Encumbrance-An attempt at a simple tracking system


Equipment and Description


In response to encumbrance suggestions, here is mine on how to track encumbrance without it being cumbersome. The current one is obviously a simulation version. This option is more abstract, and is intended to ease play.

Follow these steps in order:

1) Record the weight of any armor and shields you wear/carry.
2) Record the weight of all the weapons you carry.
3) Record the weight of any significant items that you carry. An item is a significant item if it weighs 5 pounds or more.
4) Record the weight of your coin treasure. As a rule, add 1 lb. for every 50 coins that you carry.
5) Total up all of these. Refer to table 8-4: Carrying Capacity on page 125 in the PFRPG handbook to determine your current load.

* Backpacks, Sacks, and Belt Pouches are carry items. As a general rule, you only need to record the weight of the items listed above and any other items contained in a carry item are ignored. Some reason needs to be exercised in this matter... a sack full of grappling hooks for instance should be ruled on. Refer to the chart below when determining a carry item's capacity.

Backpack: 40 lbs

Belt Pouch: 7 lbs

Sack: 50 lbs

What do you think?

Liberty's Edge

anthony Valente wrote:

In response to encumbrance suggestions, here is mine on how to track encumbrance without it being cumbersome. The current one is obviously a simulation version. This option is more abstract, and is intended to ease play.

Follow these steps in order:

1) Record the weight of any armor and shields you wear/carry.
2) Record the weight of all the weapons you carry.
3) Record the weight of any significant items that you carry. An item is a significant item if it weighs 5 pounds or more.
4) Record the weight of your coin treasure. As a rule, add 1 lb. for every 50 coins that you carry.
5) Total up all of these. Refer to table 8-4: Carrying Capacity on page 125 in the PFRPG handbook to determine your current load.

* Backpacks, Sacks, and Belt Pouches are carry items. As a general rule, you only need to record the weight of the items listed above and any other items contained in a carry item are ignored. Some reason needs to be exercised in this matter... a sack full of grappling hooks for instance should be ruled on. Refer to the chart below when determining a carry item's capacity.

Backpack: 40 lbs

Belt Pouch: 7 lbs

Sack: 50 lbs

What do you think?

back packs i think could do even for 60 lbs

i am sure you can carry about 20 or 30 kilos inside

the sack might be able toget more, but its more difficult to carry, i would add a 30% of the weight justfor encumberancemechanics
belt pouch wouldbe able to carry a lot of heavy gold coins... but i will need ot weight soemthing practical to be sure

Grand Lodge

Works for me. the general concept anyway.

I suggested Load Units instead of weight in another thread simply because some items are not quite "right" for weight and I think the idea is to account for encumbrance. This allows a more abstract number to be used to get away from perfectionists. :)

Load Units would still work perfect with your system though.

*PUSHING HARD FOR LOAD UNITS- ain't gonna happen but I can try*


As far as encumbrance goes, in my games, I assume that the PCs drop sacks, and other items that would logically be carried, but not useful in combat, such as ladders, 10'poles, battering rams and such. Keeping such items in mind only occurs if the PCs retreat.

Often, the PCs aren't laden with treasure until after many battles and defeating the BBEG, and at that point, it usually is just a matter of can they physically carry all the stuff? If you use weight in this case, it's a simple matter of comparing total weight carried with the chart in the handbook. It helps in this case to assign a weight value to sacks, backpacks, and such. Even though it's not accurate, it's close enough for my game.

In reality, in our game situations, encumbrance rarely comes up, especially at the high levels we are currently at. The party has a couple of bags of holding, a handy haversack, several of mundane carry items, and the wizard has various spells (Tenser's floating disk comes to mind) to make hauling treasure trivial.

In our Age of Worms campaign, large troves of treasure are almost non-existent.

Spoiler:
The only one I can think of where we would really need to check if the party has the capacity to carry everything at this point is "Into the Wormcrawl Fissure," and that is almost entirely because of Dragotha's hoard... it's immense! My players could not defeat the dragon, and upon realizing this, they dove into the pile of treasure, and protecting themselves in resilient spheres, and using time stop, were able to steal some of it and get out of dodge... it was amusing.

Still, it's just an idea I had for this issue and is based off of how I interpret encumbrance while playing in general... that it really only needs to be tracked when it seems to be necessary.


All I can say, as an experienced hiker: food and clothing is heavy.


Straybow wrote:
All I can say, as an experienced hiker: food and clothing is heavy.

... and water is even heavier, especially if you have to carry significant quantity.

'findel

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