Looks good. I've been thinking of something similar; this seems well pulled-off. I'd probably set the burden points for random "small stuff" even lower than it is - maybe even count a lot of them as "neglible" completely, as not to hamper those who wish to keep a lot of small gadgets around (like, my wizard has 40 sheets of paper and about 15 inks - that shouldn't weight like 2 half-plates).
One question. What about large creatures or creatures with multiple legs? In the rules, as I'm sure you know, large creatures can carry twice as much as a creature with the same strength score that is medium. Same with a medium quadruped. By RAW, every 5 points of strength score translate into a doubling of carry capacity. So would that just add 5 to their "Burden Points"?
See, that's always something I thought about. I always thought that wearing armor was easier than carrying it around. However, other than getting certain perks in Oblivion or something, I've never seen that concept implemented. I mean, I would rather wear a 20 lb weighted vest than carry around a 20 lb backpack. That's just me.
Actually, many games counts the weight of your worn clothes/armor differently than your carried armor. But that's another matter.
A simpler way might be basing it on armor type. Now, this gets further away from any kind of "realism", but it's a simplification:
Armor/clothes carried has burden of 1/3/6/9 based on clothes/light/medium/heavy. Armor worn has burden of that or armor check penalty, whichever is less. Shields are 1 for bucklers/light shields, 2 for heavy shields, 4 for tower shields.
Misc items are 4:1 for items weighing .5-2 pounds, 1 if they weight >2-9 pounds, 2 if they weight 10 pounds (and after that, 1 for each 5 pounds). Items that weight less than .5 by themselves count as neglible, up to DM discretion.
What about that variant?
Simplified Encumbrance
Firstly this is NOT my invention. Some other forum dweller *let me know who you are if it was you* came up with this idea and I like it enough to think of running with it after some tweaks.
** spoiler omitted **...
I think I'm the dweller in question.
I'm not sure if I ever dedicated a thread about this houserule, but you can see it here under "other rules".
The original idea was meant as an abstracted way of calculating equipment and burden. There was a lot of DM fiat involved: a ladder, while lighter than a suit of chainmail, would be more burdensome and cumbersome to carry. As BeowulfIam noticed, this creates a linear scale rather than a logarithmic one like RaW's.
So a carried armour should be more cumbersome than a worn one. By how much? Doubled would make the math easy. Unnecessarily harsh? Perhaps but on the other hand, I can't picture myself fighting unhindered with a backpack full of plate mails...
In my experience with this system, the burden of light armours and weapons are virtually negligible in this system, while that of a full plate and heavy weapons is hard to ignore even for a strong warrior. This was working fine with my style, but it had more of a "encumbrance - yes/no" aspect than RaW.
For what its worth, we played that 4 legged creatures could bear x2 their Str score. Size was already factored in by adjusted Str score. A creature's own encumbrance would be = to its Str score.
'findel
It's interesting, but I think you should give the numbers a little more thought. You gave Heavy Armor a cost of 9, yet Half-Plate (which is the armor with the highest ACP) has a penalty of -7, thus a cost of 7. Same for medium at -5 and light at -3.
I mean... I'm honestly just being really REALLY picky, but it sounded like that's what you wanted. Also, if you had four items weighing one pound each, it would encumber just as much as one 2 pound item. This sort of makes sense since it's more difficult to find a way to carry a lot of something, but them that raises the question of the volume of an item. What if you have 8 greatswords? As you stated in your previous description, they cost 2 points apiece. At 8 lbs, that follows. However, greatswords are big and awkward. How would you carry them? Would that make them cost more?
Just speculations.
For what its worth, we played that 4 legged creatures could bear x2 their Str score. Size was already factored in by adjusted Str score. A creature's own encumbrance would be = to its Str score.
'findel
I agree with you fully on a logical basis about larger creatures, however not RAW. Is that just your houserule? Because I like it.
Helaman,
Feel free to do what you want of this rule, but the idea was to avoid pound equivalence. If you need to cross-reference everything for their weight, you might as well use RaW in pounds. This was meant to avoid headaches and sanity checks, as you put it :) As with other abstract rules, the simpler you keep it, the better.
Also, instead of giving large creatures increased burden capacity, we adjusted burden of different size. For example, a sword has a burden of 1 in the hand of an appropriate-sized character, but twice as much for a halfling (assuming a human-sized sword). The medium-sized knight may have a burden of 36 (his own Str + his equipment) but for his large-size horse, that translates into 18.
So in effect, larger creatures did benefited from both higher Str score and size modifier... Now that I think of it, I'm not sure how clever that was...
It's interesting, but I think you should give the numbers a little more thought. You gave Heavy Armor a cost of 9, yet Half-Plate (which is the armor with the highest ACP) has a penalty of -7, thus a cost of 7. Same for medium at -5 and light at -3.
I assume this was directed at me rather than the OP, which tied burden to only ACP. The light/med/heavy distinction was for armor that was carried but not worn - thus, carrying a half-plate in your backpack is a weight of 9, but wearing it, if you're proficient, is just a weight of 7 (or 6 if it's masterwork) due to better weight distribution.
It's interesting, but I think you should give the numbers a little more thought. You gave Heavy Armor a cost of 9, yet Half-Plate (which is the armor with the highest ACP) has a penalty of -7, thus a cost of 7. Same for medium at -5 and light at -3.I assume this was directed at me rather than the OP, which tied burden to only ACP. The light/med/heavy distinction was for armor that was carried but not worn - thus, carrying a half-plate in your backpack is a weight of 9, but wearing it, if you're proficient, is just a weight of 7 (or 6 if it's masterwork) due to better weight distribution.
Understood. I really like that. It's much more simple and considers worn armor as being easier to carry than not worn.
All of this is just a little strange, as I said before, because it treats strength linearly rather than non-linearly. So, by all technicalities, Hercules could only carry around 46 points worth of stuff. So... About 250 pounds of random junk. In RAW, Hercules can carry around literally tons and tons of stuff.
I would assume Hercules had a permanent effect similar to Ant Haul.