Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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1st time post.
Can't spot guidelines around prohibition of laying hands on the dead and performing a resurrection, so here we go.
Many thanks to @Brooklyn_Red_Leg , you filled a gap that occurred to me as well - explains why I ended up here.
I've returned to D&D after a ~45 year break (long story) and am parsing details of a party as DM to do a sense check on encumbrance. This point seems to not have rated much of a mention in the discussion above that questions the sense of your reality check within the context of gameplay.
I think the reality is very worthwhile so that characters aren't unnecessarily slown down and limited by weight. I very much appreciate the voice of reason and knowledge you share. Saved me the hassle of researching out the various combinations you shared back at post #1 .. Bravo!
For those who doubt your reasoning, there are plenty of re-enactors out there on youtube who provide some real world validation of your summary, from what I can discern. The doubters should let there keyboard assist them with some research.
I've taken a view that physical size of the wearer should be taken into account as well. The weight of a suit of armour for a halfling shouldn't be the same as that of a human, as an example. I've just cooked up my own set of weight reduction factors to address, working on the basis that a human rates at a factor of 1.
The other modifier that I've applied is to assume that magic armour is fabricate from high strength/resilience materials compared with their standard equivalent. Back in the real world, liken it to alloy steel and steel treatments that improve hardness, ductility and tensile strength that permit thinner wall material to do the same job. So, personally, I think it's fair to apply a small weight discount to give credit to the arcane nature of magic armour.
Since 1e I’ve realized that the way to treat all “ weights” in the game is think of them not as actual weights but as a measure of encumberance and wieldng ability. That 18lb pike probably actually weighs under 10 lbs but is unwieldy because of its length and the inertia and torques created by that length. Similarly the armours aren’t actual weights but measures of how that weight affects the body’s movements. The plate armor may weight 70+ Lbs but because that weight is balanced and shared between hips, shoulders etc its encumbrance is only 50-60 lbs. I used to go on extended camping trips with an 80# backpack and trying to one arm it was a good way to get a wrenched shoulder. But once on and supported by the belly band as well as shoulder straps it wasn’t a major problem.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
The inaccurate weights were one reason i started ignoring encumbrance.
Did for a while in the 90's have an alternate list of gear that was made from lighter materials but still razor sharp ETC that were highly prized and worth 3 times the gold as loot, but people got sick of the different lists, so we just had lighter stuff and then we dropped encumbrance for player nescecities and only had it for loot.
then we stopped caring about that. If WoTC wants people to start playing with weights more, they will have to revisit it for sure.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
No. YOU feel this way, and I'm sure there are others but there is always 1st and 2nd edition that had speed factors, weapon vs. armor adjustments, the nomenclature of polearms...lots of things that bring a more "realistic" flavor to the game. I think that a much greater number of players would be put off by the excessive detail that the game has tried to limit. Differing bonuses and penalties? Advantage/Disadvantage instead. Spell components? Focus items. 15 swords with slightly differing stats? One small, one medium and one large sword, flavor them as you will.
I for one don't want the game to be about details, I want it to be about FUN.
If i had to guess, armor weighs a lot at higher AC to impose a minimum strength requirement.
65 pounds for full plate requires a minimum 15 strength. It also soaks up a lot of your carrying capacity.
Magical mithral armor, the super light and flexible chainmail from lorf of thr rings that even an untrained hobbit can wear? According to rules, it wrighs 65 pounds, exactly the same as normal steel armor.
The rules try to force players to choose between dex and str, and the one thing that forces thr plaer to choose STR is how much armor weighs and the how strength correlates to carry capacity.
Weight carried via arms is different then weight carried in a back pack or for armor the distribution of the weight. Get a 50 pound bag of sand/flour/cement/etc. and put it in a back pack, it feels lighter than 50poiunbds, carry that same bag in your arms and it will feel heavier then 50 pounds after a while. Armor distributed weight so that it was not as heavy feeling.
As for total weight in a back pack. Before 1800s (an arbitrary time point) most people walked everywhere. People had some sort of back pack and carried stuff in that. They would actually be able to walk several miles. In fact those back packs would carry a lot of weight. The peasants including women and children would probably carry enough weight that was closer to their body total weight then less. People were naturally more fit. Years ago in the military we where routinely carrying 120 - 170 lb backs packs plus belts with pouches and items in our hands. We would walk for miles as well like those peasants of old, sleep under the stars and keep moving the next day. Probably a persons weight might even be less then the total weight they carried. It was done.
Basically, weight and encumbrance rules are going to feel unrealistic no matter what. You may feel one way about the rules based on your own bias. Are you very fit or 100% out of shape or in between?
To me medium armor a weapon/shield combo and 150 pounds of gear (including a few other weapons) is not outrageous weight wise, probably even normal. For other people they would feel 100 lbs in total weight would lead to exhaustion. It is all ones personal bias.
Now carrying around a 10 foot pole, that to me is outrageous :)
Modern special forces carry between 50 pounds for a short mission to 100 and up to 150 for a long term mission.
But packs also.have quick release clasps to drop that weight quickly for a fight.
As Keith Baker points out in several of his Eberron books a decent medieval crossbowman could fire maybe two shots a minute on a good day, in D&D you’re firing one every six seconds and possibly twice every six seconds depending on feats. He argues theres no level of reality at all in the base rules so anyone trying to impose one is looking at the wrong system and really we should be accepting that all equipment in the game has some degree of magic involved otherwise it wouldn’t work the way the mechanics do
Is that from a book or actual weighing? Just curious what is your definition of modern? I doubt we would have been in the recommended book on weights. Most of that weight was batteries and multiple radios to be able to communicate. We needed separate radios to talk to everyone as they were all on different ones VHF, FM, and few others as well and another piece of equipment that the some twenty somethings (from a TT war game site) had books said was only vehicle mounted. This was before GPS.
The point is a majority of people today don't have a good concept of what can be carried.
Hi, I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish. I have been playing and DMing since the beginning in the 70's. Armor or AC as never taken away with fun and adventure. So why does this reality matter. How would you run your game? Also as you can imagine, most of my players have quite a bit of magic to help with AC. Thanks for sharing.
I mean if you have never had a DM try to screw you over because of equipment weight, or stop the session for an hour to make your table do book keeping to make sure your gear is within carrying capacity, or just straight up off your character because 'he weighed too much in his gear, he falls through the floor" or that kind of thing then it isn't much of an issue.
But like.... i have been in all those cases. Even had stuff like "you need to carry all this out to the army in one go. But you are all too weak to do it." and other such ways weight has messed with players because a DM got mean.
There is also just the 'this doesn't make sense' part of it. In 5E a quarterstaff is said to weigh 4 pounds, but the staff I made from oak a few years back was like a pound and a half. We have these things in real life and they are given weights that aren't reflective of things we can just grab and check. That bothers some people, so i can see why this conversation comes up, even when i just ignore it.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
I dunno. Pack, food, water, rifle, mags, helmet, tripod, spare barrel, and a thousand rounds of belted ammo.
I make encumbrance a session 0 topic. I don't want to do it as a player, but if my players find that kind of micromanagement fun, then so be it.
I’m having fun reading a lot of this discussion- if you’re not using encumbrance then what do the weights matter? If you are using encumbrance given how screwy strength values are why are you worried about equally screwy weight and encumbrance values?
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
On the other hand, if it doesnt matter, why resist changing the rule?
Because changing something is more work than not. If it doesn't matter, then spending time, energy, and capital on changing it doesn't make sense. If you want to homebrew more "realistic" encumbrance and weights because you think that time and energy is worth it, then no one is stopping you; I use some slightly modified rules in the game I mentioned, myself. But the game runs fine with what we have, so WotC spending resources to update it now is not something we should expect.
"Because changing something is more work than not. If it doesn't matter, then spending time, energy, and capital on changing it doesn't make sense"
And yet, it costs nothing to put it on the wish list of things to change.
I wouldn't disagree with that, but I didn't get the impression that expectations would be appropriately tempered. As I said before, WotC are the ones that would be weighing the benefits of changing the rules/entries vs. the gain for the average player and I wouldn't hold my breath.
Yeah, but if nothing else, a list of rules update requests that includes "fix these object weights" means, folks who run into the issue can just bump the thread rather than expend energy rehashing something others already hashed.
Alternatively, setting up a homebrew and getting lots of attention on it to the point that it becomes quite popular is probably more likely to result in a rules change on the next iteration. They did it with potions, and I think a few other things with 5.24e.