Toward a Better Encumbrance System

[Christopher R Taylor]

Ok so, 

 

ASSUMING YOU USE ENCUMBRANCE IN A CAMPAIGN*
 

I'd like to has out a simpler and more workable system than presently in place.  And I would like to come up with a simpler way of implementing it than having Kg weights and careful measurements written up and added to determine results, if possible.

 

My starting place is with casual strength.  At half your strength you're exerting at such a level that you use no endurance and take no time to execute a task.  This suggests to me that this should be the base level for endurance: if you're not over half lifting capacity, you're golden and have no penalties.

 

I want encumbrance to be meaningful and have an impact on combat and play rather than a mild annoyance.  Someone carrying a full suit of armor, 5 weapons, a quiver of 20 arrows, six amulets, a backpack full of potions, food, cooking equipment, and a sleeping roll plus all the other crap Joe adventurer somehow lugs around should feel like a pack mule.

 

But I don't want encumbrance to be obnoxious, either: people should be able to move around in reasonable gear without crippling penalties.

 

Any thoughts or input?

 

*an attempt to to stave off the inevitable "dude, just don't use it" or "its not used in superheroic games" comments.

[dsatow]

You can do video game simplification.  Give everything encumbrance points.  Your strength gives you the maximum number of encumbrance points you can use.  If they exceed the limit, add 1 end/5 strength over encumbrance round up to any action they do and as a minimum per phase.

 

This is just a off top of the head solution, so take it with a block of salt.

[mrinku]

I want encumbrance to be meaningful and have an impact on combat and play rather than a mild annoyance.  Someone carrying a full suit of armor, 5 weapons, a quiver of 20 arrows, six amulets, a backpack full of potions, food, cooking equipment, and a sleeping roll plus all the other crap Joe adventurer somehow lugs around should feel like a pack mule.

 

 

That guy should GET a pack mule

 

If you want a reasonable rule, use reason. No armour worth its salt is encumbering in the context of its intended use, and should be well distributed on the body. Even the very thick tournament plate suits that would have been totally impractical in battle let the wearer plant their lance accurately in a joust.

 

Armour does fatigue through heat retention, though. Which is a different thing.

 

More than a couple of weapons is weird. Primary, secondary, maybe a dagger. Most weigh less than you might think, too. Encumbrance through weight is less of a concern than them getting in the way when you're fighting. Unless you've got a squire or other helper to hand you a weapon swap, it should be something for each hand and what you can carry on the belt. No one swaps to bow after starting with sword and shield, but starting with bow then drawing a sword is reasonable.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I do like the idea of weight distribution mattering; a pack makes things in it encumber less, etc. And I agree, armor shouldn't be as encumbering worn as it would be, say, carried in a bundle.

[mrinku]

If you think a player is pushing common sense, get them to wear analogues of the gear they reckon they can manage and TRY to do the stuff they claim they can. Good luck on finding a way to holster a polearm, in particular...

 

However, a horse takes care of a multitude of equipment issues and means you arrive at the fight a lot fresher, too

[Christopher R Taylor]

Reminds me of of my all time favorite all time "What's New" comics by Foglio, in the Dragon Magazine. It was about that: understanding what your character goes through.  Stuff like cover yourself with phone books as armor and run a marathon, or shower with cats strapped to your body.

 

And here it is, from Dragon Magazine #62

 

[Nolgroth]

Almost all encumbrance rules deal strictly with mass and few deal with size. I was playing Fallout 4 (and this is to illustrate a point) the other day and stumbled upon a toy factory where they made robotic horses about 18 scale inches tall and probably twice that long. I picked up about 2 dozen of those things, plus some extra "loose" parts. My son, looking over my shoulder, asked with some incredulity, "Where are you putting all those?"  He was, of course, absolutely correct. While my weight limit allowed me to carry those and a whole lot more besides, there should have been no practical way that I could have fit them.

 

My solution, therefore, is two-fold. 1) You have to account for the combined weight of your items and 2) You have to account for the size of the items you are carrying. Both important parts but also potentially "obnoxious." My solution comes, not surprisingly, from another video game. In the later Deus Ex games (not sure about the early ones), your encumbrance is a visual grid and the size of the objects you are carrying, have to fit within that grid. The larger the object, the more space it takes up. Lessee if I can find an image from the interwebs. Don't go nowhere...

 

 

...okay there you go.

 

Now, obviously, there is still a lot of stuff there and the video game doesn't track weight. That's where we use our p'n'p rules to supplement. Heck, let's use that visual (mostly cuz I took the time to find it).  You have a multiple weapons, probably weighing in at ~8 kg, Figure about 3.5 kg for the submachine gun looking guns. I count 3 so add another 11.5 kg.  Pistol? It looks pretty large frame, maybe even Desert Eagle size. Lets go with 2 kg. Together, the guns weigh in at a healthy 23 kg. To speed this up, let's just round out the rest of the gear to about 7 kg for an even 30 kg of weight. I didn't see a lot of ammo in that inventory and ammo is heavy. Lucky guy.

 

So lessee, a Strength 10 character can easily lift the weight. He could add about another 20kg, but could probably only fit one addition large item or a couple of moderately sized items. 

 

Advantages: Lets you see, at a glance, how much "space" is taken up by inventory. Let's you control the amount of inventory without getting too anal. 

 

Drawbacks: You have to decide how many blocks any particular item takes up. If you are going to go visual, you probably need to have some sort of tokens to represent size on the character sheet or supplemental sheet. A good way might be to take larger index cards (4x6 being ideally sized IMO) with a grid printed on them. Laminate a few and then have some dry erase or Vis-a-Vis markers handy to draw out the size of the item in X x Y dimensions then write what the item is in the middle. You might even write it out like Longsword 2.5kg, so that you could easily tally up the weight.

 

Disclaimer: I've never actually used this method before. I think, with a little bit of prep, it wouldn't be too hard or obnoxious to fit into a game. I also don't know if index cards can be purchased with a pre-existing grid printed on them. You'd think there would be but...

 

And all of this is only one suggestion that I have been toying with for some time.

[mrinku]

Most of that What's New is spot on, but the cinderblocks for armour is a bit cheeky. That would literally be like comparing how a twenty kilo backpack feels when you lift it directly and haul it around as opposed to wearing it with chest and belly straps in place and adjusted properly. And I can guarantee Phil got a lot of feedback on that very point from his SCA friends

 

Plate in particular is pretty comfy. Far easier to wear than chain of the same weight - that stuff really digs into your shoulders, no matter how well you clinch it up at the waist. A coat of plates drags on the shoulders as well, but not as bad. 

 

That's a big reason that later styles got rid of the hauberk and just used chain patches to cover spots like the inside elbows and backs of knees.

 

@Nolgroth: 2.5kg for a longsword? More like 2.5 pounds. 2.5kg would be a big two hander. A typical one handed sword is about a kilo.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longsword

 

A sword's pretty easy to wear, too, once you get hang of it. Bows are... inconvenient at best. Though there are designs of bow case (especially for saddle use) that work okay for the shorter recurves. A longbow you carry unstrung or in your hand.  

[Nolgroth]

@Nolgroth: 2.5kg for a longsword? More like 2.5 pounds. 2.5kg would be a big two hander. A typical one handed sword is about a kilo.

 

Random numbers given for example because I was not really interested in looking up the weight of yet another weapon.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I can't remember the name but the first game I saw that used the grid style inventory system was in the early 90s, long before Diablo (which also uses it).  You had to be creative about what you kept and didn't, and how you "packed" it.

[mrinku]

Random numbers given for example because I was not really interested in looking up the weight of yet another weapon.

 

Fair enough. Myself, I was quite surprised how heavy the Desert Eagle was. 2kg? That's insane! Talk about strapping a brick to your hand...

[Nolgroth]

Fair enough. Myself, I was quite surprised how heavy the Desert Eagle was. 2kg? That's insane! Talk about strapping a brick to your hand...

 

Ammunition is heavy and I was giving fully loaded weights. On the other hand, weight helps with recoil. That, combined with the rolling block design, has been reported to really lessen the effect of perceived recoil. I, personally, have never fired anything quite so weighty as the Desert Eagle. Couldn't tell you and, honestly, it is an aside to the conversation about encumbrance rules. (Hint to Gun Bunnies: Start a new thread to debate recoil and stuff if you like. )

 

For myself, I am really considering using that kind of visual encumbrance rule for a Fate (or other rules lite) game I have been threatening to put together. Something that only takes a small portion of the character sheet for actual stats. Plop the encumbrance table on the bottom half and roll with it. Maybe have a separate encumbrance sheet for mounts and pack animals.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I am kinda leaning heavily toward the use of encumbrance points rather than actual weights, but I can't figure out a way to make that work better than a number.  I mean, how is ENC 1 better than 1kg?  I do want to use the casual strength as a baseline but how do you work it beyond that?  STR +5 is basic push level for heroic characters, and that's a supreme effort.

Remember, STR is the max you can lift with a great effort, over your head, once. That means a serious expenditure of strength.  So if a character is carrying as much as their STR can hold, they should barely be able to stagger a few steps.  And there's not a lot of range in a heroic game between 1/2 STR and full STR carrying.

[mrinku]

Chris, why not break it up by how the gear is carried, then apply weight allowances. Doesn't have to be finicky. Maybe:

 

Clothing (including armour)

Pack and webbing

Belt

Each hand. Hand allowances can be combined if needs be (i.e. carrying a chest).

 

"Belt" might also represent "ready to use" equipment that's not strictly speaking attached to a belt, like a bandolier or quiver. Packs become more encumbering when not strapped properly and VERY encumbering when transferred to a Hand allowance. Equipment stored in a pack can't generally be quickly accessed. You can strap gear to the outside of a pack within reason, but would need to first take off the pack to access it.

[Lee]

Another idea would be to base your ENC points not only on the mass/weight but also on the volume of an object. That 1kg object the size of a baseball will be far less encumbering than that 1kg object that's 1m³.

 

It could be as simple as a few encumbrance levels (i.e. Unwieldy, Bulky, etc.) that increase the ENC by a given amount or as complex as determining the volume of the object and its average density, calculating its mass and using all that to produce your ENC points.

 

I'm using something similar to the latter for a crafting system I'm working on. I'm pleased with where it's going, but it's no where near ready to be used or I'd share.

 

Lee