Make Tracking Encumbrance Fun 

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Item slots are the best rule I have yet to push on my players! Great topic, Ben!

My long-standing rule for encumbrance in my games is essentially "I don't care how heavy your equipmemt is, I care how you're actually carrying it." So at various points, usually when the players come across a big treasure haul or need to perform some athletic activity, I'll ask the players to explain how they're carrying everything. Depending on this explanation, they get lumped into one of four categories: Unburdened (non-restrictive clothing and minimal equipment), Light Gear (armour, weapons, pouches, restrictive clothing), Heavy Gear (full backpacks, travel supplies) and Overburdened (carrying large, unwieldy objects or laden with sacks of treasure). It's served me well so far, as my players tend to be reasonable about saying "yeah, I don't think I can carry that." Probably wouldn't work well for a published system though, where you can't rely on having such players.

I remember an old meme with a warrior loaded with tons of things and the words "I think you are abusing my lienency on encumbrance."

good video! Just can we talk about how ben's room gets smaller and smaller? Ben's eventually just gonna become a sentient bookshelf with an overdub of his voice

In my homebrew rules, a slot is : - 100 GP - 100 similar objects, smaller than a fingernail - 10 similar objects, smaller than a thumb - 1 day of rations - 1 weapon/book/bottle/torch/etc.. And we go from there, estimating each objects based on that table. Works great for us !

Slot based systems also make more sense. The plate armor you are wearing on your body doesn't weigh you down nearly as much as the looted one you're carrying on your back due to weight distribution. *However* I think a slot encumbrance system only works well if there are a limited amount of different size categories (say 5, where a category 3 is the largest that can fit in your backpack) and items like your worn armor and weapons (up to a reasonable point) are excluded from the calculation. Choosing heavier gear should not penalize players in regular play, it will come into play in situations like swimming, climbing, or long distance running.

I was literally just typing out a comment saying I like to use the video gamey grid for item slots when you brought it up! I really like that it ends up representing not only how much weight a character can carry, but also the puzzle aspect of making it all fit - almost like packing a bag to go camping.

When I ran my first 5e game about 5 years ago and announced that I would be using encumbrance rules, the players immediately began to whine about not having Bags of Holding because tracking encumbrance was too hard. A slot system would take the wind out of that bagged argument.

When my son was around 9, I printed out cards like the mouse game and had him manage his inventory based on the size of his pack (huge packs reduce dexterity). Additionally, he had "pockets" or "pouches" for items at the ready, so his pack might be full of potions, but he could only have four available in combat. Or three and one item, etc. To get items out of the pack required one turn to drop it (dex penalty gone) and another turn to root around in it. It could be done in combat if needed, but added more tension. We have used the same system for years now.

It's rather common for GMs to give players a really important item that will be needed later, or for the players to pick up a plethora of circumstantial items that they forget about. Tracking encumbrance forces players to become keenly aware about what they're carrying, and, least in my experience, this helps players actually use that equipment. Excel spreadsheet or something equivalent and you can make it tangible without wasting time fiddling.

Brings back memories of 2e & "how are we carrying this hoard back to town?" lol good times

My favourite system for this is Stars Without Number. Items, including weapons and armour, have an Encumbrance rating (usually 1 or 2 but sometimes 3). PCs have a Readied Encumbrance (equal to half their Strength) and a Stowed Encumbrance (equal to their full Strength). Readied items can be drawn freely, Stowed items require an action to pull out.

Hair cut is on point, just like your points on encumbrance!

Another good reason to limit inventory: if players have a hundred items in their pack, they are going to forget about some of them. There will be things that are useful for encounters that they end up not using, and there may even be pot-relevant items that they forget they they have. A number of times I have had to remind players that their PC has already found the thing that an NPC is looking for.

I think item slots is an interesting approach. For me personally, I use the "reasonability test". It's pretty straight forward - what is reasonable for your character to carry? Usually it pairs down to 1 suit of armor (no one walks around with 4 sets of armour, sorry!), 2 - 3 weapons (3 if one is a dagger - and this includes quivers, scroll cases, etc.), and then basic delving, exploring, and survivable equipment that can all fit into a large backpack. No weights, slots, tetris-ing, etc. Thing is, across dozens of different folk and people, I've only ever had to enforce the rule once. Individuals know what's reasonable and what's not.

I really like the Anti-Hammerspace encumbrance rules. They are basically slot based, but you draw out the items into six, three slot containers.

I had a GM that was a bear on encumbrance. Thank God for bags of holding. Sometimes when I run a campaign, the very first "quest" is researching and finding all the required materials to make a bag of holding for a shop keeper, the reward of course would be a small bag of holding for everyone, (if they performed very well) or just one for the entire party

You had me at "you play as a mouse". Very cute little idea to have the inventory tetris be affected by your conditions.

We've been running Knave at our table for a while now and I strongly recommend people trying out the inventory system. The hype is real! The players immediately become more immersed trying to figure out how to carry all the loot and weighing the relative value of things they want.

I got the rules I use from mouse guard. It has a front and back outline of your character. You have to draw everything you wearing, and holding onto that character. If you can’t do it you can’t carry it. It also brings you into the game by being able to look down and see yourself as well as you can draw it. It’s easier to see how absurd carrying a lot of stuff is when you take away the list and give the gear portrait

Runequest had (has) something similar. Every character has an ENC score, with a little formula to calculate it - average of STR and CON, but no greater than STR. Then any item that can be easily held in one hand is called a "thing". Two handed weapons mostly count as two "things". Some very large weapons count for 3. Most non-metal armor counts for 1, metal armor 2, but a few exotic armors are more.

The idea to make spells occupy the same slots as encumbrance is GENIOUS. It solves soo many problems: - slots for carrying is indeed the most fun way to track encumbrance. - it makes spell components (the stuff you need to cast the spell that occupies the slot) play a role without being more boring bookkeeping - it naturally limits the number of spells the wizard can take with them, as they'd need the components, making a vancian system actually make sense - it makes strenght more valuable, AND explains why wizards would have less "mundane" items and armour. Same counts for lightly armoured and armed 'scouting' characters, btw, as they have more trinkets and tools. It'd even explain better why some divine characters can wear heavier armour, as their source of magic doesn't require components.

For D&D 5E I can highly recommend "Darker Dungeons" by Giffyglyph. It has simple and fun rules for slot based inventory, survival conditions, stress and lingering injuries and many more modular rules that makes 5E more dark and gritty. I've been using it for a while now and it's impossible to go back to the vanilla rules.

man QB has been dropping some bangers left and right on this OSR advice stuff literally the exact information I was looking for at the exact time I was looking for it

Pathfinder's "Bulk" system reminds me of I've seen OSR websites talk about the stone system. Here's a run down: Weight is in Stones, not pounds. A stone is an archaic weigh measurement. Your max load is your strength score in stones. You are heavily encumbered at 2/3 Str or more in stones, and lightly encumbered once you hit 1/3. Plate mail=4 stones Medium armor= 2 stones Light armor and 2-handed weapons= 1 stone Hand weapons, Ammo bundles, and most adventuring gear= 1/3 stone Potions, Rations, jewelry, small tools, daggers= 1/10 stone Loose gemstones, coins= 0 Stones, but a thousand coins equals a stone.

Wizardry, an Apple II game and one of the early inspirations for Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy had a basic 8-item slot encumbrance rule. Since it was based on early D&D, a lot of the game involves slogging back and forth between whatever floor you were last on and filling up the handful of empty inventory spaces you had left after taking equipment into account. The game also had it where if a party was killed, you could create a new party and if you could make it back to where your bodies were, you could not only get your old equipment back if you had inventory space, but if you had space in your party, you could bring back some of the bodies for a chance at resurrection.

I’m really surprised you didn’t mention Veins Of The Earth’s system for encumbrance where your stat modifiers each have a slot box associated with every modifier point. It’s by far my favorite rpg book ever made. I’m currently home brewing a sci-fi version. I can’t recommend that book enough. Get it while LOTFP is still selling it (or anything for that matter).

This is my favorite unsolved RPG rule problem, thanks for your contribution! :)

In my system, a nuD&D-derivative off of the SWSE chassis, I've been waffling between traditional encumbrance and item slots and your video has helped me decide to use item slots.

Forbbiden Lands have a really nice encumbrance system with item slots

RuneQuest 2 in 1978 or so had a slot based system. ENC was broken down in to a thing (something you could hold in one hand) and you could carry so many things based on CON and STR.

B/X "coin weight" is my favorite. After players add up their armor, weapons and gear they're left with the exact number of coins they can haul. It also easily converts into 16 one hundred coin slots. Gear RAW states that all adventuring gear counts as 80cw total. I allow 3 items to fit into this "slot" (usually a waterskin, ration and torch bundle) but any additional items beyond that cost 100cw each. Simple as.

One advantage to tracking encumbrance that didn't come up is that it makes you aware of what you're carrying. So often I have players who completely forget about all the starting equipment your character gets in 5e, like crowbars and hammers.

Very cool. I like the idea of having emcumberance slots, and conditions can fill those as well. Good!

This is where tools can facilitate game play. I have an online character sheet that tracks all of this so players can, at a glance, see their encumbrance and movement impacts. In lieu of that, slots is absolutely the way to go. [Edit: Note, we play AD&D and embrace the mud and consequences - I direct everyone to AD&D 1e DMG pg. 225 for the gear preparations of Dimwall and Drudge and the consequences].

Really enjoying you bringing back to the spotlight the old school D&D.. for me its nothing but 1E/2E.. what I grew up on and won't ever change.

One interesting thing I find that some people have a taboo against, but I like, is using technology to help. Having a way to have computers manage all the math is a good way to get rid of Encumberance’s biggest weakness!

Funny you were talking about spells taking up spell slots. Wizard's spell books can get quite Chonky in 2e AD&D. I had one wizard that was encumbered basically just carrying his book around. XD

I'll point out that with many digital character sheet, calculating weight isn't difficult. It will tell you how much you are carrying and how much to various encumbrance points (light, medium, heavy, or whatever). Even if you print it out, you then know how much to your next point. If you have 14lbs until you are moderately encumbered, fine. You typically aren't adding/removing equipment that much until you find something specifically heavy. Thus, you can mostly ignore it until you have to carry a suit of armor at which point you just assume you are moderately encumbered. If players get new armor or weapons, they can do a recalc when they level up and update their sheets (away from the table). Most players will typically 'revolt' if you make weight/slots too big of an issue. They'll bring mules or pack dogs, or get a bag of holding, horses, etc.

For a modern take, look into the bulk system in Starfinder.

Just stumbled upon this channel and this series on older D&D rules is really cool.

Another benefit of tracking items is that in helps to stop players forgetting they have an item for 5 sessions as they are always looking over them

Mind-blowing stuff!! Thanks again for uploading! Always love your analysis.

Yes the LotFP encumbrance slot system is the way to go. The Veins of the Earth modification is almost better.

Stars without number uses encumbrance instead of weight. It is basically a slot based system. What i liked about it was that encumbrance wasn't tied to item weight, but how easiy it was to pack/carry

I really like this new approach to videos. Good work. Keep it up!

Wow, these are all great ideas. I'm glad I found this channel.

New comment for an old video, but the new Transformers RPG by Renegade Studios uses slot-based item management. The system uses "Hardpoints" which all PCs have start with 4, 2 of which are their hands. Character options and Upgrades can manipulate this amount, but it is a nice clean sensible way to manage players weapons, gear and any support equipment (like bulldozer shovels, helicopter blades and hook & cables) the players characters have.

Great video! I’m going to try these ideas with my groups.

An excellent, historically based rule suggestion I came across (may have been from Bat in th Attic), was using stones. 1 STR = 1 stone (14 lbs.) Heavy items were listed in single stones, so a double axe might be one stone and a longsword half a stone. If I remember correctly, he advised working in units of one stone for heavy items and three items per stone for light stuff. For very light objects, only very large amounts would count as ⅓ stone.

I've been using a system where items are given a score based on bulk, typically between 0 and 3. Players have a carry weight that is rather low and based on sizes and strength. Think 8 to 12. Works rather well for us. Allows for imposing limits without too much math. A well armed warrior is at 6 weight from plate, shield, and long sword. Throw in rope, tent, and dungeoneering kit and your nearing the limit. An extra piece of chalk or a hammer won't break you, but hoarding weapons might. Makes the team donkey much more important. :p

I just tackled this problem for a home brew!!! I agree, the resource management in the decision making is fun!!! I did a little study to start, surveying a bunch of games to see what they did. In order of highest to lowest complexity, I labeled them -- Accounting (count everything), Slot-Based, Common Sense (i.e., DM judges), and No Encumbrance. I wound up choosing the slot-based system of Lamentations of the Flame Princess as the model for my equipment/encumbrance/movement rules.

AWESOME! Thx for the chance to win! Looking forward to the newsletter as well!!!

Thoughts at the 6minute mark: (1+[strength mod] and/or [con mod]) times proficiency modifier is the number of equipment slots you can carry.

a great visual example of the slot based system is the video game Diablo. In my campaign (I enforce encumbrance) I have had players dumping food and gear to carry more loot out of a dungeon. Makes for some great tension as they try to get back to town without delay.

I have been thinking about using the Five Torches Deep system for my other games also.

I only just recently discovered this channel. So far I like the content, keep up the good work. I have been in campaigns in the past where everyone back pack acted like a bag of holding and I agree it does take away from the game experience. The slot based tracking is an interesting idea, and one that I have played in before. It makes item choices more important.

I use the following encumberance system (coming from WHFRPG E2): Categories: Tiny/Small/Normal/Great This not only regards size, also about weight. A great item takes 2 slots, a normal slot takes 1 slot. Small items take 1 slot but can hold per slot X copies / stacks (potions, food, torches, etc.) most of the times consumables, but also knives, daggers, mugs… if you can stack it, fold it or make a small bunch… its a candidate. Tiny items are so small, they just ignore the slot system. Examples: a broche that is added to the outfit, the inevitable Map, a letter, etc. Based on your Strength/Physical Attributes/Size you get more slots and more X. Armour uses a different system. The „always ready“ weapons also get a slot for free (like the inevitable hand-sword), but cannot be more than 3 slots (thinking sword+bow, sword+shield, 2 swords + dagger, great weapon + dagger)… I tried to write it in an system agnostic way.

I was thinking the same thing with The Fantasy Trip from Steve Jackson games. I used the idea of "grenade equivalents" from his car wars game as an example that I sent him. Hopefully he will place it the "Hexagram" zine.

I really liked the fatigue system. I use a VTT (FGU) which is not very illustration friendly, it can be done with some work. But I do use encumbrance, I believe according to 1st edition D&D it was a measure of weight and bulk. The slot system is a great idea. By making (1lb = 1 slot), you take care of both components of encumbrance.

I remember reading the loot dragons have and wondering how players would carry that. Even worse if you base it on what you see in the Hobbit movie, for Smaug. Mules and carts would take weeks or months, all the brigands for 100 mile radius would converge on the party.

Yeah the newsletter and the giveaway is a win win haha just found your channel through reddit and am a huge fan!

Great Video! I love item slots. I use the Anti-Hammerspace system myself but it's essentially the same. I also modify the number of containers available by STR mod instead of just armor. It was GREAT for Dungeon Crawl Classics.

I am very happy too encounter this video, gonna share this with my players and hopefully they are willing too give it a try. Gonna make a Diablo bag system, also geting bag of holding gonna be so much meaningful as well and very rewarding for players! Many Thanks Questing Beast!

I just want somebody to make a nice inventory system and sell it on dmsguild. Most of the inventories on there are ugly or just not simple enough for most (especially newer) players. The Tetris like inventory sounds incredible, but then you'd have to kind of draw the items into the boxes and not everybody is up for that.

I have seen people do really fun stuff with item slots. Falling in water fills them with moist, getting tired fills them with fatigue, magically gaining weird amounts of weight fills them with fat and if you use roll under, whenever you try to stay afloat or hang from a precipice you might have to roll under your empty slots or start sinking/falling forcing a fun and iconic decision: do I drop my droppable gear to increase my chances at staying alive?

The Encumbrance rule in Pathfinder 2e is complete and really simple.

5:22 so we could use the item slot system & say that the weight measurement is called "swords", which sounds better than "stones"

This video was super informative. After watching this I have made a homebrew slot based encumbrance system for fith edition. Basically: the amount of slots are your strength score. And I put all the items from the Players Handbook into an excel document with 1, 1/2, 1/4 or 1/10 slot size (or some take up several slots, like a ladder). Every other item, like magic items I just rule the size/weight on the fly.

I ran a Skyrim game the other day due to our regular DM being out and I had to quickly homebrew some sort of capacity system. I ended up using a slot system just like this. It was determined by strength score (everyones was less than 10) and item size. (Food/potion/dagger= 1 slot. Sword/axe/shield/cheesewheel 2 slot, great weapon = 3 slot and armor = 4). I also allowed for any starting equipment to not be counted in, for brevity's sake. Skyrim being extremely combat heavy meant the players were stocking up on food and searching for potions whenever they could. Food was pretty much infinite but because it only healed 1 point (as a bonus action, once per turn) it was less effective than using a potion (1d4). But for the first time it felt like encumbrance was actually manageable and fun, since the players would trade items with each other when hurt or if they found too many potions.

I made simple item cards for my home game. The players or the GM can fill them with the respective stats and info. But they didn't have a well marked spot for weight, so I just went there and modified my template, thanks! Now they'll be able to arrange them on top of one another so that the most relevant info sticks out, and the weight can be easily counted.

This was a great video and I get a strong feeling you run really fun games. We are in a second ed ravenloft game where we just defeated the three hag darklords in Tepest. While a misplaced bomb demolished their house and most of the loot, we ended up with their massive cauldron even our 18/80 fighter couldn't lift. So being a wizard I poly morphed into a bear on top of it and circus rolled that thing to town.

VTTs really help with encumbrance and weight tracking in my experience. That said, if I go back to playing in person, without tools, I will be using this/the pathfinder system. I am loving this series btw, your video on dungeon exploration is one of my favorites.

Definitely using this system.

OD&D and BD&D got it right. 🙂 Weight in coins is the way to go. The real life weight of items are irrelevant because you only really need to know how much treasure you can haul. At the start of a session you add: armor, weapon, shield + 80 for equipment. Now you have your total encumbrance for the whole session. You know how much treasure you can grab before dropping in speed. Example : Sword 60 + Chain armor 400 + shield 100 + equipment 80 = 640. Encumbrance 640 has a movement speed of 60' per turn For this session the player knows that he can grab another 160 coins of treasure before he would drop to a speed of 30'. Max amount of treasure he can grab is 960 coins. This player only ever needs these two numbers during play. 160 coins before a drop in speed, maximum 960 coins. No further calculations necessary during this session. All you ever need. No pounds, no stones, no bulk, no "slots", no small/large items, no managing every single item. A maximum of 1600 coins of weight is logical. 400 in backpack, 600 in a large sack in right hand, 600 in a large sack in left hand. That equals 1600 coins. Done! 😁

This is absolutely something I'm adding to my game!

Your content is so good. Thanks!

For 5e i just used the variant encumbrance in my ice wind dale game and my players have been pretty receptive to it. I didn't have to reinvent the inventory system or have them learn a new system, but it did immediately make them think about what they need and what they don't and how they're gonna take care of a sled and beats of burden.

Rad Hack uses slots based upon your strength score. Super easy to use.

I like the 5 + Strength bonus number of items before you're encumbered, and+ 5 more before you can't move anymore, or only at a crawl. This would work for Fantasy Flight Games' Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader etc (40k rpgs) as well, so I think I'm gonna institute it in the next adventure. Excellent video, cheers. Your room looks like the book section of a well-stocked hobby shop!

These are neat! I love the content besides reviews that have been on the channel lately.

ive always enjoyed them as they add an addtional chalange to the game and makes strength based characters much more relivent

Blades in the Dark uses a slot based equipment system. At the beginning of a mission, you select if you are foing for a light, medium, or heavy load, and that'll determine how many things they can carry.

Mausritter's system is super cool, it and Knave's slot based system has inspired me to create an inventory system that uses a grid based system similar to like Diablo and other computer game rpg's inventories. Some of the items look like how they should look (heavy armor looks like pieces of armor, etc.) and then some stuff is weird polyomino type shapes (tetris-y shapes) such as the magic spell runestones and conditions you can get. It has been super fun in my group's play-testing but we have all enjoyed weird computer rpg inventory management so it may not end up being for everyone haha. It has been super intuitive, simple, but also deep.

I can't believe I've never heard of a slot based encumbrance system before. I've got a GURPS fantasy game starting up soon, and that sounds perfect.

Great stuff friend 👏 👍

Luke Hart from The DM Lair has a system designed for 5e that is very similar to what you're describing. It's just called _Revised Carrying Capacity_

The best system of encumbrance that i have seen is from the rpg ryuu-tama. You can carry your STR+3 with STR being a d4/d6/d8/d10/d12. All items have a size of 1, 3, or 5. Each point over adds a -X to all rolls, so 3 over = -3. Containers have a size but can hold X size in items which do not count against you carry capacity (ex. Backpack is size 3, but can hold 5 size). Most weapons are size 1 or 3 with armor being 3 or 5 (ex. Bow is 3, leather armor 3). An average person can carry 9 size and i can see yourself thinking that i use that on just my bow, armor, and backpack. Yes, but no. A rule that is found on the character sheet but kinda glanced over in the rule book is that equipped items are size 0. And each character can equip: 2 weapons, 1 armor, 1 shield, and 4 travel items (head, feet, back, and walking staff). However, you may never equip armor and weapons in total size in excess of your carrying capacity. So a human with 9 capacity can equip 9 size over 2 weapons and 1 armor for 0 capacity; May equip a shield, hat, feet, back, and walking staff at 0 capacity; and also carry 9 capacity its other items such as a backpack, bedroll, and rations. Its quick yet detailed enough for a system that is about traveling.

Mausritter mentioned!

For fun, in the video game Pathfinder: Kingmaker, they use a really stringent rule for encumbrance. With 8 Strength, my character could not wear even leather armor (in addition to basic clothing and weapons), without being encumbered, which stifles the Dex bonuses, speed, etc. I am not whining : I adapted and respected the hardcore nature of that game. I used only magical bracers and later acquired many items that boosts said Ability Scores (I still just use powerful bracers and robes as I have insanely high Dex). - nb : BUT, if I am GM/DM, I would use a simplified limit similar to the Bulk system in PF2. i.e. you can carry x bulky items on your back. Also, x small items equates 1 bulk. (i.e. I make a difference between Bulky and 1 Bulk in my logic, so I should use different terms.)

Great video! Always though 5e encumberence is too fiddly to actually use. Five torches deep gets a bit closer to making it usable but the best imo is the black hack where you can just carry a number of times equal to your strength. Also if you're already subbed to the glatisant i assume you're auto entered into the contest?

The slot idea is great! Castles and Crusades uses something similar. Although, I do think the B/X rules of everything being measured in coins is pretty simple in its own way.

Very interesting video, thank you. I fully agree that encumbrance rules are often quite cumbersome in the vast majority of games while they could be fun to play by adding resource management into play. I like the new Alien RPG (Free League) rules. You can carry twice your Strength score in weight. Each object has a Weight of 2, 1, 1/2 or 1/4. Simple, straightforward.

Great ideas, I love the diablo-esque slot affected by debuffs... guess I need to hack a 5e character sheet with slots!

Hey Ben, Great video! whats the book next to Labyrinth, the black with gold cover.

I have to admit that as a DM, I've never paid too much attention to the encumberance rules. I've allowed magical items such as bags of holding or Heward's handy haversacks to be fairly easy items for PCs to aquire. The only thing I really keep track of is rations and water/party provisions. I've tended to use a common sense approach. I ask for a list of what each PC is taking into the dungeon. As long as it isn't the contents of an entire store and seems like a reasonable amount, I allow it. It's the same for hauling loot out. If they have the means to reasonably stow it(bag of holding, portable hole, Rincewind's Luggage), I'll let them take it out.

Maybe, but item slots also get stupid if you don't allow item mixing by size, because suddenly your 1 short sword and 1 buckler are taking up 2 different slots despite being roughly the same size and easily paired together. For instance by simply hanging the buckler off the pommel, a practice which was traditionally done with swords, hence the term Swash-Buckler. Or if your 1 ring can't be mixed in with your 99 coins. Regardless, item weight works, what doesn't is just how much a person can reasonably carry without affecting their mobility, and the use of complex charts instead of simple formulas to denote this. --- Take 3.5/PF1 for instance, a basic Melee NPC will have 13 Strength which works out to 50/100/150lb carry weight. This is supposed to be the average Warrior. Then take a Heroic Melee NPC with 15 Strength, which works out to be 66/133/200lbs. This is supposed to be the average Fighter, ie average player whom are generally above average. Yet if you've ever walked around with an extra 50lbs in your pack, you'd know for certain that there's no way in hell you're climbing, jumping, or swimming like you would with 0lbs. Not to mention while modern soldiers are expected to carry around 100lbs of gear, quite a few of them wind up with long term medical issues because of it. So it makes little to no sense that you could carry 150lbs let alone 200lbs and still run, swim, or climb at all. Compare that to the average Human weights, 140lbs for females, and 175lbs for males. Are you telling me that the average Warrior is somehow able to weigh 325lbs, gear and all, run 6.8mph, jump 2ft high, 10ft long, lift his weight while climbing a rope ladder, and doesn't immediately sink into the river while trying to swim? Maybe the first is reasonable enough, but the rest seems like quite the stretch. Then again the average Scutum/Tower Shield weighs 45lbs according to DnD3.5/PF1, when historically it was closer to 22lbs, so maybe it's just that the devs didn't know what stuff weighed and threw out numbers which sounded reasonable to a novice at the time. Amusingly though the PF1 game I run, only one player out of six wears Medium Armor and has a Medium Load. So maybe it's not a big issue for most as your typical player will want to go as light as reasonably possible anyway.

Just signing up gives an entry to win that beast of a book?! That's crazy! I'm in! :D

Nice, you have me thinking about "fixing" encumbrance rules in Star Frontiers.....