You do assign bulk by thinking of the weight and the awkwardness of carrying something, whether because of it's size, composition, or the needs of it being ready to grab and use.Where have you seen the part about "the needs of it being ready to grab and use"? Can you indicate the exact page number and the exact citation?
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Eh I think bulk has enough wrong with it without having to get creative at interpreting the rules.We have to get creative and interpret the rules if we want our character to be able to carry anything else than his murderhobo's kit. Right now, no character can possibly carry 10 books, that's a problem if we want to play a scholar: hence the need for creativity.
Maybe if we separate books into several volumes, they are easier to handle? Maybe this is the reason why à la recherche du temps perdu is composed of 7 volumes: the whole saga weights 7 L instead of 1 B...
I think you misunderstood what I was saying but that's fine. whatever. have fun.
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If bags and back packs do not do anything, can you carry 1000's of coints, kits, shields, armor rations bedroll, tent, without any of those containers?
Where are they 'put'?
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Obviously everyone wears a backpack, satchel, half filled sack on their belt, three or four belt pouches for their backup shields and pours their elixirs into a waterskin. I'm not sure if you can do that last one.
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The rules don't say that you can breathe, so every new character created only has a few minutes to live.
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I really though I'd be able to avoid the absurdity of the bulk system during actual play. But after deciding that I needed to drop my whip so I could pickup 500feet of silk rope, I've realized its just always going to be there.
I'm not following the current argument and don't have much to say about it. Carry on.
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It is a bit silly that they gave us - L 1 2 3. I just turned it all into .01 .1 1 2 3 anyway so I could actually add it up. They could bump it up so I wouldn't need the decimals, but 1, 10, 100, 200, 300 probably calls too much attention to the system itself.
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I GM almost exclusively and don't really care how much stuff my players are carrying (unless they start hauling off statues or using each other as mounts). And hadn't seen anyone even really try to use it from 2nd Edition AD&D through PFRPG.
But I've seen new and old players alike figure out and apply bulk unprompted in Starfinder and the playtest. Which is kind of funny because I still don't really care, but it's clearly works far better for their subset of players.
And I can see that. I don't weigh things in my daily life, so pounds are no more a meaningful physical amount than bulk is. And I couldn't guess how many pounds I could comfortably carry, but I can tell you how many bulk a Strength 10 character could carry without being encumbered.
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Bulk works. Its not too punitive or generous. Its easy to track. Dunno, seems fine to me.
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Stop the hyperbole. If you're running into bulk problems get a bag of holding or bump your strength a little.You fight 3 bandits on the way to the dungeon. They each have a short sword, hide armor, and 2 javelins. That's 15 B of loot.
You now have to turn around and go back to town to go sell your loot because everyone is now at their max load, overencumbered, or can only carry 2 more things before becoming so.
Unless you have a packmule (possibly multiple), someone who doesn't mind losing 10 feet of movement (and a decent str), a dwarf who doesn't mind losing 5 feet of movement (so not wearing medium or heavy armor), or a bunch of str based monks, there is no reasonable way to store loot before getting access to bags of holding. Which is unobtainable until level 3-4 (probably not 3 as weapons and armor will be the priority).
In 3.5E, I played ranger that burried/hide loot caches from defeated foes.
We returned after we have cleared the whole area with pack mules.
If you cannot carry all loot just take the best in weight/price category.
On topic. Yes, I would like better to have weight in kg/lb and not some "bult" imaginary value.
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The system places specific restrictions on putting objects too large for the dimensions of an object inside that object. It doesn't attempt to check combined volume of objects, but it does restrict you from placing a ladder into a chest. Other objects with less certain dimensions are also a bit complicated, but a ladder has a specific inflexible length.
Bulk has plenty of inconsistencies that make it rather silly, there's no need to invent new ones.
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Ladders used weight in PF1e. There was nothing that said you couldn't tuck your ladder into your boots like a hidden dagger in PF1e.
There are some fair criticisms at the bulk system, and I understand some people do not like the level of abstraction it utilizes. But let's not get ridiculous.
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I don’t think it’s meant to be a measurement. Certainly not at the individual item level. It’s an abstract system that means as you hold lots of stuff you get encumbered.
We find it works fine at that “global” level. It’s poor at consistently answering questions about carrying ladders and armfuls of swords but that kind of thing doesn’t really matter at our table. We just want the wizard to slow down if they carry lots and the barbarian to not really care about how much equipment they have.
It seems to me that whether you like bulk or not depends on what you want to use it for.
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It's poor at consistently answering any questions of comparative value. That's a pretty serious flaw for a system of values.
I don’t think it’s meant to be a measurement. Certainly not at the individual item level. It’s an abstract system that means as you hold lots of stuff you get encumbered.
We find it works fine at that “global” level. It’s poor at consistently answering questions about carrying ladders and armfuls of swords but that kind of thing doesn’t really matter at our table. We just want the wizard to slow down if they carry lots and the barbarian to not really care about how much equipment they have.
It seems to me that whether you like bulk or not depends on what you want to use it for.
It works terribly at a global level. The only thing it works well for is people who find it easier to grab a low, single digit number for items, instead of ball-parking a weight in pounds.
When a system allows me to carry either 10 short swords or 1 longsword in the same unit of measurement, it doesn't work. This is a text version of the Diablo item grid, but more nonsensical.
For my purposes it's far too restrictive and inconsistent.
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It's poor at consistently answering any questions of comparative value. That's a pretty serious flaw for a system of values.
This kind of gets at what I mean, I don’t think it is a system of values (Ls don’t add incrementally, there’s no fractional items, etcetera). I think it’s simply an algorithm for determining PC penalties. Each item is ascribed a value, but the categories are broad - two items in the same category might be quite different in the real world as the decision of L or 1 can be close (and has far reaching consequences).
Most PCs at our table will be encumbered or unencumbered under each system. That’s the only question we ask, so the two systems are equally good at answering it. We don’t ever compare the differences between carrying armfuls of swords and cases of wine (or similar issues that people are experiencing - we don’t divide up a 1 bulk item amongst multiple people).
This seems to me to be a discussion between people with fundamentally different goals/desires for an encumbrance system - it seems like there are (at least) two quite different uses of encumbrance, so it’s not surprising objections/strengths of one group are irrelevant (or impossible to see) to the other.
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I don’t think it’s meant to be a measurement. Certainly not at the individual item level. It’s an abstract system that means as you hold lots of stuff you get encumbered.
We find it works fine at that “global” level. It’s poor at consistently answering questions about carrying ladders and armfuls of swords but that kind of thing doesn’t really matter at our table. We just want the wizard to slow down if they carry lots and the barbarian to not really care about how much equipment they have.
It seems to me that whether you like bulk or not depends on what you want to use it for.
It works terribly at a global level. The only thing it works well for is people who find it easier to grab a low, single digit number for items, instead of ball-parking a weight in pounds.
When a system allows me to carry either 10 short swords or 1 longsword in the same unit of measurement, it doesn't work. This is a text version of the Diablo item grid, but more nonsensical.
For my purposes it's far too restrictive and inconsistent.
My use of “global” was probably poorly chosen. “Coarse” would perhaps have been better. I meant we find it works fine for answering questions like “what’s your speed?”
We don’t look at encumbrance in any other context, so the peculiarities of dividing up bundles of short swords wouldn’t come up.
I have to admit, there's really no way I'm going to understand tolerance of a system that is arbitrary in its relationship to the game world, as well as being inconsistent internally. All it really ends up doing is changing the answers to questions regarding what level my players will buy a cart and mule, and how many potions they'll be carrying; changing both those answers in a way that can't be explained in narrative.
But it sounds like you don't need much in the way of rules for inventory management. What is it that bulk is doing that weight didn't?
What is bulk doing to elicit that response though?
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But it sounds like you don't need much in the way of rules for inventory management. What is it that bulk is doing that weight didn't?
I don’t really know. Personally, I don’t use encumbrance rules as a DM, I just say “don’t carry too much, pay attention to your strength in deciding what that means”.
The DMs in my group that want to track encumbrance prefer bulk. They are also definitely faster in coming up with bulk ratings than weights, so I’m glad they do. My main reason for eschewing encumbrance systems over the years has been the lost time discussing how much a one foot tall, gold idol weighs, or a pile of gems, or whether we can carry a bunch of tapestries.
My guess is that, due to its abstract nature, people are happy to accept a number different from their own intuitions (or feel more comfortable guessing, if they are asked a question as DM). It makes the game go quicker for us and given it generally gives roughly the same answers as weight (to the question of how fast a PC moves) there’s no real loss - the precision of weight doesn’t affect gameplay at all, as far as I can see.