For the past 6 hours I’ve been agonizing about whether or not to cut this rule from Legends & Labyrinths:

Grappling: A combatant can grapple an opponent by making an opposed grapple check, which is a type of action check:

1d20 + grapple attack bonus vs. opponent’s grapple check

If the check is successful, the combatants enter a grapple. Combatants in a grapple can escape by taking an attack action.

When attempting any action (including escaping the grapple), a grappling combatant must first succeed at an opposed grapple check against everyone else in the grapple. This check is a free action. Opposing characters can choose to automatically fail their checks. (Note: When making a  full attack, a combatant must make an opposed grapple check for each attack action.)

These would be the entirety of the rules for grappling. They take my Super Simple Grappling rules and boil them down even further to their core essence. I’m also playing with the idea of embracing the Pathfinder method of a grapple check vs. a static defense score (CMB vs. CMD).

Either way, though, it means including an extra set of rules, at least one extra stat for every character, and extra information cluttering up the Creature Size table.

To put this in perspective, the only other combat maneuver you’d currently find in Legends & Labyrinths is a stripped-down version of a partial charge. (And that’s only there because it was the easiest way to make surprise rounds work. The other option was to give everyone a full set of actions on the surprise round, and that seems to be too powerful in playtesting.) The goal is to make the game as simple as absolutely possible, but not to the point of crippling its utility.

This grappling rule obviously adds complexity and a little bit of extra baggage to the rules. The question I can’t quite answer is this: How essential is the ability to grab somebody else and wrestle with them? If this rule doesn’t exist, is every DM running the game going to end up needing to figure out how to adjudicate it?

What do you think? Keep it or cut it?

ENCUMBRANCE BY STONE

Encumbrance by Stone for OD&D
OD&D Equipment Sheet

Encumbrance by Stone for 3E / Legends & Labyrinths
3rd Edition / Legends & Labyrinths Equipment Sheet

5E Encumbrance by Stone

DESIGN GOALS

Basically, the entire point of the Encumbrance by Stone system is to simplify the encumbrance rules to the point where they can be used to meaningful effect on-the-fly during actual gameplay.

All the way back in 1974, this type of gameplay was discussed. In Volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, for example, we can read:

If the adventurers choose to flee, the monster will continue to pursue in a straight line as long as there is not more than 90 feet between the two. (…) Distance will open or close dependent upon the relative speeds of the two parties, men according to their encumbrance and monsters according to the speed given on the Monster Table in Volume II. In order to move faster characters may elect to discard items such as treasure, weapons, shields, etc. in order to lighten encumbrance.

But in actual practice the encumbrance rules are such a pain in the ass that either (a) they’re not used at all or (b) the amount of calculation required to adjust your encumbrance is sufficiently huge that no one is going to try to do it in the middle of a chase scene.

But in the half dozen sessions since I’ve introduced the encumbrance by stone rules, I’ve had explicit encumbrance-based play crop up twice. And although “encumbrance-based play” may not sound all that exciting at first glance, being forced to throw away your favorite shield or abandon several weeks worth of rations on the pack horse actually provides a great deal of interest. (Going back to get your shield, for example, can be a unique motivator. Running out of food because you had to leave them behind can throw your plans completely out of whack.)

The real root of my desire to find a workable encumbrance system, however, lies in the open table wilderness explorations my campaign is currently moving towards: Encumbrance can make a big difference in how you supply yourself for a particular expedition and that, in turn, will lead to a lot of interesting strategic decisions down the road. Similarly, being forced to leave potentially valuable treasure behind because you can’t carry it will drive interest in revisiting locales.

THINKING ABOUT STONES

Roughly speaking, for the purposes of estimating the stone weight of larger items:

OD&D 1 Stone = 15 lbs.

D&D3 1 Stone = 10 lbs.

But in practice you can just assume anywhere from 10 to 20 pounds. Although eventually set by British law at 14 pounds, the stone historically varied depending on the commodity being traded and the location in which it was being traded. (For example, the 1772 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica states that a stone of beef was eight pounds in London, twelve pounds in Hertfordshire, and sixteen pounds in Scotland.) This makes it fairly ideal to provide a system which uses crude approximation in an effort to vastly simplify the bookkeeping involved with tracking encumbrance. And the slightly archaic nature of the terminology is immersive for a fantasy world. (“I’m carrying about eight stone.”)

In terms of performance, the system will give you a result fairly homogenous with 3^rd Edition up to around Strength 25 and then it begins to fall behind the actual tables when performing a straight conversion of stone-to-pounds.

I’m generally okay with that performance for a few reasons: First, most characters won’t reach those levels of strength.

Second, the bundling system tends to be friendly towards the characters. Each bundle is supposedly around 10 pounds, but many common bundles will actually weigh more than that. (Other bundles will under-perform, of course, but I suspect the opposite will more often be true.) And if you’re carrying 40+ stone, then you have to be carrying 150+ bundles (or a lot of really bulky items).

Third, speaking of 150+ bundles, bulk does become an issue at some point. You may be super-strong, but there are only so many places for you to strap stuff to your body. The exception to that is when you’re just lifting a single, heavy object in your hands (which is why I included a separate column for lift).

Fourth, I just don’t care that much. If I did care that much, I would just use the full-fledged, count-every-single-pound method of encumbrance.

SPECIAL THANKS

The design of this system is heavily influenced by Delta’s D&D Hotspot and Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

Go to Part 1

This is an equipment sheet designed to be used with the Encumbrance by Stone rules for Legends  & Labyrinths / 3rd Edition I posted yesterday. (It’s similar to the sheet for OD&D, but with a couple key differences.)

(click for PDF)

USING THE SHEET

Using the sheet is really where this system comes alive, because it basically makes tracking encumbrance as easy as listing what you’re carrying.

Encumbrance Rule: You can write down your character’s encumbrance rule (based on their Strength score) in the spaces provided in the lower right corner.

Armor/Shield/Weapons: The assumption is that your currently equipped armor, shield, and weapons will be listed for reference on the front of your character sheet. You can jot down the current encumbrance values for these items in the spaces provided in the lower right hand corner of the sheet.

Coins/Gems: These are listed in the upper right and their encumbrance calculated as shown. (To quench the “I have one coin and it apparently weighs a ton” complaints, you can allow PCs carrying 20 coins or less to list them as “loose change” in the miscellaneous equipment section.)

Heavy Items: This section is for listing anything that qualifies as a heavy item (i.e., weighs 1 or more stones all by itself).

Miscellaneous Items: The heart of the sheet. Simply list everything you’re carrying in bundles of 20 or less. When you’re done, you can immediately see how many stones of miscellaneous equipment you’re wearing. Bam.

Add Misc. Equipment + Heavy Items + Coins/Gems + Armor + Shield + Weapons = Total Encumbrance. In practice this is all single digit arithmetic and adjusting your encumbrance on-the-fly during an adventure is practically automatic.

Moved equipment to your horse? Picked up a bunch of treasure? Throwing away your shield in order to run away from the goblin horde at your heels? It can all be done in seconds.

TIPS AND TRICKS

Stored Items: This section of the sheet is for anything you own that isn’t currently being carried by your character.

Inventory of Gems: These are tracked separately to make calculating coin/gem encumbrance easier.

Containers: This area is used for listing containers in use (which don’t count against encumbrance). Empty containers should be listed as miscellaneous equipment. There are two easy methods for tracking which items are in which container:

(1) List miscellaneous equipment slot numbers next to the container.

(2) Put a symbol (star, circle, square, etc.) next to the container, then mark items in the container with the same symbol.

Tracking Supplies: The intention is that you list your supplies in the miscellaneous equipment section, but you can quickly check off supplies used on the trackers. At some point of convenience, you can go through your equipment list, adjust the totals, and then erase the supply checklists to start anew.

The Blank Space: After making the sheet I kept expecting something to crop up that I’d forgotten. (At which point I’d have this convenient blank space to slot it into.) After a half dozen sessions, nobody has suggested anything. (Let me know if you think of something.)

Go to Design Notes

This simplified method for handling encumbrance will be used in Legends & Labyrinths, but it can also be easily dropped into any 3rd Edition game. (The rules for encumbrance by armor and the effects of encumbrance can be found in the core rulebooks.) The design is indebted to Delta’s D&D Hotspot and Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

Encumbrance, measured in stones carried, determines the load a character is currently carrying. Loads are either light, medium, or heavy and a character with Strength 10 follows an encumbrance rule of 10-5-3:  At 3 stones they are carrying a medium load, at 5 stones they are carrying a heavy load, and their maximum load is 10 stones.

Characters with lower to higher Strength scores adjust this rule by 2-1-½ per point of Strength. Partial stones can be rounded up. The minimum possible rule, regardless of Strength score, is 2-1-½. (For example, a character with Strength 8 would have an encumbrance rule of 6-3-2. A character with Strength 18 would have an encumbrance rule of 26-13-7.) These adjustments are summarized for convenience on the table at the end of this post.

Lifting and Pulling: The character can lift and carry the amount indicated on the table above their head. They can lift twice this amount and stagger around with it (moving only 5 feet per round as a full action and losing their Dexterity bonus to AC). They can generally drag or pull five times this amount along the ground (favorable conditions can double this; bad circumstances can reduce the amount to one-half or less at the DM’s discretion).

Tremendous Strength: For scores higher than 29, find the Strength score between 20 and 29 with the same final digit and multiply the listed lift score by 4 for every ten points the creature’s strength is above that score. (For example, a creature with Strength 38 would be able to lift 1,200 x 4 = 4,800 lbs.)

Adjusting for Size: The encumbrance rule for a creature is doubled for each size category above Medium and reduced by ½ for each size category below Medium (to a minimum of 1-½-¼). The encumbrance of armor, however, is also adjusted by the same factor (to a minimum of a half stone).

Quadrupeds: Quadrupeds can carry heavier loads, equal to 150% of a biped.

WEIGHT BY STONE

To determine the number of stones carried by a character, simply consult the table below.

Miscellaneous Equipment: Up to twenty items of the same type (scrolls, arrows, potions, rope) can be bundled together for the purposes of encumbrance. Items of different types aren’t bundled when determining encumbrance.

Stowed Weapons: Stowed weapons have been compactly stored in a way which makes them more difficult to draw (but easier to carry). Stowed weapons must be retrieved before they can be used, but they only count as 1 stone per 5 weapons.

Heavy Items: Anything weighing more than roughly 10 pounds can’t be effectively bundled. Estimate a weight in stones (about 10-20 pounds to the stone). When in doubt, call it a stone.

Clothing / Worn Items: Worn items don’t count for encumbrance, unless the individual items would qualify as heavy items.

CONTAINERS

Weapons are assumed to be in sheaths, armor is worn, and you might have a wineskin or two strapped to your belt. But since there’s a limit to how much you can hold in your hands, everything else you’re carrying needs a place to live. As a rule of thumb, containers can carry:

Empty containers count as miscellaneous equipment. Containers being used to carry items don’t count towards encumbrance.

Larger sacks (often referred to as “loot sacks”) are also possible, but these cannot generally be stored on the body. They must be carried in both hands.

CREATURE WEIGHT BY SIZE

Your own weight does not count against your encumbrance, but these figures are important for mounts. (They’ll also come in handy if you need to carry a corpse or prisoner.)

These figures are meant to serve as a useful rule of thumb, being roughly accurate for creatures similar in build and type to humans (i.e. fleshy humanoids). There will, however, be significant variance within each size category. Even typical animals of Huge size, for example, can easily range anywhere from 400 stones to 3,000 stones. Creatures of unusual material can obviously shatter these assumptions entirely (ranging from light-as-air ether cloud fairies to impossibly dense neutronium golems).

ENCUMBRANCE RULES

Go to Part 2: Encumbrance Sheet

This material is covered by the Open Game License.

I’m preparing to run some combat stress tests in order to put the monster creation rules in Legends & Labyrinths through their final paces. In order to do that, I would like to get my hands on high level character sheets from actual play.

Let me explain what I mean by that: What I want are actual 3.0/3.5 characters who are 10th level or higher and reached that level by earning experience points at the gaming table and leveling up in an organic way. They don’t necessarily need to have started at 1st level, but I’d prefer to see characters who have seen at least 4-5 levels of actual play.

What I don’t want are pregens or characters that were freshly rolled up at higher levels. I’ll be doing some testing with those, too, but they’re easy to find or create.

(Why do I want ’em? In my experience, characters who are created at higher levels tend to look significantly different than characters who have leveled up to those levels.  The organic process of gaining loot and shifting your intended character build in response to the campaign’s events creates different characters than those who are given an equipment budget and allowed to build to a focused spec in a single sitting. And while I’ve got samples from my own games, I’m specifically interested in getting a wide sampling of what the organic processes at other tables created.)

If the sheets are online, you can link me to ’em in the comments. Otherwise drop me an e-mail with “[Character Sheet]” in the subject line. (You can find my e-mail address on the About page.) I don’t particularly care what format they’re in, but I’m particularly interested in the equipment lists so don’t leave those out.

Also: The more the merrier. And if you’ve got multiple versions of the same character at different levels, send ’em all.

If you send me a sheet, I’ll be crediting you as a “Playtest Assistant” unless you tell me not to.

Thanks!

(I don’t need additional external playtesters at this time. When I do, I’ll be posting something about it here.)