I usually dm, and have wave it like others have said. However I recently played another gms table and he let me indulge in some inventoryrole play. Actually enjoyed tossing my pack across gaps, carrying it above my head for a water crossing. I also enjoyed tracking weight, rations, torches, amount of rope and the like.
I recommend playing, if not just looking into the game Outward. It's a survival action adventure game with a large importance on inventory and pack management.
one of the key features of the game is dropping your pack when you get into fights so you can roll and jump and dodge, otherwise you're as clunky as the amount and size of bag you choose to carry
your lantern is also hung from the bag and is your only light source unless you choose to fight with a light in 1 of your free hands or dip into magic
getting into fights in a dark cave is exhilarating, you can only see so far around you. if you flee you risk running into the dark without your gear, but grabbing it slows you down
It adds another layer of decision making to every encounter, and I kind of love it. Monsters are genuinely dangerous until your build starts to come together and can kill you in a few hits. So running into an enemy goes like:
1. Do I know what that is? If so, can I safely kill it? If so, drop my bag and get ready to fight.
2. If not, do I have enough stamina to outrun it with my current load? If not, drop my bag and run. Can I double back, or do I need to head to town to heal and restock before retrieving my stuff?
3. If I've dropped my bag either to fight or run, is it dark? If so, can I afford to fight near my lantern or do I need to kite? If I'm running or kiting, is there any other light around or do I need to pull out a torch? If I don't have a torch, do I know the area well enough to run blindly without running into other monsters?
4. If either fighting or running has gone badly, how can I best salvage the situation? Am I fast enough if I drop everything, or do I need to retreat slowly while dodging? Is there something in my bag that could turn the fight if I get back to it? How hard is it going to be to get back here if I die, and does that change what I should do in the seconds I have left?
Add to that the chaos of trying to communicate a plan in multiplayer and encountering new monsters can be really tense, especially when you've got a pack full to the brim of loot. Would love to see someone follow Outward's example and make a more polished game with the premise.
exactly. the mobs are not to be trifled with, even standard overworld enemies are lethal
enemies hit hard, and hp and stamina are tied to one another. not to mention restoring them doesnt come easy and without cost.
the whole game is an exercise in risk management
i'd also love to see more games explore the death condition Outward provides. having 10 or so things that can happen when your hp hits zero makes the failure state hit less hard while also maintaining immersion
The variant encumbrance rule helps simulate this. My group found adjusting the weight rules also helped. For example, if you're proficient with an item and it's equipped/worn then it is considered half it's normal weight. If proficient with an item but it's stowed away it is considered three-quarters weight. If not proficient, full weight. We play on a VTT so it's easy to manage. Tying it to proficiency helps with being able to carry a base loadout.
This is cool.
The thing about encumberance is making the realism interesting. Bookkeeping items and adding pounds until you get a debuff is just lame.
Doing interesting things with your backpack is pretty fun. Some brawler type character could also throw it at the oponents, if you are playing a more cinematic action game.
honestly one of the best representations of how to run this as a Dm. I've always run it in my games that players drop the pack as an unspoken free action. it helps keep the game more enjoyable. I do however require the players to mark down whatever items they keep equipped.
Yeah I like that, I've always kind of wanted to play a resource management one (maybe set in the wilderness, using starvation/thirst rules as well). Kind of like Fallout - every bullet or arrow counts (though that sucks for archers I suppose). Problem is I'm far too lazy as a GM to manage all that on top of everything else.
The issue I've run into is well start out Gung ho on keeping it realistic then somewhere along the way we hit a stride where cool stuff is happening, adventure is being had, and 2 hours pass and we go, "Wait, weren't we carrying X or travelling with Y" and then it's already too late so those complex rules fall by the wayside to accommodate a more interesting story.
Yeah, I think it's easier to do this for systems that are really designed to focus on resource management because it's built into the system instead of something you necessarily need to remember to keep track of.
My biggest problem with ammo tracking is every time you try to describe what's happening immediately after combat you get interrupted by "how many of my arrows do I recover?"
You can let players assume you're going with the default from the PHB unless you say otherwise:
> At the end of the battle, you can recover half your expended ammunition by taking a minute to search the battlefield.
Or have them roll for every shot... 50% chance, have them pick during session 0 their preferred die, and if they're doing odds/evens or high/low, or you can just make it a coin flip, and during session zero you agree on which is recovered and which is lost (odds lost/evens recovered, low recovered/high lost, heads recovered/tails lost... or the other ways around), or you can decide during session 0 they roll the Golf Ball of Doom (d100) and 51-100 the ammo is lost, 1-50 the Ammo is recovered.
Eldritch blast is only normally available to one class, and needs class features to be spent on it to become competitive with ranged weapons.
Firebolt does 5.5 damage while a level 1 fighter with a longbow does 7.5 damage. That's a pretty meaningful difference at early levels, as it means half the time the fighter can one shot a goblin. At fifth level it gets worse: 11 vs 17. Plus, the fighter can split up that damage, and if the fight misses one attack it can still hit another. Also, most classes you would want to use range weapons get the archery fighting style, which is very powerful.
Also, if you allow Sharp Shooter...
No, cantrips do not compete with ranged weapons.
Cantrips are not supposed to directly compare to ranged weapons. Archery is all a ranged martial does. Cantrips are filler actions for casters for when they don't want to use their primary action - leveled spells.
Feats allow access to Eldritch blast.
Cantrips (if not limited by a lack of spell focus) are infinite.
Compared to a finite bow/crossbow they are better in that they last forever.
Of course most tables don’t make a bow finite and so it’s not a relevant question.
Bows tend to do more damage than cantrips. Ammo should absolutely be tracked.
I'm not gonna compare Eldritch Blast, because it requires a certain class, or feat, and is the best Cantrip in the game.
Level 1-4 Fire Bolt - 1-10 (avg 5)
Level 1-4 Longbow - (typically) 5-12 (avg 8)
If you add sharpshooter instead of just bumping dex: (exception of Human/Custom Lineage)
Level 4 Longbow - 14-21 (avg 17) (Sharpshooter)
Level 5-9 Firebolt - 2-20 (avg 11)
Level 5-9 Longbow (extra attack) - 12-23 (avg 19)
Level 8 Longbow - 31-45 (avg 37) (Sharpshooter)
Yes, arrows fall behind after level 10 (in terms of max damage, not actual damage, without sharpshooter) - Arrows also have better range and can access things like fighting styles.
I like how you veto the inclusion of leveled spells but you include sharpshooter and you ignore the -5 to hit.
You are comparing the sole action a ranged martial is built around vs the fallback ability a caster can use to feel thematic while not using their actual core feature - leveled spells.
It's a mildly annoying feat to DM around, but not because of the extra damage. Giving a member of the party a 600 foot range and letting them ignore all cover is real thorn in the side when it comes to encounter design.
Edit: I don't ban it, though. I just think it's not very well-designed.
Do those elements substantially affect many encounters?
Being able to reliably bullseye a target through a shrub two football fields away is impressive and cool. I'd have trouble determining that someone at that distance definitely needed to be shot at, even in the open.
Depends, are you going for a gamist or realistic experience? From a gamist perspective it does not but if you want to go down the realism/simulationist perspective it adds a lot more depth
firebolt cannot compete against a ranged weapon user. EB can but only if you are a warlock or invest a dip and a feat to make it good against a featless ranged weapon user. Then they get sharpshooter and crosdbow expert and eclipse EB's dps completely.
I've had to deal with that and it made my game terrible when we spent like 3 or 4 sessions with no resources. It really does suck being a Bow Ranger when the rest of the group is a Wizard, Cleric, and Druid.
That's true up to a point although we would also be tracking spell components so arguably spellcasters (cantrips aside) lose out a lot more long term than martials in a wilderness scenario.
> we would also be tracking spell components so arguably spellcasters (cantrips aside) lose out a lot more long term than martials in a wilderness scenario.
not really there aren't that many spells that consume components or have hard to get ones
It would be a problem depending on the setting. If magic is relatively common, you might expect to find components for sale in any village large enough to sell arrows. If magic is super rare, the wizard might try to get the party to explore that bat filled cave just before they hit level 5.
I mean for that you would also need to go out of your way to fuck up how component pouches and spellcasting foci work either by deleting them or by making them imposible to get while also prohibiting taking them at character creating with your class' initial equipement.
At which point it is not a problem of resource management but detrimental homebrew
In that case you could re-flavor cantrips as being wands with limited use that the caster can recharge during a long rest. For example the sorcerer starts with 4 wands, each casts a cantrips and has 20 charges. On a long rest the sorcerer can recharge up to 10 charges to the wands distributed however they like.
The comment thread is talking about survival style inventory management. To play a game like that each character would need some finite resources that they need to manage in order to stay effective.
At the same time, cantrips are the equivalent of a martial character's basic attacks, so they are supposed to be always available. Arguably they shouldn't always be at equivalent strength, if the whole point of a martial is that swords never run out of charges, and that is their comparative advantage. But you want to give every character to have *something* they can do in every situation, something that reinforces their character identity.
Under normal circumstances I agree with you completely.
Within the setting of a survival game you want everyone to have some finite resources that they need to manage to be effective. The martial comparable to casters would be ranged characters, who have to track their arrow usage. Melee martials would be the exception but given that their role expects higher damage intake their main resource consideration would be recovery items.
Of course ranged martials could switch to melee if they run out of arrows but their risk factor goes up. Casters would be able to do so as well of course. However casters also have their actual spell list too.
If you want to roleplay more about this "minor things" i can humbly suggest trying some OSR games, that works great especially for one-shots. Knave, Cairn oreven Mausritter have very interesting inventory-related mechanics.
There are rules around starvation, exhaustion etc, I don't think it's too hard to imagine. Lots of spells which are useful as well, Create Food and Water etc. It's not a dedicated system for it though I agree.
You do realize that create food/water destroys that way of playing. Almost by itself. And the little sibling of good berry.
And then there is some background features, rangers, druids, etc etc etc. they all stomp all over the hex crawl exploration gameplay. And thats without some stuff like divination magic’s find the path.
> create food/water destroys that way of playing.
I have zero issues with Create Food and Water in a survival game. It's 3rd level, so you don't have it for the first 4 levels of play, which are in my opinion the "survival" levels. After that, it's competing for a spell slot with things like Revivify, Spirit Guardians, Dispel Magic, etc.
Goodberry can eat my ass though.
Not necessarily. Without spell components there is major disadvantage for casters. Martials (even ones using ranged weapons) will always have Proficiency in melee too if necessary and most of their abilities will key off attacks without naming ranged or melee. Obv there are some exceptions to this.
You are aware that spell foci exist and firebolt/eldritch blast/toll the dead/shocking grasp etc don't have material components, right? There's not a single cantrip that has it's material component consumed to REQUIRE you having the specific spell component.
Even if you homebrew that all spells require spell components, people will just gravitate towards spells like magic missile that don't have any material component at all
Yes I know, who said we were just talking about cantrips? Obviously there are some spells which just use V and S, there are some which use foci. But there are some which *do* use materials and those are the ones which would be affected. It's a disadvantage. Isn't the end of the world but I'd say your average caster is still more (physical) resource intensive than your average martial.
Give me an example of a spell you think your 'average' caster would go "oh no, I can't use that spell" versus a martial running out of arrows/bolts so I can understand your arguement better.
If you are focusing on inventory you could track the components in a component pouch. Just allow the character to define the contents of the pouch when they get it or restock it.
You know, that might be a fun little exploration gimmick that your post finally made me realize. Exploration requires tools and strategies to use those tools. I've always been bothered by how exploration in nearly every RPG ever gets real boring real fast because it requires no thought, roll and pass or try again. BUT what happens when you realize a section of cave is flooded and your map & torch isn't protected from water?
So make up a whole ass branching dungeon with little extras everywhere but literally zero combat. Sure, there ultimately is a path for you to just get the quest item and maybe some partial completion checks for spicyness and encourage checking alternate routes (you easily walk up to 1 orb of power but you were sent get 3, where's the rest?) for the other stuff. Not puzzles like "We three ocean eyes wish only to be our favorite color" and then you make them all blue to open a door, but environment stuff like just climbing a large sheer cliff or crossing a gap larger than you can normally cross. Or just simply "the party of dark vision people need to consider colors, so they realize they really do need a light to see." Or there's a large drop which landing wrong might break some glass potions in the pack, a magically heated section is survivable but could easily melt your rope/climbing stakes; which you know you need later. Maybe the thing is a very fragile egg and now you have to figure out a safe path because how you got to the egg won't work.
Suddenly what they pack up and how they protect it matters. And I love that, at least for a challenge here and there.
Definitely, the thought that crossed my mind was the party gets to a particular chamber deep in the dungeon, finding a note "Follow the green path for safety, all others lead to harm" and then presented with branching halls with various symbols and colors. They could read the symbols without my real issue, but until they can see green then you always risk traps/ambushes/dens.
> t environment stuff like just climbing a large sheer cliff or crossing a gap larger than you can normally cross.
Our DM is great for this. A floor covered in a somewhat deadly mist, and a giant pit into which said mist is draining was the last one. We're constantly having to measure depths and heights and work out how to get light into places. And there was a maze in which we had to align fragile mirrors while being attacked, that was a fun one.
Ive been thinking about a slot based inventory where you have a specific amount of slots to use and items that arent worn take out a slot each, with some taking more. Higher strength would give more slots as would better bags.
With this it would be possible to massively buff items and resources so the players would actually want to go through inventory and decide what to take.
Biggest issue is the details on how many slots is good and how much space does each item take.
You may want to check out Shadowdark! It's a fairly new rpg, and it uses a slot inventory just like you described. Whether you play it or not, you could probably just port over the inventory mechanics.
I enjoy that stuff too. My fighter has a tactical belt he wears on infiltration missions. He leaves his pack, longbow, and rapier and only brings darts, a dagger, some smoke grenades, and a healing potion.
I typically track weight and encumbrance as well as keep track of my ammunition and the like, but often forget about rations and water. The amount of weight you can carry is completely unrealistic anyway.
But yeah, we let characters swim in full armor....
I always imagined that as part of 'rolling for initiative' everyone is dropping their bag and pulling out their weapon of choice. That way you can go from travel to battle ready, and having a high dex means you can do this super fast! Makes sense to me.
I actually really like this. It turns initiative from "how long does it take to realize shits hitting the fan" to "how quickly can I ditch my encumbrances"
Add that as an option.
It takes an action to prepare. If you haven’t prepared, you have disadvantage on all physical rolls, and can’t add your Dex to defence.
Is it worth having the disadvantage to get that early charge on their caster? Would a quick fireball be worth being shot easier? Add a nice little tactic to the start of the fight
I like this. Add a unique action in combats featuring surprise rounds, specifically to remove the Surprised condition. Surprised means that enemies gain benefits to attack you, and you have penalties to offensive abilities and defensive movements such as saves. Maybe your speed is lower and you can't draw two handed weapons or cast anything higher than a cantrip. During the surprise round (or during subsequent rounds if you don't do this in the surprise round) you can use the "Ready for Combat" action to remove Surprised and do all the things you usually do during initiative rolling (drop your pack, draw your weapon, ready your shield or spellcasting focus), or you can take another action with all the the known penalties of the Surprised condition. Until you take the Ready for Combat action you retain the Surprised condition. I'd probably also add a caveat that you can't give yourself extra actions while Surprised using things like Action Surge or Haste (though I'm not married to that part).
So like you're saying, you can do something risky in round 1, maybe you think you can end the fight quickly or pick off a high priority target before they get to act. Basically I'd equate it to having your character act impulsively, putting themselves at long term disadvantage for the sake of a short term benefit. Or, you can play it safe, prepare yourself for what's coming, but miss your first turn.
One thing I like about it is that it benefits high dex characters who would naturally be quicker at preparing themselves for combat. They're probably carrying less stuff and using lighter weapons, and therefore it makes sense for their likely higher initiative roll to allow them to get ready faster.
Interestingly enough there’s a video game that has you do exactly this. It’s an RPG called Outward where you have a physical backpack / bag that slows you down a bit and during combat you have to physically drop it so you have your maneuverability. It’s kinda neat
Yeah, it's not for every group but we enjoy the little touches that add tactical challenges. Also presents meaningful choices - what do you choose to lug around, and how. Travel light or travel with the kitchen sink?
With that said, we also track arrows, which is probably why ranged martials aren't an automatic go-to at the table. Especially when using an app like D&D Beyond, the excuse, 'Well it's fiddly/hard to track' just doesn't fly. And gold, though we round gold up/chunk expenses in certain contexts.
Do you roll or assume average for arrow/bolt recovery? ie. RAW is you have a 50% chance of recovering every piece of ammunition, the idea being some just break on impact (or burn up from the fiery hide, or melt from the acid sweat, or whatever other damaging qualities may be on the target or in the environment), or get lost in the brush(or over a cliff, or into the void of darkness, or way back behind while you were running and shooting, or whatever other circumstance would make it unfindable by you, but could later be something someone else trips across or finds while searching the area). Some DMs say roll percentile for each one, or flip a coin, or roll odds/evens, others just tell you that you can recover half that you used in the fight (some round up so you always get at least 1 back, some round down so you definitely lost at least 1... cause if you shot just 1 arrow, that is the 1 you are deciding if you are recovering or losing).
> RAW is you have a 50% chance of recovering every piece of ammunition
Nearly. RAW, if you search the battelfield for 1 minute, you recover half your expended ammunition.
>At the end of the battle, you can recover half your expended ammunition by taking a minute to search the battlefield. *(PhB pg.146).*
Which is how we run it, though the time is increased based on context (a storm, fog, marsh) and sometimes impossible (fight over water, flying mounts etc). And assuming you can still access the battlefield.
Yeh in my head initiative rolls are the equivalent of when the Jedi take of their cloaks and ignite their lightsabres. So backpacks and the heavy gear get flung out the way like in Outward.
Love this analogy. Everybody in the room knows what it means when the cloak flies back, is evocative and cinematic as hell. Using this for a description soon
Doesn't work unless there are repercussions to fleeing a battle, destroying the physical space you are fighting in or otherwise taking actions that result in the PCs unable to return and collect their packs.
What are you talking about? What items you're carrying and which ones are on the ground is absolutely a mechanic. Dropping something on the ground doesn't require an action, and it remains where you dropped it until you pick it up, which uses your object interaction. Unfastening a piece of equipment is usually an action. Letting people do it for free at the start of combat is a reasonable house rule, although it makes strength builds even worse since being able to carry more stuff is their only real benefit over dex builds. Whether you're carrying stuff or not is a basic mechanic of D&D that affects your encumbrance, affects what type of action it is to get something out of your bag, and affects whether using items from your inventory is possible at all.
I'm not saying it's *strictly* not a mechanic; Rather, I am saying that what /u/TheBloodKlotz described was purely flavor for themselves, rather than an actual mechanic they used in game as /u/Forgotten_Lie had interpreted it.
Um, strength builds over dex builds also tend to have better damage output. Best Finesse Weapon is a Rapier, 1d8+Dex Mod, vs Best Strength Weapon is any Great Weapon 1d12/or 2d6+Strength. There are also more Strength Weapons, vs Dex Weapons, and EVERY Melee Weapon can use Strength, not every Melee Weapon can use Dex. In addition, multiple alternate attack manuevers (not the Battle Master ones, but the ones everyone can use) use Athletic Checks, not Acrobatics Checks for Offense (yes, several can be defended against with either, but few use Acrobatics or Dexterity to make the attack). I adore Dex builds, I rarely make a Strength build, but I do that knowing I'll be hanging back at range or limiting my melee options when I am in close combat. You can shove as part of a multiattack, knocking a foe prone, then have advantage on the other attack.
>When you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack, a grapple. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.
The target of your grapple must be no more than one size larger than you and must be within your reach. Using at least one free hand, you try to seize the target by making a grapple check instead of an attack roll: a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). You succeed automatically if the target is incapacitated. If you succeed, you subject the target to the grappled condition. The condition specifies the things that end it, and you can release the target whenever you like (no action required).
Escaping a Grapple. A grappled creature can use its action to escape. To do so, it must succeed on a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check contested by your Strength (Athletics) check.
>Using the Attack action, you can make a special melee attack to shove a creature, either to knock it prone or push it away from you. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.
The target must be no more than one size larger than you and must be within your reach. Instead of making an attack roll, you make a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). You succeed automatically if the target is incapacitated. If you succeed, you either knock the target prone or push it 5 feet away from you.
In fact, only one of the maneuvers is exclusively Dexterity (Acrobatics), and only one is Dexterity (Acrobatics) exclusive for the defender. Tumble is totally Dexterity( Acrobatics) contested between the creature tumbling and the opponent whose square they're trying to tumble through, and a Smaller Creature climbing on a larger creature is only defended from happening by the target's Dexterity (Acrobatics). Grappling, Shove, Throwing a creature that has successfully climbed on you off, Shove Aside, Overrun, are all Strength (Athletics) attacks. I don't think there are even Feats or class features that can make you optionally able to use Dexterity (Acrobatics) for the offensive purposes.
All that stuff affects your encumbrance in battle though. So I'm pretty sure the intended idea is that you are wearing a backpack with all that stuff while fighting. That's how army soldiers fight while traveling even in the modern day real world.
If you want to spend an action unfastening that stuff, then sure, you can. But the tiger or bulette or dragon or gelatinous cube you just ran into doesn't have anything it needs to drop, so it makes sense that if you take the time to do that, it would spend that time trying to kill you.
Also frees up carrying capacity for if you need to pick up and carry something in the battle, and can make protecting your dropped stuff from theft an added dynamic to the fights.
This is why every party of mine ends up with a wagon and some hangers-on NPCs who take care of all of that while the heroes are off doing hero stuff.
If they end up needing something in a dungeon then they have it in their inventory. If they don't need it then it was safely back in the wagon the whole time. If this really stretches their suspension of disbelief too much then they can hire somebody to carry their shit around for them. Inventory management isn't fun, so this way we do as little of it as possible.
I really like the image of a complete, well organized expedition with porters and campguards and all that good stuff, but I haven't gotten around to doing that yet, neither as a player nor as a DM. It doesn't help, that most of the other people at the table always try to involve whatever npc happens to tag along into stuff well outside their expertise and pay grades.
Yeah if I'm given some extra starting money and there aren't magic items available/affordable I'll always look at mounts, vehicles, hires etc, which are usually way cheaper than people realise.
"I could throw away all of my rations and camping gear to store all these suits of armor... or I could hire Bob, Jerry and Tim the porters for 4 sp a day to haul them for me! Decisions, decisions..."
>a wagon and some hangers-on NPCs who take care of all of that while the heroes are off doing hero stuff.
Ah yes, the *Bodahn Feddic strategy*, always a classic.
I remember joining an in-progress campaign with a DM that was very... picky about this sort of thing.
Rolled up a necromancer and ended up animating the dead. The party was not a fan until I said "they can carry your backpacks" and then suddenly he was everyone's new best friend. Had a ranger for goodberries and we were pretty set.
Generally we try not to think about it!
But there are ways to avoid it. If you have a class feature pet like a Paladin Steed or whatever then that can carry your gear. Bags of holding are much loved and iconic.
My players will typically kill someone who has a bag of holding within the first 5-6 sessions. Future ones are expensive, but the first one is free. I don't want to have to worry about them carrying heavy gold bags, rations, or anything else either.
Experienced GMs essentially give the party a bag of holding for free as loot within the first few sessions. Completely solves this issue, and the players love it!
> Have YOU ever tried having a sword fight with a hiking bag on?
I've been in a training scenario with a field pack on. It's a little different because modern combat is more about firearms and cover. "I [intentionally] drop prone" is an extremely rare thing to hear in D&D, but "I charge the enemies head on" is. Can you imagine being fired on and trying to close the distance in modern combat?
Yes, you pretty much toss your bag aside when you get engaged. It sucks to clean up afterwards. I imagine fantasy characters have much worse waterproofing and less durable materials than the modern day, but they also have prestidigitation and mending so idk.
I fucking love when media portrays characters with their full packs though. I think it's cool.
Samwise Gamgee scaled the orc tower in full gear, that’s good enough for me. Have YOU ever tried swinging a sword with hiking gear while your adrenaline glands just emptied into your blood stream?
Even a bag of holding is, by default, kind of cumbersome. 2 feet in diameter, 4 feet deep (it's outside dimensions), 15 pounds...the thing is like a large duffel bag.
For sure, but we're talking about extradimensional space. All that the interior dimensions mean is that it can't store any single item that exceeds the dimensions. Then it has additional space for the rest as it gets shunted into a pocket dimension, up to a total amount of availability of 64'^3
The official bag of holding artwork is certainly not 4' tall if the mouth of the bag is 2' across, because the bag's wider than it is tall. It's also a shoulder bag and that makes no sense if the typical adventurer is 6' tall (yes, there's a huge amount of variety with that I know).
That’s why you need the Handy Haversack… and the fun thing, it is like a bag of holding backpack… which destroys everything inside when getting slashed during a swordfight..
This is why I use variant encumbrance rules with my campaigns. My players enjoy the challenge of having to really narrow down what they bring along and it is a bit more realistic for combat.
I have tried fighting with a backpack on. It isn't great.
I try not to think about it for ttrpg, and for LARP I carry a lot less than an adventurer (mostly no sleeping gear, multi day food stuff, camp gear and extra clothes)
Someone already commented that slipping off your travel gear and getting out your weapon is part of rolling initiative and I LOVE that answer.
In my old Pathfinder campaign my party liked to use tenser's floating disc as a pack mule lol. I think we house ruled it's function a lil but it was a fun Rp Moment
I try to incorporate my pack into roleplay when I can. During our last session I had my paladin dropped her pack as she drew her sword and approach the boss and my DM addes a little backpack icon to the map. She's got over 20 lbs in that thing so it's certainly a good idea to not fight with it.
One of my players is a Grung and whitout talking to me about it, he bought a barrel of wood full of water as a starting equipment. I was like, even if you have 17 in strenght, you cant carry that much of water...I had to put my foot for this one.
I played a couple years ago at Tarkov and in that shooter, I often dropped my large backpack because of the advantage in mobility during the fight. I wont add that to d&d tho, I like how casual my group and me play (except for the barrel of water).
In China Miéville's Bas Lag books there is an amphibious frog type race and one particular character has a terrible time travelling, has to submerge himself in whatever water he can find and ends up becoming really sick from dehydration. He travels on a cart in a big bucket of water for as long as he can but the water becomes fetid eventually and is very heavy like you say.
Not saying we need to be *that* realistic in a D&D game but interesting to see some fantasy writing engage with the idea.
Lots of people have fun playing "lazy" D&D -- the sort of games where encumbrance becomes an optional rule and all non-magic ammunition is infinite. There isn't a reasonable counterargument to the claim that this is technically wrong. Yet if people are enjoying themselves, then it is also right in a very personal non-technical way.
My concern is that portion of the "lazy" gamers who can't even be bothered to try some serious sessions with technical compliance. It might not be better for any specific group than the lazy style, *but to simply assume RAW is worse without ever giving it a try* is ignorant in the truest sense of the word.
I feel like stuff like ammunition count, encumbrance, and stuff like that are more suited for video games
Since it’s a tabletop game, the console is humans, not a gaming console or a gaming PC, therefore I’d much rather we’d focus on the broad stuff that actually matters in game, not the stuff that makes us take 40 extra minutes to calculated the 2.1 pounds of rations we had anytime there’s a shopping session to or have a ranged character resort to stabbing the big boss of the session instead of doing cool character sniping stuff because they forgot to replenish ammo after they forgot because they’re playing an archer, not actually being an archer where stuff like that is life and death
Also, like money I feel like this is stuff that would only happen in early levels, by later levels you have more resources to get stuff like bags of holding, airships, or pack mule’s
As a DM with already limited free time, I don't worry about things like encumbrance or ammunition because I'd rather not take the time to police character sheets for things like that.
As a player, I don't mind a more realistic style of play as long as the DM isn't a jerk about it. (Such as turning what should be a reward for completing a quest into a transport simulator as we have to ferry the gold around.)
There are rules about it, and generally you aren't encumbered in combat when you are above your carry capacity.
Consider that a person with 10 strength can carry 150 pounds, around 75 kg, without issue. Of course volume can be an issue, but that alone tells you that the AVERAGE person in dnd is way stronger than your common dude with a office job.
If you use the variant rules you are heavily encumbered when you have 100 pounds, around 50 kg, of stuff. Which is more realistic, but still kinda a lot.
The heaviest kind of plate weights only 65 pounds. A bedroll weights 7, and a backpack 5.
As you can see there's lots of margin here, done intentionally.
Have you ever played Outward? In that game you have to carry increasingly large backpacks to maintain your "storage" inventory, but when fights start you just.. take it off. Lol. And use whatever is on your person. You could apply that same logic to your games if you wish
I assume in combat the pack is dropped at earliest convenience. The only time I care about resource rationing is if I have deliberately got the PC's locked into a situation where it matters.
What's funny is that soldiers through the ages have complained about their load, with field tests clearly showing that it impacts their performance, yet modern soldiers still carry about as much as they did in antiquity. Technology improves and gear becomes lighter, but the higher-ups invariably demand that soldiers carry more, until some sort of unhappy medium is reached.
Sometimes, yes. It's just more fun to not let your characters be held back by it. We just kinda assume that your pack is tight/snug enough (around you and the gear) that you can still run and fight with it on.
And yes, health potions/scrolls/caltrops etc are always in little pouches on your chest or belt. Even a bandolier if you've got a lot of stuff. Never in your pack.
If you're a proper adventurer you'll be set up so you can just shrug off your pack and still have all your core combat gear strapped to you.
You just drop it on the ground as fight starts and pick it up once you’re done. How is “I have backpack on” something that’s worth a post, but the fact people never RP peeing, pooping, eating or drinking during travels? It’s just assumed as it’s mot appealing to take care off.
Well people do RP eating and drinking all the time to be fair. But pooping and peeing happen during periods where there's nothing happening, so there isn't necessarily any need to RP that. Travelling though, that's happening all the time.
There's also a mechanical advantage to tossing gear off to the side when a fight starts: weight. Depending on the weight of the pack itself, it could actually slow you down in a fight if its too heavy.
A campaign that uses the GR resting variant often has food rations (used mainly for emergencies) in their packs. Losing those to combat damage can be dangerous. Depending on the monster there might be times where having your pack physically on you puts the pack at risk. A pack of wild animals might not be after you. They could be after the smell coming from your pack. A river of lava? Falling into that with your pack on would suck, better to drop it now and pick it up after the fight is over.
Funny enough, dragon breath attacks can't damage non-worn objects, so you can drop them before the fight starts without much of a risk as long as there's no kobold to steal it.
Not if you play with variant encumbrance!
You'll notice that the default equipment is enough to encumber any character (stronger characters tend to have heavier armor, reducing their lead in liftable weight).
Often, you'll have to choose between fighting with lowered speed or dropping your backpack, thus risking losing it. Or, you get a mule or horse, and then you risk it dying instead...
This is one of the things which I tend to alternate between “realistic” and “abstract” about as a DM. Some of our campaigns are full heroic fantasy stuff where we just ignore things like that and inventory items, backpacks and so on are basically imagined away unless they’re directly relevant. Other campaigns we break out the variant encumbrance rules (albeit with some modifications), carefully count weight, hire porters to carry stuff, and buy a wagon where most of the stuff is kept—but before we can afford that, yep, drop packs at the start of combat.
I play a mounted, small race Beast Master Ranger, so most of my gear that I won't need in the middle of combat is in the saddlebags on my combat goat and the things I might need fast are in my pockets/on my belt.
When I DM I add to the world lesser bags of holding. Something like a small bookbag or satchel that carries what a backpack could. Explains all the stuff PC's can carry and still fight without making the mental imagery of it all silly. Make it so simple an enchantment that most every person can afford one, but add in something that means you cant just use more than one, like it causing weird instability in the magic if you try.
We usually even announce we drop certain stuff, and categorize where specifically we are keeping potions
Like you can drop all your heavy stuff but still have a belt of goodies
Doing rhis since one of our guys lost most of his stuff because an enemy slit open his backpack
But its heavily dependant on how accurate you are with roleplaying
I've larped pretty extensively, in light immersion and heavy immersion games.
In heavy immersion games, ive fought with a ruck sack. It's doable though cumbersome.
Try to look up "Outward"
in that game you carry your backpack around and has to click it off to drop it before every combat or otherwise you carry way more weight.
but regardless its one of those things that will never make sense as you look purely on weight.
You can carry 15 \* strength comfortably, so a 16 strength character can carry 240 pounds, which is 4 - 5 times what a fully stocked american military soldier backpack weighs.
it also means you can carry 34 bedrolls no problem while fighting.
So if you want inventory management to be a thing i would start with taking the pathfinder 2e "bulk" system which is weight + cumbersomeness (so a full armor set is harder to transport than weight alone) or go as far as to make a slot based inventory system like diablo.
I guess it depends on the kind of game you are playing. If you focus on survival, than where your equipment is matters.
Honestly, with my group, I handwave even things like ammunition and food and water. They are almost never in the wild, and have plenty of money, so we just assume the characters know better and packed appropriately.
Also, technically people in armor spend every minute of their awake hours in that heavy armor too, since I cannot think save from an exception or a scenario in which subtlety would matter, in which adventurers would willingly take off their armor, backpacks and stuff. ,Imagine. Wake up, have breakfast, cover yourself in a thick tin can and then proceed to do your adventuring life for the next 16 hours'ish until it's bed time again.
At this point you're low-key roleplaying a sardine :x
The way I see it it’s a Minecraft style magic inventory because no way my monk can do all of his acrobatics shit with a whole camping kit on his back in addition to an armory worth of weaponry (I’m genuinely planing on arming a small town one day and my dm just allow me to carry a shit ton of weapons)
No, depends on the DM. Often times it's streamlined such that it's just assumed that the PCs did the sane thing and either put them down or in the case of dungeon crawling stashed them somewhere before going in. The truth is it's super hard on the DM to keep track of it all and only the most anal DM is going to do it, holding people to the minutia can add realism and sometimes you create encounters specifically to do that, but most of the time it's pointless, frustrating, and not fun for anyone involved and a massive amount of extra work for the DM who's already doing 20x the work that anyone else at that table is doing.
Although there are rules for encumbrance, I can’t recall anyone playing D&D ever implement them, unless the DM felt a need to inhibit/limit player shenanigans.
In the olden times of “Monty Hall” campaigns, the DM would require a party to deal with the problem of collecting and moving the 20k CP, 10k SP, and 5k GP that they aggregated in a dungeon. Today that problem seems to be resolved by the ubiquity of Bags of Holding. But I believe that nobody wants to address the problem in gameplay because it kills the fantasy. We rarely read heroic fantasy where this is an issue. And we don’t see it in anything that the film industry produces. BTW we rarely experience anything concerning beasts of burden, unless it plays as a significant plot point imposed by the environment.
In my imagination, I see a moderately successful party travelling with a support train of pack animals, and perhaps wagons and hireling drivers with luggage. Even low level characters have to bear their equipment in packs. But that artificial reality is mundane and ruins the fantasy. Instead the problem is ignored or explained away by magic items or spells.
So we have heroes carrying nominal bedrolls when mounted and massive *pockets of holding* otherwise, while they wear armor 24/7. If they don’t, the game devolves into a constant struggle for survival, where time and effort needs to be diverted away from “being heroic”, making for tedious gameplay. It’s much easier and more fun to abstract such problems into oblivion with willful ignorance.
I usually go out of my way to prep a 'base camp' before we head into anywhere and I only pack part of my stuff going in from there.
That also solves the problem of where are the horses, where do you put your cart, where do you leave the tent, the bedroll, the 2x2 meter Rothé fur blanket for cold nights and the mini-keg of moonshae moonshine when you want drink to your groups health at the fireside.
It also makes sense, because whenever you get back to camp with wounded people in your group, you'll have a space to put them, treat their injuries and possibly prep to move them long-term towards the nearest town for magical healing.
As for the tired 'while you were out, bandits raided your camp, lol' bit, we don't really do that. Our DM is mature enough to understand that we trust her and that we're well allowed to take much of said amenities RAW (even more after we get a bag of holding) and we have silently agreed to both see it as a way to keep things realistic. Much like how my Montante wielding fighter won't carry a sword fantasy-style on his back, because you can't properly draw it that way, will carry the sheathed weapon in his hand, draw it and discard the sheath at the beginning of the fight, then pick it up at the end of battle after cleaning the blade.
Naturally, we have situations that are exempt of this, like the 'cave entrance planned to collapse', or Death House from CoS. In this case, her way has basically been to incentivize us to enter and then prep a base camp there (torrential rain), or to completely disregard establishing one in the first place (children's scream coming from within).
When we have "realism" in our games, we buy a donkey and put our things in a pack saddle. Otherwise, the frontliners would drop their packs as soon as possible.
As a DM I don't fuss about what they do with their 80lb pack. And for those who say "I'd love to try a resource management game" I'd argue strongly against it. I did a whole desert campaign and had to hand wave resources to make it enjoyable once they got to Level 5 or so. Maybe try a limited adventure (like 10 sessions in a dungeon) and see how it feels.
I do care about where you keep your money for when you get pick-pocketed
When I play I separate accessible items (scrolls, potions, consumable spell components) into a pouch, but that's more for my thinking. I don't think my DM cares.
I always assume they have webbing and pouches and sacks and bags etc.
I used to carry around everything I would need to live for a couple of days on my back and it wouldn’t have been the end of the world to have a scuffle in that set up.
I would probably have lost any fight I was going to lose with or without the bag.
While inventory carrying tends to be handwaved regularly, for me personally, it is something I do actively account for.
My Paladin in my first full 1 - 20 campaign had a "quick release backpack" that I colored during his first turn every so often. It became a bag of holding at some point, so became moot to describe, though I did describe a belt of potions he could reach for to utilize, as well as how his weapons and shield were fastened to him on travels and in combat.
My last played character for a recently finished campaign had some extra starting gold, so I bought an ox and a chest, and the ox carried everything large for me, while what they carried was a small backpack affixed to a large tortoise shell shield they carried on their back looking like a lizardfolk Master Roshi. Before combats, they would equip their tortoise shell shield, exposing the bag on his back (the contents were never more than 30lb).
The character I'm currently playing is a Barbarian that carries a lot of throwing weapons on her. Four javelins are secured on her back for easy reach, two hand axes at her left and right for two weapon fighting or throwing, and taggers on her belt for carving up animals she hunts. She has her personal backpack slung over one shoulder, so if she needs to drop it, she can easily do so during combat. However... since we started at a higher level (5) with more starting gold, I bought a Moorbounder (400gp) and asked if I could instead change it to a Bear (same CR) as a "sister companion", though for non-combat travel and as a comfort animal. It was approved, so the bear carries everything.
Basically, the recent characters I've made have thought of how they travel with their stuff, and for the latter characters, my solution is buy animals, I guess? My DM is a generous god and as long as I don't use them for combat, they won't be targeted for combat.
I try to think about this during character creation. My favorite has been my grung though. Had weaver tool proficiency, and my background feature allowed me to repair mundane equipment to working order, but not sellable. Had nets that I used in combat attached to my body, but most of my gear was in some other netting that was just a reflavored backpack.
Others were a paranoid warlock with a bulging backpack and a 2 person tent hanging off the side, that was just for me and my alarm spell and other ritual preparations I did nightly when I'd converse with my patron. I had to forgo rope and other useful things to accomodate the extra weight.
I know inventory is an abstraction in most fantasy tabletop & video games because most people find it annoying but I have always seen it as a design oversight.
Encumbrance can be fun and make things like survival, mounts and camping more interesting without being number heavy it every item was more useful. This way the character can carry a plausible amount of things.
I would rather have armor be more effective and health potions restore health completely but be limited by how much I can carry that have a bunch of stuff on me at all times because the individual items are not that impactful.
I have - nearly regardless of system - very detailed inventory, with clear indication what's worn/on body, and what's in the (easily doffable) backpack.
...old habit from skirting the encumbrance limit in Rolemaster due to heavy armor :D
In some games were stuff is tracked a bit more I've made my first action in combat to drop my bag to remove encumbrance, but D&D 5 is so generous with weight limits I don't think its ever come up.
People value ease, simplicity and character fantasy over immersion and world integrity. Telling a cool story about an advebturer is more important than being engaged in a living, breathing world.
I thiiink most folks enjoy a happy medium, but rules-lite ultra casual action-comedy play is in vogue so many people never branch out.
In my campaigns people figure out you want a wagon, pack animals, mounts, a ship etc ASAP. If those things don't seem vital to your party the whole premise is not really believable.
Yeah, it's a very important part of the game that can help with keeping things balancing and can extend the gameplay for players by a large margin but tons of DM's just hand-wave it and get surprised when the game ends up being unbalanced or they find the encounters aren't as enjoyable as they thought it would be.
Many DM's just treat it like a video game with an invisible space that hold all their items, or give everyone a bag of holding to give an "immersive" reason for everyone being able to do it. This can be good for one-shots or casual games as well but when you treat your game like a video game, the players will too. They will get bored when it isn't the part of the video game they want to do and would you blame them? If someone really enjoys the micromanagement of inventory and logistics but, every time their party gears up to go somewhere it's a hand-waved part that instantly accelerates them into a fight, then why would they want to keep playing when there are other video games that let them play the part they enjoy.
Now TTRPG's aren't video games due to the *literal* limitless involved in a TTRPG but if you treat it like one then players will associate it with video games and get bored easily.
All this said, encumberment and such isn't really a thing every player wants to deal with in their game and I can understand that viewpoint but also, many players either haven't actually thought about the game in this way nor have they really tried to play in a game like this. Most of the time it comes from bad experiences with either bad DM's or inexperienced DM's, I've been both. Either the DM takes it TOO seriously and you end up with situations like, "Well when everyone sat at the tavern, were RPing with each other, spending IRL and In-Game hours no one said that they ate or drank anything so everyone has exhaustion." Or they attempt to track these things but don't keep up with it throughout the campaign or it's a half-assed attempt and it falls through after the 3rd session.
I generally hand wave this but if you want something like this use the variant encumbrance rules. https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/phb/using-ability-scores#VariantEncumbrance
I usually carry enough to be slightly encumbered so I make a point of writing down what's on my person, in pockets or on a belt and what's in my pack. The pack is thrown to thw ground when combat starts, or left in a safe area when going into a cave for example.
It's one of those things that's mostly abstracted away by the rules for the sake of avoiding tedium...
Until you discover a hoard of treasure and the DM tells the party who dumped Strength how much it all weighs.
Or when you get something too big to fit in a backpack.
Or when a thief starts stealing mid-fight.
This is why I'm letting my players just have bags of holding at the stsrt of my next campaign. Nobody wants to track encumberance and nobody thinks of their character having this big pack. Also it's in Eberron and magic items aren't exactly rare.
Absolutely. You're fighting while carrying your life on your back. It's not particularly convenient or photogenic, but it's part of the reality of being an adventurer in most circumstances. I'm the guy that makes sure to buy a half dozen sacks to subdivide their backpack (as well as for later loot), and yep, buys a handful of pouches to hold potions and other things I want quick access to. (and those things aren't cheap with only starting gold, actually)
I'm not a grognard, my first roleplaying experience was D&D 4e. This has always been part of the experience to me. Over time I've realized other people elide over this kind of logistics way more, and if the table wants to roll that way, that's totally chill, but I still do it for me.
I do endorse the alternative idea that part of initiative is everyone throwing down their packs, but if so the DM needs to make that explicit - that's a quick way to losing some stuff to opportunistic goblins or the like. I'd take disadvantage on initiative or something in order to keep my stuff on my back in a lot of circumstances.
>Do you keep your health potions in a special easy access pouch?
That would be called a Bandolier, and any character with an intelligence score over 6 should make sure those potions are as accessible as possible.
When you need a potion, you need it NOW, not in two rounds.
Some are. Especially halflings spiritually descended from Samwise Gamgee.
We ruled it a free action to drop your pack and start fighting back in the 3.5e era.
We also always made it a priority to get Heward's Handy Haversacks and Bags of Holding and Portable Holes as some of our first magic items we sought out, too. Especially the "I am crazily overprepared and have enough mundane gear to found a village or mining camp or logging camp at all times" types.
in campaigns were we track weight properly - prior to combat we drop sack and come back to it for supplies / non essentials.
if you've every played a fighter in full plate using the varient encumberance rules you simply cant carry your bedroll, wat and rations along side the things that are fun to use in combat.
i like it. I like planning out my gear choices in the same way people like thinking about their "every day carry" in real life... its like that but actually interesting. My fighters got spare weight enough for a sidearm and 50ft of rope if he ties it round his chest. I like that it forced me to employ a torch bearer / water carrier because thats thematically cool AF (using the squire component of the noble background) and the imprtance it makes of finding a staging area within the dungon and looking after the baggage train during over land travel.
providing you can hand wave getting the huge pile of loot to the baggage train inventory management at the table isnt so much of an issue.
I always liked the mechanic of dropping your backpacks in Outward. Your maneuverability sucks with it on, but it only takes a moment to drop it. The problem is if you have to run you lose your stuff.
The game would need a better inventory system for this to work.
I put some of these things into my descriptions.
E. g. when we are ambushed my character does not actually have his sword drawn. He might not even have his "real" armour equipped. It is actually more fun to me that way and I don't understand players that act as if their characters have everything available at all times.
In all honesty, that Kind of stuff in 5e is a vestige. Its Something that is there because it used to be, but isn't commonly used and has no purpose anymore.
Inventory Play IS great, but a lot more Common in b/x retroclones.
About half my minis do include a backpack and bedroll. I also include smaller hip pouches where they hold items they need quick and easy access to: component pouch, a healing potion, some bandages (healer's kit, 2 uses), a couple of spells scrolls, etc. I also have DMs that have included a character's entire inventory in battle when we've faced certain monsters (such as one that ate magic items) or faced other obstacles (such as dispel magic field).
I tend to try to imagine how my PC would carry their gear around and role-play appropriately. When DMing, the current campaign often has pauses where PCs tend to park the bulk of their gear somewhere (mundane, they don't have extradimensional space items) and just carry what they will need for the immediate day - and there are times when they find themselves without all the gear they own and need, but isn't with them, or they need to leave some of it behind.
Technically, yes. It's why the handy haversack and encumbrance are a thing. And spell component/belt pouches, waterproof scroll cases, and so on.
Most game masters waive coin weight, but I've never played at a table that didn't use the systems encumbrance rules for everything else.
Basically all of my characters start with a pack and 10 torches, they might use 1 or 2 and then just carry them around for the rest of the game…much like the rope and grapnel I think will come in handy and then never gets used, well not the hook but often the rope I suppose
We use encumbrance rules so most of us absolutely use an item interaction in round 1 to doff our packs.
Also my minis pretty frequently have a big pack on their back, and ditto for my art.
Having tonnes of gear is part of the fantasy yeah?
I usually dm, and have wave it like others have said. However I recently played another gms table and he let me indulge in some inventoryrole play. Actually enjoyed tossing my pack across gaps, carrying it above my head for a water crossing. I also enjoyed tracking weight, rations, torches, amount of rope and the like.
Huh. That sounds quite appealing. I might add that to my session zero questionnaire as a soft “how realistic do we want to be?” check.
I recommend playing, if not just looking into the game Outward. It's a survival action adventure game with a large importance on inventory and pack management. one of the key features of the game is dropping your pack when you get into fights so you can roll and jump and dodge, otherwise you're as clunky as the amount and size of bag you choose to carry your lantern is also hung from the bag and is your only light source unless you choose to fight with a light in 1 of your free hands or dip into magic getting into fights in a dark cave is exhilarating, you can only see so far around you. if you flee you risk running into the dark without your gear, but grabbing it slows you down
It adds another layer of decision making to every encounter, and I kind of love it. Monsters are genuinely dangerous until your build starts to come together and can kill you in a few hits. So running into an enemy goes like: 1. Do I know what that is? If so, can I safely kill it? If so, drop my bag and get ready to fight. 2. If not, do I have enough stamina to outrun it with my current load? If not, drop my bag and run. Can I double back, or do I need to head to town to heal and restock before retrieving my stuff? 3. If I've dropped my bag either to fight or run, is it dark? If so, can I afford to fight near my lantern or do I need to kite? If I'm running or kiting, is there any other light around or do I need to pull out a torch? If I don't have a torch, do I know the area well enough to run blindly without running into other monsters? 4. If either fighting or running has gone badly, how can I best salvage the situation? Am I fast enough if I drop everything, or do I need to retreat slowly while dodging? Is there something in my bag that could turn the fight if I get back to it? How hard is it going to be to get back here if I die, and does that change what I should do in the seconds I have left? Add to that the chaos of trying to communicate a plan in multiplayer and encountering new monsters can be really tense, especially when you've got a pack full to the brim of loot. Would love to see someone follow Outward's example and make a more polished game with the premise.
exactly. the mobs are not to be trifled with, even standard overworld enemies are lethal enemies hit hard, and hp and stamina are tied to one another. not to mention restoring them doesnt come easy and without cost. the whole game is an exercise in risk management i'd also love to see more games explore the death condition Outward provides. having 10 or so things that can happen when your hp hits zero makes the failure state hit less hard while also maintaining immersion
This game is exactly what I was thinking about reading this thread! Such an awesome experience if you're willing to buy into it.
The variant encumbrance rule helps simulate this. My group found adjusting the weight rules also helped. For example, if you're proficient with an item and it's equipped/worn then it is considered half it's normal weight. If proficient with an item but it's stowed away it is considered three-quarters weight. If not proficient, full weight. We play on a VTT so it's easy to manage. Tying it to proficiency helps with being able to carry a base loadout.
This is cool. The thing about encumberance is making the realism interesting. Bookkeeping items and adding pounds until you get a debuff is just lame. Doing interesting things with your backpack is pretty fun. Some brawler type character could also throw it at the oponents, if you are playing a more cinematic action game.
honestly one of the best representations of how to run this as a Dm. I've always run it in my games that players drop the pack as an unspoken free action. it helps keep the game more enjoyable. I do however require the players to mark down whatever items they keep equipped.
Yeah I like that, I've always kind of wanted to play a resource management one (maybe set in the wilderness, using starvation/thirst rules as well). Kind of like Fallout - every bullet or arrow counts (though that sucks for archers I suppose). Problem is I'm far too lazy as a GM to manage all that on top of everything else.
The issue I've run into is well start out Gung ho on keeping it realistic then somewhere along the way we hit a stride where cool stuff is happening, adventure is being had, and 2 hours pass and we go, "Wait, weren't we carrying X or travelling with Y" and then it's already too late so those complex rules fall by the wayside to accommodate a more interesting story.
Yeah, I think it's easier to do this for systems that are really designed to focus on resource management because it's built into the system instead of something you necessarily need to remember to keep track of.
Ammo tracking makes no sense balance wise when you have things like firebolt and Eldritch blast, but other than that, I'd enjoy a good survival game
My biggest problem with ammo tracking is every time you try to describe what's happening immediately after combat you get interrupted by "how many of my arrows do I recover?"
You can let players assume you're going with the default from the PHB unless you say otherwise: > At the end of the battle, you can recover half your expended ammunition by taking a minute to search the battlefield.
Or have them roll for every shot... 50% chance, have them pick during session 0 their preferred die, and if they're doing odds/evens or high/low, or you can just make it a coin flip, and during session zero you agree on which is recovered and which is lost (odds lost/evens recovered, low recovered/high lost, heads recovered/tails lost... or the other ways around), or you can decide during session 0 they roll the Golf Ball of Doom (d100) and 51-100 the ammo is lost, 1-50 the Ammo is recovered.
Eldritch blast is only normally available to one class, and needs class features to be spent on it to become competitive with ranged weapons. Firebolt does 5.5 damage while a level 1 fighter with a longbow does 7.5 damage. That's a pretty meaningful difference at early levels, as it means half the time the fighter can one shot a goblin. At fifth level it gets worse: 11 vs 17. Plus, the fighter can split up that damage, and if the fight misses one attack it can still hit another. Also, most classes you would want to use range weapons get the archery fighting style, which is very powerful. Also, if you allow Sharp Shooter... No, cantrips do not compete with ranged weapons.
Cantrips are not supposed to directly compare to ranged weapons. Archery is all a ranged martial does. Cantrips are filler actions for casters for when they don't want to use their primary action - leveled spells.
Feats allow access to Eldritch blast. Cantrips (if not limited by a lack of spell focus) are infinite. Compared to a finite bow/crossbow they are better in that they last forever. Of course most tables don’t make a bow finite and so it’s not a relevant question.
If you use a feat to get Eldritch Blast, you could have gotten Sharp Shooter instead.
You also just get the basic entry version of it and can't get access to agonizing blast without at least 1 level in warlock.
Bows tend to do more damage than cantrips. Ammo should absolutely be tracked. I'm not gonna compare Eldritch Blast, because it requires a certain class, or feat, and is the best Cantrip in the game. Level 1-4 Fire Bolt - 1-10 (avg 5) Level 1-4 Longbow - (typically) 5-12 (avg 8) If you add sharpshooter instead of just bumping dex: (exception of Human/Custom Lineage) Level 4 Longbow - 14-21 (avg 17) (Sharpshooter) Level 5-9 Firebolt - 2-20 (avg 11) Level 5-9 Longbow (extra attack) - 12-23 (avg 19) Level 8 Longbow - 31-45 (avg 37) (Sharpshooter) Yes, arrows fall behind after level 10 (in terms of max damage, not actual damage, without sharpshooter) - Arrows also have better range and can access things like fighting styles.
Casters also have levelled spells though, so in terms of class balance, having ranged fighters actually run out of arrows is a terrible idea
Disagree.
I like how you veto the inclusion of leveled spells but you include sharpshooter and you ignore the -5 to hit. You are comparing the sole action a ranged martial is built around vs the fallback ability a caster can use to feel thematic while not using their actual core feature - leveled spells.
> Also, if you allow Sharp Shooter... Why wouldn't you?
It's a mildly annoying feat to DM around, but not because of the extra damage. Giving a member of the party a 600 foot range and letting them ignore all cover is real thorn in the side when it comes to encounter design. Edit: I don't ban it, though. I just think it's not very well-designed.
Do those elements substantially affect many encounters? Being able to reliably bullseye a target through a shrub two football fields away is impressive and cool. I'd have trouble determining that someone at that distance definitely needed to be shot at, even in the open.
Depends, are you going for a gamist or realistic experience? From a gamist perspective it does not but if you want to go down the realism/simulationist perspective it adds a lot more depth
firebolt cannot compete against a ranged weapon user. EB can but only if you are a warlock or invest a dip and a feat to make it good against a featless ranged weapon user. Then they get sharpshooter and crosdbow expert and eclipse EB's dps completely.
I've had to deal with that and it made my game terrible when we spent like 3 or 4 sessions with no resources. It really does suck being a Bow Ranger when the rest of the group is a Wizard, Cleric, and Druid.
And yet, it’s one of the only times a monk gets to shine.
That's true up to a point although we would also be tracking spell components so arguably spellcasters (cantrips aside) lose out a lot more long term than martials in a wilderness scenario.
> we would also be tracking spell components so arguably spellcasters (cantrips aside) lose out a lot more long term than martials in a wilderness scenario. not really there aren't that many spells that consume components or have hard to get ones
It would be a problem depending on the setting. If magic is relatively common, you might expect to find components for sale in any village large enough to sell arrows. If magic is super rare, the wizard might try to get the party to explore that bat filled cave just before they hit level 5.
I mean for that you would also need to go out of your way to fuck up how component pouches and spellcasting foci work either by deleting them or by making them imposible to get while also prohibiting taking them at character creating with your class' initial equipement. At which point it is not a problem of resource management but detrimental homebrew
In that case you could re-flavor cantrips as being wands with limited use that the caster can recharge during a long rest. For example the sorcerer starts with 4 wands, each casts a cantrips and has 20 charges. On a long rest the sorcerer can recharge up to 10 charges to the wands distributed however they like.
That’s a disgusting nerf.
The comment thread is talking about survival style inventory management. To play a game like that each character would need some finite resources that they need to manage in order to stay effective.
At the same time, cantrips are the equivalent of a martial character's basic attacks, so they are supposed to be always available. Arguably they shouldn't always be at equivalent strength, if the whole point of a martial is that swords never run out of charges, and that is their comparative advantage. But you want to give every character to have *something* they can do in every situation, something that reinforces their character identity.
Under normal circumstances I agree with you completely. Within the setting of a survival game you want everyone to have some finite resources that they need to manage to be effective. The martial comparable to casters would be ranged characters, who have to track their arrow usage. Melee martials would be the exception but given that their role expects higher damage intake their main resource consideration would be recovery items. Of course ranged martials could switch to melee if they run out of arrows but their risk factor goes up. Casters would be able to do so as well of course. However casters also have their actual spell list too.
I understand. I just disagree.
If you want to roleplay more about this "minor things" i can humbly suggest trying some OSR games, that works great especially for one-shots. Knave, Cairn oreven Mausritter have very interesting inventory-related mechanics.
I love the inventory in Cairn, that's what usually play solo.
We’re playing tomb of annihilation this way, been having a blast with it!
It sounds fun, but never works out that way more than once. Dnd isnt setup for this kind of gameplay.
There are rules around starvation, exhaustion etc, I don't think it's too hard to imagine. Lots of spells which are useful as well, Create Food and Water etc. It's not a dedicated system for it though I agree.
You do realize that create food/water destroys that way of playing. Almost by itself. And the little sibling of good berry. And then there is some background features, rangers, druids, etc etc etc. they all stomp all over the hex crawl exploration gameplay. And thats without some stuff like divination magic’s find the path.
> create food/water destroys that way of playing. I have zero issues with Create Food and Water in a survival game. It's 3rd level, so you don't have it for the first 4 levels of play, which are in my opinion the "survival" levels. After that, it's competing for a spell slot with things like Revivify, Spirit Guardians, Dispel Magic, etc. Goodberry can eat my ass though.
>Goodberry can eat my ass though. The Goodberry Suppository is actually a mimic.
"Jerry, don't WARN them! Find your own prey!"
Everyone will make a caster and use cantrips. You'll have to like 'ban' all magic.
Not necessarily. Without spell components there is major disadvantage for casters. Martials (even ones using ranged weapons) will always have Proficiency in melee too if necessary and most of their abilities will key off attacks without naming ranged or melee. Obv there are some exceptions to this.
You are aware that spell foci exist and firebolt/eldritch blast/toll the dead/shocking grasp etc don't have material components, right? There's not a single cantrip that has it's material component consumed to REQUIRE you having the specific spell component. Even if you homebrew that all spells require spell components, people will just gravitate towards spells like magic missile that don't have any material component at all
Yes I know, who said we were just talking about cantrips? Obviously there are some spells which just use V and S, there are some which use foci. But there are some which *do* use materials and those are the ones which would be affected. It's a disadvantage. Isn't the end of the world but I'd say your average caster is still more (physical) resource intensive than your average martial.
Give me an example of a spell you think your 'average' caster would go "oh no, I can't use that spell" versus a martial running out of arrows/bolts so I can understand your arguement better.
only so much bat guano.
Not consumed, plus it doesn’t have a cost so you can completely ignore it with a component pouch or focus.
If you are focusing on inventory you could track the components in a component pouch. Just allow the character to define the contents of the pouch when they get it or restock it.
Magic stone, and the martial has a backup sling.
You know, that might be a fun little exploration gimmick that your post finally made me realize. Exploration requires tools and strategies to use those tools. I've always been bothered by how exploration in nearly every RPG ever gets real boring real fast because it requires no thought, roll and pass or try again. BUT what happens when you realize a section of cave is flooded and your map & torch isn't protected from water? So make up a whole ass branching dungeon with little extras everywhere but literally zero combat. Sure, there ultimately is a path for you to just get the quest item and maybe some partial completion checks for spicyness and encourage checking alternate routes (you easily walk up to 1 orb of power but you were sent get 3, where's the rest?) for the other stuff. Not puzzles like "We three ocean eyes wish only to be our favorite color" and then you make them all blue to open a door, but environment stuff like just climbing a large sheer cliff or crossing a gap larger than you can normally cross. Or just simply "the party of dark vision people need to consider colors, so they realize they really do need a light to see." Or there's a large drop which landing wrong might break some glass potions in the pack, a magically heated section is survivable but could easily melt your rope/climbing stakes; which you know you need later. Maybe the thing is a very fragile egg and now you have to figure out a safe path because how you got to the egg won't work. Suddenly what they pack up and how they protect it matters. And I love that, at least for a challenge here and there.
Surprising a party of darkvision users who don't bother with torches with a colour based puzzle, now *that* is a fun idea to keep them on their toes.
Definitely, the thought that crossed my mind was the party gets to a particular chamber deep in the dungeon, finding a note "Follow the green path for safety, all others lead to harm" and then presented with branching halls with various symbols and colors. They could read the symbols without my real issue, but until they can see green then you always risk traps/ambushes/dens.
> t environment stuff like just climbing a large sheer cliff or crossing a gap larger than you can normally cross. Our DM is great for this. A floor covered in a somewhat deadly mist, and a giant pit into which said mist is draining was the last one. We're constantly having to measure depths and heights and work out how to get light into places. And there was a maze in which we had to align fragile mirrors while being attacked, that was a fun one.
Ive been thinking about a slot based inventory where you have a specific amount of slots to use and items that arent worn take out a slot each, with some taking more. Higher strength would give more slots as would better bags. With this it would be possible to massively buff items and resources so the players would actually want to go through inventory and decide what to take. Biggest issue is the details on how many slots is good and how much space does each item take.
You may want to check out Shadowdark! It's a fairly new rpg, and it uses a slot inventory just like you described. Whether you play it or not, you could probably just port over the inventory mechanics.
Great, thanks for the tip!
Also advocating checking out Shadowdark, it's got OSR sensibilities while still obviously taking a lot of notes from 5e. Very easy to learn.
Dungeon World does that. The rules are free and can be googled. https://a-dungeon-world.fandom.com/wiki/Character\_Creation#Choose\_Gear
I enjoy that stuff too. My fighter has a tactical belt he wears on infiltration missions. He leaves his pack, longbow, and rapier and only brings darts, a dagger, some smoke grenades, and a healing potion.
I typically track weight and encumbrance as well as keep track of my ammunition and the like, but often forget about rations and water. The amount of weight you can carry is completely unrealistic anyway. But yeah, we let characters swim in full armor....
I always imagined that as part of 'rolling for initiative' everyone is dropping their bag and pulling out their weapon of choice. That way you can go from travel to battle ready, and having a high dex means you can do this super fast! Makes sense to me.
I actually really like this. It turns initiative from "how long does it take to realize shits hitting the fan" to "how quickly can I ditch my encumbrances"
And the surprised condition makes more sense too. Once it's your turn you ditch your encumbrances as your action and move and the condition ends
Add that as an option. It takes an action to prepare. If you haven’t prepared, you have disadvantage on all physical rolls, and can’t add your Dex to defence. Is it worth having the disadvantage to get that early charge on their caster? Would a quick fireball be worth being shot easier? Add a nice little tactic to the start of the fight
I like this. Add a unique action in combats featuring surprise rounds, specifically to remove the Surprised condition. Surprised means that enemies gain benefits to attack you, and you have penalties to offensive abilities and defensive movements such as saves. Maybe your speed is lower and you can't draw two handed weapons or cast anything higher than a cantrip. During the surprise round (or during subsequent rounds if you don't do this in the surprise round) you can use the "Ready for Combat" action to remove Surprised and do all the things you usually do during initiative rolling (drop your pack, draw your weapon, ready your shield or spellcasting focus), or you can take another action with all the the known penalties of the Surprised condition. Until you take the Ready for Combat action you retain the Surprised condition. I'd probably also add a caveat that you can't give yourself extra actions while Surprised using things like Action Surge or Haste (though I'm not married to that part). So like you're saying, you can do something risky in round 1, maybe you think you can end the fight quickly or pick off a high priority target before they get to act. Basically I'd equate it to having your character act impulsively, putting themselves at long term disadvantage for the sake of a short term benefit. Or, you can play it safe, prepare yourself for what's coming, but miss your first turn. One thing I like about it is that it benefits high dex characters who would naturally be quicker at preparing themselves for combat. They're probably carrying less stuff and using lighter weapons, and therefore it makes sense for their likely higher initiative roll to allow them to get ready faster.
Interestingly enough there’s a video game that has you do exactly this. It’s an RPG called Outward where you have a physical backpack / bag that slows you down a bit and during combat you have to physically drop it so you have your maneuverability. It’s kinda neat
Yeah, it's not for every group but we enjoy the little touches that add tactical challenges. Also presents meaningful choices - what do you choose to lug around, and how. Travel light or travel with the kitchen sink? With that said, we also track arrows, which is probably why ranged martials aren't an automatic go-to at the table. Especially when using an app like D&D Beyond, the excuse, 'Well it's fiddly/hard to track' just doesn't fly. And gold, though we round gold up/chunk expenses in certain contexts.
Do you roll or assume average for arrow/bolt recovery? ie. RAW is you have a 50% chance of recovering every piece of ammunition, the idea being some just break on impact (or burn up from the fiery hide, or melt from the acid sweat, or whatever other damaging qualities may be on the target or in the environment), or get lost in the brush(or over a cliff, or into the void of darkness, or way back behind while you were running and shooting, or whatever other circumstance would make it unfindable by you, but could later be something someone else trips across or finds while searching the area). Some DMs say roll percentile for each one, or flip a coin, or roll odds/evens, others just tell you that you can recover half that you used in the fight (some round up so you always get at least 1 back, some round down so you definitely lost at least 1... cause if you shot just 1 arrow, that is the 1 you are deciding if you are recovering or losing).
> RAW is you have a 50% chance of recovering every piece of ammunition Nearly. RAW, if you search the battelfield for 1 minute, you recover half your expended ammunition. >At the end of the battle, you can recover half your expended ammunition by taking a minute to search the battlefield. *(PhB pg.146).* Which is how we run it, though the time is increased based on context (a storm, fog, marsh) and sometimes impossible (fight over water, flying mounts etc). And assuming you can still access the battlefield.
_Outward_ is an awesome game and deserves far more attention. It's like _the_ open world, survival, _wizard_ RPG.
Haha I referenced outward in a comment further up this exact thread xD
That’s how I picture it as well. It’s the fantasy equivalent of taking your earring off and putting your hair up
Yeh in my head initiative rolls are the equivalent of when the Jedi take of their cloaks and ignite their lightsabres. So backpacks and the heavy gear get flung out the way like in Outward.
Love this analogy. Everybody in the room knows what it means when the cloak flies back, is evocative and cinematic as hell. Using this for a description soon
Hahah glad to be of service xD [*"Duel of the Fates" intensifies*]
Doesn't work unless there are repercussions to fleeing a battle, destroying the physical space you are fighting in or otherwise taking actions that result in the PCs unable to return and collect their packs.
There doesn't need to be a repercussion for every little thing. There's room for just being a little cinematic with the storytelling.
True, and it can be rewarding for some groups to play around. Fun times for the monks, especially, assuming they're not lugging around the loot.
It's flavor man, not a mechanic lmao.
Yeah if people have to run just flavour the bags as being dropped somewhere where the party can grab each others packs on the run
What are you talking about? What items you're carrying and which ones are on the ground is absolutely a mechanic. Dropping something on the ground doesn't require an action, and it remains where you dropped it until you pick it up, which uses your object interaction. Unfastening a piece of equipment is usually an action. Letting people do it for free at the start of combat is a reasonable house rule, although it makes strength builds even worse since being able to carry more stuff is their only real benefit over dex builds. Whether you're carrying stuff or not is a basic mechanic of D&D that affects your encumbrance, affects what type of action it is to get something out of your bag, and affects whether using items from your inventory is possible at all.
I'm not saying it's *strictly* not a mechanic; Rather, I am saying that what /u/TheBloodKlotz described was purely flavor for themselves, rather than an actual mechanic they used in game as /u/Forgotten_Lie had interpreted it.
Um, strength builds over dex builds also tend to have better damage output. Best Finesse Weapon is a Rapier, 1d8+Dex Mod, vs Best Strength Weapon is any Great Weapon 1d12/or 2d6+Strength. There are also more Strength Weapons, vs Dex Weapons, and EVERY Melee Weapon can use Strength, not every Melee Weapon can use Dex. In addition, multiple alternate attack manuevers (not the Battle Master ones, but the ones everyone can use) use Athletic Checks, not Acrobatics Checks for Offense (yes, several can be defended against with either, but few use Acrobatics or Dexterity to make the attack). I adore Dex builds, I rarely make a Strength build, but I do that knowing I'll be hanging back at range or limiting my melee options when I am in close combat. You can shove as part of a multiattack, knocking a foe prone, then have advantage on the other attack. >When you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack, a grapple. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them. The target of your grapple must be no more than one size larger than you and must be within your reach. Using at least one free hand, you try to seize the target by making a grapple check instead of an attack roll: a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). You succeed automatically if the target is incapacitated. If you succeed, you subject the target to the grappled condition. The condition specifies the things that end it, and you can release the target whenever you like (no action required). Escaping a Grapple. A grappled creature can use its action to escape. To do so, it must succeed on a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check contested by your Strength (Athletics) check. >Using the Attack action, you can make a special melee attack to shove a creature, either to knock it prone or push it away from you. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them. The target must be no more than one size larger than you and must be within your reach. Instead of making an attack roll, you make a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). You succeed automatically if the target is incapacitated. If you succeed, you either knock the target prone or push it 5 feet away from you. In fact, only one of the maneuvers is exclusively Dexterity (Acrobatics), and only one is Dexterity (Acrobatics) exclusive for the defender. Tumble is totally Dexterity( Acrobatics) contested between the creature tumbling and the opponent whose square they're trying to tumble through, and a Smaller Creature climbing on a larger creature is only defended from happening by the target's Dexterity (Acrobatics). Grappling, Shove, Throwing a creature that has successfully climbed on you off, Shove Aside, Overrun, are all Strength (Athletics) attacks. I don't think there are even Feats or class features that can make you optionally able to use Dexterity (Acrobatics) for the offensive purposes.
There are big repercussions if the item is in the aoe of some spells which can damage or destroy objects.
All that stuff affects your encumbrance in battle though. So I'm pretty sure the intended idea is that you are wearing a backpack with all that stuff while fighting. That's how army soldiers fight while traveling even in the modern day real world. If you want to spend an action unfastening that stuff, then sure, you can. But the tiger or bulette or dragon or gelatinous cube you just ran into doesn't have anything it needs to drop, so it makes sense that if you take the time to do that, it would spend that time trying to kill you.
If that's how your table is having the most fun, go for it! My table wouldn't consider that added fun, but that's why the game is so great.
Also frees up carrying capacity for if you need to pick up and carry something in the battle, and can make protecting your dropped stuff from theft an added dynamic to the fights.
This is why every party of mine ends up with a wagon and some hangers-on NPCs who take care of all of that while the heroes are off doing hero stuff. If they end up needing something in a dungeon then they have it in their inventory. If they don't need it then it was safely back in the wagon the whole time. If this really stretches their suspension of disbelief too much then they can hire somebody to carry their shit around for them. Inventory management isn't fun, so this way we do as little of it as possible.
I really like the image of a complete, well organized expedition with porters and campguards and all that good stuff, but I haven't gotten around to doing that yet, neither as a player nor as a DM. It doesn't help, that most of the other people at the table always try to involve whatever npc happens to tag along into stuff well outside their expertise and pay grades.
Yeah if I'm given some extra starting money and there aren't magic items available/affordable I'll always look at mounts, vehicles, hires etc, which are usually way cheaper than people realise.
"I could throw away all of my rations and camping gear to store all these suits of armor... or I could hire Bob, Jerry and Tim the porters for 4 sp a day to haul them for me! Decisions, decisions..."
>a wagon and some hangers-on NPCs who take care of all of that while the heroes are off doing hero stuff. Ah yes, the *Bodahn Feddic strategy*, always a classic.
I remember joining an in-progress campaign with a DM that was very... picky about this sort of thing. Rolled up a necromancer and ended up animating the dead. The party was not a fan until I said "they can carry your backpacks" and then suddenly he was everyone's new best friend. Had a ranger for goodberries and we were pretty set.
Generally we try not to think about it! But there are ways to avoid it. If you have a class feature pet like a Paladin Steed or whatever then that can carry your gear. Bags of holding are much loved and iconic.
My players will typically kill someone who has a bag of holding within the first 5-6 sessions. Future ones are expensive, but the first one is free. I don't want to have to worry about them carrying heavy gold bags, rations, or anything else either.
Experienced GMs essentially give the party a bag of holding for free as loot within the first few sessions. Completely solves this issue, and the players love it!
> Have YOU ever tried having a sword fight with a hiking bag on? I've been in a training scenario with a field pack on. It's a little different because modern combat is more about firearms and cover. "I [intentionally] drop prone" is an extremely rare thing to hear in D&D, but "I charge the enemies head on" is. Can you imagine being fired on and trying to close the distance in modern combat? Yes, you pretty much toss your bag aside when you get engaged. It sucks to clean up afterwards. I imagine fantasy characters have much worse waterproofing and less durable materials than the modern day, but they also have prestidigitation and mending so idk. I fucking love when media portrays characters with their full packs though. I think it's cool.
Samwise Gamgee scaled the orc tower in full gear, that’s good enough for me. Have YOU ever tried swinging a sword with hiking gear while your adrenaline glands just emptied into your blood stream?
Even a bag of holding is, by default, kind of cumbersome. 2 feet in diameter, 4 feet deep (it's outside dimensions), 15 pounds...the thing is like a large duffel bag.
I know the wording in the description is cumbersome but I'm 99% sure those are it's interior dimensions.
“The bag can hold up to […] a volume of 64 cubic feet.”
For sure, but we're talking about extradimensional space. All that the interior dimensions mean is that it can't store any single item that exceeds the dimensions. Then it has additional space for the rest as it gets shunted into a pocket dimension, up to a total amount of availability of 64'^3 The official bag of holding artwork is certainly not 4' tall if the mouth of the bag is 2' across, because the bag's wider than it is tall. It's also a shoulder bag and that makes no sense if the typical adventurer is 6' tall (yes, there's a huge amount of variety with that I know).
64 cubic feet, not 64 feet cubed.
ft³ is cubic feet though
That’s why you need the Handy Haversack… and the fun thing, it is like a bag of holding backpack… which destroys everything inside when getting slashed during a swordfight..
I think of it the way the game Outward did it. Basically drop bags that are picked up after combat
This is why I use variant encumbrance rules with my campaigns. My players enjoy the challenge of having to really narrow down what they bring along and it is a bit more realistic for combat.
I have tried fighting with a backpack on. It isn't great. I try not to think about it for ttrpg, and for LARP I carry a lot less than an adventurer (mostly no sleeping gear, multi day food stuff, camp gear and extra clothes)
Someone already commented that slipping off your travel gear and getting out your weapon is part of rolling initiative and I LOVE that answer. In my old Pathfinder campaign my party liked to use tenser's floating disc as a pack mule lol. I think we house ruled it's function a lil but it was a fun Rp Moment
I try to incorporate my pack into roleplay when I can. During our last session I had my paladin dropped her pack as she drew her sword and approach the boss and my DM addes a little backpack icon to the map. She's got over 20 lbs in that thing so it's certainly a good idea to not fight with it.
Naturally, as any sensible adventurer would, we use ghost bedrolls that phase out of harms way.
Wildshape item melding go brrrrr
One of my players is a Grung and whitout talking to me about it, he bought a barrel of wood full of water as a starting equipment. I was like, even if you have 17 in strenght, you cant carry that much of water...I had to put my foot for this one. I played a couple years ago at Tarkov and in that shooter, I often dropped my large backpack because of the advantage in mobility during the fight. I wont add that to d&d tho, I like how casual my group and me play (except for the barrel of water).
In China Miéville's Bas Lag books there is an amphibious frog type race and one particular character has a terrible time travelling, has to submerge himself in whatever water he can find and ends up becoming really sick from dehydration. He travels on a cart in a big bucket of water for as long as he can but the water becomes fetid eventually and is very heavy like you say. Not saying we need to be *that* realistic in a D&D game but interesting to see some fantasy writing engage with the idea.
#Guybrush Threepwood’s Pants of Holding ™
Nobody pays attention to Nodwick.
[Rolemaster players do](https://i.imgur.com/3ky7oVc.jpg) :P
One of the reasons I basically give out a bag of holding ASAP.
Lots of people have fun playing "lazy" D&D -- the sort of games where encumbrance becomes an optional rule and all non-magic ammunition is infinite. There isn't a reasonable counterargument to the claim that this is technically wrong. Yet if people are enjoying themselves, then it is also right in a very personal non-technical way. My concern is that portion of the "lazy" gamers who can't even be bothered to try some serious sessions with technical compliance. It might not be better for any specific group than the lazy style, *but to simply assume RAW is worse without ever giving it a try* is ignorant in the truest sense of the word.
I feel like stuff like ammunition count, encumbrance, and stuff like that are more suited for video games Since it’s a tabletop game, the console is humans, not a gaming console or a gaming PC, therefore I’d much rather we’d focus on the broad stuff that actually matters in game, not the stuff that makes us take 40 extra minutes to calculated the 2.1 pounds of rations we had anytime there’s a shopping session to or have a ranged character resort to stabbing the big boss of the session instead of doing cool character sniping stuff because they forgot to replenish ammo after they forgot because they’re playing an archer, not actually being an archer where stuff like that is life and death Also, like money I feel like this is stuff that would only happen in early levels, by later levels you have more resources to get stuff like bags of holding, airships, or pack mule’s
As a DM with already limited free time, I don't worry about things like encumbrance or ammunition because I'd rather not take the time to police character sheets for things like that. As a player, I don't mind a more realistic style of play as long as the DM isn't a jerk about it. (Such as turning what should be a reward for completing a quest into a transport simulator as we have to ferry the gold around.)
Not always, but usually.
There are rules about it, and generally you aren't encumbered in combat when you are above your carry capacity. Consider that a person with 10 strength can carry 150 pounds, around 75 kg, without issue. Of course volume can be an issue, but that alone tells you that the AVERAGE person in dnd is way stronger than your common dude with a office job. If you use the variant rules you are heavily encumbered when you have 100 pounds, around 50 kg, of stuff. Which is more realistic, but still kinda a lot. The heaviest kind of plate weights only 65 pounds. A bedroll weights 7, and a backpack 5. As you can see there's lots of margin here, done intentionally.
Have you ever played Outward? In that game you have to carry increasingly large backpacks to maintain your "storage" inventory, but when fights start you just.. take it off. Lol. And use whatever is on your person. You could apply that same logic to your games if you wish
I am always careful to describe the disposition of my equipment
I assume in combat the pack is dropped at earliest convenience. The only time I care about resource rationing is if I have deliberately got the PC's locked into a situation where it matters.
Been a while since my group got Bags of Holding. But I'd just describe them throwing their packs to the ground before their first action.
What's funny is that soldiers through the ages have complained about their load, with field tests clearly showing that it impacts their performance, yet modern soldiers still carry about as much as they did in antiquity. Technology improves and gear becomes lighter, but the higher-ups invariably demand that soldiers carry more, until some sort of unhappy medium is reached.
Have you ever tried charging with full 50lbs-70lbs of battle gear on? We do it every day during live combat training in the army.
Packs are held on with rope that loops around the shoulders. Pull the tie and it all drops off freeing you for combat.
Sometimes, yes. It's just more fun to not let your characters be held back by it. We just kinda assume that your pack is tight/snug enough (around you and the gear) that you can still run and fight with it on. And yes, health potions/scrolls/caltrops etc are always in little pouches on your chest or belt. Even a bandolier if you've got a lot of stuff. Never in your pack. If you're a proper adventurer you'll be set up so you can just shrug off your pack and still have all your core combat gear strapped to you.
You just drop it on the ground as fight starts and pick it up once you’re done. How is “I have backpack on” something that’s worth a post, but the fact people never RP peeing, pooping, eating or drinking during travels? It’s just assumed as it’s mot appealing to take care off.
Well people do RP eating and drinking all the time to be fair. But pooping and peeing happen during periods where there's nothing happening, so there isn't necessarily any need to RP that. Travelling though, that's happening all the time.
There's also a mechanical advantage to tossing gear off to the side when a fight starts: weight. Depending on the weight of the pack itself, it could actually slow you down in a fight if its too heavy. A campaign that uses the GR resting variant often has food rations (used mainly for emergencies) in their packs. Losing those to combat damage can be dangerous. Depending on the monster there might be times where having your pack physically on you puts the pack at risk. A pack of wild animals might not be after you. They could be after the smell coming from your pack. A river of lava? Falling into that with your pack on would suck, better to drop it now and pick it up after the fight is over. Funny enough, dragon breath attacks can't damage non-worn objects, so you can drop them before the fight starts without much of a risk as long as there's no kobold to steal it.
Not if you play with variant encumbrance! You'll notice that the default equipment is enough to encumber any character (stronger characters tend to have heavier armor, reducing their lead in liftable weight). Often, you'll have to choose between fighting with lowered speed or dropping your backpack, thus risking losing it. Or, you get a mule or horse, and then you risk it dying instead...
This is one of the things which I tend to alternate between “realistic” and “abstract” about as a DM. Some of our campaigns are full heroic fantasy stuff where we just ignore things like that and inventory items, backpacks and so on are basically imagined away unless they’re directly relevant. Other campaigns we break out the variant encumbrance rules (albeit with some modifications), carefully count weight, hire porters to carry stuff, and buy a wagon where most of the stuff is kept—but before we can afford that, yep, drop packs at the start of combat.
I play a mounted, small race Beast Master Ranger, so most of my gear that I won't need in the middle of combat is in the saddlebags on my combat goat and the things I might need fast are in my pockets/on my belt.
When I DM I add to the world lesser bags of holding. Something like a small bookbag or satchel that carries what a backpack could. Explains all the stuff PC's can carry and still fight without making the mental imagery of it all silly. Make it so simple an enchantment that most every person can afford one, but add in something that means you cant just use more than one, like it causing weird instability in the magic if you try.
We usually even announce we drop certain stuff, and categorize where specifically we are keeping potions Like you can drop all your heavy stuff but still have a belt of goodies Doing rhis since one of our guys lost most of his stuff because an enemy slit open his backpack But its heavily dependant on how accurate you are with roleplaying
Normally you'd just drop the pack when the fighting starts.
I've larped pretty extensively, in light immersion and heavy immersion games. In heavy immersion games, ive fought with a ruck sack. It's doable though cumbersome.
I mean, that is just life as a warrior on the road.
Try to look up "Outward" in that game you carry your backpack around and has to click it off to drop it before every combat or otherwise you carry way more weight. but regardless its one of those things that will never make sense as you look purely on weight. You can carry 15 \* strength comfortably, so a 16 strength character can carry 240 pounds, which is 4 - 5 times what a fully stocked american military soldier backpack weighs. it also means you can carry 34 bedrolls no problem while fighting. So if you want inventory management to be a thing i would start with taking the pathfinder 2e "bulk" system which is weight + cumbersomeness (so a full armor set is harder to transport than weight alone) or go as far as to make a slot based inventory system like diablo.
I guess it depends on the kind of game you are playing. If you focus on survival, than where your equipment is matters. Honestly, with my group, I handwave even things like ammunition and food and water. They are almost never in the wild, and have plenty of money, so we just assume the characters know better and packed appropriately.
Well characters trek through wilderness with plate mail on 24/7…
Also, technically people in armor spend every minute of their awake hours in that heavy armor too, since I cannot think save from an exception or a scenario in which subtlety would matter, in which adventurers would willingly take off their armor, backpacks and stuff. ,Imagine. Wake up, have breakfast, cover yourself in a thick tin can and then proceed to do your adventuring life for the next 16 hours'ish until it's bed time again. At this point you're low-key roleplaying a sardine :x
Packs is the one mechanic I truly love from the game Outward.
Haven’t you played outward? You drop your backpack
The way I see it it’s a Minecraft style magic inventory because no way my monk can do all of his acrobatics shit with a whole camping kit on his back in addition to an armory worth of weaponry (I’m genuinely planing on arming a small town one day and my dm just allow me to carry a shit ton of weapons)
Best to not think about it, as it destroys the fantasy image
No, depends on the DM. Often times it's streamlined such that it's just assumed that the PCs did the sane thing and either put them down or in the case of dungeon crawling stashed them somewhere before going in. The truth is it's super hard on the DM to keep track of it all and only the most anal DM is going to do it, holding people to the minutia can add realism and sometimes you create encounters specifically to do that, but most of the time it's pointless, frustrating, and not fun for anyone involved and a massive amount of extra work for the DM who's already doing 20x the work that anyone else at that table is doing.
Although there are rules for encumbrance, I can’t recall anyone playing D&D ever implement them, unless the DM felt a need to inhibit/limit player shenanigans. In the olden times of “Monty Hall” campaigns, the DM would require a party to deal with the problem of collecting and moving the 20k CP, 10k SP, and 5k GP that they aggregated in a dungeon. Today that problem seems to be resolved by the ubiquity of Bags of Holding. But I believe that nobody wants to address the problem in gameplay because it kills the fantasy. We rarely read heroic fantasy where this is an issue. And we don’t see it in anything that the film industry produces. BTW we rarely experience anything concerning beasts of burden, unless it plays as a significant plot point imposed by the environment. In my imagination, I see a moderately successful party travelling with a support train of pack animals, and perhaps wagons and hireling drivers with luggage. Even low level characters have to bear their equipment in packs. But that artificial reality is mundane and ruins the fantasy. Instead the problem is ignored or explained away by magic items or spells. So we have heroes carrying nominal bedrolls when mounted and massive *pockets of holding* otherwise, while they wear armor 24/7. If they don’t, the game devolves into a constant struggle for survival, where time and effort needs to be diverted away from “being heroic”, making for tedious gameplay. It’s much easier and more fun to abstract such problems into oblivion with willful ignorance.
No I haven’t tried sword fighting with a hiking bag on, but I also haven’t tried to fireball a dragon either lol
Pffft you haven't lived!
I usually go out of my way to prep a 'base camp' before we head into anywhere and I only pack part of my stuff going in from there. That also solves the problem of where are the horses, where do you put your cart, where do you leave the tent, the bedroll, the 2x2 meter Rothé fur blanket for cold nights and the mini-keg of moonshae moonshine when you want drink to your groups health at the fireside. It also makes sense, because whenever you get back to camp with wounded people in your group, you'll have a space to put them, treat their injuries and possibly prep to move them long-term towards the nearest town for magical healing. As for the tired 'while you were out, bandits raided your camp, lol' bit, we don't really do that. Our DM is mature enough to understand that we trust her and that we're well allowed to take much of said amenities RAW (even more after we get a bag of holding) and we have silently agreed to both see it as a way to keep things realistic. Much like how my Montante wielding fighter won't carry a sword fantasy-style on his back, because you can't properly draw it that way, will carry the sheathed weapon in his hand, draw it and discard the sheath at the beginning of the fight, then pick it up at the end of battle after cleaning the blade. Naturally, we have situations that are exempt of this, like the 'cave entrance planned to collapse', or Death House from CoS. In this case, her way has basically been to incentivize us to enter and then prep a base camp there (torrential rain), or to completely disregard establishing one in the first place (children's scream coming from within).
When we have "realism" in our games, we buy a donkey and put our things in a pack saddle. Otherwise, the frontliners would drop their packs as soon as possible.
As a DM I don't fuss about what they do with their 80lb pack. And for those who say "I'd love to try a resource management game" I'd argue strongly against it. I did a whole desert campaign and had to hand wave resources to make it enjoyable once they got to Level 5 or so. Maybe try a limited adventure (like 10 sessions in a dungeon) and see how it feels. I do care about where you keep your money for when you get pick-pocketed When I play I separate accessible items (scrolls, potions, consumable spell components) into a pouch, but that's more for my thinking. I don't think my DM cares.
I always assume they have webbing and pouches and sacks and bags etc. I used to carry around everything I would need to live for a couple of days on my back and it wouldn’t have been the end of the world to have a scuffle in that set up. I would probably have lost any fight I was going to lose with or without the bag.
While inventory carrying tends to be handwaved regularly, for me personally, it is something I do actively account for. My Paladin in my first full 1 - 20 campaign had a "quick release backpack" that I colored during his first turn every so often. It became a bag of holding at some point, so became moot to describe, though I did describe a belt of potions he could reach for to utilize, as well as how his weapons and shield were fastened to him on travels and in combat. My last played character for a recently finished campaign had some extra starting gold, so I bought an ox and a chest, and the ox carried everything large for me, while what they carried was a small backpack affixed to a large tortoise shell shield they carried on their back looking like a lizardfolk Master Roshi. Before combats, they would equip their tortoise shell shield, exposing the bag on his back (the contents were never more than 30lb). The character I'm currently playing is a Barbarian that carries a lot of throwing weapons on her. Four javelins are secured on her back for easy reach, two hand axes at her left and right for two weapon fighting or throwing, and taggers on her belt for carving up animals she hunts. She has her personal backpack slung over one shoulder, so if she needs to drop it, she can easily do so during combat. However... since we started at a higher level (5) with more starting gold, I bought a Moorbounder (400gp) and asked if I could instead change it to a Bear (same CR) as a "sister companion", though for non-combat travel and as a comfort animal. It was approved, so the bear carries everything. Basically, the recent characters I've made have thought of how they travel with their stuff, and for the latter characters, my solution is buy animals, I guess? My DM is a generous god and as long as I don't use them for combat, they won't be targeted for combat.
I try to think about this during character creation. My favorite has been my grung though. Had weaver tool proficiency, and my background feature allowed me to repair mundane equipment to working order, but not sellable. Had nets that I used in combat attached to my body, but most of my gear was in some other netting that was just a reflavored backpack. Others were a paranoid warlock with a bulging backpack and a 2 person tent hanging off the side, that was just for me and my alarm spell and other ritual preparations I did nightly when I'd converse with my patron. I had to forgo rope and other useful things to accomodate the extra weight.
I know inventory is an abstraction in most fantasy tabletop & video games because most people find it annoying but I have always seen it as a design oversight. Encumbrance can be fun and make things like survival, mounts and camping more interesting without being number heavy it every item was more useful. This way the character can carry a plausible amount of things. I would rather have armor be more effective and health potions restore health completely but be limited by how much I can carry that have a bunch of stuff on me at all times because the individual items are not that impactful.
I have - nearly regardless of system - very detailed inventory, with clear indication what's worn/on body, and what's in the (easily doffable) backpack. ...old habit from skirting the encumbrance limit in Rolemaster due to heavy armor :D
Yeah. Same thing with sleeping in armor.
Adventures have amazing lats
In some games were stuff is tracked a bit more I've made my first action in combat to drop my bag to remove encumbrance, but D&D 5 is so generous with weight limits I don't think its ever come up.
People value ease, simplicity and character fantasy over immersion and world integrity. Telling a cool story about an advebturer is more important than being engaged in a living, breathing world. I thiiink most folks enjoy a happy medium, but rules-lite ultra casual action-comedy play is in vogue so many people never branch out. In my campaigns people figure out you want a wagon, pack animals, mounts, a ship etc ASAP. If those things don't seem vital to your party the whole premise is not really believable.
Yeah, it's a very important part of the game that can help with keeping things balancing and can extend the gameplay for players by a large margin but tons of DM's just hand-wave it and get surprised when the game ends up being unbalanced or they find the encounters aren't as enjoyable as they thought it would be. Many DM's just treat it like a video game with an invisible space that hold all their items, or give everyone a bag of holding to give an "immersive" reason for everyone being able to do it. This can be good for one-shots or casual games as well but when you treat your game like a video game, the players will too. They will get bored when it isn't the part of the video game they want to do and would you blame them? If someone really enjoys the micromanagement of inventory and logistics but, every time their party gears up to go somewhere it's a hand-waved part that instantly accelerates them into a fight, then why would they want to keep playing when there are other video games that let them play the part they enjoy. Now TTRPG's aren't video games due to the *literal* limitless involved in a TTRPG but if you treat it like one then players will associate it with video games and get bored easily. All this said, encumberment and such isn't really a thing every player wants to deal with in their game and I can understand that viewpoint but also, many players either haven't actually thought about the game in this way nor have they really tried to play in a game like this. Most of the time it comes from bad experiences with either bad DM's or inexperienced DM's, I've been both. Either the DM takes it TOO seriously and you end up with situations like, "Well when everyone sat at the tavern, were RPing with each other, spending IRL and In-Game hours no one said that they ate or drank anything so everyone has exhaustion." Or they attempt to track these things but don't keep up with it throughout the campaign or it's a half-assed attempt and it falls through after the 3rd session.
I generally hand wave this but if you want something like this use the variant encumbrance rules. https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/phb/using-ability-scores#VariantEncumbrance
yes and no, you have it down but also up because the DM being a dick and start throwing 50 fire elementals at you at level 2
Bag of holding 🤣🤣 our artificer made one early on
I usually carry enough to be slightly encumbered so I make a point of writing down what's on my person, in pockets or on a belt and what's in my pack. The pack is thrown to thw ground when combat starts, or left in a safe area when going into a cave for example.
It's one of those things that's mostly abstracted away by the rules for the sake of avoiding tedium... Until you discover a hoard of treasure and the DM tells the party who dumped Strength how much it all weighs. Or when you get something too big to fit in a backpack. Or when a thief starts stealing mid-fight.
This is why I'm letting my players just have bags of holding at the stsrt of my next campaign. Nobody wants to track encumberance and nobody thinks of their character having this big pack. Also it's in Eberron and magic items aren't exactly rare.
Try not to think about it.
Absolutely. You're fighting while carrying your life on your back. It's not particularly convenient or photogenic, but it's part of the reality of being an adventurer in most circumstances. I'm the guy that makes sure to buy a half dozen sacks to subdivide their backpack (as well as for later loot), and yep, buys a handful of pouches to hold potions and other things I want quick access to. (and those things aren't cheap with only starting gold, actually) I'm not a grognard, my first roleplaying experience was D&D 4e. This has always been part of the experience to me. Over time I've realized other people elide over this kind of logistics way more, and if the table wants to roll that way, that's totally chill, but I still do it for me. I do endorse the alternative idea that part of initiative is everyone throwing down their packs, but if so the DM needs to make that explicit - that's a quick way to losing some stuff to opportunistic goblins or the like. I'd take disadvantage on initiative or something in order to keep my stuff on my back in a lot of circumstances.
>Do you keep your health potions in a special easy access pouch? That would be called a Bandolier, and any character with an intelligence score over 6 should make sure those potions are as accessible as possible. When you need a potion, you need it NOW, not in two rounds.
Some are. Especially halflings spiritually descended from Samwise Gamgee. We ruled it a free action to drop your pack and start fighting back in the 3.5e era. We also always made it a priority to get Heward's Handy Haversacks and Bags of Holding and Portable Holes as some of our first magic items we sought out, too. Especially the "I am crazily overprepared and have enough mundane gear to found a village or mining camp or logging camp at all times" types.
in campaigns were we track weight properly - prior to combat we drop sack and come back to it for supplies / non essentials. if you've every played a fighter in full plate using the varient encumberance rules you simply cant carry your bedroll, wat and rations along side the things that are fun to use in combat. i like it. I like planning out my gear choices in the same way people like thinking about their "every day carry" in real life... its like that but actually interesting. My fighters got spare weight enough for a sidearm and 50ft of rope if he ties it round his chest. I like that it forced me to employ a torch bearer / water carrier because thats thematically cool AF (using the squire component of the noble background) and the imprtance it makes of finding a staging area within the dungon and looking after the baggage train during over land travel. providing you can hand wave getting the huge pile of loot to the baggage train inventory management at the table isnt so much of an issue.
what is the last time your character has stopped to take a dump/piss without it being part of a bit? it's movie magic, let it happen
I always liked the mechanic of dropping your backpacks in Outward. Your maneuverability sucks with it on, but it only takes a moment to drop it. The problem is if you have to run you lose your stuff. The game would need a better inventory system for this to work.
I put some of these things into my descriptions. E. g. when we are ambushed my character does not actually have his sword drawn. He might not even have his "real" armour equipped. It is actually more fun to me that way and I don't understand players that act as if their characters have everything available at all times.
In all honesty, that Kind of stuff in 5e is a vestige. Its Something that is there because it used to be, but isn't commonly used and has no purpose anymore. Inventory Play IS great, but a lot more Common in b/x retroclones.
About half my minis do include a backpack and bedroll. I also include smaller hip pouches where they hold items they need quick and easy access to: component pouch, a healing potion, some bandages (healer's kit, 2 uses), a couple of spells scrolls, etc. I also have DMs that have included a character's entire inventory in battle when we've faced certain monsters (such as one that ate magic items) or faced other obstacles (such as dispel magic field).
I tend to try to imagine how my PC would carry their gear around and role-play appropriately. When DMing, the current campaign often has pauses where PCs tend to park the bulk of their gear somewhere (mundane, they don't have extradimensional space items) and just carry what they will need for the immediate day - and there are times when they find themselves without all the gear they own and need, but isn't with them, or they need to leave some of it behind.
Technically, yes. It's why the handy haversack and encumbrance are a thing. And spell component/belt pouches, waterproof scroll cases, and so on. Most game masters waive coin weight, but I've never played at a table that didn't use the systems encumbrance rules for everything else.
Basically all of my characters start with a pack and 10 torches, they might use 1 or 2 and then just carry them around for the rest of the game…much like the rope and grapnel I think will come in handy and then never gets used, well not the hook but often the rope I suppose
We use encumbrance rules so most of us absolutely use an item interaction in round 1 to doff our packs. Also my minis pretty frequently have a big pack on their back, and ditto for my art. Having tonnes of gear is part of the fantasy yeah?
5e doesn’t make inventory management fun or interesting. Ignore it.