"Bulk" rules are needed

[StreamOfTheSky]

Do you know how long an arrow is? I don't see how you could cram ONE quiver filled with arrows into a pack, let alone four or five.

Depends how big the back pack is, and if in your world all backpacks come in the same square-ish shape, or you could get one with dimensions better suited to holding quivers. In which case an archer obviously would. No, I don't particularly know the length of an arrow, haven't done archery in alomst a decade. I'd guess about 2 or 2.5 ft, roughly. If a pack is large enough, seems like it could fit.

 

[Fifth Element]

All encumbrance systems are awesome!

2.5 feet is about right for modern archery, I think. Longbow arrow may have been longer.

 

[Dire Bare]

This reminds me of an old pewter miniature I used to see in hobby stores. It was a guy, hunched over with so much gear it looked like he had a house on his back. The overall effect looked like the peons who followed King Arthur and the knights around in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The miniature was called: "The Adventurer".

I had this figure too!! We used it to represent our party's "Nodwick"!! Poor guy.

 

[Grazzt]

What's wrong with saying, "You cannot reasonably carry around 20 quivers," and leave it at that?

No need for a rule when you have Rule 0 to cover the weirdness of the rules.

Personally I would say no more than 2 quivers, maybe three.

And for the record, yes - I believe in tracking ammo.

This. As DM you simply say "Uh no. 20 quivers. No way."

Problem solved.

 

[D.Shaffer]

I'm going to come at this in a slightly more round about way.

Have you tried asking your player why he feels the need to carry 20+ quivers of arrows on his person at all times? If he honestly feels he needs that many, there might be a different problem going on. Better to get at the root of the problem and treat that rather then slap a house rule on him that he's likely going to take as unfair if he thinks he needs that many to be effective.

 

[Betote]

...But it was anyway. Anyone who thinks D&D 3.5 has a rule for everything either hasn't played it for very long, has done nothing other than the same cycle of combat actions (say, charge, full attack, full attack, withdraw, beg for healing, repeat) ad nauseum, or had a pushover DM. In the latter case, the player should at least be aware that he was allowed things that should not have been, even if he couldn't pick out any specific examples.

Hey, what I like most about d20-based games (including 3.x and 4e) is that they do have a rule for everything: roll a d20, add something and try to beat a DC

 

[DeusExMachina]

Archer classes do turn into utter useless idiots in combat when they run out of arrows and if that is his fear, you could probably take that fear away by saying he can make a quiver of arrows during camping time or so as long as he has access to branches and such during the day. That way he doesn't need to carry so many quivers, he has a cool skill/ability to go along with his character and this ridiculous encumbrance thing is solved.