Encumbrance: Good or Bad?

[Prince Atom]

I have had the virtuous impulse to enforce encumbrance rules for all of about three sessions; and then all of my players are complaining and so I drop it in order to focus on storytelling and whatnot.

How does everyone here feel about the encumbrance rules? Do you enforce them or not? As players, have you found ways around them?

If you don't enforce encumbrance, it makes the game easier but the players tend to overlook or devalue such things as mules or donkeys, Tenser's Floating Disk (now there's a greedy wizard's spell) and the various extradimensional items like the bag of holding.

Enforcing those rules makes those items more valuable, but slows down game play.

Either of these statements true or false?

TWK
"Oh, but if I add that 100-lb diamond from the altar, my speed drops by one point!"

 

[hong]

As a rule, I hate bookkeeping. I'm quite happy to ignore detailed encumbrance calculations in the games I run, and just use whatever weight penalty "feels right".

I'd even ignore ammo issues if I could, but that's probably going too far for most people.

 

[AGGEMAM]

Enforce.

Note also the 'Max Dex AC bonus' on the encumberence chart, that can have some pretty severe side-effect if the rogue decides to take that 30 lbs goblets of pure gold.

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm on the fence with this one as a DM. And, as a player, I enforce myself.

But, there are two reasons why this is a pain in the butt:

1) It is somewhat hard to keep track of such bookkeeping.

2) A lot of items in the book weigh SO much that you have to have a Strength of 14 or higher to have a halfway decent chance of carrying even normal equipment.

So, I understand why players are reluctant to even attempt it. It's just not fun to either actually do, or to contemplate how much you are actually carrying.

Recently, the party in my campaign went through a portal that only allowed magical items and any item touching your skin to go with you. It sure cleared up the bookkeeping problems quick and made sure that armor was the overwhelming factor as to who was encumbered or not.

 

[ForceUser]

It's a pain. Still, as a DM I try to enforce but I don't harp on it, and as a player I try to police myself. I figure that as long as I keep my character's weight under the max load, I will move at my normal rate (usually 20' for my characters). I think it's important to try to upkeep encumbrance, though, because it lends importance to having a Str score and Dex mod on armors. When you factor in fatigue rules on top of that it can make for some challenging gameplay.

 

[Wyr]

My way

a make a surprise check of the equipment carried by the players about every 4 levels. If they're caught using an incorrect weight category, they're force to carry all that equipment around for 2 other levels, facing all the penalities.

It works

Bye
Fabio

 

[0-hr]

You should at least enforce the penatlies for armor. But since those overlap the encumberance penalties, things will usually work themselves out. If you want to go to the next level of detail, have the characters figure out their weight with their "standard" gear and just make a note of how much leeway they have until they fall into the next category. That gives you a good idea about how much junk they can pick up in the dungeon, without having to worry about every copper piece. They don't have to track every extra pound, but they do have to decide who is going to carry that 50lb golden statue.

As a small (and weak) character, I know what a pain those encumberance charts can be. Luckily, the Heward's Haversack is one of the cheapest, and most powerful, items available at lower levels.

 

[Artoomis]

Encumbrance is very importnant to the game. It adds value to the strength choice for non-fighters. However, constantly keeping track of it is not worth the effort. We have found that what works well for our group is:

Each player is responsible for knowing how much his character is carrying normally, and how much more he can carry without penalty. We sort of ad-hoc keep track of this during gaming session, without worrying about it over-much. Mostly it's only an issue when finding treasure or having to haul someone's body around.

It is important, though, as being encumbered has the same penalties as wearing armor, and it's pretty easy for a low/average strength character to get overloaded.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

IMO if you do not use the encumbrance penalties you should reduce or eliminate the armor penalties, too. Fair is fair.

Even with a 14 Str you have to make some non-trivial decisions about your equipment to stay within the Light category. It adds up surprisingly quickly. Food? Or a spare dagger?

Just the other day my armor-clad character failed a Str-affecting poison save and could not move due to encumbrance. That was an eye-opener!

 

[Geoff Watson]

I'm generally not strict about encumberence IMC, only bringing it up if someone is being obviously silly (eg grabbing 12 suits of ogre-sized full plate as loot).

Most of the players keep track of encumberence themselves, though they often forget to include loot or 'group items'.

Most of the PCs have Bags of Holding or Hewards Handy Heversacks, so encumberence is rarely a problem.

Geoff.