Curse of Strahd provides new character option: Haunted One. This background gives the character a monster hunter's pack. I love it, thanks WotC and DnD Beyond for providing it to us. Sadly, the text description of the background uses the obsolete wording: there is no sidebar. And there should be a link to the monster hunter's pack.
But here's another thing: there are three wooden stakes in monster hunter's pack. Looking at the wooden stake page I see no information about the weight of one stake. It's not from PHB, so there is no source for it. But it is 0.5 lbs per stake. How do I know this? (Probably nobody cares. I'll continue).
The whole pack is 49 lbs (we know it for sure from the source). All the items except the stakes are from PHB: a chest (25 lbs), a crowbar (5 lbs), a hammer (3 lbs), three wooden stakes (3×X lbs), a holy symbol (0, 1 or 2 lbs), a flask of holy water (1 lbs), a set of manacles (6 lbs), a steel mirror (0.5 lbs), a flask of oil (1 lbs), a tinderbox (1 lbs), and 3 torches (3x1 lbs). It is 45.5 without symbol and stakes. We have 3.5 lbs for three stakes and one holy symbol (which is either 0 lbs emblem, 1 lbs amulet or 2 lbs reliquary). Which leads to 2 possible conclusions:
0 lbs holy symbol (emblem) + three 1.5 lbs stakes. That's a really heavy stake, heavier that a torch (which one would argue is a stake wrapped with tarred cloth).
2 lbs holy symbol (reliquary) + three 0.5 lbs stakes. Sounds reasonable for me.
I'm sure if the designers wanted to make the stakes heavier than 0.5, they would choose 1 or 2 for simplicity. Also they probably didn't want to force the Haunted One into single 0 lbs variant and used the heaviest option to ensure the player can choose between all three types of a holy symbol.
I think it is safe to add the weight to the wooden stakes: 0.5 lbs per item. If I'm not persuasive enough, please ignore my nonsense and have a nice day. Thank you.
I actually did some google searching to get an idea of how much a wooden stake should weigh, and depending on the measurements of the stake, real life ones typically weigh between 1.2 and 2.6 pounds each. What I really wanna know is how much wooden stakes should cost. I'm working on a PC using the new Dhampir race, and due to backstory related reason's I figured he should buy a bundle of wooden stakes with his starting wealth. Unfortunately, I don't wanna buy the whole monster pack to get them, and they have no listed price. I can't even figure out what they would cost by comparing the price of the monster hunter pack with the price of the individual pieces to figure it out, because the monster hunter pack is 12 gold, 6 silver and 3 copper cheaper than all of it's item's bought individually, excluding the price of the stakes. If the character had proficiency with woodcarver's tools, and/or had a set of woodcarver's tools on hand, then maybe I'd be willing to consider it a negligible price and just assume that the character made the stakes himself, but that's not the case, so I feel like the stakes should cost something.
OK, here comes something really boring.
Curse of Strahd provides new character option: Haunted One. This background gives the character a monster hunter's pack. I love it, thanks WotC and DnD Beyond for providing it to us. Sadly, the text description of the background uses the obsolete wording: there is no sidebar. And there should be a link to the monster hunter's pack.
But here's another thing: there are three wooden stakes in monster hunter's pack. Looking at the wooden stake page I see no information about the weight of one stake. It's not from PHB, so there is no source for it. But it is 0.5 lbs per stake. How do I know this? (Probably nobody cares. I'll continue).
The whole pack is 49 lbs (we know it for sure from the source). All the items except the stakes are from PHB: a chest (25 lbs), a crowbar (5 lbs), a hammer (3 lbs), three wooden stakes (3×X lbs), a holy symbol (0, 1 or 2 lbs), a flask of holy water (1 lbs), a set of manacles (6 lbs), a steel mirror (0.5 lbs), a flask of oil (1 lbs), a tinderbox (1 lbs), and 3 torches (3x1 lbs). It is 45.5 without symbol and stakes. We have 3.5 lbs for three stakes and one holy symbol (which is either 0 lbs emblem, 1 lbs amulet or 2 lbs reliquary). Which leads to 2 possible conclusions:
I'm sure if the designers wanted to make the stakes heavier than 0.5, they would choose 1 or 2 for simplicity. Also they probably didn't want to force the Haunted One into single 0 lbs variant and used the heaviest option to ensure the player can choose between all three types of a holy symbol.
I think it is safe to add the weight to the wooden stakes: 0.5 lbs per item. If I'm not persuasive enough, please ignore my nonsense and have a nice day. Thank you.
I actually did some google searching to get an idea of how much a wooden stake should weigh, and depending on the measurements of the stake, real life ones typically weigh between 1.2 and 2.6 pounds each. What I really wanna know is how much wooden stakes should cost. I'm working on a PC using the new Dhampir race, and due to backstory related reason's I figured he should buy a bundle of wooden stakes with his starting wealth. Unfortunately, I don't wanna buy the whole monster pack to get them, and they have no listed price. I can't even figure out what they would cost by comparing the price of the monster hunter pack with the price of the individual pieces to figure it out, because the monster hunter pack is 12 gold, 6 silver and 3 copper cheaper than all of it's item's bought individually, excluding the price of the stakes. If the character had proficiency with woodcarver's tools, and/or had a set of woodcarver's tools on hand, then maybe I'd be willing to consider it a negligible price and just assume that the character made the stakes himself, but that's not the case, so I feel like the stakes should cost something.