A weighty issue

[Kynn]

I'm not talking about treasure grubbing, treasure as the purpose of play, or spending hours dividing it up. Perhaps a better term to use is Power. If you're not expected to write down Powers (aka treasure in my parlance) on your PC sheet, why have one?

You lost me at the equation of "treasure" with "Power." I am not following you here.

 

[Libramarian]

This is 5e, everything is modular.

That's not true at all. There's two sides to this whole Next thing. They are trying to give players a longer leash to play the D&D they want to play, but at the same time they're trying to define the "essence of D&D" by playing and examining all the editions for things they have in common, and pare the core back to that. And killing monsters to take their gold, and spending that gold for better stuff with which to kill monsters, is clearly going to identified as an essence of D&D type thing.

Which is good because it's fun.

As to the primary topic at hand, for simple encumbrance I like slot based systems. Like, you can carry one thing in each hand, one thing on each hip, on thing over your shoulder, and 5 things in your backpack.

 

[Libramarian]

You lost me at the equation of "treasure" with "Power." I am not following you here.

First you get the treasure
Then you get the power
Then you get...more treasure

 

[Kynn]

That's not true at all. There's two sides to this whole Next thing. They are trying to give players a longer leash to play the D&D they want to play, but at the same time they're trying to define the "essence of D&D" by playing and examining all the editions for things they have in common, and pare the core back to that. And killing monsters to take their gold, and spending that gold for better stuff with which to kill monsters, is clearly going to identified as an essence of D&D type thing.

Which is good because it's fun.

Actually, I expect that the role of treasure -- and especially buying/making magic items -- will be reduced in 5e compared to previous editions. They say they don't want it to be as magic-item dependent as 3e and 4e were. (AD&D was treasure-dependent if only because a good chunk of your XP came from money.)

 

[howandwhy99]

You lost me at the equation of "treasure" with "Power." I am not following you here.

Powers was a reference to the basic 4E resource. A PC log typically begins as a list of ability ratings and a resource list. If players don't track resources or stats telling them how good they are at stuff (more resources really as these could be supernaturally traded up or down), they why keep character sheets for D&D at all?

 

[tlantl]

For me searching out treasures and wondrous objects, or ancient tomes filled with secrets and spells is one of the things that drew me to the game, and is one of the things that keeps me playing.

I guess for some people trying to keep their fantasy grounded in reality isn't a priority. I like making players think when they find goods. I put big, heavy treasures in small places or give them a mountain of coppers to move.

If they find two suits of armor and three weapons, I don't expect the halfling rogue to throw them on his back and walk out of the tunnel he's in. Drag them, sure. But not carry.

I understand you can drag a burro into a cave. They can help carry stuff, but they need food and protecting. A riding dog works too, and they can also fight.

 

[Blacky the Blackball]

I'm all for as loose an encumbrance system as possible. My ideal system is:

1) There are three pictures in the PHB. One is of an unarmoured person carrying a sword, and with a couple of belt pouches. One is of a person in a chain shirt plus helmet with an axe and round shield, and a backpack on. One is of a person in full plate with sword and kite shield, a bulging backpack, a couple of sacks tied to their belt, a bow and two-handed sword slung across their back, and a mace on their belt.

The player/DM eyeballs the character sheet and points to which picture looks most like the character, and that determines whether the character is "Unencumbered", "Lightly Encumbered" or "Heavily Encumbered".

2) When it comes to large treasure hoards, the DM simply states "it will take two people to carry" or "you'll need a horse and cart" or "you can get it on the back of a donkey" or whatever.

Simple, quick, and from personal experience it works.

 

[Ratskinner]

That's not true at all. There's two sides to this whole Next thing. They are trying to give players a longer leash to play the D&D they want to play, but at the same time they're trying to define the "essence of D&D" by playing and examining all the editions for things they have in common, and pare the core back to that. And killing monsters to take their gold, and spending that gold for better stuff with which to kill monsters, is clearly going to identified as an essence of D&D type thing.

Which is good because it's fun.

As to the primary topic at hand, for simple encumbrance I like slot based systems. Like, you can carry one thing in each hand, one thing on each hip, on thing over your shoulder, and 5 things in your backpack.

Generally, I agree. I would only quibble with "core". My guess is that the 5e PHB/DMG/MM will present a "basic" game that will fit your description fairly well, but also include many modules that folks will consider "core." I would be surprised (not disappointed) if that basic game was the one most groups settled on playing.

 

[delericho]

Now there's plenty of systems out there that use "slots" or the like, I'd much prefer one of those to a weight-based system. However, I'm curious as to how you folks feel. Does anyone out there actually worry about encumbrance? Are there fans of adding up all the weights?

In my experience, things like tracking ammunition or rations are only interesting if there's a risk of running out, which pretty much necessitates tracking encumbrance in some form (or, of course, just stop tracking rations and ammo!). And encumbrance is only interesting if it gives rise to interesting choices.

The current encumbrance system doesn't really work for that. Most groups have at least one character with a super-high Str score, which means they can basically carry as much as they want. In which case, encumbrance becomes a tedious matter of totalling up a whole load of micro-weights... only to ignore the end result because it's well below the Fighter's limit!

My suggested fix would be to divide items into three categories - Major items (a suit of armour, a sword, etc), Minor items (a coin, a potion), and Conditional items. The last would be things like clothing items (boots, cloaks), that count as Minor items if worn, but count as Major items if they are merely carried.

(You would also need to introduce some group items - a coin is probably a Minor item, but a pile of 300 is probably pretty Major!)

Then, count up the number of Major items carried. If this exceeds some threshold (10? Str score? 8 + Str mod?), the character becomes encumbered. If it's 50% above the threshold, he's heavily encumbered. If it's twice the threshold, he can't move.

Doing so is much simpler than tracking all the micro-weights (which change every time the character picks up or drops anything, or fires an arrow, or whatever), gives results that feel "about right", and potentially give rise to interesting decisions.

(The alternative is a slot-based system. Basically, if they're keeping slot-based magic items, beyond the bleeding obvious, they should probably switch to an entirely slot-based encumbrance system. If magic items won't be slot-based, then a simple weight-based encumbrance system is probably best, as it's easier to eyeball item weights.)

 

[pemerton]

Rules for encumbrance are important to have in the core rules. They're easy to ignore when they're present but difficult to add when they're missing.

I don't think this is true. If there are no encumbrance rules in the core, the only people who are likely to miss them are those who are familiar with them from earlier editions. And will therefore be fairly easily able to incorporate those earlier encumbrance rules.

Well seeing as D&D is a role playing game, perhaps thinking about purchasing gear and toting up the encumbrance values of the stuff they buy as part of the gaming experience and not as some onerous detail that impedes the more important rush to the next level or the next three hour combat might help.

I don't agree with this at all. Yes, it is an RPG. So yes, fictional positioning matters. But you don't necessarily need rules for it. There is no rule (that I'm aware of) stating that a bard who loses a finger may have some trouble playing the lute as well as s/he used to. This can be resolved in the course of play. Likewise, I don't need encumbrance rules to tell me that a PC dragging a chest filled with 100s of pounds of coins may have trouble running or jumping without letting go of it.

Collecting gold and magic for example is pretty basic to the game. Other options can be had for limiting it then encumbrance, but ditching treasure collecting altogether is unlikely to be optional.

I'm not talking about treasure grubbing, treasure as the purpose of play, or spending hours dividing it up. Perhaps a better term to use is Power. If you're not expected to write down Powers (aka treasure in my parlance) on your PC sheet, why have one?

Am I to expect D&D 5E to not require character sheets of any kind in the default core game? Modular or not, is that a reasonable design expectation to unify the community?

I agree that D&Dnext is highly likely to have PCs built in terms of capabilities that are both fictional attributes/belongings of the PC and player resources to deploy in the course of playing the game.

These are likely, at a minimum, to include weapons, spells and a range of inherent talents.

But is it a given that they must include 10' poles, iron spikes and torches? And even if they do include these as a default, you yourself note that there are options other than encumbrance for ratioining these things. (The most obvious one is rationing by cost - and spending money to buy things is a one-off burden on playtime and can be done as part of game prep, whereas encumbrance tends to be an ongoing burden on playtime that has to be continually tracked as things are picked up and used/put down.)

Although dungeon play has been one perennial focus of D&D, it was not the only focus and arguably, from the time of Oriental Adventures and Dragonlance through to the end of 2nd edition (a period of around 15 years), was not the primary focus (at least of published materials - extrapolating from these to actual play is of course a tricky business).

I think that encumbrance is likely to be in the core, because it has been in every edition of D&D, but I don't think it is essential that it be there. As one of the most widely ignored of rules subsystems, it is ripe for change.