Carrying Capacity (not weight)

[Ronin3058]

Hi,

is there any limit besides the pure weight how much a character can carry?

One of my players carries a lucerne hammer (in his hands), a tower shield (strapped to his back), a great sword (in a scabbard on his back), a long sword (in a scabbard on his side) and a mace (in his backpack, besides some other adventuring stuff).
If I remember correctly, he also carries a light crossbow somewhere.

There is no pack animal nor other help. No handy haversack or other magical storage.

I doublechecked his encumbrance twice, he is on medium load.

It is just a dungeon crawl, so rp aspect are rather unimportant.
But the picture of this character is somewhat ridiculous.

Is there any rule to prevent that the player uses his character as a drone?

[Ciaran Barnes]

As much as I agree with your assessment of ridiculous, the rules don't cover this. Anything you impose will fall under the category of houserules.

[Kazaan]

Other than the penalties for medium load, there's nothing else hindering him. It's an opportunity cost; he can have additional gear available, but pays for that in the form of a constant penalty due to load. Alternatively, he can drop extra gear at the risk of it being picked up by a mob. It's typically bad game design to say, "This would hinder you, so you outright can't do it" unless the hindrance would be so much that it's untenable. Rather, the game says, "You can do that, but there are penalties involved so decide wisely." At the end of the day, the final determination is whether or not the character survived/succeeded. If it's stupid, but it works, it isn't stupid.

[Kayerloth]

And in addition to the replies above (with which I total agree) don't forget to make him use the appropriate actions when and or if he changes out what equipment he currently has in hand ... time i.e. action economy and cost is where you have the leeway within the rules to introduce some sort of 'realistic' cost to what is occurring.

For example, slow the whole party down to his presumable slower speed ... or they leave him behind.

While normally most GM's wouldn't worry about it you can ask about how he has it strapped on. Is the Tower Shield over or under his backpack, or quiver/crossbow etc. "Sorry you need to remove you Tower Shield to access your backpack to get at 'whatever'" and then apply those actions to the whole procedure. He'll hopefully get the hint and or rapidly spend the wealth to acquire the Haversack etc. to deal with the load. You merely need to decide how much of that is needed for you to feel the image isn't ridiculous in your head while at the same time continues to make the game fun for all involved.

[OldSmith]

In the past I have alway's dealt with this through "House rules". In which the player had to give a logical explanation as to how and where the gear was carried. And usually found that players would lead towards a realistic role play and prune their own carry list down as long as they had to be able to give the how on a semi regular basis

[wraithstrike]

Have you seen the picture of the iconic dwarven fighter? He has all types of weapons. Now in real life they would be hard to pull out quickly, but this is one of the those small things that is not really worth being realistic about IMO. Especially when the game ignores realism in so many other areas such as being able to throw yourself off of a 200 foot building, and simply walk away from it. Assuming average dice rolls you can do it before level 10.