Equipment and Persnickety Details

[Richards]

I remember hearing about a 1E wizard who had so many daggers in sheaths strapped to various parts of his body, his DM eventually gave him an AC bonus (and chance of spell failure) as a result of it.

Johnathan

 

[Alzrius]

I also like the idea of making characters carefully chart what, and how, they're carrying. Like the OP, I've also found that this works better in theory than in practice.

I do like the "one piece of paper per piece of equipment" idea, but I wonder how well that'll work when you apply it to each one of a character's twenty-seven arrows.

I am, however, considering trying out the optional rules for how equipment is carried in Van Graaf's Journal of Adventuring, however.

 

[Water Bob]

I also like the idea of making characters carefully chart what, and how, they're carrying. Like the OP, I've also found that this works better in theory than in practice.

It used to work very well in my Traveller game.

I do like the "one piece of paper per piece of equipment" idea, but I wonder how well that'll work when you apply it to each one of a character's twenty-seven arrows.

That's a bit extreme. I'd put the quiver and arrows on one sheet. If you give away the quiver, you give away the sheet. If you give away arrows, you lower the count on the sheet.

 

[Lwaxy]

So, now, I'm using index cards. Each card represents one piece of equipment. If a character loses his boots, then I take away that card. If a dagger is lost in a fight, then I take away that card. If a player gives his PC's favorite necklace to another, the card is transplanted from one PC folder to the next.

Yup, almost always done that. I would get way too confused otherwise, and same with my players. Just one of the GMs I play with keeps getting irritated, but that is mainly because the other players can't seem to get their stuff in order

 

[Lwaxy]

which we had enchanted to work as a communal bag of holding.

GREAT idea. I need to have my Company of Company of Chaos do that when they meet up next time.

 

[jedavis]

Yep, not to do it.

That said, if I was going to I'd opt for the method with the least makework. I'd probably use Excel or an iphone app to track items. That way you can automatically figure out weight/encumbrance, and it's easy to deduct for each day's food.

3e bags of holding are, I believe, pierced and ruined by unsheathed sharp objects; they don't have the catastrophic dimension-rending effects of earlier editions, though.

Hmmm... a googledoc spreadsheet might work even better, actually. All party members could concurrently edit it, you could do encumbrance calculations for each, and the DM could check it to make sure things were on the up-and-up. The next best solution would probably be a dropbox'd excel spreadsheet, but you can't concurrently edit that.

(Don't give my Traveller GM this idea... I'm the Keeper of the Cargo Manifest, and if he knew how much money we're making (all of it legally, but still), he'd skin me).

 

[howandwhy99]

"How do you manage the bookkeeping without bogging down the game?"
Do you have a good system for tracking and placing equipment?

As I understand it encumbrance originally covered bulk and mass (coin). There's a neat trick to this (that I'm not revealing) I use to keep track of encumbrance and item net worth all at once en masse. Regardless, simplify, simplify, simplify is the name of the game.

Equipment is something I ask my players to track, but don't require it (like all stats). It is being tracked if they wish to study carrying stuff and all the factors accounted for in it. However, as was mentioned earlier in the thread this kind of thing typically only comes up in early sessions at low level. It's figured out quick enough or other resources like a bag of holding make it unnecessary for players for the most part (not that those giant container's contents aren't tracked either, they are. It's simply they rarely reach a capacity to where penalties are assessed).

Tracking treasure is part of the game. Keeping it as simple as possible is part of making a good game prior to play. Can't share too much more without giving my own away, but tying in a large number of factors in a single stat isn't that hard (or uncommon).

 

[GSHamster]

Can't share too much more without giving my own away, but tying in a large number of factors in a single stat isn't that hard (or uncommon).

Umm, why not reveal your technique? Is there something I'm missing that requires you to keep it secret?

 

[Water Bob]

However, as was mentioned earlier in the thread this kind of thing typically only comes up in early sessions at low level.

That greatly depends on the type of game world your group is exploring. There are many universes in which campaigns are set, from the published ones, to third party game worlds, to homebrew universes where the only limitation is the DM's imagination. Many campaigns won't have bags of holding. Mine doesn't, that's for sure.

Don't always think in default D&D universe terms.

Umm, why not reveal your technique? Is there something I'm missing that requires you to keep it secret?

Yeah, I don't get it either. Why would you care if someone used your method in their game?

 

[howandwhy99]

In a world without container-magic items, equipment is going to be dispersed more readily and I simply tell players when they begin to take penalties by describing their PCs speed or fatigue due to penalties from this stuff.

The game I run is a puzzle game, so all of the underlying code is there for them to puzzle out. It's for their pleasure, not the community's to puzzle out the mechanics. But it isn't that hard to come up with variants either. Lots of games track equipment mechanically, some differently, that can be used for inspiration.