Without Spoilers I watching Critical Role C2 where the party is flying on Giant Eagles. They were flying two chatacters to an eagle. That made me suspicious so I looked at the Giant Eagle and the Riding Horse. Based on the rules, the maximum Encumbrance for both is 480 lbs (16 Strength Score × 15, doubled because Large ( Ability Scores ))*. I figure the average medium adventurer is going to be 180 lbs, likely more. Add 50 lbs for what I suspect is a generous inventory weight (that almost certainly doesn't include armor). So we're looking at 230 lbs. That's sort of fine, but then consider Variant Encumbrance where over 5 × Strength Score 90 lbs, doubled for large so 180 bs here, leads to a reduction of 10 ft for movement. Then over 10 × Strength Score, in this case 160 doubled to 320 reduces your movement to half. Let's look back at the adventurer. 180 lbs is probably still fine, though I feel 220+ lbs is more likely since Adventurers are FIT, and maybe 100 lbs in equipment (with armor, weapon, food and water, etc.) So, in that instance we're looking at a far more likely weight of 320 lbs for the horses carried weight, which is right on the cusp of going past medium carry weight and cutting the horse down to half movement. A war horse can carry 30 lbs more for plus 10 lbs for each category of Encumbrance.
Does that make sense to everyone? I seek to recall a prior edition where animals on all fours gained additional bonuses to their carry weight but I'm not sure. But. For the purposes of the game, do the rules for Encumbrance and mounts actually work for everyone? I'm honestly curious as I'm heading into a game where I mean to hew exceptionally close to RAW, so I'm scrutinizing everything to make sure it works (spell components have been my biggest issue, but not the only one) Thanks in advance!
I think the point of the variant rule is to keep most players approximately on the edge of encumbrance, thus you need to manage your stuff and actually think about it.
Sure but I personally *always* find myself lightly encumbered (not including my Goliath Warriors), and that adds up for a horse as well. And Variant seems more realistic to me. So does that add up with the way you'd expect mounts to work?
Dm's can make anything happen to further the story and most times put little thought to the details that your catching. If it does not effect the play much then just go along.
They could have just as easily said that each eagle was carrying a single passenger and just added more eagles.
Even the D&D story books do not follow the rules of D&D exactly. Magic users able to do things that are not even listed in the spells list or rules for one.
Sure but I personally *always* find myself lightly encumbered (not including my Goliath Warriors), and that adds up for a horse as well. And Variant seems more realistic to me. So does that add up with the way you'd expect mounts to work?
Yeah, that seems right to me. You can always drop your backpack at the start of a fight, and there's no need to haul your rations and sleeping bag on your person if you have a pack animal. In my party we have a cart and a mule.
I’d agree with choiroffire. It can work, but if you really start tracking encumbrance, particularly after the characters start getting lots of coins and if you are worrying about rations, you end up needing a pack mule or cart or someone spamming tensers floating disk or something to make it work. Maybe all of the above.
Sure but I personally *always* find myself lightly encumbered (not including my Goliath Warriors), and that adds up for a horse as well. And Variant seems more realistic to me. So does that add up with the way you'd expect mounts to work?
Yeah, that seems right to me. You can always drop your backpack at the start of a fight, and there's no need to haul your rations and sleeping bag on your person if you have a pack animal. In my party we have a cart and a mule.
Most soldiers would IRL for precisely that reason.
Without Spoilers I watching Critical Role C2 where the party is flying on Giant Eagles. They were flying two chatacters to an eagle. That made me suspicious so I looked at the Giant Eagle and the Riding Horse. Based on the rules, the maximum Encumbrance for both is 480 lbs (16 Strength Score × 15, doubled because Large ( Ability Scores ))*. I figure the average medium adventurer is going to be 180 lbs, likely more. Add 50 lbs for what I suspect is a generous inventory weight (that almost certainly doesn't include armor). So we're looking at 230 lbs. That's sort of fine, but then consider Variant Encumbrance where over 5 × Strength Score 90 lbs, doubled for large so 180 bs here, leads to a reduction of 10 ft for movement. Then over 10 × Strength Score, in this case 160 doubled to 320 reduces your movement to half. Let's look back at the adventurer. 180 lbs is probably still fine, though I feel 220+ lbs is more likely since Adventurers are FIT, and maybe 100 lbs in equipment (with armor, weapon, food and water, etc.) So, in that instance we're looking at a far more likely weight of 320 lbs for the horses carried weight, which is right on the cusp of going past medium carry weight and cutting the horse down to half movement. A war horse can carry 30 lbs more for plus 10 lbs for each category of Encumbrance.
Does that make sense to everyone? I seek to recall a prior edition where animals on all fours gained additional bonuses to their carry weight but I'm not sure. But. For the purposes of the game, do the rules for Encumbrance and mounts actually work for everyone? I'm honestly curious as I'm heading into a game where I mean to hew exceptionally close to RAW, so I'm scrutinizing everything to make sure it works (spell components have been my biggest issue, but not the only one) Thanks in advance!
I don't watch Critical Role, but I am vaguely aware that Matt Mercer is not a stickler for RAW. That said, I will point out to you that the rules for travel pace are independent of walking speed (but not independent of flying speed), so it's not apples to apples to compare traveling on a horse to traveling on an eagle.
A substantial amount of 5E's RAW is completely counter to how everyone, even WOTC in their adventure modules, intuitively thinks the game world ought to work, so I would warn you against sticking to RAW too closely. For example, the RAW on darkness behaves nothing like real-world darkness, and neither does the RAW on light fog behave anything like real-world light fog.
Looking at encumberance rules the other day I came across how "low" the carrying capacity of mounts were, and found that the capacities for each mount should CHANGE. Why? Because if a goliath gets to act as if they're 1 size larger for carrying capacity, wouldn't a mount? Or at least a mount that is specifically used for carrying things like a mule, camel, draft horse. WotC believes so in *one* case, but not any others.
The mule is a medium-sized creature and has a strength of 14. Normal medium-sized creatures would have a carrying capacity of 210 (15*14). Instead, the mule has 420! As if it is one size larger.
However, this rule is not applied to other mounts. The mastiff, elephant, camel, draft horse, and warhorse are all based on 15*str*size instead of 15*str*1-size-larger. It makes sense that a pony or riding horse might not have these capacities because their main purpose is not pulling and carrying large amounts of weight (usually only people, not people+heavy stuff). Due to this, I hope 1DnD updates the carrying capacities to:
As for the giant eagles ... They would either be able to carry 480 (if not trained for pulling items) or 960 (if trained).
In terms of weight for the C2 cast? Average weights are Fjord Half-Orc: 182 Jester tiefling: 155 Molly tiefling: 155 Beau human: 140 Yasha aasimar: 140 Caleb human: 140 Nott goblin: 40
A giant eagle would have at most (and modally) 295lbs of character wight allowing each player to have 92lbs worth of items on their person before the giant eagles become encumbered - if the players did hopped on in an even case scenario (heaviest with lightest). Considering a shield and plate armor is 70lbs (5+65), it's likely that the eagles can carry them without too much trouble using basic 15*str*2 rules OR if the eagles were bred for carrying, would be able to carry 4 players in terms of weight (but perhaps not space) with no problem.
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Without Spoilers I watching Critical Role C2 where the party is flying on Giant Eagles. They were flying two chatacters to an eagle. That made me suspicious so I looked at the Giant Eagle and the Riding Horse. Based on the rules, the maximum Encumbrance for both is 480 lbs (16 Strength Score × 15, doubled because Large ( Ability Scores ))*. I figure the average medium adventurer is going to be 180 lbs, likely more. Add 50 lbs for what I suspect is a generous inventory weight (that almost certainly doesn't include armor). So we're looking at 230 lbs. That's sort of fine, but then consider Variant Encumbrance where over 5 × Strength Score 90 lbs, doubled for large so 180 bs here, leads to a reduction of 10 ft for movement. Then over 10 × Strength Score, in this case 160 doubled to 320 reduces your movement to half. Let's look back at the adventurer. 180 lbs is probably still fine, though I feel 220+ lbs is more likely since Adventurers are FIT, and maybe 100 lbs in equipment (with armor, weapon, food and water, etc.) So, in that instance we're looking at a far more likely weight of 320 lbs for the horses carried weight, which is right on the cusp of going past medium carry weight and cutting the horse down to half movement. A war horse can carry 30 lbs more for plus 10 lbs for each category of Encumbrance.
Does that make sense to everyone? I seek to recall a prior edition where animals on all fours gained additional bonuses to their carry weight but I'm not sure. But. For the purposes of the game, do the rules for Encumbrance and mounts actually work for everyone? I'm honestly curious as I'm heading into a game where I mean to hew exceptionally close to RAW, so I'm scrutinizing everything to make sure it works (spell components have been my biggest issue, but not the only one) Thanks in advance!
* https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/using-ability-scores#UsingEachAbility
I think the point of the variant rule is to keep most players approximately on the edge of encumbrance, thus you need to manage your stuff and actually think about it.
Sure but I personally *always* find myself lightly encumbered (not including my Goliath Warriors), and that adds up for a horse as well. And Variant seems more realistic to me. So does that add up with the way you'd expect mounts to work?
Dm's can make anything happen to further the story and most times put little thought to the details that your catching. If it does not effect the play much then just go along.
They could have just as easily said that each eagle was carrying a single passenger and just added more eagles.
Even the D&D story books do not follow the rules of D&D exactly. Magic users able to do things that are not even listed in the spells list or rules for one.
Yeah, that seems right to me. You can always drop your backpack at the start of a fight, and there's no need to haul your rations and sleeping bag on your person if you have a pack animal. In my party we have a cart and a mule.
I’d agree with choiroffire. It can work, but if you really start tracking encumbrance, particularly after the characters start getting lots of coins and if you are worrying about rations, you end up needing a pack mule or cart or someone spamming tensers floating disk or something to make it work. Maybe all of the above.
Most soldiers would IRL for precisely that reason.
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I don't watch Critical Role, but I am vaguely aware that Matt Mercer is not a stickler for RAW. That said, I will point out to you that the rules for travel pace are independent of walking speed (but not independent of flying speed), so it's not apples to apples to compare traveling on a horse to traveling on an eagle.
A substantial amount of 5E's RAW is completely counter to how everyone, even WOTC in their adventure modules, intuitively thinks the game world ought to work, so I would warn you against sticking to RAW too closely. For example, the RAW on darkness behaves nothing like real-world darkness, and neither does the RAW on light fog behave anything like real-world light fog.
Hello thread I am necro'ing.
Looking at encumberance rules the other day I came across how "low" the carrying capacity of mounts were, and found that the capacities for each mount should CHANGE. Why? Because if a goliath gets to act as if they're 1 size larger for carrying capacity, wouldn't a mount? Or at least a mount that is specifically used for carrying things like a mule, camel, draft horse. WotC believes so in *one* case, but not any others.
The mule is a medium-sized creature and has a strength of 14. Normal medium-sized creatures would have a carrying capacity of 210 (15*14). Instead, the mule has 420! As if it is one size larger.
However, this rule is not applied to other mounts. The mastiff, elephant, camel, draft horse, and warhorse are all based on 15*str*size instead of 15*str*1-size-larger. It makes sense that a pony or riding horse might not have these capacities because their main purpose is not pulling and carrying large amounts of weight (usually only people, not people+heavy stuff). Due to this, I hope 1DnD updates the carrying capacities to:
Camel 960
Elephant 2640
Draft Horse 1080
Warhorse 1080
As for the giant eagles ... They would either be able to carry 480 (if not trained for pulling items) or 960 (if trained).
In terms of weight for the C2 cast? Average weights are
Fjord Half-Orc: 182
Jester tiefling: 155
Molly tiefling: 155
Beau human: 140
Yasha aasimar: 140
Caleb human: 140
Nott goblin: 40
A giant eagle would have at most (and modally) 295lbs of character wight allowing each player to have 92lbs worth of items on their person before the giant eagles become encumbered - if the players did hopped on in an even case scenario (heaviest with lightest). Considering a shield and plate armor is 70lbs (5+65), it's likely that the eagles can carry them without too much trouble using basic 15*str*2 rules OR if the eagles were bred for carrying, would be able to carry 4 players in terms of weight (but perhaps not space) with no problem.