRS helps people to track it. Near as I can tell, the people who don't like encumbrance don't need different "abstract" rules for it because they don't like messing with it period. I seriously doubt adding new rules or changing the rules will make them think "Oh wow, encumbrance rocks! How did I ever play without it?!?" For the people who do use it (of which I guesss I'm one of the few who visits the boards), I think changing it would just be annoying.

It seems like it would be change for the sake of change. And that's not a good reason to change it.

In our OD&D games encumbrance is measured in Coin. It isn't difficult to track and mainly just gets remeasured between sessions or when obviously necessary (grabbing heaps of treasure or gear).

This may not be the best solution for everyone. Our sheets are almost all notes first and foremost. Second is ownership lists. The handful of stats is smallest, but put first for ease. So, with the importance on what we own, where it is, what it is, what it can do, etc., encumbrance is important. And it's also one of the few rules items we deal with while playing.

In D20, something like the following might work similarly. Coin being an abstraction for weight and bulk.
Carrying Capacity = 2500 Coin +/-250 for Strength modifier
Item Weights are measured in Coin. 1 lb.= 50 Coins
Wearable Items like armor and shields have 2 costs: worn and unworn

And of course, 1 Coin = 1 coin (so the focus is on what's important )

As a player, I tried bothering with encumberence in the beginning of a AoW campaign. I even made sure my Heward's Handy Haversack didn't burst open!

When I realized my DM didn't care, I began to overlook it. Besides, he treated every Bag of Holding/Handy Haversack as a somewhat infinite reserve of weight (my foppish character had a "Armoire of Holding" which contained plenty of outfits as well as a "who-cares" limit to volume/weight). It never really came up that I tried to carry something too big for my strength, so long as I didn't try lifting a two-ton piece of marble; say... from a marble fountain in a dungeon that my character stone shape'd into a sphere in order to try to gain extra GP!

It's one of those things that premade adventures don't bother to assign GP worth to. It wound up disappearing by the time I got access to shrink item, so all that "Player-trying-to-get-more-treasure-than-intended" malarkey ended up out the door. No complaints from me, of course, I know those types of things aren't intended as extra treasure.

getgoldcardsoul said:

It's one of those things that premade adventures don't bother to assign GP worth to. It wound up disappearing by the time I got access to shrink item, so all that "Player-trying-to-get-more-treasure-than-intended" malarkey ended up out the door. No complaints from me, of course, I know those types of things aren't intended as extra treasure.

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No. Of course not. They're intended as extremely expensive miniaturized wrecking balls. Start bowling with a little marble, and say the command word just before you hit this pins mooks.