it drives me nuts how many people don't understand this. Especially with opening arguments like "I hate having to go through all my inventory to figure out carry weight every time I find or sell something" No. No you don't. You just have to do the initial, then for every item you pick up or sell, you add or subtract a number. It's not complicated, and IDK why so many people hate it so much.
This has some similarities to Pathfinder 2's "bulk" weight - everything is either a number of bulk, or a tenth of a bulk, or insignificant, and you can carry X bulk - but I do appreciate the simplicity of your choice of "you can carry stone = Strength score." Kudos for that, excellent streamlining.
Carrying capacity is great. It allows for harder choices. You're fighter is carrying 20 swords, 4 shields, 3 types of armor, food, water, and everything else. It makes the players actually care about what they really want. It can add more fun to a game where they can stash stuff and come back later to possibly have people steal it and they have to track it down. They track the items to a even bigger hoard of items that they can choose from. I started with 5e. So I'm not an old-head but even in my games I limit myself because it makes it more interesting.
@@vindik8or exactly. When you take away actual carrying capacity, it allows for unrealistic situations where players can just carry anything without any consequences.
Cool video! I'm planning to implement a homebrew encumbrance system in my next campaign too! This seesms good. I personally am going to call the units of carrying capacity Bulk instead of Stone. It makes it clear that it's an abstraction that accounts for both size and weight!
Very cool idea. I use something similar I've implemented for my table. I'm testing a system of Equipment Slots. The "value" of one slot seems similar to your value of the stone btw, and is linked to both the item's weight and encumbrance. 1 - I started determining a fixed number of slots based on the Size of the charachter (4 for small, 6 for medium, 8 for large...). 2 - Every charachter (no matter what Size) has a number of slots associated with "body location", like a sort of "fast draw" inventory (it's simplier than it looks), consisting of arms, torso, chest, hip and some others (usually used for weapons, armor, shield, clothes and kits). 3 - Every charachter has slots bonus equal to the strenght modifier (an inventory less accessible in the heat of a battle). 4 - Using a backpack or a traveling backpack give the charachter 2 or 4 slots bonus. 5 - Some traits and feats can increase the number of slots. I really like your method of associating the size of large objects with a fixed value of stones. I came up with something similar but yours sounds better. As per your proposal, I also use fractions (1, 1/2 and 1/4 ), and I had to do the weight-to-slot transformation for each item. there are also a bunch of tiny items with no encumbrance. It is certainly easy to put into practice at the table (compared to the basic rules), and I think it gives "more value" to every object. Your system too btw. PS: sorry for my english, it's not my first language.
Another method I've thought of is the object size method. Each object has a size, and if you don't have enough capacity, you can't carry it. And I also thought of allowing containers to carry a lot of weight, but not as much space. Puts more emphasis on having a pack to carry everything you need, and even allows for carrying smaller allies in your pack when they need to rest, or during travel.
I've always run 'carry weight' by assigning every item a size. Items fall into small, medium, and large, with outliers being stuff that's so small you can have as many of it as you want, or items that are too big/heavy to fit in normal means of bodily transportation. Then I just give the players an amount of stuff they can fit based on their pack size. Ex. I rule that a standard size backpack can fit 1 large item, 4 medium items, or 16 small items. And the party can only carry weapons or ammo if they use a scabbard/sling/rope and tie them to their belt or pack with the number of weapons they can carry being limited to space. Ex. Medium sized characters can carry a weapon on each side, a weapon slung over their shoulders, and can tie two weapons to their pack. I've always thought it was pretty intuitive.
I say you can carry “items” equal to your strength score & not be encumbered & double that for light encumbrance. Equipment is then measured in 0, 1, or 2 “items”. You can have two things in your hands and two things ready at hand, such as a sheathed dagger. Everything else is packed and takes a couple of rounds to get out.
As a DM my solution has always been to give my adventurers a bag of holding at least by level 5. Ive always regarded carry weight as 'within reason' . If the barb wants to loot everybodys common weapon along the way then sure, but thats an action for him to drop them all before engaging in the next combat for example.
there are three Es I never use in my campaigns - experience, encumbrance and electrum electrum is unnecessary since it's just half of a gold piece, for which 5 silver is just easier to understand and work with experience is similarly unwieldy so I just use milestone at my own discretion encumbrance is much the same. I make my own judgements about what and how much characters can carry doing it this way might seem overly simple but it keeps these elements from impeding the narrative
I fully agree that D&D's inventory system is clunky and nigh unusable without a digital character sheet. I created a similar abstract system for my TTRPG, but some things are even more simplified. Only weapons, armor, rations, consumables, ability items, bags, and equipment have weight. Equipment is an abstraction of ammunition, spell focus, and different skill-related tools like thief tools or cooking utensils. A bag has a static weight and contains everything else, like quest items, crafting materials, money, and character background items. Now, you do not need to keep track of all the small stuff, but you still need to make meaningful choices. A weapon being heavy is now a meaningful downside. Should you take stimulants or extra rations? Strength becomes far more important also. A weak character has a very limited inventory space.
Dragonbane shows how this sort of system can be abstracted even further while still being meaningful. Basically, the vast majority of items are only classified as "Weight 1" and exceptionally cumbersome items like a barrel, sledgehammer or a large 6-person tent are given higher weight (weight 2, 2 and 4 respectively in this case). Items worn, such as armor, clothing or your 3 "at hand" weapons, as well as anything small enough to fit into your palm are simply ignored completely. The tradeoff is that your "Inventory slots" are only equal to half of your STR, tho a good backpack may let you add +2 additional slots. So compared to this system DB gives you far fewer slots but also abstracts away a lot of the things you'll always have to have on you anyway. A melee fighter may have something like 10 slots instead of 20 but at least they don't have to pay a 5-7 slot tax just to wear their basic gear. Helps buff STR builds a bit more too which is nice. And since you ignore small stuff you can have your characters carry around more fun little trinkets like a set of dice or cards to play with at the local pub without it eating into your character's adventuring effectiveness c:
I tried a system similar to this, and it still didn't work because 5e characters start with just. So. Much. Stuff. Players had to immediately start culling equipment. It felt less like having to make decisions about what they needed and more like they weren't allowed to have what they were entitled to unless they prioritized strength. If I were to do something like that again, I wouldn't let players use starting kits. Instead, they would have to use starting gold to purchase gear. Hopefully that would give them a feeling of building themselves up instead of being torn down.
Dan Collins proposed the stone weight encumbrance system on his Delta's D&D Hotspot blog back in April of 2007. I assume that's where you got the idea. Its fairly popular among trad gamers.
It seems like you and I recognize many of the same problems in 5e. The idea of using "stone" for the carry capacity unity of measure is a good one. I would say there is more utility in tracking carry capacity beyond hauling treasure, though. It forces characters to make hard choices. Maybe a wizard decides to carry a smaller backpack so he can carry an extra spell focus and a hidden dagger, for instance. Or maybe he increases his strength at an ASI and not just his INT. I've got a lot of ideas behind this. The last thing I haven't come up with a solution for yet is how to make ammunition-tracking (and ration-tracking) less tedious. I have heard of someone who basically just rolls at the end of combat to see if the player runs out of ammunition based on probabilities, but that doesn't quite sit right by me.
I use carry weight when it’s important; wandering around town with 8 suits of plate armour, fine, whatever…. Heading off into a dungeon, I want to know how much stuff you’re taking with you….. taking a dwarven pack horse with you?, then I’ve just added two bulettes into the start of the dungeon, I hope you don’t have something irreplaceable on that pony ;)
In my games I am not interested in playing "inventory Tetris." If I feel the need to play that, then any MMO will do. I use the "reasonability" qualifier. Meaning - is it reasonable that your character can carry everything on your sheet. I put the onus on the player. Players are warned in Session 0, if the DM has to make adjustments to your inventory because you're trying to carry, for example, 4 longswords, 3 bows, 200 arrows, plate mail, 3 sets of chainmail, etc., then those adjustments will NOT be in the character's favor. Have never had a problem. And there's no math involved. These games have enough math, we don't need to insist on adding more.
I see why you want to simplify weight system. I currently run BRP based game that uses ENC instead of real weights but I am not entirely happy with it. The type of game I run it with is not something that leans on heavily on what and how much stuff the PCs are carrying. Another game, much more exploration, survival and looting based game uses traditional weights and that works wonderfully in that game. In that game you need to carry all the food and drink you need during expeditions. So, it matters how much you can carry as it limits how far you can travel. Also, like you said, it affects how much loot you can carry back home. But it also means that if you are heavily burdened, what are you going to do when your friend gets badly wounded and you have to carry him? Are you going to ditch your gear and loot or are you going to ditch the wounded? That sort of decisions give content to the game. I think these examples might not work all that well in D&D because you don't often have to carry the wounded.
When the party kills the Dragon, and there are thousands of lbs of loot to haul out, that is when encumbrance (official, old school term for carry weight) matters. Especially if they are days away from civilization. Stones? Sure its cool, but you are just changing the measure. Lbs, Kilos, Stones, it is just a matter of scale.
Encumberance is not about simulationism. Simulationism is just an angle and symptom of a bigger issue. To paraphrase from Gabe Newell: When someone shoots a wall and a bullet hole doesn't show up it's not bad because it's not realistic, it's bad because the game didn't notice or respect my choice to shoot the wall. There are times when you need encumberance before you get treasure. The choice to take an extra torch versus some silver coins, or a backpack versus armour. Thats why encumberance really sucks in WotC era D&D, the core play cycle has pushed away from dungeoneering into narrative play and forcing the GM to pick up the mechanical slack with encounter relevance through narrative. There is no narrative weight to encumberance. Tension comes from a player making a choice and being unsure if that choice was right, now that tension can't happen from encumbrance in a WotC era D&D campaign because it no longer is set around dungeoneering. It doesn't matter if you are overencumbered because nothing in a narrative sense can be of consequence. Thats not to say old school D&D does it perfectly, because it doesn't. That begs the question as to why slower movement does give mechanical weight to encumberance, and therefore make encumberance relevant in old school D&D and the OSR. It's used in older style games because when dungeoneering the slower you move the longer it takes to leave the dungeon. The longer it takes the more random encounters you have. The more random encounters you have the more likely you are to die. Even when dungeoneering in newer editions you're altogether too powerful, you don't have to sacrifice gear for treasure because class abilities take the place of much of your gear like easy to access healing in place of potions, and treasure has no point beyond buying new gear because you no longer get XP for treasure. On top of that D&D encumberance sucks more because you have so much more to track on a character sheet. In older editions you just had encumberance, a few to hit bonuses, and a few spells if you're lucky to manage. Now you have skills, with multiple sources of skill bonuses, significantly more spells, class abilities, feats, racial abilities. To add encumberance on top of that is cruel. If you still want to add encumberance you should look at Torchbearer or Lamentations of the Flame Princess for inspiration. Both are brilliant, but they do dungeoneering differently.Torchbearer is like "Darkest Dungeon the pen and paper RPG", LotFP is an old school D&D edition mechanically simplified, brought to the 1600s instead of the medieval era, and made way more horror movie, but the core system itself is smooth as butter for a more ordinary old school game. Both Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Torchbearer have way better encumberance systems than any D&D edition regardless. In LotFP they simplify by having a table of things giving points of encumberance. For example wearing chain armour gives 1 point, carrying 6 or more items gives 1 point, 11 or more items gives a further point. Normal clothing and items that you're wearing don't count. Small items of the same type like arrows count together as 1 item. Big items that take two hands to carry give 1 point each on top of counting towards number of items. Then you total up the points and see how encumbered you are which gives movement speed in combat, while exploring, while running, and miles per day overland travel. This is to tell the GM how far players can move before a random encounter is checked for. There is no weight at all. Torchbearer can't really be ported to a new game because of it's connection to other mechanics but it's areally fun game in and of itself. In Torchbearer everything has been moved to slots, and there aren't encounters based on movement speed. So your hand has a slot that can hold something, that might be a torch, or a weapon, or a bag that has slots too. You can't put a full bag into a backpack though, an empty bag takes up one slot and a full one must be carried. These slots you put items into, but it means you can only carry so many things and the more treasure you carry, the less tools you have to escape and the less tools you bring back with you. Torchbearer has a few other systems that apply into that too, like every time you roll time passes, as time passes torches burn out andyou advance through a track of conditions that make you hungry, thirsty, tired, and some way worse conditions that all stack. So if you carry treasure in place of food you get worse conditions faster, and each condition affects your rolls, and every roll is a chance at a random encounter.
Carry weight sucks because people run and play games were carry weight doesnt factor into anything. Carry weight becomes an annoyance when its handwaved away like what a lot of the elements of dnd get handwaved away, such as food and water. If you can just create food and water (or even just water) with magic, then a lot of the nuanced of carry weight gets forgotten about. Add on things like bags of holding and it gets even more pointless For instance a human needs about 2 pounds of food and 8 pounds of water per day. While 50 coins is 1 pound. And that can create an interesting situation, especially if you are deep in a dungeon. Which is more valuable 1 day of food and water for 1 person, or 500 coins? And then at the bottom of the dungeon you kill the dragon, and now you have its horde. Of over 1million coins, or about 20,000 pounds. getting the treasure out of the dungeon can be an adventure in itself But all this revolves around your game of dungeons and dragon taking place in a dungeon and having dragons. A lot of modern dnd games never touch dungeons
Encumbrance does NOT suck, it is a vital part of proper D&D games. We also live in 2024 and have things like D&D Beyond which can auto add encumbrance for you. Games like OSE/Dolmenwood add inventory slots which simulate this without doing math. There is no excuse to not do encumbrance, it's the same argument for ditching XP in favor of milstone, all ideas that make the game worse.
Thought the same. Many RPG streamers discuss ideas that have been already been stablished in other RPG systems, and they show them as if they have just discovered boiled water.
I like the idea but 14 lbs. for a long sword or a bow is nonsensical - an entire greatsword would weigh around 1/3 to 1/2 of that. I would consider abstracting the system even further to units of "bulk" which would account for both weight and size (ie, awkwardness to carry) without necessarily producing crazy results like the above.
I mean this rule is so you can't just walk out of a dragons hoard with every single penny... It's a balancing thing.
it drives me nuts how many people don't understand this. Especially with opening arguments like "I hate having to go through all my inventory to figure out carry weight every time I find or sell something"
No. No you don't. You just have to do the initial, then for every item you pick up or sell, you add or subtract a number. It's not complicated, and IDK why so many people hate it so much.
It makes choices matter and is it really that hard to keep track of a dozen or so items?
I’ve been using the sticky note method proposed by Deficiency Master, and amazingly my players told me the actually LIKE managing their inventory now
Where can I find this deficiency master and his sticky note system?
th-cam.com/video/uv8NQSgEBB4/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Lx7EP2bpOnmugFdg
@@beefcereal Deficient Master, "Dungeons and Dragon's Most Boring Rule"
@@ConFusi0n yeah, that one - I posted a link but I guess TH-cam just deleted them unless you’re a spam bot
th-cam.com/video/uv8NQSgEBB4/w-d-xo.htmlsi=G5rgrompAr_F22HH
This has some similarities to Pathfinder 2's "bulk" weight - everything is either a number of bulk, or a tenth of a bulk, or insignificant, and you can carry X bulk - but I do appreciate the simplicity of your choice of "you can carry stone = Strength score." Kudos for that, excellent streamlining.
Interesting, thank you
Carrying capacity is great.
It allows for harder choices.
You're fighter is carrying 20 swords, 4 shields, 3 types of armor, food, water, and everything else.
It makes the players actually care about what they really want. It can add more fun to a game where they can stash stuff and come back later to possibly have people steal it and they have to track it down. They track the items to a even bigger hoard of items that they can choose from.
I started with 5e. So I'm not an old-head but even in my games I limit myself because it makes it more interesting.
How does anyone carry 20 swords and do literally anything else, let alone carrying the rest of that stuff?
@@vindik8or exactly. When you take away actual carrying capacity, it allows for unrealistic situations where players can just carry anything without any consequences.
Cool video! I'm planning to implement a homebrew encumbrance system in my next campaign too! This seesms good. I personally am going to call the units of carrying capacity Bulk instead of Stone. It makes it clear that it's an abstraction that accounts for both size and weight!
Seems like you've basically invented the Pf2e Bulk rules in parallel lol, which I've found quite nice, so these rules should work well too. :)
I really appreciate you putting that stuff on google docs! Thanks a lot!
Of course!
In the first 40 secs, it seems like Excel didn’t exist and everything would be done manually…
Most every game I've ever been in balks at NOT having carry weight, not the other way around.
4:54 Back to 1E notions of encumbrance--a combination of weight and cumbersome volume.
Very cool idea. I use something similar I've implemented for my table.
I'm testing a system of Equipment Slots. The "value" of one slot seems similar to your value of the stone btw, and is linked to both the item's weight and encumbrance.
1 - I started determining a fixed number of slots based on the Size of the charachter (4 for small, 6 for medium, 8 for large...).
2 - Every charachter (no matter what Size) has a number of slots associated with "body location", like a sort of "fast draw" inventory (it's simplier than it looks), consisting of arms, torso, chest, hip and some others (usually used for weapons, armor, shield, clothes and kits).
3 - Every charachter has slots bonus equal to the strenght modifier (an inventory less accessible in the heat of a battle).
4 - Using a backpack or a traveling backpack give the charachter 2 or 4 slots bonus.
5 - Some traits and feats can increase the number of slots.
I really like your method of associating the size of large objects with a fixed value of stones. I came up with something similar but yours sounds better.
As per your proposal, I also use fractions (1, 1/2 and 1/4 ), and I had to do the weight-to-slot transformation for each item. there are also a bunch of tiny items with no encumbrance.
It is certainly easy to put into practice at the table (compared to the basic rules), and I think it gives "more value" to every object. Your system too btw.
PS: sorry for my english, it's not my first language.
Another method I've thought of is the object size method. Each object has a size, and if you don't have enough capacity, you can't carry it. And I also thought of allowing containers to carry a lot of weight, but not as much space. Puts more emphasis on having a pack to carry everything you need, and even allows for carrying smaller allies in your pack when they need to rest, or during travel.
I've always run 'carry weight' by assigning every item a size. Items fall into small, medium, and large, with outliers being stuff that's so small you can have as many of it as you want, or items that are too big/heavy to fit in normal means of bodily transportation. Then I just give the players an amount of stuff they can fit based on their pack size. Ex. I rule that a standard size backpack can fit 1 large item, 4 medium items, or 16 small items. And the party can only carry weapons or ammo if they use a scabbard/sling/rope and tie them to their belt or pack with the number of weapons they can carry being limited to space. Ex. Medium sized characters can carry a weapon on each side, a weapon slung over their shoulders, and can tie two weapons to their pack. I've always thought it was pretty intuitive.
Great approach - far better than pure weight in my opinion.
I say you can carry “items” equal to your strength score & not be encumbered & double that for light encumbrance. Equipment is then measured in 0, 1, or 2 “items”. You can have two things in your hands and two things ready at hand, such as a sheathed dagger. Everything else is packed and takes a couple of rounds to get out.
As a DM my solution has always been to give my adventurers a bag of holding at least by level 5. Ive always regarded carry weight as 'within reason' . If the barb wants to loot everybodys common weapon along the way then sure, but thats an action for him to drop them all before engaging in the next combat for example.
Pathfinder 2 does this with bulk, similar to tge stones you proposed, bulk represents both weight and size of an item.
This would be my preferred approach.
If you get an icon for items like in Resident Evil 4, you better believe I am keeping track and strapped
there are three Es I never use in my campaigns - experience, encumbrance and electrum
electrum is unnecessary since it's just half of a gold piece, for which 5 silver is just easier to understand and work with
experience is similarly unwieldy so I just use milestone at my own discretion
encumbrance is much the same. I make my own judgements about what and how much characters can carry
doing it this way might seem overly simple but it keeps these elements from impeding the narrative
I fully agree that D&D's inventory system is clunky and nigh unusable without a digital character sheet. I created a similar abstract system for my TTRPG, but some things are even more simplified. Only weapons, armor, rations, consumables, ability items, bags, and equipment have weight. Equipment is an abstraction of ammunition, spell focus, and different skill-related tools like thief tools or cooking utensils. A bag has a static weight and contains everything else, like quest items, crafting materials, money, and character background items.
Now, you do not need to keep track of all the small stuff, but you still need to make meaningful choices. A weapon being heavy is now a meaningful downside. Should you take stimulants or extra rations? Strength becomes far more important also. A weak character has a very limited inventory space.
Dragonbane shows how this sort of system can be abstracted even further while still being meaningful. Basically, the vast majority of items are only classified as "Weight 1" and exceptionally cumbersome items like a barrel, sledgehammer or a large 6-person tent are given higher weight (weight 2, 2 and 4 respectively in this case). Items worn, such as armor, clothing or your 3 "at hand" weapons, as well as anything small enough to fit into your palm are simply ignored completely. The tradeoff is that your "Inventory slots" are only equal to half of your STR, tho a good backpack may let you add +2 additional slots.
So compared to this system DB gives you far fewer slots but also abstracts away a lot of the things you'll always have to have on you anyway. A melee fighter may have something like 10 slots instead of 20 but at least they don't have to pay a 5-7 slot tax just to wear their basic gear. Helps buff STR builds a bit more too which is nice. And since you ignore small stuff you can have your characters carry around more fun little trinkets like a set of dice or cards to play with at the local pub without it eating into your character's adventuring effectiveness c:
Some interesting ideas there. Might use some of them.
I tried a system similar to this, and it still didn't work because 5e characters start with just. So. Much. Stuff. Players had to immediately start culling equipment. It felt less like having to make decisions about what they needed and more like they weren't allowed to have what they were entitled to unless they prioritized strength.
If I were to do something like that again, I wouldn't let players use starting kits. Instead, they would have to use starting gold to purchase gear. Hopefully that would give them a feeling of building themselves up instead of being torn down.
Dan Collins proposed the stone weight encumbrance system on his Delta's D&D Hotspot blog back in April of 2007. I assume that's where you got the idea. Its fairly popular among trad gamers.
Never read that. Loved his work in Disney's Tarzan (1999) though.
It seems like you and I recognize many of the same problems in 5e. The idea of using "stone" for the carry capacity unity of measure is a good one. I would say there is more utility in tracking carry capacity beyond hauling treasure, though. It forces characters to make hard choices. Maybe a wizard decides to carry a smaller backpack so he can carry an extra spell focus and a hidden dagger, for instance. Or maybe he increases his strength at an ASI and not just his INT. I've got a lot of ideas behind this. The last thing I haven't come up with a solution for yet is how to make ammunition-tracking (and ration-tracking) less tedious. I have heard of someone who basically just rolls at the end of combat to see if the player runs out of ammunition based on probabilities, but that doesn't quite sit right by me.
50 coins = 1 lb, then
559lbs = 27,950 coins
So ruffly speaking, 25000 coins can fit in a 1 cubic foot chest.
A 5ft x 5ft x 5ft cube of pure gold would weigh ~150,000 lbs.
Google lied to me
@@beefcereal for reference the same amount of water would weigh 7,800 lbs. Likely you didn't know the right questions to ask google.
I use carry weight when it’s important; wandering around town with 8 suits of plate armour, fine, whatever…. Heading off into a dungeon, I want to know how much stuff you’re taking with you….. taking a dwarven pack horse with you?, then I’ve just added two bulettes into the start of the dungeon, I hope you don’t have something irreplaceable on that pony ;)
In my games I am not interested in playing "inventory Tetris." If I feel the need to play that, then any MMO will do. I use the "reasonability" qualifier. Meaning - is it reasonable that your character can carry everything on your sheet. I put the onus on the player. Players are warned in Session 0, if the DM has to make adjustments to your inventory because you're trying to carry, for example, 4 longswords, 3 bows, 200 arrows, plate mail, 3 sets of chainmail, etc., then those adjustments will NOT be in the character's favor.
Have never had a problem. And there's no math involved. These games have enough math, we don't need to insist on adding more.
I see why you want to simplify weight system. I currently run BRP based game that uses ENC instead of real weights but I am not entirely happy with it. The type of game I run it with is not something that leans on heavily on what and how much stuff the PCs are carrying. Another game, much more exploration, survival and looting based game uses traditional weights and that works wonderfully in that game. In that game you need to carry all the food and drink you need during expeditions. So, it matters how much you can carry as it limits how far you can travel. Also, like you said, it affects how much loot you can carry back home. But it also means that if you are heavily burdened, what are you going to do when your friend gets badly wounded and you have to carry him? Are you going to ditch your gear and loot or are you going to ditch the wounded? That sort of decisions give content to the game.
I think these examples might not work all that well in D&D because you don't often have to carry the wounded.
My bugbear with a Belt of Frost Giant Strength can carry 690 lb.
Nice
When the party kills the Dragon, and there are thousands of lbs of loot to haul out, that is when encumbrance (official, old school term for carry weight) matters. Especially if they are days away from civilization. Stones? Sure its cool, but you are just changing the measure. Lbs, Kilos, Stones, it is just a matter of scale.
Encumberance is not about simulationism. Simulationism is just an angle and symptom of a bigger issue. To paraphrase from Gabe Newell: When someone shoots a wall and a bullet hole doesn't show up it's not bad because it's not realistic, it's bad because the game didn't notice or respect my choice to shoot the wall. There are times when you need encumberance before you get treasure. The choice to take an extra torch versus some silver coins, or a backpack versus armour. Thats why encumberance really sucks in WotC era D&D, the core play cycle has pushed away from dungeoneering into narrative play and forcing the GM to pick up the mechanical slack with encounter relevance through narrative. There is no narrative weight to encumberance. Tension comes from a player making a choice and being unsure if that choice was right, now that tension can't happen from encumbrance in a WotC era D&D campaign because it no longer is set around dungeoneering. It doesn't matter if you are overencumbered because nothing in a narrative sense can be of consequence. Thats not to say old school D&D does it perfectly, because it doesn't.
That begs the question as to why slower movement does give mechanical weight to encumberance, and therefore make encumberance relevant in old school D&D and the OSR. It's used in older style games because when dungeoneering the slower you move the longer it takes to leave the dungeon. The longer it takes the more random encounters you have. The more random encounters you have the more likely you are to die. Even when dungeoneering in newer editions you're altogether too powerful, you don't have to sacrifice gear for treasure because class abilities take the place of much of your gear like easy to access healing in place of potions, and treasure has no point beyond buying new gear because you no longer get XP for treasure. On top of that D&D encumberance sucks more because you have so much more to track on a character sheet. In older editions you just had encumberance, a few to hit bonuses, and a few spells if you're lucky to manage. Now you have skills, with multiple sources of skill bonuses, significantly more spells, class abilities, feats, racial abilities. To add encumberance on top of that is cruel.
If you still want to add encumberance you should look at Torchbearer or Lamentations of the Flame Princess for inspiration. Both are brilliant, but they do dungeoneering differently.Torchbearer is like "Darkest Dungeon the pen and paper RPG", LotFP is an old school D&D edition mechanically simplified, brought to the 1600s instead of the medieval era, and made way more horror movie, but the core system itself is smooth as butter for a more ordinary old school game. Both Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Torchbearer have way better encumberance systems than any D&D edition regardless.
In LotFP they simplify by having a table of things giving points of encumberance. For example wearing chain armour gives 1 point, carrying 6 or more items gives 1 point, 11 or more items gives a further point. Normal clothing and items that you're wearing don't count. Small items of the same type like arrows count together as 1 item. Big items that take two hands to carry give 1 point each on top of counting towards number of items. Then you total up the points and see how encumbered you are which gives movement speed in combat, while exploring, while running, and miles per day overland travel. This is to tell the GM how far players can move before a random encounter is checked for. There is no weight at all.
Torchbearer can't really be ported to a new game because of it's connection to other mechanics but it's areally fun game in and of itself. In Torchbearer everything has been moved to slots, and there aren't encounters based on movement speed. So your hand has a slot that can hold something, that might be a torch, or a weapon, or a bag that has slots too. You can't put a full bag into a backpack though, an empty bag takes up one slot and a full one must be carried. These slots you put items into, but it means you can only carry so many things and the more treasure you carry, the less tools you have to escape and the less tools you bring back with you. Torchbearer has a few other systems that apply into that too, like every time you roll time passes, as time passes torches burn out andyou advance through a track of conditions that make you hungry, thirsty, tired, and some way worse conditions that all stack. So if you carry treasure in place of food you get worse conditions faster, and each condition affects your rolls, and every roll is a chance at a random encounter.
Carry weight sucks because people run and play games were carry weight doesnt factor into anything.
Carry weight becomes an annoyance when its handwaved away like what a lot of the elements of dnd get handwaved away, such as food and water.
If you can just create food and water (or even just water) with magic, then a lot of the nuanced of carry weight gets forgotten about.
Add on things like bags of holding and it gets even more pointless
For instance a human needs about 2 pounds of food and 8 pounds of water per day. While 50 coins is 1 pound. And that can create an interesting situation, especially if you are deep in a dungeon. Which is more valuable 1 day of food and water for 1 person, or 500 coins?
And then at the bottom of the dungeon you kill the dragon, and now you have its horde. Of over 1million coins, or about 20,000 pounds. getting the treasure out of the dungeon can be an adventure in itself
But all this revolves around your game of dungeons and dragon taking place in a dungeon and having dragons. A lot of modern dnd games never touch dungeons
Strength is the worst ability score in a game where strength adds to damage in melee and the game is all about combat? Are you high?
I found that statement baffling, especially as in most D&D editions STR adds to HIT and DMG rolls - not sure how 5e does it.
Encumbrance does NOT suck, it is a vital part of proper D&D games. We also live in 2024 and have things like D&D Beyond which can auto add encumbrance for you. Games like OSE/Dolmenwood add inventory slots which simulate this without doing math. There is no excuse to not do encumbrance, it's the same argument for ditching XP in favor of milstone, all ideas that make the game worse.
Nobody tell this guy about bulk in PF2
Thought the same. Many RPG streamers discuss ideas that have been already been stablished in other RPG systems, and they show them as if they have just discovered boiled water.
@@FranciscoLinares-pe7lm It's a little funny. Especially when it's people from 5e reinventing Pathfinder.
With VTT and apps this is all done automatically. Dont complain and obey the rules
I like the idea but 14 lbs. for a long sword or a bow is nonsensical - an entire greatsword would weigh around 1/3 to 1/2 of that. I would consider abstracting the system even further to units of "bulk" which would account for both weight and size (ie, awkwardness to carry) without necessarily producing crazy results like the above.
You have just discovered Bulk in Paizo systems. How groundbreaking (sarcasm).