
Wei Ji the Learner |
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NielsenE wrote:just a big ole pile of goodberries that don't heal?Sorry I know they all say their food is "pure", and "wholesome" but there is way too much green sludge and smoke coming out of those alchemy guilds.
I'm leaning towards freeze dried soilent-green.
Soil-Ent Greene is made of goblins!!!! ????

Zwordsman |
It doesn't say how you hold them. Hermetically sealed square alumi covered military MRE's stack in nice squares and I could hold them in one hand stacked rather easily.
I always assumed that they meant it similar to that, That the weight is small. Not that they're like finger shaped. Though you could hold them all if you pinch the corners I guess. Or if you wrap them all together.
but it could also be something like Lambas Bread from LOTR.
Heck they could just be like power bars. Mealed grain+berries+renderd animal fat into a bar (like power bars). Wrapped in leaves or paper and tied in stacks of 7 like little bricks.

graystone |
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It doesn't say how you hold them. Hermetically sealed square alumi covered military MRE's stack in nice squares and I could hold them in one hand stacked rather easily.
I always assumed that they meant it similar to that, That the weight is small. Not that they're like finger shaped. Though you could hold them all if you pinch the corners I guess. Or if you wrap them all together.
but it could also be something like Lambas Bread from LOTR.
Heck they could just be like power bars. Mealed grain+berries+renderd animal fat into a bar (like power bars). Wrapped in leaves or paper and tied in stacks of 7 like little bricks.
I'd be hard pressed to put 28 power bars in a belt pouch [large enough to hold 100–200 coins or two apples], but 4 weeks rations in one are the rules...

Tiene |
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Zwordsman wrote:I'd be hard pressed to put 28 power bars in a belt pouch [large enough to hold 100–200 coins or two apples], but 4 weeks rations in one are the rules...It doesn't say how you hold them. Hermetically sealed square alumi covered military MRE's stack in nice squares and I could hold them in one hand stacked rather easily.
I always assumed that they meant it similar to that, That the weight is small. Not that they're like finger shaped. Though you could hold them all if you pinch the corners I guess. Or if you wrap them all together.
but it could also be something like Lambas Bread from LOTR.
Heck they could just be like power bars. Mealed grain+berries+renderd animal fat into a bar (like power bars). Wrapped in leaves or paper and tied in stacks of 7 like little bricks.
That's 999 coins isn't it? Since they're all negligible until you add the 1,000th coin. Or even 999 coins and 40 crossbow bolts.

Wheldrake |
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The whole point of the "bulk" system is to avoid players having to account for every niggling bit of weight. It's an abstraction, and one that we shouldn't peer too closely at.
It seems obvious to me that the rations were made extra light specifically so that PCs could carry a bunch of them straight out of the box at first level without breaking their encumbrance limits.
And the reason shortswords are "L" and hence 1/10th as encumbering as longswords with a bulk of "1" is because they didn't want to mess around with decimal values of bulk. If a shortsword were listed as "5L" or something similar, that would imply that players were meant to keep painstaking track of every little scrap of bulk, and inventory bookkeeping would be back.
Nobody wants that, do they?

avr |
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I wonder, could you detonate a goblin - or an animal companion - by throwing a belt pouch of rations at them?
And Wheldrake there's not a great deal of simplicity gained by defining objects as L, 1 or 2 bulk. It still adds up the same way. It does encourage people not to look too closely, and it comes close to declaring that you shouldn't care about encumbrance but it doesn't quite get there.

Wheldrake |

Well... I would claim it does get there, if you just ignore "L" items. Not that many items of common equipment have encumbrance of "1" or greater. If they do, it's fairly logical. For exemple, a repair kit has several tools and a small anvil - hard to see that with an "L" value.
I don't always agree with where the line was drawn. 50 feet of rope has an "L" value?
At the end of the day, it's a serviceable system which DMs and players can either use or ignore, as they see fit.

Abraham spalding |
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MREs are not rations in the traditional sense.
Each package of MRE is 1250(ish) calories. A "typical" diet could survive on 3 MREs every 2 days (3700 calories) easily.
MREs are rather bulky because they aren't preserved in the ways traditional rations are; a beef stew MRE when opened is already stew, not a concentrate to be mixed, and fully cooked. In addition you will have some form of drink mix, eating utensils, a wet wipe, coffee, some gum, a desert, et al.

Tender Tendrils |

A weeks worth of rations is light bulk and can be held in one hand. I'm not sure I could hold 7 modern day military MRE packs in one hand.
What do you suppose the alchemist guild is doing to make food so light and do you suppose it has something to do with all the aberrations in the world?
I think it is largely a player convenience thing - in my experience players often really hate having to spend a lot of carrying capacity on rations (5e approached this by giving players insane carrying capacities and background features which let you automatically feed the party, I suspect pathfinder 2e is approaching this by making the weight of rations fairly negligible)

Gisher |
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Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! wrote:I think it is largely a player convenience thing - in my experience players often really hate having to spend a lot of carrying capacity on rations (5e approached this by giving players insane carrying capacities and background features which let you automatically feed the party, I suspect pathfinder 2e is approaching this by making the weight of rations fairly negligible)A weeks worth of rations is light bulk and can be held in one hand. I'm not sure I could hold 7 modern day military MRE packs in one hand.
What do you suppose the alchemist guild is doing to make food so light and do you suppose it has something to do with all the aberrations in the world?
Create Food is a 2nd level spell on the Divine, Primal, and Arcane lists. Unheightened it will feed 6 medium creatures for a whole day. For 160 gp a party could buy a Wand of Create Food that would mean never having to pack rations again.
The Ring of Sustenance is still here, too.

Tender Tendrils |

Tender Tendrils wrote:Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! wrote:I think it is largely a player convenience thing - in my experience players often really hate having to spend a lot of carrying capacity on rations (5e approached this by giving players insane carrying capacities and background features which let you automatically feed the party, I suspect pathfinder 2e is approaching this by making the weight of rations fairly negligible)A weeks worth of rations is light bulk and can be held in one hand. I'm not sure I could hold 7 modern day military MRE packs in one hand.
What do you suppose the alchemist guild is doing to make food so light and do you suppose it has something to do with all the aberrations in the world?
Create Food is a 2nd level spell on the Divine, Primal, and Arcane lists. Unheightened it will feed 6 medium creatures for a whole day. For 160 gp a party could buy a Wand of Create Food that would mean never having to pack rations again.
The Ring of Sustenance is still here, too.
True, though I don't think I have ever seen a player choose or prepare those spells. Keeping the weight of rations low is probably a far more efficient way to keep players from having to worry about it. Most players I have met prefer to dedicate as little thought as possible to rations (I am the only person I have met who enjoys that kind of bookkeeping or takes mundane spells like that).

graystone |

True, though I don't think I have ever seen a player choose or prepare those spells.
With create being divine, it's spell they can just take on a day they need it. For instance, if the party finds themselves starving, the divine caster just takes it when the prepare for the day since it doesn't have to be learned/known before the prep stage.