Level Up (A5E) possible way of fixing carrying capacity

[tetrasodium]

due to various design choices 5e feels a lot worse with carrying capacity being overly generous to the point where odds are good nobody was tracking it & you'll need to stop to calculate everything if a situation comes up where it might matter. If you want to build in survival horror elements for a twist your in for a mess there & have to rebuild a ton of stuff like spells/abilities/equipment/etc beyond just carrying capacity. With that said, it generally doesn't add much of anything because it's so generous. Then 5e exacerbates this by saying that you can grab anything from that bottomless pit of str*15 items

Instead of everyone carrying around a wheelbarrow like it's nothing, maybe have different armors include a small number (ie 2-3) of small containers for specific types of stuff like these hypotheticals:

• X scrolls
• Y of the same type of potion & you can use one as a free action/round
• 2Y of the same type of potion but you still need to burn an action
• Z potions of any type
• a spare weapon
• a concealed weapon of concealable size
• One item up to [size].
• Q single use magic trinkets
• some amount of food kept fresh & protected from arcane/divine/biological taint*
• etc

Specify which items are in those slots on your armor & you can still carry str*15 in your bags, but you need to drop them or suffer $penalty in a fight good luck not getting robbed. The special slots might allow you yp take out an item & maybe use it without provoking an AoO but sorting through that dimensionally enlarged duffel bag with 700 pounds of stuff is a full round action (or more?) that provokes an AoO and you still need to use it next round.

With this kind of thing there is value in hiring someone to cart/guard your pile o' lewt if the gm wants to play up that or the party still

* On the subject of food, going back to 3 individual meals/day is an improvement for games that want to play up "you need to find food" for whatever reason since you have more gradation between each person having enough for the day. Instead of quickly finding food & forgetting about it you can find some food & present a choice between getting some the party will need today or ding something else that might be more expedient/convenient/beneficial. Goodberry should definitely be split so you can either make berries counting as a short lived potion that each heal a small amount or you can make fewer berries that each count as one meal but not both.

 

[aco175]

I know my table would not like to track this, same with arrows, water, food, toilet paper, etc... Although the newest private always carried the TP in a coffee can, but that is not the point. The point is that tracking this is not fun and unless it is needed to be tracked for some game reason, it becomes a bore. Going on a desert adventure- ok, track food and water. Going to a desolate island- ok, track arrows.

If there was a simple way to track encumbrance, maybe. I remember a sheet we used to track magic items in 3e that someone made with the shadow of a man on it and listed slots for each magic item they could have. Maybe something like this would work where each item could be listed in the location with a simple weight somehow.

 

[tetrasodium]

I know my table would not like to track this, same with arrows, water, food, toilet paper, etc... Although the newest private always carried the TP in a coffee can, but that is not the point. The point is that tracking this is not fun and unless it is needed to be tracked for some game reason, it becomes a bore. Going on a desert adventure- ok, track food and water. Going to a desolate island- ok, track arrows.

If there was a simple way to track encumbrance, maybe. I remember a sheet we used to track magic items in 3e that someone made with the shadow of a man on it and listed slots for each magic item they could have. Maybe something like this would work where each item could be listed in the location with a simple weight somehow.

That's the point & I think you might have misread something. The current bottomless pit everyone ignores is still a bottomless pit but now they have a handful of items that are in special containers somehow attached to their armor like a tactical vest/modified glove of storing/etc... everything but that small handful of items is handled normally except now instead of the GM going through your sheet & crossing things off you & your players have some control over the special things they carry on them that they won't lose when they get shipwrecked, yoinked into ravenloft, robbed by cannibal halflings, etc. The bullet list are examples of types of pockets/pouches/dimensional spaces/etc that could be built into armor.

 

[aco175]

I should not read so fast. It looks like you are suggesting more magic items that store things, basically. Something like a ring that holds your spellbook or Flash suit. I have had some of this in the past with smaller things, but tend to have bags of holding just hold as much as can fit in a 10ft space, or 5ft space for a smaller pouch of holding.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I usually go with a slot-based system.

number of equipemnt slot = STR score, weapons with the ''heavy tag'' and armors with a STR prerequesite require 2 slots, all other items need 1, and small item can be stacked by 3 of the same type. Coins are stack at 300 per slot.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think 5e as-written handles this fine. 15x strength is a simple baseline for those who don’t want to have to worry about it unless someone tries carrying an absurd amount of stuff (which I would argue is most groups). For those who want carried weight to matter more, there’s the encumbrance variant rule. And if you want more precision around not just oral weight carried but where all this gear is, just enforce the container capacity limits.

Any mechanics concerning weight in A5E would need to work within 5e’s carrying capacity and encumbrance rules to meet the goal of backwards compatibility.

 

[tetrasodium]

@aco175 magic or not doesn't really matter, just common enough that pretty much any setting where people make armor can have a guy sew/enchant a couple onto your armor to your liking if it's not something you can do yourself
@vincegetorix I tried the same for a ravenloft game but there were so many ways around it like leomund's secret chest powerful build, bear aspect, bag of holding, & god knows what else that thwarted it because all of those things are so generous they take a thing that is nearly meaningless on a mechanical level & make it completely irrelevant.

@Charlaquin I'm aware of & even mentioned those rules. The problem with those rules is that they are so generous that they cause problems if weight is ever suddenly important or even maybe important & I pointed out some of them. Not only that, the suggestion does work with stock. it just adds some possible penalties or risks for everything carried but a select handful of items, did you not read the OP?

 

[Charlaquin]

@Charlaquin I'm aware of & even mentioned those rules. The problem with those rules is that they are so generous that they cause problems if weight is ever suddenly important or even maybe important & I pointed out some of them.

I disagree. If you use encumbrance and enforce container capacities, it’s far from generous, and weight is basically always important.

Not only that, the suggestion does work with stock. it just adds some possible penalties or risks for everything carried but a select handful of items, did you not read the OP?

I do seem to have misunderstood what you were getting at, but I’m not the first to do so and we’re only 8 posts deep! Your title frames your suggestion as a fix to encumbrance rules, which implies a change rather than an addition, and your OP doesn’t clearly dispel that notion.

 

[tetrasodium]

I disagree. If you use encumbrance and enforce container capacities, it’s far from generous, and weight is basically always important.


I do seem to have misunderstood what you were getting at, but I’m not the first to do so and we’re only 8 posts deep! Your title frames your suggestion as a fix to encumbrance rules, which implies a change rather than an addition, and your OP doesn’t clearly dispel that notion.

No the containers really don't do what you think because you can function like a performer in cirque du soleil while loaded up like the grinch's sled as long as you've got the strength. In any situation where it might matter what was on the sled it's literal gm fiat & there id no reason for the grinch to drop said sled in order to run around beating people with weapons while dodging/taking blows from opponents... As to your last comment, you seem to have confused "compatible" with "identical".

 

[Charlaquin]

No the containers really don't do what you think because you can function like a performer in cirque du soleil while loaded up like the grinch's sled as long as you've got the strength.

Which is why I also said encumbrance rules. 5x strength is barely enough to keep the basic adventuring necessities on your person if you have less than like 12 strength, and even with 20 strength you’re still limited by how much you can actually fit in your backpack.

In any situation where it might matter what was on the sled it's literal gm fiat & there id no reason for the grinch to drop said sled in order to run around beating people with weapons while dodging/taking blows from opponents...

Sure, I guess in theory you could also have 10 sacks or whatever, but only if you can explain where they all are on your person.

As to your last comment, you seem to have confused "compatible" with "identical".

Ok. I don’t think my continuing to post in this thread is going to lead to anything productive. Good luck.