If I’m being honest, I ignore the weight values for items unless it specifically comes up or if a player starts hoarding things aggressively.
Yup. Same goes for temp/hunger/thirst. Unless the environment creates a situation that directly challenges that, like arctic conditions, desert, underwater, extended covert ops etc., these things do not serve the story and get in the way.
Plus, a bag of holding neatly side-steps a lot of encumbrance problems and I firmly believe that’s why it’s been a part of D&D lore since at least 2nd ed.
Meanwhile, if the table wants to go deep simulation on all this, the rules are there for that. But I wish everyone good luck with fighting monsters up close in a cave where weapons bigger than daggers are too large to swing, and heavy armor too bulky to be practical.
Yeah, encumbrance, rations, and even sleep can be too crunchy to deal with all the time. We’re making so little progress as it is! But they can be nice as occasional plot points.
Exactly. Want to haul the locked chest back to town? Then its size matters. Want to pick up a dagger and some coins? Who cares, we’re trying to have fun here not micromanage inventory.
Off topic, but imperial instruments always crack me up, with the fractional displays.
That’s insane. Is eigths the minimal resolution, or can it do stuff like “15 and 76/89ths of a pound”?
Usually it is by powers of 2 and only up to 64ths at most (least?). So you might see 3/8, 7/16, 15/32, or 37/64, but never 5/7 or 23/24. Also, usually the fraction is reduced, so the numerator will always be odd (1/4 and not 2/8).
Well that’s reassuring… slowly backs away hope … hope they stay odd, get the great fractions of the empire! They are, certainly something, wow… yeah … i gotta go but
Yeah come on 76/89ths would be silly because 89 is prime and 76 is even, it would obviously be rounded to 55/64ths
Drug dealers need to know it’s an 1/8th?
I imagine that D&D uses a similar encumbrance system to project zomboid. Those values don’t only represent weight, but the actual “encumbrance” of the item which sort of takes into account weight, the volume of the object and how awkward it is to hold.
But even then it feels too heavy for rope
I once bought 2cm thick hemp rope for reenactment purposes (can’t recommend, it’s worse than nylon and costs more and maintaining it sucks).
I don’t have any spare, but I chucked some on a scale, and it seems to be about 250 grams per meter, for about 8.5lbs per 50ft.
So D&D rope is even thicker, or its tarred (which you absolutely should do if you dislike drying rope).
Oh come on everyone loves maintaining their ropes, it’s a classic hobby. Wake up, churn your butter, maintain your rope, then it’s time to roast some chicory for your morning coffee.
My assumption is they meant a much thicker rope, but yeah, definitely not as heavy as they say.
Yeah I wouldn’t even call that rope. Cord, perhaps, but it seems too thin to be called rope.
Modern climbing ropes are still less than 10lbs at four times the length. Not sure how the density compares, but it’s not 4 times denser either.
The numbers are so weird man
It’s fantasy system, not metric system 🧌
- Braided, not twisted.
- Manila not hemp.
- Go ahead and try to climb that rope with bare hands.
Kids do it literally every day in gym class, and sometimes on the way back down they do learn some valuable lessons about abrasion and doing things you’ve seen on TV.
I do think there’s an unspoken assumption for adventurers that they wear gloves for this and many more reasons.
Those types people climb are much larger in diameter. The thinner the rope the more difficult to hold onto it.
