D&D 5E Is Anyone Using Variant Encumbrance?

[Celebrim]

and one they probably won't feel anyway as they'll all drop their packs at the start of combat

And this is precisely how things get left behind. Also, there are some opponents that would consider stealing the pack more important than killing the player. Yes, most of the time it doesn't matter that the person has left possessions strewn all over the battlefield. But sometimes, you want to run away, and now your pack is 'over there', and the spear you dropped after the first round of combat is 'over there', and the archer's bow is now 'over there'.

 

[Syntallah]

And this is precisely how things get left behind. Also, there are some opponents that would consider stealing the pack more important than killing the player. Yes, most of the time it doesn't matter that the person has left possessions strewn all over the battlefield. But sometimes, you want to run away, and now your pack is 'over there', and the spear you dropped after the first round of combat is 'over there', and the archer's bow is now 'over there'.

And that is precisely the type of 'decision point' I want to give my players...

 

[CapnZapp]

What happens if you dont use the variant rules, and you go over the weight limit?

I believe this edition retains some sort of rule for dragging heavy objects along, at minimum speed?

Sorry, haven't got the details.

 

[delericho]

And this is precisely how things get left behind.

While this is all true in theory, it suffers from the twin weaknesses that it comes up so rarely as to barely be a restriction and on those occasions where it does come up it results in an annoying time-sink as the PCs traipse back out of the dungeon and to town for a lengthy shopping trip, just to get back to the "good stuff".

I'm still of the opinion that the DM would be better deciding whether mundane equipment is actually important to his game. If not, just let the PCs carry (essentially) whatever they want, since it's not important. If it is important, he probably wants something significantly more constraining than even the variant encumbrance rules to force the players to choose only those items that they really need.

I appreciate, of course, that your mileage probably varies on this one quite a bit.

 

[Celebrim]

While this is all true in theory, it suffers from the twin weaknesses that it comes up so rarely as to barely be a restriction and on those occasions where it does come up it results in an annoying time-sink as the PCs traipse back out of the dungeon and to town for a lengthy shopping trip, just to get back to the "good stuff".

This view of the game is strange to me. I'm frequently told how one ought to practice "failing forward", and when I ask what is meant by that I'm often told that it is failure that doesn't result in the end of the story (as by death, or perhaps indefinite incarceration).

But then I say, "Oh, well yes, the party "fails forward" all the time, with or without my assistance or any special technique. However, it seems to me that by fail forward you are just limiting the scope of failure, so that you want to prevent actual failure and substitute it for never less than a minor victory."

Generally speaking, I'm then told that I don't get it, and that the failure is actually real. But I find that their definition of "real failure" never seems to arise to the level of anything that would actually threat the PC's interests. And now I here you saying that if the failure is so onerous that it means going back to town to resupply and delay in getting to the "good stuff", such failure is too much to consider. I'm beginning to see as a general rule, "Thou shalt not allow the PC's to be inconvenienced, even if by their own actions." Is it really such the case that failure now can't include death, disfigurement, disability, loss of possessions, or inconvenience? I ask what form of failure is left that is actual failure to a typical sociopathic murder hobo?

If we could entirely trust players to be reasonable, and confine themselves to carrying only what was reasonable for big darn heroes such as themselves, then I think we could do away with encumbrance in all forms. But typically I find I have to do a bit of an audit, every few months, just to see whether the players are actually being reasonable about how many hands their characters have, and the volume of their packs, and whether its quite reasonable to be leaping about like an epic swashbuckler when they are carrying the entirety of Smaug's horde on their backs. At such times I find myself having to demand that part of the good stuff is concretely imagining the experience their character is having (Just where are you putting your glaive, your morningstar, your longsword, your dagger, your shortbow, your backpack, and your two quivers of arrows?), and that part of the good stuff might be buying a mule or ten and a pack bearer if you plan on carrying out of the dungeon every item of the slightest value you find.

Knowing that if you have a sword in one hand, and a shield in the other, you don't have a hand left for holding a lantern or for fishing that potion of cure serious wounds out of your backpack is part of the good stuff. And I find this isn't a problem that occurs rarely. What I find tends to happen though if you don't continually correct for it is that you end up no longer playing in the stance where you can see the imagined world, but where everything is a sort of elaborate board game and nothing need be concretely imagined. Whether something is in your left hand and something else is in your right hand doesn't preclude holding a torch and fishing through the backpack for a healing potion, because it's really not about being the character but about using your abstract resources to resolve abstract problems. Now, I like abstract problems and board games well enough, but if I played an RPG like an abstract problem or board game I'd be forgoing all the pleasures that are actually unique to an RPG.

The degree to which you pay attention to these things can be tweeked rather easily without violating the integrity of the imagined space. Simply tweek the availability of the magical items that alleviate these problems by storing stuff in extradimensional spaces where you usually don't have to think about it. If you really want to avoid this, hand out bags of holding, gloves of storing, and baubles of the unseen servant to ensure that the players - when they ever need to think about this, which will be rarely - always have ready solutions.

 

[delericho]

This view of the game is strange to me. I'm frequently told how one ought to practice "failing forward"

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of "fail forward". I'm quite happy just to have the PCs fail.

Generally speaking, I'm then told that I don't get it, and that the failure is actually real. But I find that their definition of "real failure" never seems to arise to the level of anything that would actually threat the PC's interests.

Fair enough...

And now I here you saying that if the failure is so onerous that it means going back to town to resupply and delay in getting to the "good stuff", such failure is too much to consider. I'm beginning to see as a general rule...

I suspect the "general rule" is rather that you're talking to different people with different perspectives.

"Thou shalt not allow the PC's to be inconvenienced, even if by their own actions." Is it really such the case that failure now can't include death, disfigurement, disability, loss of possessions, or inconvenience?

The thing is, I don't mind the player characters being inconvenienced in any and all ways. Not an issue.

But that shopping trip back to town means taking a chunk out of my very limited gaming time. It doesn't inconvenience the PCs, it inconveniences the players and it inconveniences me. And that's something I'd rather avoid.

So, actually, what I'm calling for, in the case where the DM decides "equipment matters" is that the inconvenience be greater than just the occasional trip back to town. They can't carry iron spikes and rope and rations and torches, so they have to make a tough choice about what to leave behind and then have to make do without if caught short.

... snip quite a lot...

What I find tends to happen though if you don't continually correct for it is that you end up no longer playing in the stance where you can see the imagined world, but where everything is a sort of elaborate board game and nothing need be concretely imagined.

Yep, I understand your frustrations here.

The degree to which you pay attention to these things can be tweeked rather easily without violating the integrity of the imagined space.

Some people - probably a lot of people - simply don't care about this, and don't consider that the TARDIS-style backpack does "violate the integrity of the imagined space". They just want to play. And I can't say I fault them for that - people should play what they want.

But there seems to be a weird hang-up that occurs with games like this where, because the game includes rules for encumbrance they feel that they have to include it. And so we have people tracking encumbrance, and then bitching mightily about the need to do so. Leading to the rules getting watered down further and further, to the current point of uselessness.

And to those people, I say: just drop encumbrance. If it's nothing but an annoyance, why are you even bothering?

For people like yourself, who consider encumbrance to be important, and for whom the TARDIS-style backpack is indeed an issue, then absolutely, use encumbrance. If you find it adds to the game, then by all means use it.

Me, I find the RAW (in virtually every RPG I've read or played) hits pretty much exactly the wrong balance - it assumes a lot of micro-management of weights, then ties those weights to limits that are generally too high to matter, and penalties that are too fiddly to bother with anyway. I'd be happy if the rules were either removed entirely or significantly beefed up (and indeed, changing with different DMs and campaigns), but find that they fail as-is precisely because they fall between the two stools.

 

[Syntallah]

This view of the game is strange to me. I'm frequently told how one ought to practice "failing forward", and when I ask what is meant by that I'm often told that it is failure that doesn't result in the end of the story (as by death, or perhaps indefinite incarceration).

But then I say, "Oh, well yes, the party "fails forward" all the time, with or without my assistance or any special technique. However, it seems to me that by fail forward you are just limiting the scope of failure, so that you want to prevent actual failure and substitute it for never less than a minor victory."

Generally speaking, I'm then told that I don't get it, and that the failure is actually real. But I find that their definition of "real failure" never seems to arise to the level of anything that would actually threat the PC's interests. And now I here you saying that if the failure is so onerous that it means going back to town to resupply and delay in getting to the "good stuff", such failure is too much to consider. I'm beginning to see as a general rule, "Thou shalt not allow the PC's to be inconvenienced, even if by their own actions." Is it really such the case that failure now can't include death, disfigurement, disability, loss of possessions, or inconvenience? I ask what form of failure is left that is actual failure to a typical sociopathic murder hobo?

If we could entirely trust players to be reasonable, and confine themselves to carrying only what was reasonable for big darn heroes such as themselves, then I think we could do away with encumbrance in all forms. But typically I find I have to do a bit of an audit, every few months, just to see whether the players are actually being reasonable about how many hands their characters have, and the volume of their packs, and whether its quite reasonable to be leaping about like an epic swashbuckler when they are carrying the entirety of Smaug's horde on their backs. At such times I find myself having to demand that part of the good stuff is concretely imagining the experience their character is having (Just where are you putting your glaive, your morningstar, your longsword, your dagger, your shortbow, your backpack, and your two quivers of arrows?), and that part of the good stuff might be buying a mule or ten and a pack bearer if you plan on carrying out of the dungeon every item of the slightest value you find.

Knowing that if you have a sword in one hand, and a shield in the other, you don't have a hand left for holding a lantern or for fishing that potion of cure serious wounds out of your backpack is part of the good stuff. And I find this isn't a problem that occurs rarely. What I find tends to happen though if you don't continually correct for it is that you end up no longer playing in the stance where you can see the imagined world, but where everything is a sort of elaborate board game and nothing need be concretely imagined. Whether something is in your left hand and something else is in your right hand doesn't preclude holding a torch and fishing through the backpack for a healing potion, because it's really not about being the character but about using your abstract resources to resolve abstract problems. Now, I like abstract problems and board games well enough, but if I played an RPG like an abstract problem or board game I'd be forgoing all the pleasures that are actually unique to an RPG.

The degree to which you pay attention to these things can be tweeked rather easily without violating the integrity of the imagined space. Simply tweek the availability of the magical items that alleviate these problems by storing stuff in extradimensional spaces where you usually don't have to think about it. If you really want to avoid this, hand out bags of holding, gloves of storing, and baubles of the unseen servant to ensure that the players - when they ever need to think about this, which will be rarely - always have ready solutions.

This.

Excellently put, my friend. Far better than I could have.

 

[Keeblrkid]

To answer the original question.

The campaign I am currently running has an added emphasis on player decision. So, Yes I used the variant encumberance rules, and it has been a non-issue for my group and I.
I created an excel spreadsheet that tracks character encumberance. We added starting gear to the sheet during character creation. The workbook has a tab for each type of gear, and a tab for each storage device or mount you own. Now as new items are picked up i place them on the that characterizes sheet on the respective tab, which doesn't slow the game at all.

When we start a session I let anyone you is close to overencumbered know their current carry-weight. So it doesn't show up as a surprise during play.

I enjoy playing like this because it makes Strength matter, it has made the party dwarf shine, and it has given them tons of things to spend their hard earned gold on. I have never seen a game where buying mounts, and then wagons and carts, and eventually camp guards mattered to the players, but I have now. Some of the recurring guards are now favored npcs, and the feeling of "murder-hobo" has been lessened significantly just due to the importance of having a home to store all of their stuff in. This is the first game I have every DMed where the players actually feel like participants of the world instead of Murder-Hobos or Heroic PCs which reside above and beyond the world.

All in all, bellyaching about encumberance and gold expenditure has added a ton to my group's game.

That being said, if I didn't have the excel workbook I couldn't be bothered to care, and my game would be much different. I dont want to make my players wade through that kind of records keeping.

 

[Celebrim]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of "fail forward". I'm quite happy just to have the PCs fail.

Ok, so long as we are speaking the same language.

The thing is, I don't mind the player characters being inconvenienced in any and all ways. Not an issue...It doesn't inconvenience the PCs, it inconveniences the players and it inconveniences me. And that's something I'd rather avoid.

In general, I tend to handwave shopping if the number of players is above 2 (which it has been for me for that last 15 years or so). It's not so much that it is inconvenience or distracts from what is important, but that it tends to be a pursuit that doesn't lead to group dynamics or interesting group play. When you have a larger group, you need to make sure that you are focusing the spotlight on the group most of the time, rather than on small stage melodrama involving just a portion of the group.

So, actually, what I'm calling for, in the case where the DM decides "equipment matters" is that the inconvenience be greater than just the occasional trip back to town. They can't carry iron spikes and rope and rations and torches, so they have to make a tough choice about what to leave behind and then have to make do without if caught short.

When equipment matters, it's not the iron spikes, rope, rations, and torches, but the player's bag of holding or +3 composite longbow that the kobold is running away down the corridor with. I mean, it could be a funny scene when the players realize that the kobold is running away with the torches and lamp oil, and they have only 30 minutes of light left and they're hours from the surface, but that would be a rather rare situation indeed. The real issue here though is that for the average player, they have a far stronger and more sentimental relationship with their gear than they do with any NPCs - no matter how strong the DMs characterization has been. Player's tend to think of their gear the way Jayne Cobb thinks of his guns. If you really want to provoke strong emotional reactions from the PC's, don't kidnap the PC's little sister or lover - kidnap their gear. "The BBEG is holding my nephew hostage.", is an intellectual position. "That thing took my stuff!", is an emotional position.

I can't help but thinking that part of the resistance to bookkeeping is not merely the resistance to the drudgery of keeping track of your current encumbrance, but rather resistance to anything that might mess with the player's attachment to his gear. "We leave no man behind!", in D&D tends to be replaced with, "We leave no coin behind!"

Some people - probably a lot of people - simply don't care about this, and don't consider that the TARDIS-style backpack does "violate the integrity of the imagined space". They just want to play. And I can't say I fault them for that - people should play what they want.

I think I may have not communicated clearly. I don't really have a problem with bags of holding. I'm not even suggesting that they are wrong for my game. What I'm suggesting is a personal preference regarding how and when they are introduced to the game. The question could be thought of as, "At what tier do you introduce or associate bags of holding?" And for me, the answer is, "Epic tier.", or at least "end game", because I associate the "epic tier" not with a level range but with end states of the campaign. For me, with campaigns that ideally end around 13th to 15th level, that means bags of holding might show up around 10th level or higher.

This is for me because the tier system is less associated with level or color, than how the sort of challenges you have to struggle to overcome shape the way you play. And for me, D&D's rather effective zero to hero to demigod structure strongly encourages you to sample each set of challenges in a certain order. That is to say, I prefer not to introduce perfect solutions to logistic problems until players have played through a period of struggling with logistic problems. Thus, there ought to be a period where going on a long journey represents many hazards and difficulties. Only after this period is experienced and struggled through should the tools that render such a journey trivial or unnecessary be introduced. If you introduce bags of holding in the mundane tier, so that they pick up one in the dungeon at 1st level, you may be unintentionally changing the color of play significantly.

My advice is to change this color of play only by conscious choice and only if you know what trade off you are making. The reason I love Keeblrkid's post is I think he's pleasantly shocked to discover exactly what he was losing by avoiding something he thought was mere bookkeeping. In fact, I'd argue by ignoring encumbrance and similar logistics problems, you've lost almost everything that makes what you might call the 'paragon' tier interesting, namely, being and growing into being a "leader of men". Paragon play IMO is marked by expansion of the play into spheres of social and political importance, and with in the acceptance of responsibility for other persons by the PCs/players. (Ironically, this is because in a sense you are making NPCs into possessions or gear of the player.) By making the party a self-sufficient island unto itself, capable of transporting all its stuff, you are unintentionally endorsing sociopathic behavior because you are creating a situation where the party really doesn't need anyone and perhaps optimal play might well be to see it as "us against the world".

But there seems to be a weird hang-up that occurs with games like this where, because the game includes rules for encumbrance they feel that they have to include it. And so we have people tracking encumbrance, and then bitching mightily about the need to do so. Leading to the rules getting watered down further and further, to the current point of uselessness.

I understand your frustration. I've got 500 pages of house rules, and counting. Ok, I understand you don't want to formalize things that much, and maybe you aren't a really good rules smith, but seriously, how does any DM get hidebound? The DM makes the freakin' rules.

 

[Dausuul]

For those who would like to track encumbrance, but find it too much of a pain, here's an idea to simplify it a bit. What do y'all think?

Items are Light (2 pounds or less), Medium (3-6 pounds), or Heavy (7-14 pounds). Items weighing 15 pounds or more are Heavy with a multiplier; 15-24 pounds is Heavy x2, 25-34 pounds is Heavy x3, and so on.

On the equipment section of your character sheet, you have a number of Light slots, Medium slots, and Heavy slots. You can put a Light object in any slot, a Medium object in a Medium or Heavy slot, and a Heavy object in a Heavy slot. Heavy objects with multipliers take up that many Heavy slots, so plate armor (65 pounds, Heavy x7) takes up 7 Heavy slots.

You get unencumbered slots: 10+Str Light, 5+Str Medium, and 3+Str Heavy. You can fill up these slots without worrying about encumbrance.

You get encumbered slots: 5 Light, 3 Medium, and 2 Heavy. If you put anything in these slots, you are encumbered.

You get heavily encumbered slots: 5 Light, 3 Medium, and 2 Heavy. If you put anything in these slots, you are heavily encumbered.

(This is deliberately trading off some realism for ease of use. A character carrying fifty objects weighing a few ounces each is going to be screwed over by this system. However, from the standpoint of a typical adventurer carrying a mix of light, medium, and heavy items, the results would be reasonable, and it would be a lot simpler than trying to keep a running weight total. You just have lines on your character sheet for unencumbered slots, encumbered slots, and heavily encumbered slots, and you can tell at a glance when your encumbrance has gone over the line.)