General Rules Revisited - Inventory & Encumbrance

Rejiggering the inventory system is what’s next on this run of system refinements.

My original proposal turned out to be too lax. Knowing how a decisive part of the reason for using an inventory comes from wanting to reward investment in the Strength attribute, the 20-slot service ceiling was exceedingly easy to attain and a Strength 10 character could shoulder piles of items with little concern. Fiddly math abounded, too, what with the dual currency of slots and encumbrance points.

I wish to tighten the rivets a bit more and this post has got its crosshairs trained on all of that. The balancing act continues to be how to constrain a character’s freedom of picking up all the cake in the world and eating it too while leaving sufficient leeway for low strength characters to remain viable explorers.

“You can’t have everything, where would you put it?”

Beyond my own take on the subject, the matter has been approached of late by other writers, as it is a rule that influences the tone of the whole game. These approaches I found too restrictive in some aspects or too permissive in others. Design-wise, I reiterate the dual essence of the problem posed by this kind of system: it all hinges on how much weight a referee feels is appropriate for a rurally grown person to carry around and how to confront that with the abstraction of armour weight. My previous foray already was concerned with differentiating armour weight from slots, it just wasn’t very good at expressing it.

I want a character with low strength to not be barred from adventuring and I want enough slots that the average character will indeed be able to palm some stuff off the scenery and keep “rainy day” items, rather than being forbidden of taking anything less than mission-critical equipment.

Unable to claim to have found a solution that will fit all sizes, this retooled proposal strikes a middle ground. Or just off-center from middle, as these things are known to go. Playtest might tell.

The burden of change

As regards changes, here’s what I managed to scare up:

- Reduced the inventory to a single page.

- Streamlined the properties and did away with “encumbrance points”, double currency be damned: it’s slot based all the way.

- Got rid of the “containers” sidebar, difficult to make gameable, repurposing it as an encumbrance tracker, for signalling the points at which a character reaches the different encumbrance levels.

- Reworked the encumbrance levels proper.

The Crunch

- A medium sized character can carry up to a maximum of 20 items of inventory (slots) while a small sized character is limited to 15 slots, representing the practical limits of physical space taken up by objects. Of these, the first five are fast-access slots (including hand slots), representing the most practical spots for keeping items on hand and ready to use and that don’t require a dedicated action to be fetched.

- Independent of but interacting with the above applies the encumbrance rule, by which a character’s Strength attribute determines when he becomes encumbered by his load, representing a combined factoring of both weight and overall restriction of mobility (thresholds explained under the next header). A suit of armour reduces the base strength total for the purpose of calculating encumbrance intervals by a number equal to its AC bonus.

(It shouldn’t be uncommon for a strong character to have lifting capacity beyond the slot limit of what can be practically strapped to a body, but any such extra weight will have to be carried by hand or on extraneous containers).

- A normal item occupies a slot – representing roughly 5 pounds – meaning a normal or light weapon, a day’s worth of drinking water, a shield or a quiver of ammunition.

- Minor items (torches, track rations, 100 coins or gems) can be grouped together three to a slot.

- Insignificant items (such as a ring, a sheet of parchment, a quill) occupy no slots as long as their collected descriptors fit inside the box, otherwise the jumbled mess starts taking a slot.

- Heavy items take up two slots.

- Bulkier items (a body, a treasure chest, a keg of beer, an unworn suit of armour) will take up slots on a case-by-case basis, they may be too unwieldy to be stored at all and require being carried by hand at all times.

- Items stored beyond the practical scabbarding of the fast access slots are stowed in the backpack or otherwise distributed evenly about the character (on belt pouches, slings, harnesses and rigging, all of which need to be purchased on a simple pay-per-slot basis) and not within easy reach, requiring that the character expend his action and make a Dexterity check, DC equal to the item’s inventory position. If failed, the round is wasted searching to no avail. Instead of rolling, the character can dedicate a whole round per 5 slots of searching, counting from slot number 4, and ensure that the item is found with a more thorough search. Characters searching through their inventory grant Advantage in combat.

Reworked Encumbrance Levels

I’ve acquired a distaste for the encumbrance levels presented in the PHB, as I feel a bit more granularity is needed, rather than having a sudden plunge of -10’ of speed: tiering it into four levels makes more sense to me, better differentiating between the infantry types inherited from antiquity and serving as reinforcement for the classical hero archetype (i.e. weapon and optional loin-cloth). I’m not yet concerned how this will square with the different classes, adjustments will certainly be made. Math-challenged as I am, I have provided for the simplest of fractions: half, and half-of-half instead of poking at the three-quarters trap with a ten-foot pole.

Encumbrance level	Slot Threshold (modified by armour & rounded down)	Penalties (cumulative)
Unencumbered	Up to ¼ Strength	None
Lightly Encumbered	From ¼ STR  to ½ STR	-5’ Speed
Encumbered	From ½ STR to STR	-5’ Speed, No DEX bonus added to AC, Disadvantage on Dexterity saves
Heavily Encumbered	From STR to 2*STR	-10’ Speed; Disadvantage on physical saves, attack rolls and ability checks

The Sheet

Click to unpack

Running some numbers by way of example

I did this for my own guidance, but it seems illustrative so I’ll leave it here.

Inventory sampling:

Armour: No armour/Leather armour (AC 11)/Mail armour (AC 14)/ Half-Plate armour (AC 16)

Typical Loadout (~12 slots): heavy weapon, heavy crossbow, cranequin, 3 days of rations, light weapon, lantern, 3 vials of oil, rope, 10x pitons & climbing hammer, medium shield.

Retooled proposal:

Character Strength & Encumbrance slot thresholds 

(lightly encumbered (1/4 STR)/encumbered (1/2 STR)/heavily encumbered(STR)/maximum load(2*STR)):

Strength 6 character:

STR 6 (unarmoured) – 1/3/6/12

STR 6 (leather – AC +1, effective STR 5) – 1/2/5/10

STR 6 (mail – AC +4, effective STR 2) – 0/1/2/4

Strength 10 character:

STR 10 (unarmoured) – 2/5/10/20

STR 10 (leather – AC +1, effective STR 9) – 2/4/9/18

STR 10 (mail – AC +4, effective STR 6) – 1/3/6/12

STR 10 (half-plate – AC +6, effective STR 4) – 1/2/4/8

Strength 14 character:

STR 14 (unarmoured) – 3/7/14/28

STR 14 (leather – AC +1, effective STR 13) – 3/6/13/26

STR 14 (mail – AC +4, effective STR 10) – 2/5/10/20

STR 14 (half-plate – AC +6, effective STR 8) – 1/4/8/16