Weight restrictions make no sense?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

I'm more disturbed by characters being able to walk 8 hours with whatever load and be as fit as they were when they started.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
I'm more disturbed by characters being able to walk 8 hours with whatever load and be as fit as they were when they started.

Is that a product of the game, or is it perhaps more related to gamers themselves?

/ I haven't done any serious backpacking since the Boy Scouts. Philmont kicked my butt (it was worth it though.)

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

The game says nothing about it, thus it is a product of the game. Push it past 8 hours and the game makes a gesture about it, but until then, nothing.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
The game says nothing about it, thus it is a product of the game. Push it past 8 hours and the game makes a gesture about it, but until then, nothing.

Hmm I do have to agree that is similarly strange but it actually reinforces the fact that ignoring the weight penalties in combat might make more sense assuming you aren't exerting yourself constant for example if you sat on your ass on a horse for your 6 hours of travel and then need to just pull out the stops for a minute or two aka 10-20 rounds it isn't so bad but the game instead just assumes if you're strong the 100 lbs of crap hanging off of you totally doesn't bother you even if your doing 7.9 hour marches and then combat.

If I were writing up the rules I'd probably let you just bypass the weight penalties for 1 weight class (so a medium is light and a heavy is medium) for a number of rounds equal to your Str stat (so 10 on average up to say a 20 for scary strong people) and suffer from fatigue afterwards until you take a 1 hour rest period*(X/Str) where X is the number of rounds you used so if you use half of the max you only need to rest for 30 minutes etc etc.

It would be interesting but it definitely isn't the most straightforward rule.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
The game says nothing about it, thus it is a product of the game. Push it past 8 hours and the game makes a gesture about it, but until then, nothing.

Hmm I do have to agree that is similarly strange but it actually reinforces the fact that ignoring the weight penalties in combat might make more sense assuming you aren't exerting yourself constant for example if you sat on your ass on a horse for your 6 hours of travel and then need to just pull out the stops for a minute or two aka 10-20 rounds it isn't so bad but the game instead just assumes if you're strong the 100 lbs of crap hanging off of you totally doesn't bother you even if your doing 7.9 hour marches and then combat.

If I were writing up the rules I'd probably let you just bypass the weight penalties for 1 weight class (so a medium is light and a heavy is medium) for a number of rounds equal to your Str stat (so 10 on average up to say a 20 for scary strong people) and suffer from fatigue afterwards until you take a 1 hour rest period*(X/Str) where X is the number of rounds you used so if you use half of the max you only need to rest for 30 minutes etc etc.

It would be interesting but it definitely isn't the most simple/straightforward rule.

Shadow Lodge

TriOmegaZero wrote:
The game says nothing about it, thus it is a product of the game. Push it past 8 hours and the game makes a gesture about it, but until then, nothing.

Rules are inevitably approximations. I'm not sure I'd want the core rules to cover things like endurance over eight hour marches. In any case it's a rule that would get ignored most of the time regardless.


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Hruggek wrote:
An example of this was that a long sword had a "weight" (which was actually an encumbrance value) of 7, whereas a 10 foot pole (which is just a long spear shaft) was 10. The long sword is clearly heavier than 7 pounds (given that most medieval long swords weighed in the 15 pound range, but the 10 foot pole probably weighed less than 10 pounds. Why the higher value for the 10 foot pole?

I'd like to point out this particular bit of wildly inaccurate information concerning the weights of swords... a medieval longsword weighed less than 4 pounds, certainly not the 15 pounds stated here. Even greatswords didn't weigh much more than 6 pounds.

Dark Archive

Even with low strength builds I don't think I have ever had a real problem with encumbrance. I mean if you have low strength, the masterwork backpack pretty much does the job for you, all you have to do is not have everything including the kitchen sink. When I made a character that wanted to carry way more than I could I just simply got a pack animal, he even had a block and tackle loaded on him and it was just fine.

BTW, masterwork backpacks don't stack since it is a bonus from the same source.


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Hruggek wrote:
The long sword is clearly heavier than 7 pounds (given that most medieval long swords weighed in the 15 pound range

Wait, what?

A medieval one-handed sword that's close to what D&D calls a long sword generally weighs around 3 pounds (1.2-1.5 kg). A hand-and-a-half sword generally clocks in at little under 4 lbs (1.6-1.8 kg). Even two-handed swords generally weigh about 5 lbs, possibly 6 (2.0-2.8 kg).

This site has some rather accurate replicas of ancient, medieval, and early modern blades. The single largest sword there weighs 3.7 kg, or 8.2 lbs. The second largest sword is 2.8 kg, or 6.2 lbs. A 15 lb sword is not a sword, it's an I-beam. Or maybe something from Exalted or Final Fantasy, where people use swords the size of surfboards.


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

He's probably thinking of replicas: i.e., poor quality cast iron, about 2-3 times the sectional cross volume of an actual weapon to help keep it from breaking (being more brittle than tempered steel), but covered with shiny chrome plating. IIRC, heavier versions did exist, but they were used for training (i.e., build up muscles, like a tetsu-to for kenjutsu) or other purposes (i.e., executions, where the weight of the axe or sword did most of the work), instead of actual combat.

Owner - House of Books and Games LLC

TriOmegaZero wrote:
The game says nothing about [walking and getting tired], thus it is a product of the game. Push it past 8 hours and the game makes a gesture about it, but until then, nothing.

I can deal with 8 hours of walking not affecting fatigue, I suppose - it's the same thing as a character at 1hp being as effective as one at full hit points, and I really, really don't want to try to turn Pathfinder into a simulation. I'm more disturbed by the fact that there are no penalties whatsoever for never sleeping. Your character can choose to never sleep, ever, without ill effect. Yet, sleep for one night in armor and you start hitting the fatigue rules. By RAW you're better off not sleeping than sleeping in armor.

I ran across this when trying to figure out how long someone could play a lyre of building before dropping from exhaustion. Turns out the RAW answer is "forever."

(I heard that one of the adventure paths had rules for going without sleep, but I guess I haven't read that one yet.)

Silver Crusade

In response to the original question, I think the weight restrictions make perfect sense. It may be annoying in game terms, but wearing armor and weapons SHOULD put you into medium encumbrance unless you're fairly strong. We're talking light vs medium encumbrance here, not whether or not you can carry it at all.

Have you ever lifted an actual chain shirt? That's heavy stuff, even if you're only wearing a partial shirt. I'm sure wearing that in real life, along with a backpack full of non-trivial gear, would slow me down. It may be lighter than plate mail, but that doesn't make it light.


When you dump Wisdom you get Will penalties and low perception. When you dump Intelligence you get fewer skills. When you dump Con, you die.

What made you think Str would be different?

That said, a bag of holding/handy havershack pretty much solve the problem to everybody except str 5 halflings.

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