D&D 5E Experiment with Equipment Slots, I'd love your feedback

[BookTenTiger]

As a DM I've never been a stickler for encumbrance or inventory management; I've never found that players actually enjoy it. However, I was fiddling around with an idea and I'd love some feedback on it!

Here is a link to the Google Doc I created.

The basic idea is that each character has a number of "Equipment Slots" they can use to store items. Light weapons, spell foci, and small items take up 1 Slot. Most weapons, light armor, and medium-size weapons take up 2 Slots. Heavy or two-handed weapons, medium or heavy armor, and large weapons take up 3 slots. 100 Coins take up 1 Slot. A character has a number of Equipment Slots equal to Strength Score + Proficiency Bonus.

The Equipment page also has a section for Sheaths. Items listed here can be drawn during combat as part of movement or an Interact with Object.

There is also a Bandolier, which can store small items such as spell components, potions, daggers, or scrolls, and which can be drawn as an Interact with Object.

Finally there's a sheet for Storage, on which players can list items stored in treasure chests, homes, pack animals, etc.

I guess my goal with this would be to give the players both more control and more accountability over their equipment. They would have an opportunity to think tactically about what they want available in combat. Stronger characters would be rewarded for investing in Strength. And no one would have to calculate the weight of their equipment.

What do you think? Would this be a fun tool for players to use? Or should I just forget about equipment slots like I normally do?

 

[cbwjm]

I do like equipment slots for simple equipment management, not sure how I feel about the small races get -3, but maybe that's something to test in play.

 

[GMMichael]

Here is a link to the Google Doc I created.

I guess my goal with this would be to give the players both more control and more accountability over their equipment. They would have an opportunity to think tactically about what they want available in combat. Stronger characters would be rewarded for investing in Strength. And no one would have to calculate the weight of their equipment.

What do you think? Would this be a fun tool for players to use? Or should I just forget about equipment slots like I normally do?

Gear accountability is sadly overlooked in general. I don't want to add up the weight of 13 items (especially the ones that weigh less than one pound each), and gear slots eliminate that problem. I also don't want to watch my weapon-hauling ally somehow fight unencumbered with a sword, shield, bow, quiver, and backpack all being worn/wielded at the same time.

Viva la henchmen - may they return to D&D and haul our stuff!

 

[R_J_K75]

What do you think? Would this be a fun tool for players to use?

In theory I always thought that tracking equipment and encumbrance should be done but in practice using weight to do so was more trouble than it's worth. Shadowdark uses a very similar system that utilizes equipment slots as you are proposing, with some items taking up more slots than others. It is rather simple and seems to work well but after playing it my only thought is that even though the equipment list is rather short it would just be easier if everything took up one slot even if it's not too realistic.

 

[Laurefindel]

My equipment/encumbrance variant is very similar. 3 levels of encumbrance based on light/medium/heavy. Worked very well for us. Yours looks just as good.

 

[el-remmen]

I may take and tweak your system, so I'd say, "Looks okay to me!"

 

[Krachek]

ShadowDark bring a nice slot system. Take a look at the free content.

 

[Quickleaf]

As a DM I've never been a stickler for encumbrance or inventory management; I've never found that players actually enjoy it. However, I was fiddling around with an idea and I'd love some feedback on it!

Here is a link to the Google Doc I created.

The basic idea is that each character has a number of "Equipment Slots" they can use to store items. Light weapons, spell foci, and small items take up 1 Slot. Most weapons, light armor, and medium-size weapons take up 2 Slots. Heavy or two-handed weapons, medium or heavy armor, and large weapons take up 3 slots. 100 Coins take up 1 Slot. A character has a number of Equipment Slots equal to Strength Score + Proficiency Bonus.

The Equipment page also has a section for Sheaths. Items listed here can be drawn during combat as part of movement or an Interact with Object.

There is also a Bandolier, which can store small items such as spell components, potions, daggers, or scrolls, and which can be drawn as an Interact with Object.

Finally there's a sheet for Storage, on which players can list items stored in treasure chests, homes, pack animals, etc.

I guess my goal with this would be to give the players both more control and more accountability over their equipment. They would have an opportunity to think tactically about what they want available in combat. Stronger characters would be rewarded for investing in Strength. And no one would have to calculate the weight of their equipment.

What do you think? Would this be a fun tool for players to use? Or should I just forget about equipment slots like I normally do?

Your approach is very similar to my own house rules for slot-based encumbrance. Biggest difference is that I also differentiate between "equipped slots" & "stored slots."

The challenge has been getting players to adopt it – specifically to record next to their gear how many slots something takes up. Across the board, I see this being the biggest stumbling block in my own game. It's hard enough getting players to track equipment accurately, so getting them to pay attention to an additional element is even harder.

If I were playing in person, I miiiight try some kind of graphical system (the kind of thing you see in Knave or Cairn iirc with little cards/tokens going onto a physical "Gear sheet" with slots that are filled in with the cards/tokens).