{"id":17861,"date":"2016-06-10T01:17:53","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T15:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/?p=17861"},"modified":"2019-02-09T02:28:34","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T15:28:34","slug":"he-aint-heavy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/he-aint-heavy\/","title":{"rendered":"He Ain&#8217;t Heavy, He&#8217;s My Servomech: User-friendly Encumbrance in RPGs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_17863\" style=\"width: 340px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17863\" src=\"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/543px-DakarStreet.jpg\" alt=\"Photo by Ferdinand Reus - Flickr [1], CC BY-SA 2.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=3033439\" width=\"318\" height=\"350\" style=\"border: 2px solid black\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17863\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/543px-DakarStreet.jpg 363w, https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/543px-DakarStreet-109x120.jpg 109w, https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/543px-DakarStreet-327x360.jpg 327w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 318px) 100vw, 318px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-17863\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Ferdinand Reus &#8211; Flickr [1], CC BY-SA 2.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=3033439<\/p><\/div>\n<p>This article was inspired by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/GMSDAY\/posts\/1145866865428276\" target=\"_blank\">a Facebook post<\/a> by Toolmaster way back in July 2015 on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/dndmemes\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dungeons &#038; Dragons Memes<\/a>, a facebook community run by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.d20collective.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">The d20 Collective<\/a> who offer various gaming-related clothing (and some cups) for sale.<\/p>\n<p>This post was then shared by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/GMSDAY\" target=\"_blank\">GM&#8217;s Day<\/a>, which is another Facebook community, this one run by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.creativemountaingames.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Creative Mountain Games<\/a>, which is the game publisher run by a twitter acquaintance of mine, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MarkCMG\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Clover<\/a>, who is extremely active in the gaming community, posting links to material of interest to gamers daily on both Twitter and Facebook, running a trio of online gaming communities, both in his own name and in the name of Creative Mountain.<\/p>\n<p>The post asked the question,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nGMs: Are you strict with encumberance rules? An oddly important rule set that most people disregard.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Various GMs and players responded. I wasn&#8217;t one of them because I knew that I wanted to make a more substantial response. In fact, I&#8217;ve been convinced for a long time that there&#8217;s got to be a better way of handling the whole question of encumberance, something that is more abstract and less intrusive, without sacrificing too much of the realism that these systems provide when they are used.<\/p>\n<p>The suspicion that just such a system has been bouncing around the back of my head, off and on, for the entire almost-a-year since the original Facebook post got me to thinking about it. In large part, I was inspired by the system described in response to the question by Emily Rachel Falder, an expat Brit living in Canada. Emily explicitly states in her response that her group (No indication as to whether she is a player or the GM) found the system that her group uses online somewhere but doesn&#8217;t know or remember where or whom:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nWe enforce a different system than the usual rules, in which the GM assigns each item as either &#8220;significant weight&#8221; or &#8220;insignificant weight&#8221;. Players can carry as many insig items as they can fit on their sheets, but each signif item has a number, the total of which is compared against their STR score to see how encumbered they are. We found this system online but I don&#8217;t have the original source handy.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now, this is an interesting idea, but I think it goes a little too far into the abstract in one sense and a little too far into the game-mechanical in another. As I said to myself at the time, &#8220;interesting, on the right track, but there has to be a better way.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At last, I think I&#8217;ve found that &#8220;better way&#8221;, inspired by a number of sources. What&#8217;s more, with a little tweaking of the interface, this system should be something close to Universal, applicable to any RPG.<\/p>\n<h3>Character Strength Scale<\/h3>\n<p>There are a couple of things that the GM needs to know in order to use this encumberance system. The first is the basic die roll used for strength and stat checks. If that&#8217;s a d6, then there is a x4 scale &#8211; don&#8217;t worry about what that means, I&#8217;ll explain in a minute. If it&#8217;s 2d6, there is a x3 scale. A d10 or d12 is a x2 scale. 3d6, 4d6, d20, and d30 are all the x1 scale. d% is a x1\/4 scale.<\/p>\n<p>Each character needs to know their Scaled Strength. This is simply the character&#8217;s Strength score multiplied by the scale and rounded up.<\/p>\n<p>So,<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a character with a strength of 4 on the 1d6 scale multiplies his strength by the scaling factor to get his scaled strength &#8211; 4 x4 =16;<\/li>\n<li>A character with a strength of 8 on the d10 scale has a scaled strength of 8 x2 =16;<\/li>\n<li>A character with a strength of 17 on the 3d6 &#8211; 4d6 &#8211; d20 &#8211; d30 scale has a scaled strength of 17;<\/li>\n<li>A character with a strength of 67 on the d% scale has a scaled strength of 16.75 which rounds to 17;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8230;and so on.<\/p>\n<h3>Total Lifting Capacity<\/h3>\n<p>The second number that will be required is the total weight that the character can dead-lift. Some rules, like the Hero System, define this explicitly, others don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<h5>How about DnD 3.x \/ Pathfinder? They list a &#8220;heavy load&#8221; range &#8211; is that the same thing?<\/h5>\n<p>Actually, no, because the implication is that the character can still move while carrying that load. To convert this, we need to know define how much more the character can lift while immobile relative to the maximum that they can lift and remain mobile.<\/p>\n<p>This means getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. In essence, the highest weight listed for the character&#8217;s STR value in the heavy load column is the maximum they can carry and move, so that load is the equivalent of the highest load that confers an encumberance level permitting Greater-than-zero movement.<\/p>\n<p>If you examine the carrying capacity tables (Table 9-1 on page 162 in the 3.x PHB, Table 7-4 on page 171 in the Pathfinder Core Rules), you can determine that these are defining a three-interval system with the final column (0% movement, 100% encumbered) not shown. That means there are 2 intermediate values in between no encumberance (light load) and total encumberance, and I show below that this is the equivalent of values of 100%, 2\/3, 1\/3, and 0%. So the highest Heavy-Load weight is 2\/3 of the character&#8217;s ultimate total lifting capability.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>For a character of STR 10, that&#8217;s 100 lbs, so the character&#8217;s total lift capacity is 100 x 3 \/ 2 = 150 lbs.<\/li>\n<li>For a character of STR 20, that&#8217;s 400 lbs, so the character&#8217;s total lift capacity is 400 x 3 \/ 2 = 600 lbs.<\/li>\n<li>For a character of STR 30, that&#8217;s 1600 lbs, so the character&#8217;s total lift capacity is 1600 x 3 \/ 2 = 2400 lbs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The too-clever-by-half might notice that these are the values that are three places higher on the respective tables. If you look up STR 13 on the tables, you get a highest number in the heavy load column of 150 lbs; if you look up STR 23, you get 600 lbs; and if you look up (and work out, because the tables don&#8217;t go that high) STR 33, you get 2400 lbs. THIS DOESN&#8217;T WORK FOR OTHER VALUES ON THE TABLE, so <strong>don&#8217;t<\/strong> get used to using it as a shortcut.<\/p>\n<h3>Unencumbered Movement<\/h3>\n<p>The third thing that you will need to know is the Unencumbered Movement rate, also known as the base movement rate, of the typical character. This could be measured in feet, or in scaled inches, or in meters &#8211; it doesn&#8217;t matter. <\/p>\n<h3>Stages of Encumberance<\/h3>\n<p>The first thing that the GM needs to decide are the stages of Encumberance. There are three ways to define this &#8211; as a fixed reduction in movement rate, as a percentage of the movement rate, or as a fraction of the movement rate. These describe the effects of encumbrance on movement and index any other consequences that the GM wants to apply.<\/p>\n<h5>Fixed reduction<\/h5>\n<p>If the typical movement rate is 30ft (or less), there are some obvious choices: -5&#8242;, -6&#8242;, and -10&#8242;. If the typical movement rate is 25m (probably over a different time interval), -5 is the obvious choice. If the typical movement rate is 10&#8243; of scale movement or 10 hexes of scale movement, the choice that leaps out is also -5 &#8211; but if the typical rate is 12&#8243;, -4 and -3 are also viable contenders.<\/p>\n<p>What is required is the ability to list a range of movement, from maximum to 0 based on these reductions.<\/p>\n<p>Maximum is &#8220;unencumbered&#8221;, by definition. Zero is &#8220;fully encumbered&#8221;, again by definition &#8211; the character can&#8217;t do anything but lift the load; if he wants to move, he will have to let go. There has to be at least one intermediate stage (which is why -5 at a 10&#8243; scale doesn&#8217;t work).<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s say 24&#8243; is the typical maximum, and -6 is the fixed reduction. You would then get a range of 24, 18, 12, 6. and 0. What the system requires, going forward, is the <strong>Interval Count<\/strong>. In this case, 24-18 is one, 18-12 is two, 12-6 is three, and 6-0 is four. The Interval Count is always one less than the number of entries in the range &#8211; so, we had five entries (starting with 24 and ending with 0), and there four intervals as a result.<\/p>\n<p>I recommend using 4 or 5 intervals; 3 is generally the minimum acceptable.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s actually important later in the system to convert the results into a percentage of the maximum &#8211; so 24 becomes 100% (24), and the other values in the example offered are 75%, 50%, 25%, and 0%.<\/p>\n<h5>Percentage Movement<\/h5>\n<p>This starts with 100% and reduces the movement rate by a fixed percentage that adds up to zero. You might use 25% (four intervals) or 20% (five intervals). You then multiply the resulting series of percentages by the initial movement rate. If the game system always gives movement as a simple number, like D&#038;D, the fixed interval approach is usually simpler. Where they are more variable or wide-ranging, such as the hero system, the fixed percentage change of Fractional Movement gets around this diversity. It doesn&#8217;t matter if some characters run at 500 miles an hour and others fly at Mach 2.4 (as is the case with the Hero System, if you build your characters appropriately); you simply apply the percentage to the rate of movement and calculate what that reduction in percentage means to that particular character.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s set an interval of 25% for example. The range is 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, and 0%. If a character has a movement rate of 34 hexes, the intervals translate for that character as 34, 75% x34 = 25.5, which rounds in the characters favor to 26, 17, 8.5 (which rounds in the character&#8217;s favor to 9), and 0.<\/p>\n<p>Again, the key number needed going forward is the number of intervals, which is one less than the number of entries in the scale, and the recommendation is 3-5.<\/p>\n<h5>Fractional Movement<\/h5>\n<p>This system starts by defining the number of intervals the GM wants and then converting that first into percentages and then into movement rates. From trying it the other way around, I can state that this should seem fairly clear to readers at this point, but was very difficult to describe without the examples of the previous methods.<\/p>\n<p>To get the % of movement lost, divide 100 by one more than the number of intervals, or by 1 more than the number of intermediate encumberance levels that the GM wants.<\/p>\n<p>So:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>to get 2 intermediate encumberance levels, you calculate 100 \/ (2+1) =33.3% steps: 100%, 2\/3, 1\/3, and 0%.<\/li>\n<li>to get 3 intermediate encumberance levels, you calculate 100 \/ (3+1) =25% steps: 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, and 0%.<\/li>\n<li>to get 4 intermediate encumberance levels, you calculate 100 \/ (4+1) =20% steps: 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%, and 0%.<\/li>\n<li>to get 5 intermediate encumberance levels, you calculate 100 \/ (5+1) =16.67% steps: 100%, 5\/6, 2\/3, 1\/2, 1\/3, 1\/6, and 0%.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Casual Strength<\/h3>\n<p>A concept that comes from the Hero System is the notion of Casual Strength. This is the strength that the character can use without exerting himself &#8211; it&#8217;s everything from the firmness of handshake (ignoring psychological effects) to how firmly the character opens doors to the amount of force the character exerts on the floor when walking\/running, to how firmly he grips his coffee mug in the morning. A character of immense strength tends to break things around them purely by accident.<\/p>\n<p>This notion is so useful that it is applied to the encumberance system to represent the amount an item has to weigh before it becomes significant and needs to be assessed as a load by the GM.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe Hero System calculates casual strength as half of the character&#8217;s normal strength score &#8211; but that&#8217;s a very problematic approach to quantify, because the Hero system uses a geometric scale for it&#8217;s stats, each +5 being twice as much as the previous score. The normal character has strength of 10, so a character with strength 15 is twice as strong as one of Strength 10, a character of Strength 20 is four times as strong, a character of Strength 25 is eight times as strong, strength 30 is 16 times, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>A character of Strength 60 is therefore 1,024 times as strong as the &#8220;average&#8221; or &#8220;normal&#8221; character.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s look at what that means for Casual Strength as a percentage of the character&#8217;s full strength:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Str 60: 1\/2 of 60 is 30, so casual strength is 100% x 8\/1024 = approx 0.8% of the character&#8217;s Strength.<\/li>\n<li>Str 30: 1\/2 of 30 is 15, so casual strength is 100% x 2\/16 = 12.5% of the character&#8217;s Strength.<\/li>\n<li>Str 20: 1\/2 of 20 is 10, so casual strength is 100% x 1\/4 = 25% of the character&#8217;s Strength.<\/li>\n<li>Str 10: 1\/2 of 10 is 5, so casual strength is 100% x 0.5\/1 = 50% of the character&#8217;s Strength.<\/li>\n<li>Str 0: 1\/2 of 0 is 0, so casual strength is 100% x 0.25\/0.25 = 100% of the character&#8217;s Strength.<\/li>\n<li>Str -10: 1\/2 of -10 is -5, so casual strength is 100% x 0.125\/0.065 = 200% of the character&#8217;s Strength.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It was that last result that convinced me, when working on the Zenith-3 rules, that the official casual strength system was good in theory but broken in implementation.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h4>Update:<\/h4>\n<p>There were a couple of errors in the math originally presented above. Blame it on the panic of trying to finish this off at the last moment. These have now been corrected, and thanks to Pierre Parent for noticing them and bringing them to my attention!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Instead, I defined it as 10% of the character&#8217;s Carry, which is itself 1\/2 of the character&#8217;s Lift. Let&#8217;s compare the results:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Str 60: Lift is 1024x25kg = 25,600 kg. Carry is 12,800 kg. One tenth of 12,800 is 1280 kg. A character of STR 34 can carry this load with a small margin left over, while a character of STR 33 can&#8217;t &#8211; so the Casual Strength of the character is 34.<\/li>\n<li>Str 30: Lift is 1600kg. Carry is 800kg. One tenth of 800kg is 80kg. A Character of STR 14 can carry a little more than this load, one of STR 13 can&#8217;t &#8211; so the character has a casual STR of 14.<\/li>\n<li>Str 20: Lift is 400kg. Carry is 200kg. One-tenth of 200kg is 20kg. A character of STR 4 can carry 22kg, so the Casual Strength of the character is 4.<\/li>\n<li>Str 10: Lift is 25kg. Carry is 12.5 kg. One tenth of 12.5 is 1.25kg. A character of STR -16 can carry 1.36 kg, so the Casual Strength of the normal human is -16.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But I was never completely happy with this approach, either. It&#8217;s clunky and complicated, especially the conversion back to a STR score.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In this encumberance system, I embrace the notion of casual strength while offering a completely new mechanism for it&#8217;s calculation. I&#8217;ll get back to that, shortly. Suffice it to say that Casual Str is defined as the STR required to carry the minimum amount that is considered &#8220;significant&#8221; by the system.<\/p>\n<h3>The Hierarchy Of Lists<\/h3>\n<p>The encumberance system I am describing in this article works by creating lists of the objects carried based on the load that those objects represent. There are as many entries on a list as the character&#8217;s scaled strength, and lists are arranged in a hierarchical system by which the entire contents of the preceding list (from light to heavy) consumes slots in the next equal to the number of intervals. If you run out of room in a list, you can start a new one of the same size, consuming a second second set of slots in the next list up.<\/p>\n<h5>The Number Of Lists In The Hierarchy<\/h5>\n<p>Obviously, there are as many lists as there are intervals in the encumberance effects settings chosen by the GM, and the Casual Strength defines the minimum load that a single line on the lowest-weight list contains. This is why I don&#8217;t recommend more than 5 intervals &#8211; it becomes impractical.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_17864\" style=\"width: 495px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17864\" src=\"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/encumberance-lists.jpg\" alt=\"This example diagram (Scaled STR 20 with Four intervals = four lists, each lower list filling four slots of the next higher list) illustrates the central concepts of the system.\" width=\"475\" height=\"475\" style=\"border: 2px solid black\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17864\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/encumberance-lists.jpg 475w, https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/encumberance-lists-120x120.jpg 120w, https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/encumberance-lists-360x360.jpg 360w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 475px) 100vw, 475px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-17864\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This example diagram (Scaled STR 20 with Four intervals = four lists, each lower list filling four slots of the next higher list) illustrates the central concepts of the system.<\/p><\/div>\n<h5>List Character- istics<\/h5>\n<p>If a low interval number has been chosen, it means that there won&#8217;t be very many lists of equipment for the player to keep track of, but it also means that each slot will represent a larger load, so finesse can be lost. Two items should be recorded at the top of each list: the total load that the list will represent when it is filled, and the load that each line of the list represents.<\/p>\n<p>While it&#8217;s possible to compress the calculations into single formulas, a recursive procedure tends to be clearer and easier. So, start by working out how many lists there will be &#8211; this is the same as the interval number. Once you know that, and the total lifting capacity of the character, and the scaled strength, you are ready to calculate the parameters of each of the lists.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>By definition, the list equal to the Interval number will total the lifting capacity of the character.<\/li>\n<li>Divide the total by the scaled Strength to get the load capacity of each slot in the highest-number list.<\/li>\n<li>Multiply that by the interval number to determine the total load represented by the next lighter list.<\/li>\n<li>Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you have identified the characteristics of all the lists.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Okay, so let&#8217;s do a practical example &#8211; and, rather than the nice, neat STR 20 used in the diagram, I&#8217;m going to pick a more realistic STR 17 on the D&#038;D \/ Pathfinder scale, and 4 intervals (just to be different to the usual D&#038;D scale).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>List 4:\n<ul>\n<li>Total lift is 3\/2 of the maximum &#8220;heavy load&#8221; shown, or 3\/2 of 260 lbs = 390 lbs <em>(Side-note: this is one example of the &#8220;three Str higher&#8221; cheat not working, which is why it shouldn&#8217;t be relied on).<\/em><\/li>\n<li>390 \/ 17 (scaled STR) = 22.94 lb, round to 23 lb. So each of the 17 lines in list 4 represents 23 lb of load.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>List 3:\n<ul>\n<li>The top 4 slots of list 4 represent 23&#215;4= 92 lb of load, so that is the total load capacity of list 3.<\/li>\n<li>Dividing that 92 lb by the scaled strength (17) gives 5.4 lb, which rounds in the character&#8217;s favor to 6 lb. So each slot in list 3 represents 6 lbs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>List 2:\n<ul>\n<li>The top 4 slots of list 3 represent 6&#215;4= 24 lb of load, so that is the total load capacity of list 2.<\/li>\n<li>Dividing that 24 lb by the scaled strength (17) gives 1.4 lb, which rounds in the character&#8217;s favor to 2 lb. So each slot in list 2 represents 2 lbs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>List 1:\n<ul>\n<li>The top 4 slots of list 2 represent 2&#215;4= 8 lb of load, so that is the total load capacity of list 1.<\/li>\n<li>Dividing that 8 lb by the scaled strength (17) gives 0.47 lb, or 7.52 oz, which rounds in the character&#8217;s favor to 8 ounces. So each slot in list 1 represents 8 ounces.<\/li>\n<li>The top 4 slots of list 1 represent 8&#215;4= 32 oz of load, so that is the amount of load reserved for trivial items.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Notice that even though there&#8217;s some difficult division in the calculations (dividing by 17 is never fun), the &#8220;round in the character&#8217;s favor&#8221; at the end simplifies the calculation tremendously. &#8220;24 divided by 17&#8221; is a 1 plus a long string of decimal places; but you don&#8217;t need to actually work out what they are, you simply round up to 2 and move on to the next step.<\/p>\n<h3>The Weight Factor<\/h3>\n<p>When the player indicates that he is adding an item to his inventory, the GM has to determine what list it should go onto and how many slots on that list it should consume. This is actually very straightforward because the system does most of the work for him. It only takes a glance of the character&#8217;s lists to spot the two key values at the top of each list &#8211; the total load that the list represents and the load per slot. That means that the GM doesn&#8217;t need the exact weight of anything, just a rough estimate; he simply locates the lowest-numbered list in which the item is less than the total load allowed of the list, and then guesstimates how many of the slots are required.<\/p>\n<h5>Distributed Weight (optional)<\/h5>\n<p>You may have noticed that I keep referring to &#8220;load&#8221; instead of weight. That&#8217;s because they aren&#8217;t at all the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>You can carry a weight that is distributed across your body far more easily than you could if it were a dead weight that you had to pick up. In effect, the <em>load<\/em> is less than the <em>weight<\/em>. The question is always, &#8220;how much less?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no one simple answer, but we have so much fuzziness built into the system already that we can manufacture one. If the weight is not on the arms, the load is 1\/4 of the weight. If the arms are carrying some of the burden, the load is 1\/2 of the weight.<\/p>\n<h5>Constriction (optional)<\/h5>\n<p>Some weight burdens carry a disproportionate load by being concentrated on the extremities. For lack of any other terminology, I have dubbed this effect &#8220;Constriction&#8221;. Gloves, Helmets, Boots, etc, are all affected by Constriction, which has the opposite effect to Distribution of weight. The Load of such items is doubled, or &#8211; if they are concentrated at the very extremities &#8211; quadrupled.<\/p>\n<h5>Unbalanced Loads (optional)<\/h5>\n<p>The other factor that can impact the loading of a weight is how balanced it is. Weight concentrated in any given direction increases the load that the weight presents, doubling it. This can combine with any of the other weight adjustment considerations.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_17865\" style=\"width: 425px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17865\" src=\"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/encumberance.jpg\" alt=\"Three intervals and STR 13, List #3, two ways - showing what happens when you add a second List #2, and illustrating how you can see at a glance what the Encumberance levels are. On the first version of the list, the character is 1\/3 encumbered (2\/3 normal movement), while on the second version, the addition of a second page of list #2 (shown as &#039;2nd list&#039;) has pushed the character into the 2\/3 encumbered bracket (1\/3 movement).\" width=\"400\" height=\"481\" style=\"border: 2px solid black\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17865\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/encumberance.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/encumberance-100x120.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/encumberance-299x360.jpg 299w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-17865\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Three intervals and STR 13, List #3, two ways &#8211; showing what happens when you add a second List #2, and illustrating how you can see at a glance what the Encumberance levels are. On the first version of the list, the character is 1\/3 encumbered (2\/3 normal movement), while on the second version, the addition of a second page of list #2 (shown as &#8216;2nd list&#8217;) has pushed the character into the 2\/3 encumbered bracket (1\/3 movement).<\/p><\/div>\n<h3>The Encumberance Outcome<\/h3>\n<p>Ultimately, the most important list is the heaviest weight list, because it incorporates the weight of all the others. That means that you can simply read the effective encumberance off the list simply by looking at how much of the list is filled. If half the list is filled, the character is half-encumbered and moves at half their normal movement rate. On top of that, there may be other encumberance effects &#8211; penalties to Dexterity, for example.<\/p>\n<p>All of these get indexed against the scale defined at the very start &#8211; the first decision made by the GM. This defines the brackets or categories of effect from encumberance.<\/p>\n<p>As with the &#8220;divide by 17&#8221; example earlier, these categories also simplify the determination of the encumberance levels. You don&#8217;t need exact calculations; as the example shows, you can see at a glance what the encumberance levels are, completely customized for that specific character.<\/p>\n<h5>User-friendliness is the key<\/h5>\n<p>When you boil it all down, this is a very simple system. There&#8217;s:<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8230;a little bit of fiddling that may be required to determine total lift capacity and <em>in some cases<\/em> a scaled STR score;<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;one decision about how granular the GM wants his record-keeping to be (which can be customized for each character!);<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;there&#8217;s a single set of calculations that have to be done once per character but that can be done in advance for all the values that might ever be required;<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;and the rest of the system is simply players keeping a list of what they are carrying.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Things don&#8217;t get much more user-friendly than that. With this system, there is absolutely no need for encumberance to be the &#8220;oddly important rule set that most people disregard&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article was inspired by a Facebook post by Toolmaster way back in July 2015 on Dungeons &#038; Dragons Memes, a facebook community run by The d20 Collective who offer various gaming-related clothing (and some cups) for sale. This post was then shared by GM&#8217;s Day, which is another Facebook community, this one run by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[67,68,125,74,89,12,93,81],"tags":[98,155,117,121,284,172,218,282,150],"series":[],"class_list":["post-17861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dnd","category-dnd-3e","category-house-rules","category-mike","category-npcs-etc","category-pcs","category-rules","category-zenith3","tag-3x","tag-dd","tag-game-mechanics","tag-herosystem","tag-house-rules","tag-npcs","tag-pathfinder","tag-pcs","tag-treasure"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1toiD-4E5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17861"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17861"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23474,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17861\/revisions\/23474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17861"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=17861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}