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Message: <blockquote data-quote="harpy" data-source="post: 5005959" data-attributes="member: 85243">I'm trying to figure out the overall value of carrying capacity in the game.  This post is kind of just me talking out loud for those who might comment on my thoughts...  GENERAL OBSERVATIONS  Carrying capacity is something that can have a tendency to be overlooked.  It requires a lot of book keeping on the players part to keep track of weight, and I'd assume DM's aren't eagerly looking forward to auditing character sheets.  So in a broad context it is probably one of the rules in the game that is not as closely observed as other rules.  Carrying capacity, when it is an issue, seems to fall into two categories.  The first is the concern a player has to remain in the light load category.  If you remain within the light load then no penalties are incurred.  If however a character is wearing medium or heavy armor, then these concerns tend to be thrown out since the penalties kick into effect, regardless of it either being armor usage or extra weight being carried.  So to a certain extent, this first concern is whether or not you are a “tank” character or not.  The second situation where carrying capacity comes into effect due to an emergency situation.  Suddenly a character is down and either needs to be dragged or carried to safety is the iconic reason for this.  In years and years of playing RPGs I'm hard pressed to think of other situations where heavy loads needed to be carried about in a stressful situation.  Not that they couldn't happen, but normally it is just to move an ally to safety.  Next, in your typical D&D game the issue of carrying capacity only seems to be an issue in the lower levels of play.  By mid levels players will often have available to them Bags of Holding, Handy Haversacks, magical quivers, and gloves of storying to radically reduce the weight load of the items they carry.  Further, mithral becomes affordable for the heavier armors, cutting their weight in half.  Since armor is normally the heaviest item a character has to be encumbered with, this tends to lighten a load significantly.     So for a general recap, carrying capacity can have a tendency to be easily overlooked in games, it is normally only scrutinized by players who have characters that are not wearing medium or heavy armor,  by mid levels it can easily be solved by magic items, and it tends to be a rare encounter where characters are called upon to move heavy objects in the middle of a battle.  The end result is that carrying capacity doesn't seem to be a frequently important feature of the game.  GRITTY DETAILS  Now to go to the nitty gritty, looking at how carrying capacity and how it relates to item weight:  Despite the fact that encumbrance and carrying capacity isn't a very important part of the game, nonetheless there is a great amount of detail baked into the system.  Size affects both carrying capacity and the weight of objects that are tailored for specific sizes.  Here is a breakout of typical sizes:  Large Biped - x2 carrying capacity/x2 item weight Large Quadruped - x3 carrying capacity/x2 item weight   Medium Biped – x1 carrying capacity/x1 item weight   Medium Quadruped -  x1.5 carrying capacity/x1 item weight Small Biped -  x.75 carrying capacity/x.5 item weight Small Quadruped -  x1 carrying capacity/x.5 item weight Tiny Biped -  x.5 carrying capacity/x.1 item weight Tiny Quadruped -  x.75 carrying capacity/x.1 item weight  Now lets look at a scenario.  You have a character who falls into the one category that really cares about encumbrance, the martial character who wants to remain mobile.  They want as much AC as possible while still moving at full speed, and they are low level and can't afford something fancy like a mithral breastplate.  So they look to a chain shirt as their best option.  For simplicity of proportions we'll assume (somehow) that all of these creatures have a Strength of 10.     Putting that through a spreadsheet and the percentage that the chain shirt takes up of the overall light load carrying capacity is:  Large Biped - 75.76% Large Quadruped - 50.51% Medium Biped - 75.76% Medium Quadruped - 50.51% Small Biped - 50.51% Small Quadruped - 37.88% Tiny Biped - 15.15% Tiny Quadruped – 10.1%  As you can see, aside from the Medium and Large Bipeds, everyone is a winner when combining carrying capacity and weight ratios when they are using items fit to their size.  Now lets look at it if we scale strength to size.  We'll assume Large is 18, Medium 10, Small 8, and Tiny 4:  Large Biped - 25% Large Quadruped - 16.67% Medium Biped - 75.76% Medium Quadruped - 50.51% Small Biped - 64.1% Small Quadruped - 48.08% Tiny Biped - 38.46% Tiny Quadruped – 25.64%  What's interesting here is that despite the shifts in strength values everyone is still coming out better than the Medium Biped.  On the large side of things the sheer increase in strength pushes the weight ratio down further, and on the tiny end the 1/10th weight of items still compensates greatly even for a large drop in overall strength score.  For the last scenario, lets look at the emergency situation, where the character needs to drag the tank character out of the way after being dropped by the BBEG.  We'll assume a weight of 250 lbs and the strengths adjusted to size:  Large Biped – 125% or can carry as a medium load Large Quadruped – 83.33% or can carry as a light load Medium Biped – 757.58% or needs to drag away Medium Quadruped – 505.05% or lift and stagger away Small Biped – 1282.05% or needs to drag Small Quadruped – 961.54% or needs to drag Tiny Biped – 3846.15% or can't even drag! Tiny Quadruped – 2564.1% or can't even drag!  Note, the above percentages are in relation to the creatures light load.  So from the above, if the tank has a centaur friend then he'll easily get scooped up and trotted off to saftey.  However if its only the Wizard's pseudodragon familiar who is left to try and drag the tank out of the way then he's probably toast.  SUMMATION  Looking at the whole picture, it looks like if a character can easily equip themselves with items that are fitted to their size then unless you are a medium biped you are actually winning out in the encumbrance ratio.  Not that this is a huge deal, as in the opening observations encumbrance isn't a major factor in the game.  Tiny creatures that don't have access to items designed with their 1/10th weight ratio would have a lot more problems and would really need to bulk up if they want to pick up and use items that the party stumbles across.  When it comes to the emergency situations, raw strength plays a far greater role than encumbrance multipliers.</blockquote>

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