Readied items - how many?

[Fundin Strongarm]

Our DM is trying to come up with a limit on how many items we can have handy and how many we'd have to fish out of a backpack (or some other full round action). His preliminary number is 10 items for someone heavily armored and 12 items for someone not armored. This would include weapons, ammunition, spell component pouch, potions, scrolls, etc.

Is there anything definitive anywhere about this? We have just converted to 3.5 if that matters.

Thank you for any help you can give us.

 

[Lord Wyrm]

The DM is assigning an arbitrary number to presumably stop some abuse, I don't know of an official rule that says how many items you can have within reach. Personally I had a Rogue whose immeadiatly available items were 10 daggers tucked in various places, 20 potions on bandoleers, 20 arrows in quiver, short sword in waist sheath, short bow on back, hand crossbow on other side of the waist, 50ft of rope slung over shoulder, short sword in sheath across chest, and a lightcrossbow underslung on a light shield. Yeah, its an extreme example but it way more than 10 (In fact its 56 items).

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Personally I had a Rogue whose immeadiatly available items were 10 daggers tucked in various places, 20 potions on bandoleers, 20 arrows in quiver, short sword in waist sheath, short bow on back, hand crossbow on other side of the waist, 50ft of rope slung over shoulder, short sword in sheath across chest, and a lightcrossbow underslung on a light shield. Yeah, its an extreme example but it way more than 10 (In fact its 56 items).

You know it's odd, my first thought when reading the OP was "what sort of craziness would have to exist for me to need to House Rule how many items a person can have readied?"

Yeah, your example would about do it.

 

[Terraism]

You know it's odd, my first thought when reading the OP was "what sort of craziness would have to exist for me to need to House Rule how many items a person can have readied?"

"I'm carrying 20k slings."

 

[Lord Pendragon]

"I'm carrying 20k slings."

Luckily, I've never had a player try to get away with that, nor the...unusual...encumbrance in the post I quoted.

 

[Ferrix]

The DM is assigning an arbitrary number to presumably stop some abuse, I don't know of an official rule that says how many items you can have within reach. Personally I had a Rogue whose immeadiatly available items were 10 daggers tucked in various places, 20 potions on bandoleers, 20 arrows in quiver, short sword in waist sheath, short bow on back, hand crossbow on other side of the waist, 50ft of rope slung over shoulder, short sword in sheath across chest, and a lightcrossbow underslung on a light shield. Yeah, its an extreme example but it way more than 10 (In fact its 56 items).

You may have 56 items, but I'd almost qualify some of those groups as single readied items.

Quiver of 20 arrows. Bandoleer of potions.

Most of the massive amount of items are small items which take up very little space and can conceivably be stored in easy to retrieve locations without impeding the character.

 

[darthkilmor]

Does that limit even matter when you have a:

Handy Haversack

A backpack of this sort appears to be well made, well used, and quite ordinary. It is constructed of finely tanned leather, and the straps have brass hardware and buckles. It has two side pouches, each of which appears large enough to hold about a quart of material. In fact, each is like a bag of holding and can actually hold material of as much as 2 cubic feet in volume or 20 pounds in weight. The large central portion of the pack can contain up to 8 cubic feet or 80 pounds of material. Even when so filled, the backpack always weighs only 5 pounds.

While such storage is useful enough, the pack has an even greater power in addition. When the wearer reaches into it for a specific item, that item is always on top. Thus, no digging around and fumbling is ever necessary to find what a haversack contains. Retrieving any specific item from a haversack is a move action, but it does not provoke the attacks of opportunity that retrieving a stored item usually does.

 

[Fundin Strongarm]

We've got a number of scrolls and potions so he's trying to limit the number we can have handy and what would be in our backpack. I can see his point. I can also see only having so many weapons in scabbards at your waist/over the back within easy reach.

By the way, a quiver of 20 arrows would count as just one item for this purpose, as would a spell component pouch.

As for the Haversack, we have an item called a Bag of Lodging that has a couple rooms inside it's extra-dimensional space. We occasionally hide in it and putting the Haversack inside it would be trouble. We may have to think about getting some, though, if this limit is going to be a hinderance.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

In the FRCS you can find rules on mundane and masterwork potion and scroll belts. They allow you, I believe, to keep 10 potions or scrolls handy. The masterwork versions allow you to retrieve one such item, once per round, as a free action.

That's probably a good place to start from.

 

[Len]

In the FRCS you can find rules on mundane and masterwork potion and scroll belts. They allow you, I believe, to keep 10 potions or scrolls handy. The masterwork versions allow you to retrieve one such item, once per round, as a free action.

And without such an item, it's a move action to retrieve an item no matter where it's stored - in your backpack, in a pocket or wherever. There are exceptions for drawing a weapon while you're moving or with the Quickdraw feat, but even so I don't see much point to your DM's rule.

(My rogue carries a couple of concealed daggers too, but not ten of them. Encumbrance starts to become an issue after a certain point.)