Heroes vs. gravity

[Szatany]

Am I the only one who thinks that encumbrance rules are more trouble then they are worth? I'd love to see a simplified system where only meaningful items have abstract weight (like longsword - 1 weight point), and a character can carry a number of WP equal to his Str score.

Later I will start a similar thread about upkeeping gold, but have to think it through first.

 

[Bront]

Abstraction has the disadvantage of being... well, abstract.

There are several rules that are commonly ignored in Encumberance. In particular, your clothing/outfit does not count against your encumberance, so wearing a nobles outfit on a weak noble does not put the poor guy into medium encumberance unless he's wearing 30 pounds of jewelry.

I've found the problem with ignoring encumberance is that you end up with players carrying around everything they find, particularly the golfbag of swords ("A Wereshark? Caddy, my #7 Ironsword should be good") or other unreasonable things. (I've seen a player who was carrying so much, that the end weight was heavier than his horse!). On the other hand, meticulous tracking of it can be tedius as well. A good compromise is to have them track most things, on on occasion update it, but don't penalize them for carrying around something extra for just a but (unless that's the point).

But, that is part of the fun of the game, and a balance point as well. Want to be nimble and quick? Either have the strength to lug around all that gear, or learn to do with smaller, lighter gear (or just less gear).

And it's not like there aren't, or won't be carry all magic items.

 

[blargney the second]

When I'm DMing I am extremely prone to hand-waviness wrt encumbrance. If it's too much to carry, it's usually pretty darn obvious and I let my players know. The rest of the time I turn a blind eye.
-blarg

 

[Darkness]

Heh. When I saw the thread title, I thought this would be about falling damage. (Was in forum index, where the 'Equipment' tag doesn't show up.)

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not too concerned about encumbrance most of the time, but every now and then I'll check a few character sheets and see if things are being kept reasonable. More often than finding overencumbered characters, I'll find characters with little or no basic equipment at all because the player hasn't bothered...*then* I holler.

Encumbrance becomes more of an issue if a party finds more loot than they can carry and gets greedy (I give out very few devices of Holding).

Lanefan

 

[Shadeydm]

I thought it was going to be about how unfun it is that only arcane casters get to fly and that fighters and rogues should be able to as well.

 

[pogre]

I pretty much hand wave encumbrance now unless a PC has a ridiculous amount of equipment.

 

[Glyfair]

I'd love to see a simplified system where only meaningful items have abstract weight (like longsword - 1 weight point), and a character can carry a number of WP equal to his Str score.

Runequest had something like that. Encumbrance was measured in "things." Things weighed a certain number of "things" with the typical hand-held weapon being the base of one thing.

Encumbrance is one of those things where the appropriate level of detail will vary from group to group. As we move deeper into the computer age, detailed systems for encumbrance will become easier and easier to adjudicate.

 

[Sammael]

Encumbrance should be simplified and made more abstract. It should be a function of both volume and weight. I am in favor of the WP system proposed above.

 

[WhatGravitas]

I usually handwave encumbrance, game-time is too precious to go through a bunch of stuff. Plus: The weight doesn't take into account the size, but I honestly don't know how to alleviate that without introducing even more bookkeeping.

An abstract system, on the other hand, feels very artificial and forced.

Cheers, LT.