Sacks, Backpacks, & Satchels - Do they increase your Bulk capacity? Should they?

[Rameth]

As the thread subject says do these items allow you to carry more items, just stored away? Or do the items in the bag still count toward your carry weight?

I used to believe they did but in another post someone mentioned that they do not and now I'm inclined to believe them.

If they in fact do not do you think that they should? To me it makes sense that a backpack/sack/satchel would make the items inside easier to carry. Maybe reduce the Bulk of an item in a backpack by half or from 1 Bulk to L and L to negligible.

What do you guys think?

[Blave]

They do not increase your carry weight. Their only "effect" is that they don't weigh anything themself when you equip them.

However, Stephen said in the last Paizo Friday that he would like to see this changed somehow. Note that at this point it's just something he personally would like to change, not something the development team as a whole is considering.

So maybe this will change. Having some Expert or Master Backpack that reduces the total weight of all items inside by 1 Bulk or something like that would certainly be handy without becoming a haversack.

[Fuzzypaws]

Yeah, as written they clearly don't increase carrying capacity. A backpack /should/ do so though, even if I wouldn't give that to any other pouches / sacks, because it helps you distribute weight better. An easy enough way to handle it might be to say a backpack increases your effective Strength by 2 + item quality rating for the purpose of carrying capacity.

[Lightning Raven]

I found it weird to not see backpacks not behaving like in Starfinder.

Simple backpacks give you the benefit of treating your Strength as 1 higher for the purposes of carrying capacity. "Advanced" (I forgot the term) lets you treat it as 2 higher.

Reducing the bulk of each item like you guys are proposing is way too much, although I wouldn't mind it. But I think making them reduce the weight for each item would trivialize this without even having a bag of holding.

[Bardarok]

Even if basic backpacks don't I'd like Expert, Master, Legendary Packs to help hold more. I think that might be interesting (and a decent default use for low lvl permanent items if nothing else looks good)

[DataLoreRPG]

The basic effect of the backpack is that it takes an action to take it off your back and another to take something out it. So, its worse that just strapping everything to your body.

I would recommend a pack give an item bonus to Bulk capacity (a pack over half capacity could maybe grant a +1 item bonus to bulk capacity or something). Because its an item bonus, only the highest bonus applies (so you can't load up on backpacks).

The bonus would have to be dependent on stuff being inside of it, I think.

[Zwordsman]

I'd love one for the Alchemist. thats for sure..

That said... they probably couldn't afford one for a while anyway given other things.