D&D General Huge Equipment Lists: Good, Bad, or Ugly?

[jmartkdr2]

Fair enough, but that doesn't mean there were no ill effects.

If you try to do it for more than a week, it'll add up. But a young, fit soldier could do it for a while.

So if you wanted to add a "realistic" penalty, you need to have 1/7th of a level of exhaustion. At some point, the granularity needed isn't worth the effort.

 

[Mannahnin]

True, but I would say the modern military kit is worse than even full plate due to the fact that it's a lot more weight and it's all on the upper body (mainly the back if you have a rucksack for a long patrol).

For a light infantryman from the US, a normal load without rucksack is probably in the 40-60 pound range and a full combat load is probably in the 120-160 pound range depending on the person's role.

Modern plate carriers are at least a little better distributed and padded than a mail hauberk, which rides on the shoulders and belt.

And yeah, obviously you dump the rucksack ASAP in combat. Adventurers would realistically dump their traveling/hiking packs as well.

 

[Stoutstien]

The issue with resting in armor has nothing to do with realism or balance. It's purely a pacing and expectation problem.

If you track weight, food, water, time,light sources, and other factors that add that nature beat to a game where camp/rest is more than just a reset on resource pools then taking armor off almost happens all the time even if there wasn't rules in place.
Also points out the flaws in AC calculations but that is a different issue.

Now if your table is running a pacing where rests aren't serving this purpose then removing armor doesn't make any sense from a narrative or game play perspective.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Most of my experience with this sort of thing is D&D-based, but it exists in lots of other systems as well (Shadowrun and GURPS can be plenty egregious). Some systems have very sparse gear. You got your climbing gear, backpack, rations, light source, you're good to go!

Then you have the ones that are full of sundries from Gnomish Listening Helmets, Drow Swimwear, Mithril Waffle Irons, Whetstones, Wasters, Portable Rams, Sunstones, and Potion Sponges!

I find myself of two minds about this. On the one hand, a limited amount of supplies means that there are a lot less tools for a non-magical character to fall back on to solve problems. Sure, a crowbar might solve a lot of problems, but there are going to be times when you'll want long-handled thieves' tools, grappling crossbow bolts, signal arrows, dog pepper, or weaponblack and when you reach for it, you find it's not there.

On the other hand, I remember in my 2e days when it felt like there was always that one player who couldn't live without half the contents of the Complete Thieves' Handbook plus Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue stuffed into their Handy Haversack and was constantly coming up with MacGyver solutions to problems. Open Locks? Give me a few moments with my portable adamantine tipped drill and a vial of black dragon bile!

So I'm curious how other people feel about this sort of thing. Do you feel the game is better when the players break out cleats and snowshoes when traveling to Ten Towns, or prefer not having every character outfitted with sunrods and camouflage ponchos?

I like both. As long as the way it is done serves the game well, it works for me.

 

[LordBP]

Modern plate carriers are at least a little better distributed and padded than a mail hauberk, which rides on the shoulders and belt.

And yeah, obviously you dump the rucksack ASAP in combat. Adventurers would realistically dump their traveling/hiking packs as well.

Not sure the plate carriers are better than a mail hauberk as they rest on the shoulders and mid-section right around the belly button.

Least with a hauberk, you should have a some type of padded gambeson underneath it and it should ride on the entire shoulder instead of a 3-4 inch strap like a plate carrier does.

 

[Mannahnin]

Not sure the plate carriers are better than a mail hauberk as they rest on the shoulders and mid-section right around the belly button.

Least with a hauberk, you should have a some type of padded gambeson underneath it and it should ride on the entire shoulder instead of a 3-4 inch strap like a plate carrier does.

Fair enough. I was figuring the carrier would have more points of support, better straps/webbing, and more comfortable materials.

 

[Oofta]

The issue with resting in armor has nothing to do with realism or balance. It's purely a pacing and expectation problem.

If you track weight, food, water, time,light sources, and other factors that add that nature beat to a game where camp/rest is more than just a reset on resource pools then taking armor off almost happens all the time even if there wasn't rules in place.
Also points out the flaws in AC calculations but that is a different issue.

Now if your table is running a pacing where rests aren't serving this purpose then removing armor doesn't make any sense from a narrative or game play perspective.

From a pure gameplay perspective the issue for me is that only a minority of builds are penalized. Dexterity is already the super stat for non-casters, we don't need to penalize strength based characters more. If the penalty is severe and frequently occurs, people will be even more discouraged from playing a common archetype for reasons that have little to do with realism.

In other words I don't think we should insist on having penalties for armor while ignoring how armor actually works. Armor in D&D is not accurately portrayed. D&D has a long history of making compromises and oversimplifications to streamline play, it's always struck me as odd that people insist that this one aspect needs to be more "realistic". Especially when there's scant evidence it actually achieves that goal.

 

[Oofta]

Fair enough. I was figuring the carrier would have more points of support, better straps/webbing, and more comfortable materials.

It does. I'm not going to bother googling again, but chain mail and many other armors put all the weight on your shoulders. Plate distributes it so that you carry it on both shoulders and waist. As someone who has backpacked both with an old school pack with only shoulder straps and a more modern style that has shoulder and waist straps, it makes a huge difference in comfort and how much I could carry.

 

[Argyle King]

For me, it depends upon how the game handles equipment, using equipment, and whether or not choices of equipment matter.

A big equipment list that does nothing for my character. For example, if a game lists 20 weapons but either a) there is no tangible difference to any of them OR b) 1 or 2 are so obviously better than the rest that everyone largely ignores the other 18, I don't see the point. It's just padded word count at that point, and the visually large number of choices is, in reality, only a handful of actual choices.

GURPS was mentioned in the OP. I highly enjoy the gear choices in GURPS because the system is built in a way that those choices can be (it is a modular system with many of the rules being optional) meaningful. When playing that system, I also use some of the extra options from
Low-Tech.

On the other end of the spectrum, I recently picked up Dungeon Crawl Classics, and the list of available gear is somewhat small. However, the game is built in a way that those handful of choices can be somewhat meaningful (albeit with some of that meaning needing to be ad hoc by the judge). To be honest, I think the list of mundane equipment could be a little bit larger, but -even with less than 10 days with the game, the game gives me enough of an idea about how things might work that I can add stuff. DCC sometimes violates "a" that I mentioned above, but I have space to add detail where I want it.

 

[Stoutstien]

From a pure gameplay perspective the issue for me is that only a minority of builds are penalized. Dexterity is already the super stat for non-casters, we don't need to penalize strength based characters more. If the penalty is severe and frequently occurs, people will be even more discouraged from playing a common archetype for reasons that have little to do with realism.

In other words I don't think we should insist on having penalties for armor while ignoring how armor actually works. Armor in D&D is not accurately portrayed. D&D has a long history of making compromises and oversimplifications to streamline play, it's always struck me as odd that people insist that this one aspect needs to be more "realistic". Especially when there's scant evidence it actually achieves that goal.

Thats fair. It's the same problem with armor and stealth when the removed the distinction of moving silently and going undetected while being still.

They thought it would make interesting counter play but they missed that crossover point by miles.

It would be interesting if carrying capacity was more important or the protection from H armor was not simply an extra 5-10% avoidance jump. (If you want to talk about realism shields should set a minimal AC in addition to adding to suit armor total.)

My games run at a rachet pace so players tend to don/doff armor more frequently than most tables until it's go time and then long rests are something you have to work for to being with.

The other solution it disregard WoTC thinking once it isn't intuitive...which is often lol.