One of the few things that I found useful in Tom Clancy's "Clear and Present Danger" (which I'm still reading) is that he noted a strong correlation between the weight of a person and how much they could comfortably carry, long-term, without undue effort.
Now, of course, he was talking about professional soldiers at the time, which therefore assumes that they were already on the high-end of the strength spectrum. However, it occurs to me that D&D adventurers, even Wizards and the like, are also inherently physically active (if nothing else, there's all that running away!). Indeed, even Wizards are known to carry around their packs long-term, which would necessarily hone the various muscle groups.
That suggests that actually a character's weight should be related quite closely to their strength and consitution scores (as well as to height, race, and sex, of course). It also suggests that that "big fat mage" is actually not an adventurer at all - such a character would either be very big and strong, or would be small and weak, or wouldn't really be an adventurer at all.
(Likewise, Gollum's jabs that Sam is a "stupid, fat hobbit" are somewhat true at the start of his quest, but by the end he actually is fat only in comparison to Gollum's own near-starvation - Sam wouldn't have been carrying any excess weight at all.)
The upshot of this is that I'm rethinking the encumbrace rules I had in place for Nutshell, in favour of a simpler system where max load (like base movement) is simply a factor of race - humans can carry 4 major items as a Light load, 8 as a Medium load, and 12 as a Heavy load; dwarves are likewise 4, 8, 12; halflings are 3, 6, 9; and so on. These values should probably include the character's Stength modifier, and potentially allow for the use of a feat or talent to increase the figures.
It's just simpler and cleaner than the current method, which is filled with all manner of exceptions and complexities.
While that's certainly a more lifelike mechanism for encumbrance, I can't help but not like it.
ReplyDeleteCreating a halfling fighter who carries a whole bunch of kick-ass stuff because he has a high strength score ceases to be possible. I suppose that's why 3e had different limits for carrying for small and medium characters, because then both the size of the character, the relative lightness of their stuff and the strength of the character could all be reflected.
I think that's a bit overkill, so I do like your earlier system of having it class-based and number-of-items-based. But moving it to a race-based system just means you've got another reason to never create a halfling fighter.
Ahem... "These values should probably include the character's Stength modifier"...
ReplyDeleteJust sayin'.