Sep25
on September 25, 2018
Weighed Down
I don’t know many games that bother to track encumbrance, but for the most part I like the verisimilitude of worrying about having too much stuff or being concerned about what is stored where. Although, in many editions, small and low strength characters can barely hold anything. I remember my halfling bard in 3e almost being weighed down by their clothing.
One of the more annoying bits of bookkeeping comes from treasure. Gold and coins weight a LOT but the game expects you to be carrying several thousand at all times, especially in 3e/Pathfinder and 4e. Even in high levels of 5e you can literally be swimming in gold coins that will be particularly challenging to carry.
In the various groups where I play we usually keep track of encumbrance; altough being a pain in the ass, it makes up for a more realistic gameplay.
We even enhanced it a little bit: even if you got a STR 20 character, it is unlikely you can move around freely (and what about fighting) while you carry a bunch of looted weapons and a spare armor (because… rust monsters). Encumbrance is more than just weight. Luckily, when you get to middle levels you can easily afford a bag of holding or Hevard’s backpack. By the time you hit high levels, you’re usually able to grab a portable hole too… you can fit and entire dragon hoard in it!
But I also found interesting the directions given for other games, like Cyberpunk 2020: one body armor layer, 1 heavy weapon/assault rifle/shotgun/SMG with a spare magazine, 1 pistol or UZI and spare magazine (possibly with a smaller backup/grenade/whatchamallit), a knife. The game itself states something like “all of your gear in a 50x50x100 cm bag”. This makes for very realistic gameplay, without bothering too much about the exact weight of said items.
Coins are one of the few things I actually keep track of, encumbrance-wise. Firstly because it’s so easy to track (For every 50 coins you have, it weighs 1 lb) but mostly because of bragging rights (“I have a dwarf’s weight in silver in my bag of holding!”)