The Unseen Servant forums

The entry for encumbrance and movement rate on the character sheets is really handy. But I tend to forget about it after character creation. Would it take a lot of work to add encumbrance for each item in the item list, perhaps next to "Location" for each item? Optimally, the sheet would be able to calculate total encumbrance based on the encumbrance of all the items, too.

What you propose is doable and a good idea. Encumbrance in (A)D&D editions is measured in coins, right? If you're looking for a running total, we'd need encumbrance fields on the weapons tab too. And it would have to take into account the actual coins a PC is carrying as well.

In AD&D 1e, encumbrance is usually in gold pieces, but the unit measure probably isn't even necessary in the sheet—just space for a number would be fine, then the unit would be obvious from context. That would make it the most generalizable, I think (OSRIC, for example, uses lbs).

Good point about the weapon weight. You'd probably want to add ammo weight, too.

Speaking of which, a button near the ammo on the weapons tab to decrement the ammo by one would also save a few keystrokes.

Zhym wrote:In AD&D 1e, encumbrance is usually in gold pieces, but the unit measure probably isn't even necessary in the sheet—just space for a number would be fine, then the unit would be obvious from context. That would make it the most generalizable, I think (OSRIC, for example, uses lbs).

Good point. Unit doesn't matter.

Zhym wrote:Speaking of which, a button near the ammo on the weapons tab to decrement the ammo by one would also save a few keystrokes.

Also a good idea.

I'll see what I can do this weekend. We're not doing much for the 4th so I'll have some free time.

Wonderful! Thanks!

I've already worked on this a bit. Seems to be working well. I think I'll add a new field 'Encumbrance units' (pounds, coins, etc.) on the first tab, and I may keep a running encumbrance total for each category (weapons, equipment, gems, magic items) as well as the total encumbrance on the first tab.

If an encumbrance value isn't entered for an item, or a non-numeric value is entered, I'm defaulting the encumbrance value to zero (0)

These are great ideas.

Should make keeping track a lot easier.

Thanks Greg!

Great ideas Zhym ~ and thanks for implementing those ToniXX!

I can't find the OSRIC rule for how many coins equal one pound. Is it 10? What other rulesets use pounds for encumbrance instead of coins?

It's 10 coins to one pound in OSRIC. In AD&D 2e, I think it's 50gp/lb. But then there are weirdos like that guy running Ravenloft on here, where different coins have different weights (I make copper pieces fairly light so there's a reason not to ignore them completely). I have no idea how the character sheet would deal with that, short of having a weight field for each coin. Or maybe players with those weirdo DMs would just enter their money as items.

Zhym wrote:It's 10 coins to one pound in OSRIC. In AD&D 2e, I think it's 50gp/lb. But then there are weirdos like that guy running Ravenloft on here, where different coins have different weights (I make copper pieces fairly light so there's a reason not to ignore them completely). I have no idea how the character sheet would deal with that, short of having a weight field for each coin. Or maybe players with those weirdo DMs would just enter their money as items.

Yes, this is a problem at the moment. I'm trying to figure it how to handle it. I've got most all other aspects of the encumbrance feature done on my development server.

In AD&D1e: 10gp = 1lb.

OSRIC & 2e lists armor, weapons & equipment in lbs. but they are nearly symmetrical to the figures in 1e once you do the math.
(i.e. for leather armor: 150gp (divided by 10) = 15lbs.)

One important thing to note/remember is that encumbrance is a measure of weight AND volume (or "bulkiness"), not just the weight of an item. Thinking of the example of a 10lb. shield vs a 10lb. sack of feathers. They weigh the same thing on the scale but the sack of feathers would actually be bulkier and harder to carry than the shield.

Zhym wrote:It's 10 coins to one pound in OSRIC. In AD&D 2e, I think it's 50gp/lb. But then there are weirdos like that guy running Ravenloft on here, where different coins have different weights (I make copper pieces fairly light so there's a reason not to ignore them completely). I have no idea how the character sheet would deal with that, short of having a weight field for each coin. Or maybe players with those weirdo DMs would just enter their money as items.

This brings up a good point about currency sizes & weights changing from kingdom to kingdom, place to place or even age to age. I've always noted differences between current & ancient currencies imc, with the older age currencies either weighing more or less than the standard, current mint-issue and thus having to be adjusted for accordingly.

Fwiw, here's a link to the Dragonsfoot E-zine "Footprints" page: http://www.dragonsfoot.org/ft/

- Scroll down to the page to Issue #7 and look up the "Master Encumbrance Guide"

Items are listed as weight in gp but it has a lot of stuff listed that isn't covered in the core books. I've been using this resource for quite some time and found it extremely useful!

(Note: You can download these as Adobe pdfs for free, btw!! )

Just saw this thread. Would make my life a lot easier - thanks for your efforts Greg!

New player on the forums here. Would love encumbrance to be listed for each item and have it tallied up automatically!

ken-do-nim wrote:New player on the forums here. Would love encumbrance to be listed for each item and have it tallied up automatically!

+1, just a number and a total and let the DM decide if it's "coin" or just flat weight.

Thanks!

Is this still on the dev server?

The coin weight thing might be solvable with a field for how much a coin weighs. It wouldn't catch weird systems where different coins have different weights, but it would cover most games. Or players in games where different coins have different weights could track those as items.