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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5836761" data-attributes="member: 22424">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.)</blockquote>

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