Hi everyone. I'd like to get some feedback from some fellow DMs about a judgment call I made during the last session. This situation involves a player trying to manipulate the rules to maximize the amount of stuff he can carry.
Disclaimer: I realize that some DMs/players don't pay much attention to the weight of the stuff that a character is lugging around. To be honest, I don't pay much attention to it either, but my players do. (I guess this is a good thing.)
Anyway, back to the story. One of the PCs is a relatively weak rogue, so he's always trying to find somplace to put stuff so he doesn't have to wear it. (Sometimes he pays his fellow partymembers to carry stuff for him.) Recently this PC acquired some Boots of Elvenkind and a Cloak of Resistance. Both of these items have a listed weight in the DMG - each one weighs one pound.
The player in question said that these items should not increase the amount of weight he was carrying. Here was his logic. At the beginning of the campaign, his character got an explorer's outfit for free. On pg. 111 of the 3.0 Player's Handbook, it specifies that such an outfit "does not count against the amount of weight a character can carry." The description for the explorer's outfit specifically mentions that the outfit includes "sturdy boots" and a cloak.
So my player reasoned that if he threw away his old boots and cloak (the ones he had from his explorer's outfit), the new magical boots and cloak should not count against his encumbrance limit.
I disagreed. I said that if the DMG had wanted these items to not affect a character's carried weight, then the DMG would not have included a weight for these items. My player objected forcefully that this made no sense. Why should one mundane pair of "sturdy boots" weigh nothing, but a master-crafted pair of magical boots designed for sneaking weigh his character down?
I responded that there was no sense in looking for a logical explanation since it makes no logical sense to say that your initial set of clothes weighs nothing in the first place. I assume this rule was made for game balance reasons. It certainly does not reflect reality! In reality, clothes have a weight. I figure the game designers' reasoning went something like this: since a character's initial set of clothes has no game benefits, they should also not pose a liability to the character in terms of money or weight.
Anyway, rationalizations aside, the conclusion of the story is that I stuck by my guns and my player thought I was being an evil DM. What do you other DMs think?
Disclaimer: I realize that some DMs/players don't pay much attention to the weight of the stuff that a character is lugging around. To be honest, I don't pay much attention to it either, but my players do. (I guess this is a good thing.)
Anyway, back to the story. One of the PCs is a relatively weak rogue, so he's always trying to find somplace to put stuff so he doesn't have to wear it. (Sometimes he pays his fellow partymembers to carry stuff for him.) Recently this PC acquired some Boots of Elvenkind and a Cloak of Resistance. Both of these items have a listed weight in the DMG - each one weighs one pound.
The player in question said that these items should not increase the amount of weight he was carrying. Here was his logic. At the beginning of the campaign, his character got an explorer's outfit for free. On pg. 111 of the 3.0 Player's Handbook, it specifies that such an outfit "does not count against the amount of weight a character can carry." The description for the explorer's outfit specifically mentions that the outfit includes "sturdy boots" and a cloak.
So my player reasoned that if he threw away his old boots and cloak (the ones he had from his explorer's outfit), the new magical boots and cloak should not count against his encumbrance limit.
I disagreed. I said that if the DMG had wanted these items to not affect a character's carried weight, then the DMG would not have included a weight for these items. My player objected forcefully that this made no sense. Why should one mundane pair of "sturdy boots" weigh nothing, but a master-crafted pair of magical boots designed for sneaking weigh his character down?
I responded that there was no sense in looking for a logical explanation since it makes no logical sense to say that your initial set of clothes weighs nothing in the first place. I assume this rule was made for game balance reasons. It certainly does not reflect reality! In reality, clothes have a weight. I figure the game designers' reasoning went something like this: since a character's initial set of clothes has no game benefits, they should also not pose a liability to the character in terms of money or weight.
Anyway, rationalizations aside, the conclusion of the story is that I stuck by my guns and my player thought I was being an evil DM. What do you other DMs think?
