Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Ought to be good for opponents having to make a Will save to avoid mental stun, granting you surprise. :)Eventually, he said he'd drop his backpack at the start of combat, and I let it go."I'll drop my pants at the start of every combat..."Seems like there should be a feat chain. Drop Trou lets you do it as a move instead of a standard. Improved Drop Trou adds to the DC of the Will save. Greater Drop Trou makes it an immediate action that doesn't provoke...
I'll stop now.
Would you really want to Drop Trou if it does provoke?
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Once you get into medium armor, is there really any point in *not* being medium encumbrance? I mean 20 foot move, and -3 ACP? Okay. That's what I have already.
True -- although in my experience, the characters that wear medium armor are also likely to be the ones with enough strength that encumbrance is less likely to be an issue.
There are feats and such that require you not to be encumbered, but many of them also would require light or no armor, and the sort of character that wears medium armor isn't likely to have those feats.
The most likely case where it would matter is the fighter who's high enough level to be able to move at full speed in medium armor. That fighter would not want to be encumbered by gear.
Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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Yes, I track encumbrance except for coin weight. I assume that there is a Society Lodge somewhere that keeps most of my cash.
Unless found loot has a stated weight (like that 100 pound chest in a certain icy scenario) I don't force parties to track it. Practically speaking, the extra math here doesn't speed up the game or make it more fun, so I don't see the point.
Hmm
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Would you really want to Drop Trou if it does provoke?
Oh, when I drop trou, it provokes...
I'll just show myself out now.
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So are you trying to fascinate enemies or demoralize them?Eventually, he said he'd drop his backpack at the start of combat, and I let it go."I'll drop my pants at the start of every combat..."
Weeellll....
as a Street Performer I get:
Madcap Prank (Su): At 9th level, a street performer can use performance to discomfit a target within 30 feet, causing its clothing to become tangled, its headgear to fall down over its eyes, or even causing it to slip and fall or otherwise be made to appear a fool. The target must make a Reflex save (DC 10 + 1/2 the bard’s level + the bard’s Cha modifier) each round that it hears or sees the performance, or it takes one of the following random effects each round: 1—blinded, 2—dazzled, 3—deafened, 4—entangled, 5—fall prone, 6—nauseated. Each effect lasts 1 round. This performance replaces inspire greatness.
... so not exactly "fascinate" or "demoralize" - just blinded, dazzled, deafened, entangled, prone, or nauseated.
;)
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... so not exactly "fascinate" or "demoralize" - just blinded, dazzled, deafened, entangled, prone, or nauseated.
My god, it's like every college relationship all over again...
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Its always fun to walk into a party wearing only the sleeves of many garments and then seeing who notices... usually we wind up stabbing them in the after dinner party.
sorry! I just had to say that...
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As for the original topic, I'm very good about tracking encumbrance when I first create a PC and buy my initial equipment... and then mostly forgetting about it later.
But that generally means that I max out my carrying capacity up front on low strength PCs, buy a pack mule, and try not to buy any more equipment with any weight that I need on my person until I have a handy haversack on those PCs. And for higher strength PCs, it generally means that I'm sure my PC can handle what I'm carrying without any problems.
Speaking of which, when I was playing at my local store yesterday, I discovered that Reaper has a new "Bones" (white plastic unpainted) pack donkey mini. I picked it up for about $2.50, I think. I use it on enough characters, I figured it's worth owning the mini, instead of continuing to use the Squeely Nord mini for that like I've done in the past.
But as for most games, nobody really takes the time to do any sort of audits of PCs around here in PFS. The only time encumbrance comes up is when somebody tries to do something stupid. Like the strength dumped psychic buying full plate until we told him that his character doesn't have the strength to lift it, let alone walk around in it. Or a blacksmith walking around carrying an anvil... and then showing us the math to prove that his fighter really does have the strength to do that when we all freaked out.
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Yes, I track encumbrance except for coin weight. I assume that there is a Society Lodge somewhere that keeps most of my cash.
Unless found loot has a stated weight (like that 100 pound chest in a certain icy scenario) I don't force parties to track it. Practically speaking, the extra math here doesn't speed up the game or make it more fun, so I don't see the point.
Hmm
Large amounts of cash can be carried as diamonds and converted back to cash as per the rule on trade goods. Also handy in case you need to res someone in the field.
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Once you get into medium armor, is there really any point in *not* being medium encumbrance? I mean 20 foot move, and -3 ACP? Okay. That's what I have already.
It's +3 Max dex, -3 ACP, and the reduced speed. Plus, class abilties, like the Monk AC bonus don't function with a medium load (though they don't function in armor, either).
It would matter if you were reducing these numbers via some special means. The Fighter Armor Training (Ex) for example, would not adjust the encumberance penalties, just that of the armor. So you'd still be moving at reduced speed and have that +3 max dex. Unclear if the Armor check penalty would be reduced, but I lean towards it being unaffected since this source of armor check is not confered by the armor.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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about now someone (raises hand) will point out the issue with encumbrance and the spell enlarge person -
wow - "multiplying its weight by 8"... yeah. That 50 pounds of gear we are carrying just went to 400 pounds...
That's your own weight, not that of your gear.
For gear I would use the regular rules for weight of larger gear, i.e. doubling armor and weapons. A medium breastplate enlarged to large should weigh the same as a normal large breastplate. Other gear... well it doesn't get any lighter when sized for Small characters.
So on the whole your gear will do slightly less than double in weight. But by becoming larger you've also doubled your carrying capacity (and increased your strength). So it doesn't require recalculation of encumbrance.
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Once you get into medium armor, is there really any point in *not* being medium encumbrance? I mean 20 foot move, and -3 ACP? Okay. That's what I have already.It's +3 Max dex, -3 ACP, and the reduced speed. Plus, class abilties, like the Monk AC bonus don't function with a medium load (though they don't function in armor, either).
It would matter if you were reducing these numbers via some special means. The Fighter Armor Training (Ex) for example, would not adjust the encumberance penalties, just that of the armor. So you'd still be moving at reduced speed and have that +3 max dex. Unclear if the Armor check penalty would be reduced, but I lean towards it being unaffected since this source of armor check is not confered by the armor.
right but the general point is that if you're in normal medium armor the best you're doing anyways is +3 dex, your ACP is already 3 or higher, and your speed is already reduced. So in the general sense they are correct, if you're in medium armor medium encumbrance is a non-issue. Now if you're doing stuff to change this then sure it's not true for you. But generally by default it's true.
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right but the general point is that if you're in normal medium armor the best you're doing anyways is +3 dex, your ACP is already 3 or higher, and your speed is already reduced. So in the general sense they are correct, if you're in medium armor medium encumbrance is a non-issue. Now if you're doing stuff to change this then sure it's not true for you. But generally by default it's true.Once you get into medium armor, is there really any point in *not* being medium encumbrance? I mean 20 foot move, and -3 ACP? Okay. That's what I have already.It's +3 Max dex, -3 ACP, and the reduced speed. Plus, class abilties, like the Monk AC bonus don't function with a medium load (though they don't function in armor, either).
It would matter if you were reducing these numbers via some special means. The Fighter Armor Training (Ex) for example, would not adjust the encumberance penalties, just that of the armor. So you'd still be moving at reduced speed and have that +3 max dex. Unclear if the Armor check penalty would be reduced, but I lean towards it being unaffected since this source of armor check is not confered by the armor.
Mithral breastplates are very popular. But once you go there, you have to make sure you're only lightly encumbered.
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right but the general point is that if you're in normal medium armor the best you're doing anyways is +3 dex, your ACP is already 3 or higher, and your speed is already reduced. So in the general sense they are correct, if you're in medium armor medium encumbrance is a non-issue. Now if you're doing stuff to change this then sure it's not true for you. But generally by default it's true.
Hide, Do-maru, and Kikko, have max dex +4. The Armored Coat is ACP -2, as are the masterwork versions of Hide and Kikko.
Not everyone in medium armor is wearing breastplate...
Mithral armor is common enough, too.
Additionally, the ever common Armor Expert Trait has no effect on encumberance ACP. So Masterwork Breastplate with Armor Expert is -2 ACP, but with a medium load you'd still be at -3 ACP because the worst one used and Armor Expert only applies to the ACP of the armor itself (as written in the ability).
Anyway, the penalties are really light, in my opinion, for encumberance. If I were paizo, I would have had the encumberace penalties stack with the armor penalties, but that's just me. It should be unrealistic for a character in heavy armor to also have a heavy load.
Unless your character is weak or carrying a lot of gear, that's all you need to know; the extra gear your character carries won't slow him down any more than the armor already does.
In other words, without dumping STR and with a normal adventuring loadout, encumbrance by weight does not come into play.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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about now someone (raises hand) will point out the issue with encumbrance and the spell enlarge person -
wow - "multiplying its weight by 8"... yeah. That 50 pounds of gear we are carrying just went to 400 pounds...
That's your own weight, not that of your gear.
For gear I would use the regular rules for weight of larger gear, i.e. doubling armor and weapons. A medium breastplate enlarged to large should weigh the same as a normal large breastplate. Other gear... well it doesn't get any lighter when sized for Small characters.
So on the whole your gear will do slightly less than double in weight. But by becoming larger you've also doubled your carrying capacity (and increased your strength). So it doesn't require recalculation of encumbrance.
But the spell itself says: "...All equipment worn or carried by a creature is similarly enlarged by the spell...." and "doubling its height and multiplying its weight by 8...."... but I guess we can just ignore what the spell says and go with the general rules in this case, rather than the specific rule...
but - bah - this is a non-issue, because no one enforces it (except for that one judge I hit at Gen Con a few years back... but I avoid him when I see him for other reasons).
Well, yes, if you are going to misquote the spell.
This spell causes instant growth of a humanoid creature, doubling its height and multiplying its weight by 8.
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All equipment worn or carried by a creature is similarly enlarged by the spell. Melee weapons affected by this spell deal more damage (see Table: Medium/Large Weapon Damage). Other magical properties are not affected by this spell. Any enlarged item that leaves an enlarged creature’s possession (including a projectile or thrown weapon) instantly returns to its normal size. This means that thrown and projectile weapons deal their normal damage. Magical properties of enlarged items are not increased by this spell.
The creature has it's weight increased by 8, the sword it is carrying takes on all the physical properties of a sword one step larger. (which in this case is 2x weight.)
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Again, two people can read the same passage in two different ways. There is literally no such thing as "rules as written".
If you rule that items increase their weight by a factor of 8, pinning your character to the ground, then I'm not going to play at your table, because that's not how I read the same passage.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Similarly enlarged: made proportionally bigger. Your undies grow to fit.
It doesn't say its weight increases at the same rate, and it would be weird if it did, because we already have rules for the weight of bigger equipment.
There are two valid ways of reading the text (speaking purely from a language perspective), but one of them causes a sensible outcome (weight and encumbrance increasing at roughly the same rate, a sword made large through magic weighing the same as a naturally large sword). The other creates a physically weird result (identical objects with different weights) and is practically unplayable.
I know which interpretation I'm using.
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Yeah, at strength 7 your encumbrance is so low that wearing a masterwork backpack costs your 4 lbs to gain 3.
Well to be fair, that's not just a problem at str 7.
8-9 only gains 4 pounds so breaks even.9-10 is 3 again, so it's a downgrade there too
10-11 and 11-12 are only +5 pounds each, so minimal gain.
it's not till str 13 that light load carrying starts to increase by 7+ pounds per tick.
In short, MW backpack isn't actually worth it unless your str is already 12+
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Sorry that was a bit off topic from OP, so to answer the OP:
We try to enforce it as much as possible around here, and even players will remind other players of things. Occasionally a player will obfuscate a bit.. not outright cheat, but just not bother adding their total b/c they "might" be close, and then they can just say they don't know.
Personally I always know my weight for several reasons, and I have played sessions with Medium or even Heavy Encumberance penalties.
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Since when can you not crit on rays?
That doesn't work actually. Ray of Enfeeblement doesn't deal strength damage, it applies a penalty. There is no mechanism for it to cause a bigger penalty on a critical hit.
You can only crit with something that deals damage. Ray of enfeeblement, as stated, is a debuff, so whether it's a ray/touch/whatever, you can't crit.
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Yeah, at strength 7 your encumbrance is so low that wearing a masterwork backpack costs your 4 lbs to gain 3.Well to be fair, that's not just a problem at str 7.
8-9 only gains 4 pounds so breaks even.
9-10 is 3 again, so it's a downgrade there too
10-11 and 11-12 are only +5 pounds each, so minimal gain.
it's not till str 13 that light load carrying starts to increase by 7+ pounds per tick.In short, MW backpack isn't actually worth it unless your str is already 12+
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Sorry that was a bit off topic from OP, so to answer the OP:
We try to enforce it as much as possible around here, and even players will remind other players of things. Occasionally a player will obfuscate a bit.. not outright cheat, but just not bother adding their total b/c they "might" be close, and then they can just say they don't know.Personally I always know my weight for several reasons, and I have played sessions with Medium or even Heavy Encumberance penalties.
Sometimes when you're counting every last pound, getting an extra pound of carrying capacity at STR 10 and 11 is worth the 50 gold. That's the difference between being able to carry a dagger or not. But, your numbers also assume that you weren't already carrying a normal backpack. If you were, then the Mwk Backpack is only a 2 pound increase for 5 pounds more carrying capacity.
The numbers work out slightly better for a small character. A small Mwk Backpack weighs 2 pounds. A small character with a 10 STR goes from 24.75 pounds for a light load to 28.5, so the Mwk Backpack gains you a net 1.75 pounds, which on a small character could be 3 daggers or similar weighted items.
If you have no equipment that you need a backpack for at all, then yeah, the Mwk Backpack doesn't help all that much. Which makes sense. But for characters who are right at their encumbrance, it can squeeze a little bit more out of things.
With regards to medium armor, I've never understood why more people don't use the Agile Breastplate instead of the regular Breastplate. Sure, it's more expensive, but it reduces the armor check penalty for climbing and jumping, two things you are likely to have to do in the middle of combat at some point. If you're going Mithral armor, then it has a 0 ACP for climbing and jumping. Admittedly, 200gp is a lot in the early game, but when you're investing 4,000 gold in your armor just to make it Mithral, the extra 200 doesn't seem like that big of a deal.
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I think not too many people remember about the Agile breastplate. It's not obscure for the forum demographic but for a more typical PFS player it probably is.
The Burdenless armor enhancement is surprisingly appealing, as a flat 4,000 gp enhancement to your armor. Of course that's a lot of money, but at higher levels it could very well be worth it.
Another possible consideration (and usually less efficient than burdenless gear), if you're scrounging for every last pound and money is not so much an object: you could in theory opt to have your masterwork backpack, your clothing, your blanket or bedroll, or some other thing usually made of cloth manufactured of darkleaf cloth instead. It should cost you about 750 gold pieces per pound saved, so... about 1550 gp for the backpack. It's a pretty exorbitant price but I bet somewhere is a 7 strength character who'd think it's worth it.
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There's absolutely no reason for anyone to be worried about the weight of a blanket, bedroll, rope, grappling hook, torches, sunrod, rations, waterskin, masterwork day job tools, or other things you don't need on your body during combat. That's what the party barbarian pack mules are for. They're 13 gp in the Core Rulebook, and that includes the pack saddle.
It's the clothing, armor, weapons, spell component pouch, alchemy kit, splash weapons, etc that you need on your actual person that are the problem. But as has been pointed out, there's a lot of different ways to deal with that.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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...about now someone (raises hand) will point out the issue with encumbrance and the spell enlarge person -
wow - "multiplying its weight by 8"... yeah. That 50 pounds of gear we are carrying just went to 400 pounds...
That's your own weight, not that of your gear.
For gear I would use the regular rules for weight of larger gear, i.e. doubling armor and weapons. A medium breastplate enlarged to large should weigh the same as a normal large breastplate. Other gear... well it doesn't get any lighter when sized for Small characters.
So on the whole your gear will do slightly less than double in weight. But by becoming larger you've also doubled your carrying capacity (and increased your strength). So it doesn't require recalculation of encumbrance.
But the spell itself says: "...All equipment worn or carried by a creature is similarly enlarged by the spell...." and "doubling its height and multiplying its weight by 8...."... but I guess we can just ignore what the spell says and go with the general rules in this case, rather than the specific rule...
but - bah - this is a non-issue, because no one enforces it (except for that one judge I hit at Gen Con a few years back... but I avoid him when I see him for other reasons).
Well, yes, if you are going to misquote the spell.
This spell causes instant growth of a humanoid creature, doubling its height and multiplying its weight by 8.
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All equipment worn or carried by a creature is similarly enlarged by the spell. Melee weapons affected by this spell deal more damage (see Table: Medium/Large Weapon Damage). Other magical properties are not affected by this spell. Any enlarged item that leaves an
So your arguement is that a magically enlarged large sword has the same damage and to hit as a crafted large sword, yet weighs 4x as much? Trust me, if you make the sword weigh 4x as much, it should have a *much* lower to hit (and possibly a larger damage.)
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Similarly enlarged: made proportionally bigger. Your undies grow to fit.
It doesn't say its weight increases at the same rate, and it would be weird if it did, because we already have rules for the weight of bigger equipment.
There are two valid ways of reading the text (speaking purely from a language perspective), but one of them causes a sensible outcome (weight and encumbrance increasing at roughly the same rate, a sword made large through magic weighing the same as a naturally large sword). The other creates a physically weird result (identical objects with different weights) and is practically unplayable.
I know which interpretation I'm using.
so... if we shrink an item using the shrink item spell, do we change it's weight as the spell says... or do we change it to 1/8th the mass?
The game mechanics are a kluge, and often do two different things when approached from two different points - this is often why we end up with some really odd things... like a Human using a Halfling long spear, because it's a one handed weapon with reach.
Shrink Item completely describes how it handles the weight. That's different from Enlarge Person which only explicitly says how it handles the weight of the creature.
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If you rule that items increase their weight by a factor of 8, pinning your character to the ground, then I'm not going to play at your table, because that's not how I read the same passage.again - I would not rule that way.
I don't understand your position, then. Are you arguing just for argument's sake?
Everyone in this thread can see the words you're quoting, and everyone (including you, apparently) agrees that they don't mean what you're claiming, so what are you doing?
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Great point, it can be done for sure. It is a lot more doable for caster of course, since you don't necessarily need to carry weapons or armor. Also 5str sounds like you may have been small which is VERY doable since it cuts your armor/weapon weight in half and your clothing/bag weight in quarter.As an aside, I ran a Caster for a while with 5 Str. It can be done with a light load (16lbs), but your equipment is certainly limited. You'll start to take advantage of items with no listed weight, like Wands. The main loss is that you can't make melee touch attacks worth beans.
I played a grippli Ninja who had I think a 17 lb limit with a 7 Str. That was fun to figure out how to play. I recall one time we were given Alchemist's fire, and I asked the fighter to carry mine for me.
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If you rule that items increase their weight by a factor of 8, pinning your character to the ground, then I'm not going to play at your table, because that's not how I read the same passage.again - I would not rule that way.I don't understand your position, then. Are you arguing just for argument's sake?
Everyone in this thread can see the words you're quoting, and everyone (including you, apparently) agrees that they don't mean what you're claiming, so what are you doing?
Yeah, I think we can all agree that nosig has successfully proved his point (that Enlarge Person is poorly worded). But since everyone agrees on the RAI, and that's how everyone plays, continued debate about it is pointless.
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Despite a decade of playing and running v.3.5, I had a minor epiphany shortly after starting PFS about 2 years ago. One of the pregens I played then was the rogue Merisiel. I was a little surprised to see she had a Str as high as 14 when she was a finesse build. Then I looked at how much her gear weighed, and realized that she needed every point to keep from tanking her Str/Dex skills due to encumbrance. That insight informed the build of my first PFS PC, a rogue, who I gave almost identical physical stats.
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Despite a decade of playing and running v.3.5, I had a minor epiphany shortly after starting PFS about 2 years ago. One of the pregens I played then was the rogue Merisiel. I was a little surprised to see she had a Str as high as 14 when she was a finesse build. Then I looked at how much her gear weighed, and realized that she needed every point to keep from tanking her Str/Dex skills due to encumbrance. That insight informed the build of my first PFS PC, a rogue, who I gave almost identical physical stats.
When Merisiel was built, there also wasn't a way for her to get Dex-to-damage, so having a small strength bonus is helpful, and dumping it below 10 is not a good idea.
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I actually have two dex-to-damage melee characters. The halfling has 10 strength, and the half-elf has 12 strength, so I invested 2 build points up front on both, mostly for encumbrance purposes.
Though for the half-elf, adding the +1 to damage until hitting that third level of unchained rogue to get dex-to-damage is useful, too. The halfling had dex-to-damage right from level 1 (Dawnflower Dervish bard).
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Unless your character is weak or carrying a lot of gear, that's all you need to know; the extra gear your character carries won't slow him down any more than the armor already does.In other words, without dumping STR and with a normal adventuring loadout, encumbrance by weight does not come into play.
Yeah, but by normal loadout, do they mean the limited gear selection that pregens have, or do they mean the extensive inventory that most PC made adventurers have? I do understand your point.
Really, they just mean that encumberance isn't ignored, per say, but it also doesn't need to be constantly calculated. Just double check your encumberance when you add a bunch of weight or when you lose strength. There's no need to constantly adjust it when you add drop or pick up minor objects.
The encumberance levels are also useful for role playing what your character would consider heavy or light or something that cannot be lifted. Mister Str 5 caster is probably not going to be gathering lumber anytime soon, just because that would be too strenuous an activity. Meanwhile, Miss Str 20 barbarian would be juggling large pieces of wood in a carefree manner.