Making encumrbance challenging and fun?

[harpy]

Over the years has anyone devised a system to handle encumbrance in such a way that it balances the reality of encumbrance, versus the bookkeeping?

That is, has anyone made encumbrance a challenging and fun aspect of the game without being burdensome?

[erikun]

Removing it has usually been fun, as has handing out bags of holding at low levels, usually between 3 to 5.

[ghashxx]

Something which I've often thought about incorporating is weight distribution For example, if I'm wearing a weight belt for SCUBA, sure I feel really heavy but with all the weight right there on my waist, and evenly spaced, it's not too bad. But if I've got a 40lb back pack on then that's a way different story. Same amount of weight, but distributed all kinds of different.

So instead of worrying about straight encumbrance, I say ignore that until they actually become fully encumbered (light/medium load ignore). And when they're in medium load if they have a back pack then suggest taking it off before engaging in battle. Perhaps even offer up some quick release options or something. Just start making them think about what having lots of weight distributed all over their body would do to their fighting abilities, and to act accordingly.

[jmbrown]

Something which I've often thought about incorporating is weight distribution For example, if I'm wearing a weight belt for SCUBA, sure I feel really heavy but with all the weight right there on my waist, and evenly spaced, it's not too bad. But if I've got a 40lb back pack on then that's a way different story. Same amount of weight, but distributed all kinds of different.

So instead of worrying about straight encumbrance, I say ignore that until they actually become fully encumbered (light/medium load ignore). And when they're in medium load if they have a back pack then suggest taking it off before engaging in battle. Perhaps even offer up some quick release options or something. Just start making them think about what having lots of weight distributed all over their body would do to their fighting abilities, and to act accordingly.

I thought this was normal? When I play with DMs who enforce the weight rules, I keep all inconsequential adventuring items in my backpack and all weapons/potions/wands/whatever are attached to a belt or bandoleer. When we get into a fight it's a move action to drop the 50lb backpack and start beating down.

But people in 75lb armor should be penalized for movement. A guy in full plate shouldn't even be able to climb down a ladder safely unless he's really trained in climb.

[Ryumaru]

But people in 75lb armor should be penalized for movement. A guy in full plate shouldn't even be able to climb down a ladder safely unless he's really trained in climb.

Yeah, can't let those above-the-norm heroes do anything which might in reality be somewhat questionable. We'll leave that to the fireball throwing weaklings in robes.

You're already being penalized; if in combat, I recall climbing a ladder is something like, what, DC10? Fullplate is something like -6, and assuming an above average warrior (14 Strength) and trained in Climb (4 Ranks), he'll need to roll 10+ to even move half speed up/down one. 25% chance of being so encumbered he can't move. Anyone without ranks in it or a decent Strength on a particularly low roll will be falling off about 10-15% of the time.

[Yzzyx]

But people in 75lb armor should be penalized for movement. A guy in full plate shouldn't even be able to climb down a ladder safely unless he's really trained in climb.

Armor check penalty covers this.

Edit:


climbing a ladder is something like, what, DC10?

Climbing a ladder is more like DC 0 (DC for climbing a knotted rope against a wall).

[Ryumaru]

Ah, my mistake >.<

[kjones]

Over the years has anyone devised a system to handle encumbrance in such a way that it balances the reality of encumbrance, versus the bookkeeping?

That is, has anyone made encumbrance a challenging and fun aspect of the game without being burdensome?

Not unless you really enjoy number-crunching. Encumbrance as it exists right now is thoroughly unrealistic (because it doesn't take into account weight distribution, as previously noted - I am equally encumbered carrying a 40 lb. pack and carrying a 40 lb. bag of flour) and it's already such a pain in the neck that few people bother keeping careful track.

At the very least, encumbrance requires keeping a running total of the weight of every item you're carrying. That's bookkeeping enough.

[jmbrown]

Climbing a ladder is more like DC 0 (DC for climbing a knotted rope against a wall).

Maybe for a ladder you brace up against a wall but a ladder leading straight down is DC 10 IE ledges against a wall you can stand on.


Yeah, can't let those above-the-norm heroes do anything which might in reality be somewhat questionable. We'll leave that to the fireball throwing weaklings in robes.

You're already being penalized; if in combat, I recall climbing a vertical ladder is something like, what, DC10? Fullplate is something like -6, and assuming an above average warrior (14 Strength) and trained in Climb (4 Ranks), he'll need to roll 10+ to even move half speed up/down one. 25% chance of being so encumbered he can't move. Anyone without ranks in it or a decent Strength on a particularly low roll will be falling off about 10-15% of the time.

He's also likely medium encumbered which is an additional -3. Using a level 3 fighter with the elite array (strength 15) wearing full plate, medium encumbrance, and full ranks in climb can't take 10 because he has a -1 penalty meaning he makes no progress. He has about a 55% chance of failing and a 35% chance of flat out falling.

[Lapak]

Not unless you really enjoy number-crunching. Encumbrance as it exists right now is thoroughly unrealistic (because it doesn't take into account weight distribution, as previously noted - I am equally encumbered carrying a 40 lb. pack and carrying a 40 lb. bag of flour) and it's already such a pain in the neck that few people bother keeping careful track.

At the very least, encumbrance requires keeping a running total of the weight of every item you're carrying. That's bookkeeping enough.Off-the-cuff houserule to cover what the OP is looking for: effective weight/encumbrance is halved for any items which you have a suitable container to carry them in - a backpack covers a lot of this, a quiver for arrows, a sheath and belt for a sword, and so on. Items which you have no suitable holder for, and which cannot fit into the generic packs and sacks you may have - a two-handed maul, for example - are at full weight. Items you have no suitable container for and want to lug around without taking up a hand - you find a rare painting and want to be able to still hold a weapon, say - count double.

Lets low-level characters carry more stuff, forces a little prioritization of treasure and loot, and takes what you're talking about into account. It's a pretty simple rule to use, as well. Still only one weight per item, only one multiplier (and an easy one to remember) and requires only the smallest degree of common sense.

[ericgrau]

IMO just don't unless the character is low strength or tries to carry 29 swords (regardless of his strength). If you want to make hauling loot interesting then just enforce realism like no 29 swords or 6 bags of holding (which are larger and heavier than potato sacks btw).

[Jastermereel]

The last game I played (the first our group ran) worked that way for a long time without issue. I think the only time it was called into question was when my halfling monk (first game!) tried lugging a fallen foe's fullplate around (which was legitimate for the weight, given my strength, but absurd for the logistics). It works well enough for a light casual game, but I'm finding that tracking weight (as we do in the newly restarted campaign) helps the players think about their actions more.

In a game last night they realized, much to their displeasure, that none of them had any rope to speak of (earning the ire of Samwise Gamgee), largely because they were concerned about the weight of what they were carrying. I'll be giving them Bags of Holding and Handy Haversacks and the like soon, but knowing that you have limits means you think about what you carry that much more.

[Glimbur]

He's also likely medium encumbered which is an additional -3. Using a level 3 fighter with the elite array (strength 15) wearing full plate, medium encumbrance, and full ranks in climb can't take 10 because he has a -1 penalty meaning he makes no progress. He has about a 55% chance of failing and a 35% chance of flat out falling.

You don't stack the penalties from a Medium or Heavy load and that from armor; just take the worse. Source (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/carryingCapacity.htm)

[Saintjebus]

Most melee types I've played don't worry about it, simply because the str as a primary stat makes it pretty much irrelevant. The only time I've made notice of it is when I'm playing my 6 str gnome. Then, it's actually kind of fun to decide, "Ok, can I carry this with everything else? 6 lbs? nope, don't actually need that."

[Fizban]

The easiest way to make encumbrance matter is like Saintjebus said: play a low strength character. Even for a str 10 person (average), a light load is limited to 33 lbs. Go through and total up the weight of a "standard adventuring kit" of your choice, and I guarantee it'll be pushing that before you get to weapons or armor.

[Jayabalard]

Yeah, can't let those above-the-norm heroes do anything which might in reality be somewhat questionable. We'll leave that to the fireball throwing weaklings in robes.Sounds good to me. I mean, the fireballing throwing weaklings are the ones who are explicitly allowed to bend reality to their wishes (ie, they use the magic). If they guys in full plate could bend reality to their will, they'd be throwing fireballs too instead of wasting their time running around in full plate.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Sounds good to me. I mean, the fireballing throwing weaklings are the ones who are explicitly allowed to bend reality to their wishes (ie, they use the magic). If they guys in full plate could bend reality to their will, they'd be throwing fireballs too instead of wasting their time running around in full plate.I can build a 1st level human character that can beat the world record for Long Jump without magic. I can do a similar thing for the world record for foot speed. Do you really think that melee shouldn't be allowed to do something unrealistic just so they don't suck as much?

[Myrmex]

You know what's really killer for fighters in full plate? Slippery surfaces.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

In my games I've reworked the encumbrance system to use stone (the old English unit, 1 stone ~ 14 pounds), simplified weights so that they're essentially based on size and whether they're slim/light, normal, or bulky/heavy for their size, and changed encumbrance penalties to be linearly related to your encumbrance. It reduces most of the math to single digits, makes remembering penalties easy, and injects verisimilitude without requiring a ton of bookkeeping.

[Jothki]

How about giving every item a shape consisting of a number of blocks, and forcing players to squeeze them all into a grid?

[dsmiles]

I thought this was normal? When I play with DMs who enforce the weight rules, I keep all inconsequential adventuring items in my backpack and all weapons/potions/wands/whatever are attached to a belt or bandoleer. When we get into a fight it's a move action to drop the 50lb backpack and start beating down.

As a DM, I have added a "quick release buckle" to all standard backpacks, decreasing the drop time to a free action while moving (much like drawing a weapon).



But people in 75lb armor should be penalized for movement. A guy in full plate shouldn't even be able to climb down a ladder safely unless he's really trained in climb.

Don't forget that the "average" adventurer is as strong as a middle ages knight. They are also trained how to do things in their 75 lb. plate armor. That's what non-proficiency penalties are for.

[Devils_Advocate]

Sounds good to me.
Why?


I mean, the fireballing throwing weaklings are the ones who are explicitly allowed to bend reality to their wishes (ie, they use the magic).
Um... non-magic-users can make reality follow their wishes, too. We can do that in real life. I will my arm to move and it moves. Doesn't let me throw fireballs, but it's still a pretty useful ability.


If they guys in full plate could bend reality to their will, they'd be throwing fireballs too instead of wasting their time running around in full plate.
Um, that doesn't follow. Like, at all. Different superpowers aren't interchangeable with each other. Being able to control the weather doesn't give you telepathy, nor vice versa. In D&D, learning how to throw fireballs doesn't teach a wizard how to cast healing spells. And the superpowers (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19548390/Not_in_MY_D38;D?post_id=332227098#332227098) available to non-spellcasters (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html) don't confer the ability to cast spells. That's what makes them the superpowers available to non-spellcasters.

Now, you can have a balanced RPG where some player characters have magical abilities and others are just normal humans (as opposed to D&D "humans"). You can do that by not including magical abilities fundamentally more useful than things that real humans can do, maybe by making them not all that impressive, or maybe by balancing them out with drawbacks like "doesn't reliably work in armor" or "causes fatigue".

But D&D doesn't work that way. It's a quasi-medieval superhero game. "Non-magical" superpowers are woven into the system as a whole, to the point that even if for some reason you wanted to remove them, it wouldn't be worth the effort. Instead of making thousands of ad-hoc adjustments to d20, it would make far more sense just to use a system set up to do realism in the first place.

[GM.Casper]

Make a computer do the bookkeeping and number crunching. In my homebrewed rule system character sheets are made in Excel- I just click a button and the computer calculates all the modifiers, rolls the dice, reports the character’s Attack Score and how much damage he will deal if the attack is successful.

By my rules, inventory weight is automatically calculated and then compared against the characters Strength to get Encumbrance penalties range anywhere from 0 to -10.

[valadil]

In my opinion, encumbrance is more math than its worth. By the time the group has enough gear that encumbrance becomes an issue we can afford a team of donkeys. If someone really wants to carry 8 different swords, the question of 'where do you put them' seems more relevant than figuring out if they can hold that much weight.

I'm okay with encumbrance in computer games, because the computer handles the math for you. You don't have to look up the weight of a bedroll. You don't have to add those weights or punch them into a calculator. Most of the time, I say leave encumbrance to the computer games.

That said, there are times when it's relevant. I ran a thieves guild game many moons ago. One of the challenges involved stealing a keg of beer. A standard keg is around 130 lbs. The challenge didn't actually go this way, but I was hoping to have a chase scene, where the pursuer had a wand of Ray of Enfeeblement. This is the sort of encounter where encumbrance really matters.


How about giving every item a shape consisting of a number of blocks, and forcing players to squeeze them all into a grid?

I was actually thinking of something like this. Would object size correspond to weight? (I picture something like an anvil taking up a lot of slots. Even though its small enough to occupy a backpack, it would weigh too much, and shouldn't fit in the backpack.) My only concern with a system like this would be that it gets tedious to recalibrate and reorganize if you start shifting loot around. You'd also have a lot of extra paper per character sheet, especially if different storage containers had different grids. Essentially what using a weight grid would do is make you count encumbrance in base 1 (1 grid square = 1 pound) and add the complexity of puzzling your equipment into place. It would be easier to see how much more could be carried though.

Out of curiosity, do players who favor encumbrance favor simulation type games? I don't think the amount of math encumbrance requires is worth the slight gain in realism, but I'm not a simulationist.

[Tyndmyr]

I've got a wizard with three strength. That makes encumberance actually a wee bit of a problem. A Heward's Handy Haversack is pretty much all he can handle. That does solve the rest of the issue, though.

I like simulationism, but seriously, weight totalling usually isnt worth it. Get extradimensional storage, and forget about it unless you need to loot something heavy.

[ghashxx]

I definitely wouldn't want to need to figure out exactly how everything would fit into my pack. That's not role playing, it's realism for the sake of realism on a level which, for me, requires way too much work to be worth it. Keeping a basic idea on what's possible like not having 1,000feet of rope in the bag? Yeah, that sounds about right. Keeping a running grid system going, not so much worth it for me.

[valadil]

Keeping a running grid system going, not so much worth it for me.

The more I think about it, the more I agree with this. But I do think there might be ways to optimize character sheets to make encumbrance less cumbersome.

What I liked about the grid was that it turned weight into slots. If you're treating each space as 5 pounds, a 10 pound sword fits neatly into to spaces. It's very easy to see how that fits into your possible encumbrance.

Would it be less tedious to use the lines of your equipment sheet to indicate poundage? This would probably require a separate page for equipment, but you wouldn't have to juggle items into different spaces just to make them fit. I dunno. I like the idea of having slots to fill as a way to indicate and measure encumbrance. Still not sure if it's worth the tedium.

[kemmotar]

Removing it has usually been fun, as has handing out bags of holding at low levels, usually between 3 to 5.

This...either don't enforce it or give your players the means to bypass it. Encumbrance rules have always annoyed me in any game...especially when you need a bunch of things...

It will only serve to annoy the PCs, they will probably buy pack horses or something similar, then use it for detecting traps by way of throwing it at the suspected trap and then be annoyed because they no longer have a pack horse:smalltongue:

So unless they intend to carry ridiculous amounts of things, you don't need to apply it. Essentially enforcing only very heavy loads.

[ghashxx]

The more I think about it, the more I agree with this. But I do think there might be ways to optimize character sheets to make encumbrance less cumbersome.

What I liked about the grid was that it turned weight into slots. If you're treating each space as 5 pounds, a 10 pound sword fits neatly into to spaces. It's very easy to see how that fits into your possible encumbrance.

Would it be less tedious to use the lines of your equipment sheet to indicate poundage? This would probably require a separate page for equipment, but you wouldn't have to juggle items into different spaces just to make them fit. I dunno. I like the idea of having slots to fill as a way to indicate and measure encumbrance. Still not sure if it's worth the tedium.

If you have 5 lb slots, and just do everything that way, then I guess it would work. But then you have 0.2 lb objects, or 11 lb objects, and then you've got "wasted" slots. The real thing here is that unless you're actually taking the time to draw out every object, or use different erasable colors, then you're just doing the exact same thing as keeping track of weight with encumbrance but you're doing it in 5 lb increments instead of 1 lb increments.

Using excel would actually be pretty easy. Have a set of cells outlined in bold to define the size of your backpack, and use colors for different objects and use whatever system you feel like to keep track of everything.

I love excel for keeping track of skill points, HP, BAB, and basically anything I need to erase and re-write often.

[Deth Muncher]

I told my players to invest in a H^3 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/WondrousItems.htm#handyHaversack). The one that didn't travels light. All is well in the world.

[valadil]

If you have 5 lb slots, and just do everything that way, then I guess it would work. But then you have 0.2 lb objects, or 11 lb objects, and then you've got "wasted" slots. The real thing here is that unless you're actually taking the time to draw out every object, or use different erasable colors, then you're just doing the exact same thing as keeping track of weight with encumbrance but you're doing it in 5 lb increments instead of 1 lb increments.



I'd be tempted to use slots of varying amounts - ie a column for 1s, 5s, and 10s. Items smaller than that would be stuck in a pouch. Like, have a scroll case that always weights 5 pounds and holds up to 25 scrolls. I'm not sure that level of detail would be fun to play though.

[RagnaroksChosen]

I enjoy encumbrance as a player... though I am a programmer and enjoy crunching numbers... but i mostly enjoy the realism it adds. How are we going to get our gear that we know we need from point a to point b. I think it adds to the adventure trying to problem solve how to Successfully get a wagon full of goods into a cavern.

but i know a lot of my fellow gamers do not enjoy that. Especially the math inept amongst them. or those who do not like to crunch numbers.

When i GM we ususaly crunch encumberance once to see if your starting gear is greater then what you can carry... alot of my players buy sacks and what not to lugg extra gear around in... or chests (for those wagon games we have)

[Myrmex]

but i know a lot of my fellow gamers do not enjoy that. Especially the math inept amongst them. or those who do not like to crunch numbers.

Arithmetic hardly counts as math.

[RagnaroksChosen]

Arithmetic hardly counts as math.

then sub out math for arithmetic

[Sploosh]

How about giving every item a shape consisting of a number of blocks, and forcing players to squeeze them all into a grid?

For added fun you should play this when you do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0379Zs0qaXg

Heck, you could even make an entire game out of this.

[Surgo]

How about giving every item a shape consisting of a number of blocks, and forcing players to squeeze them all into a grid?
Fortunately for those of us forced to use that system in real life, there's an old website devoted to making our life easier (http://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/packing.html). You should probably provide a print-out if you want to make your players do this :P