A Simple But Realistic Encumbrance System
Let's keep the slots, but lets make all this gear and movement make sense.
Typical slot-based inventory is great, but a little too abstract for me. However, neither my players nor I will spend the time tracking pounds or coin weight. Here is a slot-based system that makes sense to me.
My system is largely based on my personal experiences moving long distances and doing physical activity under a heavy load (Hooah). This is highly subjective, but I think it will add a lot to the realism of the game, and I also think my concessions suspend reality enough to make it more playable.
Movement Speed
First thing’s first, wearing body armor should probably be the main factor in limiting movement speed, for a few reasons:
1) it throws your balance off quite a bit, making quick maneuvers harder.
2) It's easy enough to just drop a bag during combat. Nobody would really want to drop their armor, and it takes too much time anyway.
3) you will almost always be traveling with a bag full of equipment anyway, so it makes sense for the bag to only affect movement if it gets too heavy.
Carrying the Load, Using Real Experience
In my personal experience, humping 25-35 pounds of gear in on your back for extended periods of time is really not difficult after some practice, but doing things like bending over and running can be a nuisance. I am not an extremely strong person, but a good bit above average. I’d give my STR a solid 12. Walking at a fast pace for a long distance with weight on your back can break your body down quickly. But doing it at a casual pace, with frequent breaks, over the course of 12-16 hours? That is a hugely different story.
24 miles in a day with no armor is entirely possible if you give yourself a day of rest every once in a while. You’d only have to walk at a casual 2.5-3 MPH pace, and take an hour break every two hours. So, since this is fantasy, and presumably adventurers are assumed to be fitter than we are, we can say that an unarmored individual with a STR of 10-11, and with a 40 pound bag on, can travel at a pace of 24 miles per day, if they get one day per week to rest and recover. This isn’t even unrealistic goal for a regular guy in half decent shape in modern times.
The body armor I have experience wearing weighs about as much as you’d expect chain-mail to weigh. So let’s start with that. Carrying a heavy weapon, wearing chain-mail, and wearing a 35 pound bag, I would say that the number gets at least cut in half. I’ve done this at six miles before (without resting and at a faster than casual pace), and it wasn’t exactly fun. 12 miles a day, with frequent breaks, would be about as much as I’d want to do, unless it was a big push to a safe destination.
Putting It All Together
Next, I have categorized armor types and extrapolated this data to encompass all of them. You will notice that the daily miles for both heavy armor and Over-encumbered are the same. This is for two reasons:
1) I don’t want to calculate travel over hexes smaller than 6 miles.
2) There will be an upper limit to packed items which is will limit the overall maximum weight carried by enough for someone to say “eh, i guess six miles in a day is possible” and that’s good enough for me. Truth is, this number could probably be higher, but then it would require more frequent recovery than 1 day per week, and we don’t want to make things too complicated.
I’ve added numbers for other movement speeds whose lack of distinction annoy me. For example, the “dungeon exploring” pace is, in my opinion, assuming a certain degree of attempted silence and caution, as well as mapping. Walking casually through a dungeon shouldn’t take a whole minute to move 12 feet. I also don’t think you could walk at a brisk pace through a dungeon due to things like weak lighting, rubble, making sure you find your way, etc. So it stands to reason, to me, that you could “casually” walk through a dungeon at about the pace you’d walk through a forest (where you also need to be careful and quiet, but much better visibility allows for more freedom of movement.)
And What About Stronger Characters? The Weaker Ones?
Like I said, this system will assume that the average adventurer is a bit fitter and stronger than the average US Soldier, so let’s break it down. We’re gonna say that a 40 pound pack is as much as an adventurer with average strength will comfortably carry, with their speed being modified by the weight of their armor. Assuming one will carry about 4-5 pounds of water, we can call it 36 pounds of gear/rations/etc. Now, I prefer slots to pounds.
So let’s break this down as simply as possible. Making a slot hold four pounds feels like a nice round number. It could contain a single 50’ rope, two rations, a single lantern, a single medium sized weapon, two daggers, three spell scrolls, or 100 coins.
4-pound slots, with 36 pounds for an average load, would give us 9 slots. A 10 STR PC gets 9 slots.
Items in the hand will NOT count against this number. Each hand gets an item. Two handed weapons can be carried in one hand, but must be held two-handed to attack.
Certain items should be allowed to be held on the belt or in pockets, such as unencumbering items, scrolls, or potions. Although they may be held on the belt, they count toward encumbrance. This amount is up to the GM, but I would say 2 pockets, 2 belt items, unless they go out of their way to buy belt pouches or something.
Now, I’d say that every two points of STR above 10 should add a slot, and every 2 points below 10 should remove a slot. Surpassing your encumbrance will bump you up a category in movement rate, but dropping your gear in combat will give you your regular encounter rate.
You cannot go more than three slots past your limit.
Carrying a small sack takes one hand, carrying a large sack takes two hands, and they grant 3 and six slots respectively, without changing encumbrance.
To round out our fighter: with 14 STR in chainmail, he will have 11 slots (a 50-ish pound bag) and a movement rate of 90’(30’). If he decides to put more than 11 slots worth of items in his bag, he will move at 60’(20’) but if he drops his bag during combat his encounter movement rate will still be 30’.
Here is an example of how this system might look on a character sheet (I plan to make a whole character sheet soon, once I’ve solidified all of my house rules):
