I don't know as I fully agree with him, insofar as he's focused on the exploration, where I'm focused on the combat. I have a character with low strength, who has reason to have a whole lot of stuff (artificers want their tools at hand). I can infuse two items, and one of them is tied up as a Bag of Holding, because otherwise there's no way to have that stuff at hand. And even with that, I have to be very careful, because I already move at 25' to the rest of the party's 30'. One pound more, and I'm moving at half the speed of the rest of the party...
I have a mastiff companion. I can use it as a pack animal... but then at any given moment my tools may not be at hand. I can ride him, but then I have to worry about having him be encumbered....
No meaningful choices indeed!
That's one of the areas 5e oversimplified from prior editions. I dunno what it was in 4e, but back in 3.5 retrieving a stored item counted as a move action & triggered an AoO to
manipulate an item. In 5e phb190 there are a bunch of things you can do while moving
and taking your action. That list is:
• draw or sheathe a sword
• open or close a door
• withdraw a potion from your backpack
• pick up a dropped axe
• take a bauble from a table
• remove a ring from your finger
• stuff some food into your mouth
• plant a banner in the ground
• fish a few coins from your belt pouch
• drink all the ale in a flagon
• throw a lever or a switch
• pull a torch from a sconce
• take a book from a shelf you can reach
• extinguish a small flame
• don a mask
• pull the hood of your cloak up and over your head
• put your ear to a door
• kick a small stone
• turn a key in a lock
• tap the floor with a 10-foot pole
• hand an item to another character
because all containers are apparently psychic extradimensional vats that automatically know what you are wanting to draw & instantly place it into the hand you reach inside with.
The system I linked to earlier is better in that it has these modifications:
Inventory Interactions
You must draw an item from your inventory before you can use it. During your turn, you may use your one free object interaction (PHB p190) with your inventory to
.
Add/sheathe one item (or collection of tiny items)
Remove/draw one item (or collection of tiny items
To make a second change to your inventory during the same turn, or to interact with another character's inventory, you must take the Use an Object action
...
Variant Quickdraw
If you want to make inventory access a little morerestricting for your players, try using the Quickdrawvariant rule.
Characters nominate any 3 items in their inventory asquickdraw items. Quickdraw items can be draw/removed from the inventory using a free object interaction asnormal. However, any non-quickdraw item can only be accessed using a full action.
Even without that sort of thing though, that mastif is subject to all kinds of effects including just being killed or feared & you can't draw anything from its saddlebags unless it's at least beside you. That mastiff isn't going to be alerting you if someone robs you blind while your distracted like you might if a goblin goes digging in your backpack while you fight five more goblins.
The problem is not that you can use some kind of pack animal, the problem is that 5e treats any and all packs no matter how mundane like they have the sort of isekai/hammerspace thought powered instant access storage that once needed certain magical packs like
Hewars handy haversack but was denied to other magical packs like
bags of holding, or
portable holes