How many lbs can backpacks / chests contain?

[Nearyn]

The system tells us they can hold a certain volume of material, but is there any rules(or way to determine) how many lbs a container can hold, if said container does explicitly say so in its description?

-Nearyn

[That Crazy Alchemist]

Nothing concrete by RAW. Just make sure it's nothing outrageous and it'll be fine, no need to micromanage something like that.

[Saldiven]

Interesting factoid.

According to a reference site, a cubic foot of gold weighs more than 1/2 ton.

That means that, no, your character is not filling his backpack with gold.

[Starbuck_II]

Saldiven wrote:

Interesting factoid.

According to a reference site, a cubic foot of gold weighs more than 1/2 ton.

That means that, no, your character is not filling his backpack with gold.

That is referring to real life gold.

D&D gold is different.

[Gauss]

A 2cubic foot backpack can hold:
2,413.66 pounds of gold
or 1,309.82 pounds of silver
or 1,119.74 pounds of copper
or 982.18 pounds of iron

/humor

I would go with something along the lines of 80-100lbs. 2 cubic feet of meat is between 70-80 pounds and that seems like something a backpack should be able to hold.

Starbuck, do you have a source that states how much space gold (not gold coins which are different) takes up in D&D/Pathfinder?

[Kchaka]

Lowe Alpine Saracen

[Chemlak]

I long ago reached the conclusion that the "weight" of an item in PF is actually a combination of mass and size (mostly because many weapon weigh far more than they really did in the real world, but there are a few other cases) to use for encumbrance purposes.

All items which carry things should give dimensions and a "weight" limit (no, you can't fit your 10-foot pole entirely into your backpack!). Shame they don't.

[Saldiven]

Starbuck_II wrote:

Saldiven wrote:

Interesting factoid.

According to a reference site, a cubic foot of gold weighs more than 1/2 ton.

That means that, no, your character is not filling his backpack with gold.

That is referring to real life gold.

D&D gold is different.

Assuming it's not different, a standard Pathfinder gold piece, if square, would be a bit less than 31mm x 18mm x 1mm (these are dimensions for a modern 10g gold bullion bar). That's at the 50 coins per pound referred to in the CRB. In inches, that's 1.3" x .75" x .04".

[SlimGauge]

Middle Ages Wicker Backpack
larger version

[Cuuniyevo]

Unless they're trying to carry something that's obviously too large to fit, I don't make my players worry about the interior dimensions. It's a reasonable assumption that there are straps and loops on the outside of the pack for carrying objects that are too big to fit inside. Easy example would be a bedroll tied to the top, or an axe slid through two loops along the side. Such backpacks are easily obtained here on earth, and appear in countless iconic fantasy drawings and paintings.

[Nearyn]

Thanks for the responses :)

I'm asking because I tend to keep detailed records of my equipment, and I'm managing our party's loot in a Way of the Wicked campaign.

We're presently sitting cozy on about 1348lbs of material we need to transport to a place where we may sell it (the town we're in is no longer an option). So I'm trying to figure out what I should get in terms of chests, crates, barrels etc. Not liking the idea of putting it all in saddlebags as we have no party member with Handle animal.

-Nearyn

[SlimGauge]

Nearyn wrote:

barrels etc.

Barrels are also poorly defined in the CRB and elsewhere. An empty weight is given, but not a volume. IRL, barrels came in quite a variety of sizes and several shapes depending on the intended use. Ask the GM.

[Mark Hoover]

In 3.0 a backpack held about 40lbs of material. A small sack I think carried 10lbs and a belt pouch carried 5lbs. I could be wrong though.

Anyway based on that I'd wager that a small chest, like a coffer could carry about 50lbs, and a large chest like a foot locker hauls about 150lbs.

I know for a fact that if you pile enough sacks on an enlarged goat familiar with Ant Haul cast on it you can haul 258lbs before he's encumbered. Get your spellcaster to also throw out an Unseen Servant and a Floating Disk behind themselves and their goat, and now you're carrying at least another 240lbs.

For the weight you're talking Near-guy, you're probably looking more at the wagon train type scenario...

[Meager Rolmug]

Hmmm, sounds like someone in your party needs to able to cast "treasure stitching".

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advanced/spells/treasureStitching.html#t reasure-stitching-

[Canthin]

I kept track of the loot in one homebrew campaign I was in using an Excel spreadsheet my DM gave me. He shrunk down the column width and expanded the row height to get a decent sized "square" for each cell. Each cell represented 1 "encumbrance" pound of gear.

Color coded and clearly labeled. 1 yellow cell labeled "Gold" = 50 coins. A 1 cell tall, 4 cell long gray cell labeled "Longsword+1", etc.

I don't remember how many cells a normal backpack was (I want to say 6x6), but the Bag of Holding had 250 boxes of goodies in it. It was like playing Tetris to get the loot to fit at times.

[Senko]

Mark Hoover wrote:

In 3.0 a backpack held about 40lbs of material. A small sack I think carried 10lbs and a belt pouch carried 5lbs. I could be wrong though.

Anyway based on that I'd wager that a small chest, like a coffer could carry about 50lbs, and a large chest like a foot locker hauls about 150lbs.

I know for a fact that if you pile enough sacks on an enlarged goat familiar with Ant Haul cast on it you can haul 258lbs before he's encumbered. Get your spellcaster to also throw out an Unseen Servant and a Floating Disk behind themselves and their goat, and now you're carrying at least another 240lbs.

For the weight you're talking Near-guy, you're probably looking more at the wagon train type scenario...

Intersting and i imagine it'd interact badly with the masterwork backpack that adds 2 to str for terms of carrying capacity.

[cnetarian]

well the only container that I can recall which gives both a form of weight and a volume is the beltpouch of UE which can carry (100 to) 200 coins or 2 apples. 50 coins is 1 lb, so a belt pouch can contain 4 lbs of weight or 2 apples in volume. being generous I assume the apples are large enough that there would be 100 in a bushel (apples vary in size but the expected range is 80-200 per bushel). As everyone knows a bushel is 8 (dry) gallons and a dry gallon is about 268.8 cubic inches. The math would be 2 (apples) divided by 100 (apples per bushel) divided by 1/8th (bushels per gallon) divided by 1/268.8th (gallons per cubic inch), fairly simple. Assuming large apples are used in the description, 4 lbs of coin weight equals about 43 cubic inches of apple volume.

It would not be unreasonable to assume slightly smaller apples were intended and that 1 lb in weight is equivalent to 10 cubic inches of volume for no other reason than to make the conversion easier.

[Nearyn]

In appreciation of your help, I've employed my absolutely horrendously bad sketchUp skills (never has there ever been a less worthy application of the word "skill"), and provide you with an indication of the volume that can be held in certain mundane containers.

Mundane containers
Left to right is: Backpack(2 cu.ft.), small chest(2 cu.ft.), medium chest(4 cu.ft.), large chest(6 cu.ft.), huge chest(8 cu.ft), barrel(10 cu.ft)

Naturally the objects in question would be shaped differently :P

Someone, with more skill in sketchup than me, made THIS, which is a much better indicator for magical containers.

Again, thanks for your help and input :)

-Nearyn

[Sissyl]

Generally if I check how much my character is carrying, it turns out the backpack takes safely in excess of 1,000 lbs.

[Kazaan]

Weight is more of an abstracted term and it's probably better to think of it more as A.U.M.s (arbitrary unit of mass). So a Dagger doesn't weight 1 lb, it weighs 1 aum (1 arbitrary unit of mass). In this sense, the "weight" is for balance purposes only; not an objective representation of the physical mass of the object but, rather, a subjective value that makes more valuable or useful objects more difficult to carry around. So just use common sense; you wouldn't stuff a suit of full-plate into a backpack; you'd need some kind of crate or card to haul that around if you aren't wearing it. But a longsword may stick out past the flap of the backpack so long as the bulk of it is contained within the confines of the container and, as was stated previously, a bedroll would be fixed to the top of the pack, hooks would carry certain kinds of items (ie. kettle, lantern, etc), loops would hold other kinds of items (ie. axe, utility knife, etc.). And don't forget pouches; and purses. Remember that, in medieval times, you had a little bag to hold your money, universally referred to as a purse (regardless of gender of the holder). It would often be tied by a short rope to your belt; hence the term "cutpurse" who would sneak up and cut the rope with a knife to liberate the whole purse and carry it off. For larger amounts of money, a sack would be more commonly used. For very large amounts, you'd use crates or chests (the "chest of gold" trope). Backpacks are used for organized supplies of various kinds for which you'd commonly need to fetch a specific item while sacks and chests are more just dumping grounds for large quantities of un-sorted goods, often just to be sold off.

[BretI]

Nearyn wrote:

Thanks for the responses :)

I'm asking because I tend to keep detailed records of my equipment, and I'm managing our party's loot in a Way of the Wicked campaign.

We're presently sitting cozy on about 1348lbs of material we need to transport to a place where we may sell it (the town we're in is no longer an option). So I'm trying to figure out what I should get in terms of chests, crates, barrels etc. Not liking the idea of putting it all in saddlebags as we have no party member with Handle animal.

-Nearyn

Might want to tie up all the non-magical gear in a large tarp and cast Shrink Item on it. That would at least make it easier to carry. This is assuming you've got a wizard or a sorcerer with Mnemonic Vestments and a scroll.

[Sissyl]

You could also have a hat with a very long tube where you could keep the money.