D&D 5E Rewarding Overland Travel

[tetrasodium]

Sure. A 20-Strength goliath barbarian can carry two mostly-full chests. And have no hands left to do anything else. If the goliath wants to act as a pack mule.

I mean, sure, my firbolg was fine with dragging a loaded sled back in our Icewind Dale game, because we wanted to get the sled back to town and we didn't have any sled dogs or other pack animals. I wouldn't want them to be the party's pack mule though; they're not that kind of person.

Did you forget what we were discussing? They don't need to carry two. One is enough for 150 rations. Don't forget goliath barbarian was noted in the OP. A early as post 5 there has been a steady chant of just enforce container sizes & backpacks only hold 20 pounds& there has been quite a lot of discussion about how that doesn't solve anything because more & bigger containers like the 30 pound sack & 300 pound chest since.

 

[Faolyn]

Did you forget what we were discussing? They don't need to carry two. One is enough for 150 rations. Don't forget goliath barbarian was noted in the OP. A early as post 5 there has been a steady chant of just enforce container sizes & backpacks only hold 20 pounds& there has been quite a lot of discussion about how that doesn't solve anything because more & bigger containers like the 30 pound sack & 300 pound chest since.

All of this assumes that you can buy 150 rations. How many DMs allow for stores to have infinite stock?

And you're ignoring that PCs aren't characters in a video game who will gladly carry everything for you just because.

 

[Hussar]

All of this assumes that you can buy 150 rations. How many DMs allow for stores to have infinite stock?

And you're ignoring that PCs aren't characters in a video game who will gladly carry everything for you just because.

This, right here, this is why these conversations are completely bogus and bad faith.

Seriously? You cannot buy a week of food for 5 people? The DM is limiting things THAT much? Note, that all I bought was 70 pounds of rations. Two week iron rations, in AD&D, was the standard amount that every character carried.

Yes, @Faolyn, you're absolutely right. Every setting is in famine conditions where it's impossible to buy that much food.

Give me a break.

 

[Morrus]

All of this assumes that you can buy 150 rations.

You can buy them but an exploration challenge might wipe half of them out.

 

[tetrasodium]

You can buy them but an exploration challenge might wipe half of them out.

soon. Not having a bunch of abilities that make the loss meaningless will be nice too

 

[Faolyn]

This, right here, this is why these conversations are completely bogus and bad faith.

Seriously? You cannot buy a week of food for 5 people? The DM is limiting things THAT much? Note, that all I bought was 70 pounds of rations. Two week iron rations, in AD&D, was the standard amount that every character carried.

Yes, @Faolyn, you're absolutely right. Every setting is in famine conditions where it's impossible to buy that much food.

Give me a break.

A week of food, sure. That's easy to get. A week of food is going to be many loaves of bread, several pounds of fresh meat, wheels of cheese, bunches of carrots or beets, sacks of potatoes, bushels of apples, maybe some herbs and spices if you're all fancy. You know, food. You can get that in any village. (Barring, of course, famine conditions. Considering the typical D&D world is beset by raiding monsters, eldritch weather, vengeful spellcasters, and disgruntled gods, I'm surprised that more worlds aren't suffering famine conditions.)

A week of preserved rations that only adventurers eat? If you're in a city, sure. And maybe if you have a setting where NPCs exist solely to help adventurers out in between their adventures, yeah. But why assume that every village or town is going to have 300 pounds worth of iron rations for sale?

And if you're so adamant that exploration is borked, why would you have villages stock all those rations instead of making the PCs hunt and forage?

(Also, you can't math: 1 ration/day x 5 people x 7 days = 35 rations, or x 10 for 50 rations if you use the Realms' "tendays" instead. Neither 35 nor 50--even doubled for two weeks of iron rations--isn't 150.)

 

[pemerton]

Part of the rationale for this thread, in the OP, is that making encumbrance a feature of the game gives a reason to build a PC who is good at handling encumbrance. And that gives a reason to build a Goliath. Who then, it turns out, makes the encumbrance aspect of the game basically disappear, because of the very large carrying capacity compared to the weights of goods that are salient in the context of overland travel.

It's no answer to this to say but my Goliath PC hated carrying things. I mean, maybe someone once made a wizard who hated casting spells - that doesn't mean that no one else (let alone the designers) ever had to think about the number of spell slots a character has available.

 

[Faolyn]

You can buy them but an exploration challenge might wipe half of them out.

Yup!

Or a bear might get into them, or you might come across some hungry wanderers and decide to help them out with some food, or a supernaturally evil fiend or fey may cause them to spontaneously generate maggots, or any number of things that make it so it honestly doesn't matter how much the goliath can heft.

 

[Hussar]

(Also, you can't math: 1 ration/day x 5 people x 7 days = 35 rations, or x 10 for 50 rations if you use the Realms' "tendays" instead. Neither 35 nor 50--even doubled for two weeks of iron rations--isn't 150.)

No kidding. That was kinda the point I was making. That 2 weeks of iron rations was a standard PHB thing you could buy in AD&D. It wasn't even considered anything difficult.

And, only adventurers eat iron rations? Yeah, no. You might want to look up things like salted meat, pickles, and soup stocks. Y'know, common things that common people ate all the freaking time before refrigeration?

LOL - we want our adventurers to explore so we'll make rations really rare so that the PC's have to forage. No thanks.

 

[Faolyn]

LOL - we want our adventurers to explore so we'll make rations really rare so that the PC's have to forage. No thanks.

Then stop complaining about exploration. Here's a good reason for it and you're scoffing at it.