Mass of non-armor

[Seenar]

Hey, any idea how much one should mass general equipment? How much does a sword mass, anyway? Does anyone have some good rules of thumb on equipment mass?

[Vondy]

Mass will almost always correlate to our intuitive impression of the quantity of matter that comprises an object. Thus mass is the amount of stuff in an object.

The expression the weight of an object is really just saying the force of gravity on an object. Thus weight is local gravitational force.

From a laymans point of view Pounds are units of force and Kilograms are units of mass.

As such, you can convert pounds to kilograms to get the basic mass of an object. A sword that weighs 6.6 pounds under the local gravity of the earth masses approx. 3 kilograms of "stuff".

This doesn't take into account volume or density, but it does allow a simplified conversion.

I'm sure a physicist, or one of our local science gurus could help you with calculating volume, which may apply to your task.

Edit: the exact kilogram (mass) to pound (force) conversion is

1 kilogram = 2.2046226 pounds

[Chris Goodwin]

I think he was just asking for common weights of the sorts of stuff you'd find in a fantasy game.

(I'm reminded of the joke about a physicist attempting to predict the milk output of a dairy cow: "First, assume a spherical cow...")

[Vondy]

If that is the case I was confused by the fact that he asked for mass as opposed to weight, which are distinct concepts.

Amount of stuff versus force of gravity on said stuff.

Seenar?

[Seenar]

I actually know what Mass is, compared to weight. Since the book used kilograms, I was being precise.

I am looking to see if anyone has rough estimates of what basic equipment might mass so I can calculate encumbrance.

[Yamo]

I am looking to see if anyone has rough estimates of what basic equipment might mass so I can calculate encumbrance.

Anyone else's "estimates" are unlikely to be significantly more accurate or valuable than your own, so you're really better off just using a combination of your own experience and "close enough for a game" educated guesses for anything outside it.

[Seenar]

Originally posted by Yamo
Anyone else's "estimates" are unlikely to be significantly more accurate or valuable than your own, so you're really better off just using a combination of your own experience and "close enough for a game" educated guesses for anything outside it.

Gee thanks, that's real helpful.

I am interested in how others have approached this.

[Yamo]

Gee thanks, that's real helpful.

Better than real condescending, pal. Ditch the attitude and you'll get farther.

[Vondy]

Originally posted by Seenar
Gee thanks, that's real helpful.

I am interested in how others have approached this.

With swords I've gone online and done searches for "battle ready swords" or "full tang swords". The outlets that sell such things usually inlcude approx. weight/mass in their online catalogues. Some of them have other midieval weapons they sell as well.

You can also do searches for modern armorers, people who make chain mail or leather armor, to get weights for those, though they tend to be sketchier about providing details.

With other equipment its much more difficult. You have two issues in play. The first is that we commonly use lighter materials that were unavailable in the middle ages for a lot of things (like backpacks, mess kits, etc). You can either get the weight/mass of modern items and then evaluate them to determine if you think they should go up or down, or you can just take a guess at it.

REI catalogs, army-navy catalogues, camping catalogues, and the like can at least give you a starting point.

[Vondy]

This might be a useful link for the more common midieval weapons:

http://www.swords-n-stuff.com/

[Vondy]

I don't know what I was thinking!!!

Are you familiar with Harnworld? The Harn people are fanatics when it comes to midieval accuracy and have produced materials on everything from how to manage mideival crops to... well, lets just say I used the word fanatics for a reason.

They have some detailed equipment tables with accurate midieval weights on them. I have the core harnworld book at home. I'll go take a look and see how useful it might be to you. In the meantime you can go to the Harnlink page:

http://www.warflail.com/harnlink/

[Tempuswolf]

I googled this up:

Fantasy Hero Strength Table

Hopefully, Fantasy Hero 5th Ed. will have something like this. I pulled 4th Ed., unless I just can't find one, there isn't one in it or the two companions.

As far as a rule of thumb, a meter cube of water weighs 1000 kg, a decimeter cube (~4 inches) is a liter weighs 1 kg, a gallon of water weighs 8 lbs; metal is denser than water so weighs more for a given volume, wood is less dense (generally), stone is usually about twice as dense.

My last suggestion is just steal some other systems chart.

(Doh, my typing speed betrays me again.)

[Shaddakim]

I have a list containing a wide variety of equipment items and their mass. It was developed by one of the guys in my college FH group. He spent time either tracking down items and actually weighing them or researching their weight in other ways. The resulting list (known as Lan's List, as he was the one who wrote it) became our bible on equipment.

Send me your e-mail address as a private message and I'll e-mail you a copy. I typed it into MS Word and made a PDF of it so it isn't very large, file size-wise. The only thing I ask is that you not change the name of the file, it's Lan's material and he deserves the credit for the work.

[Seenar]

Thanks guys, this is helpful.

Man, D, you are not kidding about being fanatics.

The 4th Ed link implies that full armor and equipement addes up to 50kg. I am leaning towards around 10-15kg assumption of equipment, depending on the character, but we will see how that adds up when we look at the numbers.

[mudpyr8]

Jeebus Kriste people. The poster simply asked for weapon mass, not a discussion of mass vs. weight, or the basis of the metric system.

Here's what you want to know. All of the weights are in pounds, but you can do the conversion.

I can think of 3 definitive sources off the top of my head.

1. GURPS Low Tech (SJG). An excellent source not only for standard equipment, but its history and development.

2. System Reference Document (WotC). http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/srd.html
All of the equipment in D&D is Open Gaming Licensed and free to use. Since I convert a lot of my adventures, we use the D&D gold standard (makes treasure easy to deal with), and use that EQ list since it is so exhaustive. Now, so that we don't have to get retardulously pedantic, I simply divide the weights by 2 to get a Hero/quasi-metric mass. Since Hero chars are stronger than most people, the difference relative to encumberance is negligable (10%).

3. And a 10 foot Pole (ICE). Incredibly detailed listing, including craft times and such. Very useful. However, money system is very different from D&D or anything else. However, it is a solid base.

4. Fantasy Hero. Be patient, there is a boatload of EQ with mass in FH which will be out next month.

I hope that helps Seenar.