But want to voice my opinion on carrying capacity...


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


This is just a vent, so I can say I said it and get it out of my system for a while. You don't have to reply, I'm not asking for advice or anything.

First of all, most the weight of most items are ridiculous. Usually ridiculously high.

Second, carrying 70 pounds is about the limit for the average human in good shape and acclimated to carrying that much weight. (Soldiers, for example.)

Walking any distance while carrying 150 pounds is crazy, regardless of your real strength and endurance.

That said... my real grief-

Why, by all gods holy and unholy, is the carrying capacity for a small character no bigger than my 2-year old 3/4 that of a full grown human?
Especially when all of their clothing, most of their weapons, and most of their gear weighs 1/2 or even 1/4 of their medium counterparts?

Are they all related to Mighty Mouse?

Antman?

Why isn't their carrying capacity 1/2 at BEST to balance and reflect their gear weights?

It's always bugged me, ever since I started RPing 3.0.

Sure, I know part of the thing is 'so they can carry loot', right?

Ok, Player, if you want to carry a ton of crap made for people 5 times your character's body-weight, you should play a character build for the most common gear in the game. Otherwise, a consequence of being 2-3 feet high and 100-200 pounds lighter than 90% of the world's inhabitants should be the fact that you are SMALL and rather pathetic in comparison.

Even when I play a gnome or halfling, this still urks me. Go figure.

Thus ends my rant. :P


While carrying capacity isn't my favorite part of the game...

Small characters also tend to have their strength penalized as well for being small.

So you shouldn't comparing a Strength 10 halfling to a strength 10 human. That halfling is, for his size, stronger.

The heavy load for a Strength 10 human caps at 100 pounds.
The heavy load for a Strength 8 halfling caps at 60 pounds. A little more than half of the human

If the calculation was set at 1/2 a medium creature, then the halfling would max out at 40 lbs, still not half of an average human.

Looking at the strongest among the race (from 3.0)
The heavy load for a Strength 18 human caps at 300 pounds.
The heavy load for a Strength 16 halfling caps at 172 pounds. Still a little more than half of the human, but not as much as just the 3/4 reduction would make it seem.

If I had to guess, that is the reason why small creatures have 3/4 carrying capacity rather than 1/2, since their size penalties also include having a lower strength.


LamentoftheLost wrote:

First of all, most the weight of most items are ridiculous. Usually ridiculously high.

Second, carrying 70 pounds is about the limit for the average human in good shape and acclimated to carrying that much weight. (Soldiers, for example.)

Walking any distance while carrying 150 pounds is crazy, regardless of your real strength and endurance.

So it averages out?


I was surprised how -small- Halflings were by the book. My 8yr old is playing a Halfling rogue....who is about 10" and 35lbs -smaller- than himself.

Probably more about ensuring small PC's don't cube out just by filling their wearable slots.

Liberty's Edge

Well, not all creatures have human-strength musculature. Cats, for example, are much stronger pound for pound. And most small creatures have a Str penalty.

An average Gnome or Halfling has Str 8 and a maximum Heavy Load of 60 lbs to the Str 10 human's 100 lbs. That's still more than they weigh and makes them, pound for pound, stronger than the human...but they're a different species entirely. There's literally no reason they shouldn't be stronger pound for pound.

Now, from a game balance perspective, this is basically done because only some equipment is half-weight for Small characters, while the rest is still full weight, and the 3/4 is supposed to average things out. But from a realism perspective? It's only a problem if you forget we're dealing with other species, not just scaled down humans.

And in terms of what people can carry, bear in mind that the high end (Medium and Heavy loads) slow you down significantly and aren't really intended to be what normal people carry over long distances. That's light loads.

And most people can carry that much for at least an hour or two. Really, the only realism problem there is that you don't succumb to Fatigue due to overland travel any faster when carrying Medium or Heavy loads...and that's easily fixed if you wish to do so.


Also, the characters are only held to realistic human limitations for anything inconsistently.


Deadmanwalking wrote:
An average Gnome or Halfling has Str 8 and a maximum Heavy Load of 60 lbs to the Str 10 human's 100 lbs. That's still more than they weigh and makes them, pound for pound, stronger than the human...but they're a different species entirely. There's literally no reason they shouldn't be stronger pound for pound.

Welll...chimpanzees are smaller than humans and somewhat stronger, but that's because their muscle fibre is somewhat different. For one thing they don't have anything like our endurance, and for another they don't have our dexterity. The same applies to cats and most other small animals who occasionally have to fight for their lives but can otherwise just bum around all day. So I'd hesitate to translate animal stats to humanoids.

Tiny halflings comes straight from Tolkein. True that a 3' halfling is about the size of a 3-year-old human (subject to variation) but the musculature isn't the same (and the head is much smaller). But in a game with fairies and giants, this is not really a major problem.


More specifically, I suppose it just kinda breaks the suspension of belief for me to see a halfling with a max wight of 38 lbs able to carry almost twice their own weight (75 lbs) as a LIGHT LOAD with Str 18, but a human who can weight up to 220 lbs. can only carry 100 lbs as a light load. AND the halfling's gear weights comparatively less to boot (1/2 to 1/4 the weight of medium gear, while able to carry 3/4 the norm for a medium character.)

It reminds me of Nodwick, like they were born to be henchmen.

It's like a phobia, an irrational fear that you KNOW is irrational... but in my case it's a kinda irrational pet-peeve that urks the snot out of me in spite of the magic, dragons, etc. Everyone has one, I guess.


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You are complaining about carrying capacity (which does somewhat work as has been shown)? Your real problem should be with reach - a 3 foot halfling and a 6 foot human both have the exact same reach (5 feet). A human with a human-sized longspear and a halfling with a halfling sized longspear have the exact same reach (10 feet).

For that matter, a 2' tall creature (the bottom end of small) and an 8' tall creature (upper end of medium) have the same reach. They also take up the exact same amount of space on the battle grid (1 square).


Jeraa wrote:

You are complaining about carrying capacity (which does somewhat work as has been shown)? Your real problem should be with reach - a 3 foot halfling and a 6 foot human both have the exact same reach (5 feet). A human with a human-sized longspear and a halfling with a halfling sized longspear have the exact same reach (10 feet).

For that matter, a 2' tall creature (the bottom end of small) and an 8' tall creature (upper end of medium) have the same reach. They also take up the exact same amount of space on the battle grid (1 square).

This! So much of this lol. Halfling with a dagger has the same reach as a Human with a rapier....


They are just really good at shuffling, I suppose

The Exchange

Halflings pay more for their strength too in point buy.


Jeraa wrote:

You are complaining about carrying capacity (which does somewhat work as has been shown)? Your real problem should be with reach - a 3 foot halfling and a 6 foot human both have the exact same reach (5 feet). A human with a human-sized longspear and a halfling with a halfling sized longspear have the exact same reach (10 feet).

For that matter, a 2' tall creature (the bottom end of small) and an 8' tall creature (upper end of medium) have the same reach. They also take up the exact same amount of space on the battle grid (1 square).

Actually, I can see this scenario in the mind of halfling armourers as to why they DO have reach weapons.


The carrying capacity is also off for Large creatures. I'm playing in a campaign that allowed some races from a house Eberron conversion and so I have a large character. I figured with a large PC and an 18 str I'd have no worries about carrying capacity. Nope, not the case. I can carry twice as much as a medium character - but my weapons and armor all weigh twice as much (and that's the bulk of my gear). Add in at least twice as many rations and water skins, two ropes (to make sure that they hold my weight), four human sized blankets.... and I'm only coming out a head on a few little things (like using a dinky (human sized) torch and whetstone) and I really can't carry anymore than an 18 str human. Now if I don't mind being encumbered I can lift or haul a lot - but for day to day purposes it's no advantage being large.

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