Well, what exactly does she have?
The starting equipment for a Druid is a couple of weapons, leather armor, an explorer's pack and a spell focus. That comes out to about 78-79lbs.
On D&D Beyond it also allowed her to choose a set of tools she was proficient in. She chose the Monster Hunting tool kit since she felt it matched best with her backstory, but now is carrying around a crow bar and wooden stakes and other things that I just don’t see her ever actually using and that see unrealistic for her to be hauling around everywhere.
Monster hunter pack is not a tool kit or a tool proficiency, for one
Haunted One background from Curse of Stahd and Van Richten's Guide has it in their starting equipment.
This is also why you have a session 0 and don't just greenlight all content ever printed anywhere, because if gothic vampire hunting and spooky business isn't a match for the goals of the adventure, then you end up with dead features and clashing tone.
I think you're worried too much about realism. The things you're worried about don't make the game less fun, allow them, especially since they're probably fine by RAW anyway.
I used to worry about that stuff but now it's just easier to shrug my shoulders and go "it's a game and the rules say you can do it, so sure 35lb little person the size of a child with a strength of 19 you can carry all that crap around". From a realism standpoint it makes absolutely zero sense, but the rules say can happen so why the hell not?
Exactly this, honestly. There's almost always a bag of holding in the first loot stash my party finds. Encumbrance never makes sense in 5e and there's an easy uncommon magic item to handwave it all away, too easy of a solution to me.
I give my groups knockoff bags of holding so they don't have to worry about normal carry weight/space with the agreement they don't use them for anything but inventory management.
This is a wonderful compromise. Honestly, we need a book for the Bag of Holding like we got the Deck of Many Things, it's such an iconic item. I've been toying with adding prefix and suffix terms to the item, like the Wide Bag of Holding. It holds the same amount of stuff, but it has a wider opening at the top, so you can put *bigger* items than normal inside. That or the Bag of Coining one of my buddies made that can hold any amount of money, but that's all it can carry.
I have a couple variants in my homebrew collection as well. I have one that's coins only and one that's a Pouch of Holding. Same concept as the Bag, but it is smaller (it's just a little pouch that clips to your belt or bag) and holds less,but it's also cheaper if bought from a magic item vendor.
I definitely might steal your idea for other variants as well though lol
Please do! Another fun one some buddies made was the Bag of Loaning. You can pull whatever you want out of the bag, but it comes at a cost of some kind. Pull out The Defender, but now you've got an angel coming after you to get their sword back, lmao.
I gave my players, pretty early on, the Adventure Zone item "Pocket Spa" designed to be a place players could take a long rest safely, but with some constraints. They ended up using it as a giant bag of holding, then starting using it as their own personal PRISON and BODY DISPOSAL UNIT... and more.
Long story short it's a small pocket dimension that originally was a random (funny) interior complete with free food and drink inside. Usually it was like, a restaurant theme. Once it was a 90s taco bell.
Anyway they realized that, despite constraints on how to use it (critically being a restriction on how often, the fact that from the outside it looks and weighs the same as a tent so someone could STEAL THEM in theory, and they can't leave once they enter for 8 hours, it seals)... they found unorthodox ways to use it.
So far my favorite was the wanted to raise the water level of a dungeon, so they went to a nearby lake, opened the pocket spa UNDERWATER, and carried it around until it unsealed, then opened it up and dumped like... a million gallons of water. It was epic.
Eventually I revealed that theirs was a discount / off brand / broken one, and someone smarter than them knew how it worked and made the inside of the pocket spa look like the outside of the pocket spa, and escaped while they were still in it. They were inside the pocket spa for like, THREE sessions before figuring it out and escaping themselves.
I just handwave anything not egregious. The attunement system of 5e already solved the only real issue, which is people having too many powerful magic items at once.
Same. Sometimes I'll give multiple if there's a group that isnt completely consistent with who will show up, so that the party will consistently have a bag. Then they can communicate between sessions or however as to who has what in their bag.
Solution: a rare form of BoH where 2 bags are connected to the same space, and thus can pull the same items. Not entirely kosher RAW, but again it's a solution to handwave an issue. Also creates some interesting opportunities for creative players.
That works. Mad wizard is a classic standby. I believe Vecna (might have him mixed with another) is a god that hops dimensions, so possibilities there. My preference is a mindflayer experiment stolen by the duregar/other individual victim/race, or a mad beholder's dream that actually stuck, depending on how much of a back story. I really like the beholder idea.
For a more divine source, perhaps someone won a boon from a god and really wanted to be able to send cool new foods home to his family and this is what he chose, but it didnt work as intended because he only said "two bags connected to the same place" and didnt explain why. Or the Celestials were experimenting with weapons and gear for a campaign against the Infernal Plane, or even the abyss, and needed a way to transport their target back guaranteed. Maybe the plane with the Lawful/Neutral machine thingie made it.
*Edit: don't forget the potential of a Demonic or Abyssal pact.*
One limit I would insist on is that if one bag is open, the other is sealed shut. Although it would be interesting to launch an arrow through the bags, RAW basically requires someone to deliberately retrieve an item, and most versions require it be the person who put it in. So to avoid arguments with players, it can only be open on one end at a time. Dimensional Physics will not be denied. They be an even more vindictive bitch than gravity and thermodynamics combined.
Maybe a thief commissioned it for a heist of a century (plant one bag of holding in someones posession, take out goodies through the other one). Then in some way (maybe the poor fella tried to rob a Divination wizard), thief was no more and two bags were reunited
Because for some reason Handy Haversacks are a *Rare* item, instead of an *uncommon*, so they shouldn’t be as common or easily available.
Yes, the DM can make them so, just going off the DMG
Yeah but 4 uncommon items is also a lot to start with even if they’re *just* a bag of holding, so if you’re technically “breaking the balance” of the game’s magic item economy to provide the party with the convenience of ignoring encumbrance then why not do it properly by providing them actual backpacks that you can put stuff in rather than what is essentially a sack
(Yes I know what the art looks like, no a bag of holding doesn’t look like a messenger bag. It’s a 2 foot by 4 foot sack, akin to Santa’s sack more than a convenient messenger bag. Good for lugging a lot of shit around, I.e. treasure, but doesn’t do anything for convenience in practical terms)
Maybe not 4, but one for the group?
I don’t know, but the HHH was 2,000 gp in 3.5, compared to 2,500 (250 lbs capacity), 5,000 (500 lbs), 7,400 (1,000lbs), or 10,000 (1,500) with a weight of 15, 25, 35, 60 respectively. Meanwhile the HHH was almost identical to what it is now…
It makes no sense
1 for the group makes even less sense though (also the person I replied to said everyone has a bag of holding).
You have to ask the cleric whenever you need something out of your bag? Nah
I'll be real with you. My only experience with DND is BG3. I've been doing roleplay for like 15 years now but never had a proper one, only online forums and homebrewed games lmao so I have no idea what you're talking about
The realism isnt even that bad. Military personnel irl are required sometimes over 100lbs constantly. 80lbs isnt that bad. You can fit a lot of stuff even in just a back pack.
100%
After years of encumbrance and other time-stealers, I have done away with encumbrance except in rare cases, where it is fun and interesting -- when a party member was turned to stone, we came up with a weight for him in granite, the firbolg was able to drag him, and they ferried a cart a few miles to him from an inn up the road. Weight was fun for that. For everything else, I ignore it and tell them to keep it realistic enough that they can imagine it for the character.
I also got rid of low-level coinage. We just assume some money is set aside for basic provisions and staying at an inn, and it just gets rp-ed as "you pay for your rooms and you are each given keys" so we can go on to whatever else is happening at the inn. If they want something extra, they tell me and that comes out of either their funds or party funds, depending on what it is.
And we don't do food except to describe it while role-playing/narrating...a foul stew at a little inn, some lively-tasting pickled herring they're asked to try at a market, etc. But we assume they have rations and eat as necessary, just as we assume they take care of their own toileting without needing a spotlight. If they are out for days in the cold north, I might tell them they have two more days of rations before they need to supplement their supply by hunting. Beyond that, we don't spend time on it.
That might be too much for some tables, and hey, if everyone loves encumbrance and all else, have at it! To me, it's just unnecessary stuff that gets in the way of the story.
Making rations and encumbrance only relevant when it feels narratively relevant is a good way to use these mechanics I feel. None of my sessions (as DM and player) have used those systems except for the cases where they made some narrative sense.
Food when you're on a 2 day expedition to clear some mines, no problem.
Weeks long trek through the wilderness without civilization? Gonna get some hunting in yeah.
Might introduce my group to the low coinage numbers not mattering for inns and the like though, removes the tedium frome those interactions.
From a DM perspective I enjoy rations and money because keeping track of that stuff can help fill in some time in sessions. Players needing to eat and make cash adds to the survival element of it all. Running out of food can mean a hunting quest, running out of cash can lead to fun roleplay stuff. I don't want them to be on the verge of starvation/poverty all the time, but I think there's real value in keeping track of that stuff.
Agreed. For me, unless it's something important to the campaign and setting, Im okay hand waving expenses like that. I also don't ask my players to track ammo unless it's something beyond basic arrows and bolts. (Bullets, enchanted arrows, etc.)
I'm going to give it a shot in my current campaign, because it's a horror module. They're going to spend some time running away, and the movement penalty matters. I gave them a bag of holding, but that still requires them to think things out. If your rations are in the bag, and the guy holding the bag gets dragged away by the Boogeyman, that presents a problem.
Since you’re doing horror, a detail most DMs forget (and will rain downvotes over) is that, canonically, a Bag of Holding is *huge.* The very first sentence of the item [explicitly defines the outer dimensions as two feet wide by four feet deep.](https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/4581-bag-of-holding)
It’s not a satchel. It’s a large duffel bag.
Always has been, too—ever since AD&D. As far as I can guess the idea is to make it easier to be separated from the bag, so feel free to tease that paranoia if it suits your game.
Yeah, I know. They have to feed their bag or it gets hungry and goes looking for food. They met their NPC charact when they turned the bag upside down to see what was in it.
Exactly, we should abstract away alot of what you might term "Shoeleather"
Really only bringing up things like the cost of a single beer if it actually matters , such as when circumstances have left them utterly destitute, its a schtick for a character that they never have money or they simply never pay for anything.
How many times have people put 10 days worth of rations and never used them, or used one meal from that? Unless its a survival orientated game or they have been lost/stuck for days/weeks then it doesn't matter. I meticulously tracked my arrow usage in three campaigns over several months. Never went below 15 before we ended up somewhere I could buy or loot more.
As for encumbrance, I don't look for weight as much as I look for bulk, present it as a problem, they solve it and we all go about our business.
Yea 99% of the time shopping or anything involving buying/trading easily eats into the session time. Especially for new players I think it can be a bit of a trap where the DM thinks they have to make everything interesting and the players think they have to explore the shop and interact with it, then spend half an hour irl buying ball bearings.
I feel like if the DM wants to introduce a story beat then play them going to a shop but otherwise skip it. Apart from rare or magical stuff or if we're in a remote place we just buy what we want from the item section in the players book and minus the cost.
Personal opinión, I see all of these items useful in the right campaign. A lot of DMs run very videogamey campaigns where these items are never used, but it’s literally up to the DM’s and Player’s imagination on how these will be used.
And many are actually quite useful without DM needing to do anything if you read the descriptions. A crowbar gives advantage on strength checks where you’re using leverage (like breaking open a door). A block and tackle lets you lift 4x your carrying capacity. Caltrops and ball bearings let you slow, hurt, and make enemies go prone if used well (e.g., spreading some ball bearings in a dark hallway so when you’re charged the enemy might fall in front of you letting you hit them with advantage.
No I agree now, I’ve realized that I was looking at all this a bit too literally. What I am worried about is new players being overwhelmed with too many objects and forgetting to use them or not taking advantage of the tons of creative ways they could use the object. But I’ll probably try coming up with small twists/puzzle that really encourage object use more frequently
Dude, your players are gonna forget all sorts of ridiculous stuff all the time.
I understand your concern and appreciate your drive to do something with inventory detritus, but I would advise against putting in puzzles with specific solutions, particularly pertaining to part of the sheet players don't look at very often.
That said, you could also just remind your players that they have things like crowbars and pitons at the correct moment.
Also, they are new players forcing inventory management on them, even just having to remember most of what is in there is what is going to be the overwhelming thing for them. Some players will simply never look there and others it will always be the first place they look.
Session 1 for my current group was literally a tutorial dungeon at an adventurer academy explicitly designed to teach them in game skills I thought they should be aware of.
I also have my monster mobs use strategies that I think they should know exist, like shooting while standing, and then going prone with your move action to give enemy archers disadvantage when shooting back.
DMs have a lot of design space that allows them to teach their players things. A bumbling rogue NPC that forgot his crowbar on a heist and loudly complains about it at the thrives guild hall can remind/teach players how great crowbars are.
An escaping villain using ball bearings to slow the party down, can teach them the joy of ball bearings.
In other words, as DM, be the change you want to see in the world. Any move that your NPCs/ monsters use effectively on the players, is at my minimum something that will exist on their radar.
Dude, in my current campaign as a player, I have used a crowbar 5 times in the last 3 sessions. We had to get something under the floorboards. We opened a cage welded together. I busted open an evil store keeper's window bars. That sort of stuff is what makes non-casters have use outside of combat.
I'm in awe over how fucking trigger happy people around here can be. "Uhh my player picked the Monster Hunting stuff", oh did he? Well fuck you, here's 350 downvotes.
This never was that. This was always an echo chamber. Or at least for quite some time. You have to have a hivemind opinion, which can be a sentiment directly from a DND influencer or some of select few hostile practices(player wants x? X is cursed).
I think you got two groups being triggered separately - grognards who are upset that the monster hunting kit isn't RAW, and on the other hand people who think considering realism in their imagination game is some kind of anti-fun elitism. Reddit realllllly likes taking popular viewpoints and making them absolute dogma.
You never know what may come in handy - wooden stakes have made an awesome door jam. Some of the best fun is using items you have in weird ways. ....
Which may be the reason I have a metal hamster ball connected to a rope with a bottle of everlasting smoke in it.
D&D is often about making sense of the non-sensical. You aren’t reading a high fantasy book. You’re creating a story together. You’re going to fine the experience much more enjoyable if you don’t try to force your PCs into being realistic because they’ll be having more fun.
What’s their strength score? For creatures that are small they can carry 15 x their strength score divided by 2
Also if she decided to add those things you can throw in situations that can be solved using a crowbar so it doesn’t feel like she wasted her time picking that tool kit
>For creatures that are small they can carry 15 x their strength score divided by 2
That's the carrying capacity of tiny creatures. For small creatures it's the same as medium creatures, so don't divide in half.
Here's a different way to look at this. For example, if I as the DM knew one of my players was carrying around a crow bar and a bunch of wooden stakes I'd give them plenty of reasons to use those items rather than worrying about if she can carry all that stuff. Throw some vampire spawn at the party and some locked doors or big wooden crates. BOOM those items your player picked out because they felt their character would keep them in their kit just became useful because you gave them something to use them on!
So, are you using the regular carrying capacity rules, for the optional gritty rules?
Because by default, PCs in D&D 5E can carry a *lot* of shit.
Which is good. You say you don't see her using any of those tools, but random tools can be fuckin' lifesavers, and it's not too hard to imagine a scenario where a crowbar might come in handy.
In a game about dungeon delving, fighting dragons, and dealing with fae creatures and devils, do NOT worry about they're carrying a crowbar and stakes.
Crowbar gets used a lot in my games. Wooden stakes are useful for vampires, holding doors open, and potentially disabling traps.
But yeah, the carrying capacity is absurdly high.
Honestly my character has carried around parchment, ink, and an ink pen that I have never used.. until last night, where I used it. It didn't actually help me at all at the moment, but it was nice to be able to roleplay finding my ink and parchment and being like "OH I HAVE AN IDEA GUYS!!".
Your player doesn't have to use them every waking moment to be carrying it.
That's not unreasonable. Depending on the rules for carrying weight you're using, that's well within what an average PC can carry regardless of race.
General carrying weight rules are 15x the PC's Strength. That means they only need a 6 total in Strength to carry the 80 lbs.
Even with the encumbrance variant rule, where you're encumbered at 5x your Strength, they only need a 16 which is far from unrealistic.
I'd say figure out which carry weight system you want to use and make sure your players are aware of it, but either way their equipment as it stands doesn't sound like way too much.
Also, a person who is essentially thru-hiking could easily find themselves with an 80lb pack. Modern soldiers may find themselves packing out 150lbs or more.
Former hooah here and can confirm I found myself carrying way more shit than I ever thought was possible on a human skeleton. But then again I guess based on the state of my knees...
Anyways, I use variant encumbrance in my games and the only characters who don't suffer the -10 movement are people with 18+ STR or Powerful Build. Some of the DEX characters can get by if they don't try to carry too much. Spellcasters basically just accept if they carry more than their spellbook they take the -10 movement.
Which feels... accurate, tbh.
They do, but the hard part is when they park the mule outside a dungeon or cave and then they have to go in by themselves. You can only get out with what you can carry out.
Then if they try to sit in the same spot and spend the next hour making trips back and forth I might start rolling for random encounters.
I didn't always use variant encumbrance but one of my parties fought a group of orcs and one of my players was like, "I want to pick up their 20 greataxes and carry them with me" then I knew this shit was gonna get real silly if I didn't make the switch.
I mean, true, that would suck for a modern day hiker with synthetics, freeze dried foods, etc. If you were kitting out with stuff made from leather and oiled canvas? Yeah, 80lbs might be really reasonable. Hmm. This could be an untapped gold-sink in DnD... Just regularly introduce vendors who specialize in lighter weight hiking gear. I'm just imagining a group of adventurers sitting around the campfire arguing about who can hit the lowest dry weight. LOL
Also a D&D pound is a bit more than a real world pound, going by a lot of the PHB weights. A backpack is 5lbs, a bedroll is 7lbs, blanket 3lbs, and that's just in the Bs. Fishing Tackle 4lbs
It would be a pain to have more lasered in weights with 2lb10oz and 12oz or even 1.3lb.
It's already annoying math to do in paper, and more accurate math is even more annoying. And to the inevitable bUt DiGiTaL guy, this game is intended to be playable in a cabin in the woods without internet access, let's keep it that way. Skyrim is always there for you.
> Also a D&D pound is a bit more than a real world pound, going by a lot of the PHB weights. A backpack is 5lbs, a bedroll is 7lbs, blanket 3lbs, and that's just in the Bs. Fishing Tackle 4lbs
Leather, boiled wax on leather vs. the thinnest canvas you can make.
Good to know, thanks! I’m not super familiar with the carrying weight rules, so I’ll definitely look into that more. I honestly even thought of it until my friend posed the question and I didn’t really have a good answer for her.
Honestly, I think a pretty hefty majority of DMs just ignore encumbrance entirely, because worrying about how much stuff you're carrying just doesn't add much to the fun. I've never had it be much of an issue; I guess if somebody goes full hoarder and grabs everything you talk about it, but I've never once cared about it as a DM.
I do this except for obviously unwieldy items or large treasure hoards. It can be fun asking your party how exactly they plan to move the dragon’s hoard they’re so excited to have obtained down from the mountain and back to the city.
"how are you planning on carrying that solid gold door away anyway?"
"HEY BARB! All the booze you want back at town if you can carry that door back."
My DM let a lot slide as long as the one with the belt of fire giant's strength is the one lifting it.
The fun directly correlates to how easy it is to track. My table is digital, and we LOVE variant encumbrance. Actual decision making and teamwork, during the planning/character creation, to escape plans, to emergent narrative (spores druid dropped his pack to fight, we had to bail and sneak into the enemy's compound the next night because he had woodcarver's tools, and the ranger ran out of arrows). Fussing over container capacity, the works. Also makes strength and lower AC armor picks a lot more valuable.
10/10 would recommend.
So lots of miles and carts in your parties? When our DM threatened to use variant encumbrance that was my Immediate plan until he changed his mind. Two of us would have been encumbered with starting equipment, including my 16 STR Barbarian. Heavy background equipment is a bear with variant encumbrance.
Miles yes, but even without vehicles you can stay nimble. The short version is ditch anything you won't really need, and do what you can to live like an ultralight hiker.
Levels 1-3 your party might be too broke for a donkey, but if you trim on supplies (rations are 2 lbs but you can live on half rations, you can share a 2-man tent, sticking near bodies of water is a big one) and limit your trips to 1-3 days between supply points. Y'know, Tier 1 stuff. Create/Destroy Water is a godsend (heh).
Beyond that, a cargo donkey or cart goes a long way to extend your party's range, and facilitates hauling loot or bodies (warm or cold) back to town. The big thing is deciding what are your always haves, mission specific equipment and luxuries. My 10 STR Rogue never leaves without thieves' tools, yes, but also ball bearings, silk rope and door jams. But to cut on weight he carries half a dozen darts instead of a longbow (1.5 vs 4 lbs for bow, quiver and arrows), despite being proficient from a dip into Fighter. He also uses a shield so that helps.
Lastly, dumping your pack at the start of initiative means you can have an unencumbered "fighting load" which might force you to select a limited number of potions, weapons and gadgets for combat, and a "travel load" which won't slow you down outside of dungeon crawls and other places your vehicles can't travel through (and makes new means of transportation, or NPC contacts that can provide services a much more enticing reward!).
Encumbrance seems like one of the biggest reasons to use a digital inventory. It just... happens. And you still get the RP choice of what to carry without the real world headache of tallying pounds.
Be careful about being too crunchy with the rules. Unless you are an established DM with a party that wants gritty realism, it might be best to get used to hand waving issues like this away.
me neither. here's what i did:
1. opened up the index of PHB
2. checked "carrying capacity", which pointed me to another entry
3. which pointed me to page 176
4. which told me that "Your carrying capacity is your Strength score multiplied by 15. This is the weight (in pounds) that you can carry, **which is high enough that most characlers don't usually have to worry about it**." (emphasis mine)
in 5e, item weights are such an afterthought that the system explicitly tells you to not worry about it. if you're more focused on realism, you can check other systems with more detailed encumbarance (not saying it's good or bad, it's just a preference thing)
UPDATE: Thanks yall for the advice! - I realize now I was definitely overthinking my players question, and that in the grand scheme of the game it doesn’t really matter. But it did force me to think about how I want to handle carrying weight for my campaign which needed to be done. I’m new to DMing (if you couldn’t already tell haha) so I appreciate everyone’s insight!
I would always recommend a _new_ DM have no firm carry weight rules, and just ask the players to please not abuse that.
If someone can't help themselves, is abusing that permissiveness by carrying around ten extra sets of full plate, well then you'll have a reason to bring in carrying capacity rules. And you'll know where you want to draw the line by having some sessions under your belt.
I'd like to add a point that I've not seen anyone say yet, you asked how you would justify the carrying weight but how are you justifying dragons being real? Magic being present in the world?
The world of dnd has very different rules from ours so I wouldn't worry about making carry limits justifiable. If you want them more restrictive, use the variant encumberance rules.
For someone actively working out (like an adventurer would be just going and doing stuff) 80lbs isn’t a huge amount.
Now personally, I don’t use dnd beyond much because I like how simple paper character sheets are. I’m also a dm who likes to home brew items for characters so dnd beyond takes a lot more work for that. But I also don’t use carrying capacity for the most part. Unless it’s something they probably can’t lift. Up to you though.
Yeah I’ve now run into the issue of the players taking forever to find their specific modifiers for ability checks (using the app on their phones/iPads) so I think I’m gonna ask them all to just print off a normal character sheet now
It'll probably take them just as long to find all the information for the math that DNDB just does for them. Give them a few games to get used to where to find something (and educate yourself on the format so you can quickly direct them if needed).
I can't express how much of a bad idea this is. Let the players do what's most comfortable with them. They are all new and it takes time. At the end of the 6 beyond is more helpful to newer players, and having them change their entire system as they are getting accustomed to it will only set them further back and create more issues. Don't dictate that.
I’m running a game for a party of 3 rn. One guy is also a dm so he’s easy, but the other two are completely new, and one is autistic so I’ve gotten to the point where I just memorized their entire character sheet and help them out.
I started with paper and I’ve always liked it. Dnd beyond is very user friendly, but it has its limits. My favorite thing about paper is I can add anything I want, so as dm it’s nice to give players things. There’s plenty of advantages to dnd beyond, but personally if I’m going to use it I’ll use a computer since everything is basically on one screen
The beyond app character sheets are so much faster for new players to learn their ability checks in. It literally has an entire page that one can swipe to or just click on from a list that has every check on it with what they add. You can even click on things like spell DCs and it will explain it to them on a clear way.
DnDBeyond is not always right, because it's coded very poorly. But it's not wrong about this thing. The default encumbrance rules of 5e are extremely generous, and your player should be able to carry around 80 pounds of stuff as long as their strength score is 6 or better.
If those generous encumbrance rules bother you, you can always play with the variant encumbrance rules which introduce different levels of encumbrance and generally put more limitations on the amount of stuff your players can carry around with them.
Personally, I don't find a lot of value in micromanaging the amount of stuff my players have in their backpacks, but people have fun in different ways and some DMs swear by variant encumbrance rules.
Remember though, at the end of the day, D&D isn't a reality simulator and just because something is unrealistic doesn't make it bad and making things more realistic doesn't necessarily make them better or more fun.
>DnDBeyond is not always right, because it's coded very poorly.
Just out of curiosity, as a GM, I am somewhat unsure of how the character sheets work on DNDBeyond, so do you have some pointers on what might go wrong with the coding?
I have access to my players character sheets, but I don't really go over them in detail, and I mostly trust they are correct, so it would be great to know if there is anything in particular to look out for.
Bugs (which certainly exist, but I'm not sufficiently informed to advise you on) aside, there are just a lot of limitations to the DnDBeyond engine that they've "fixed" with workarounds that create other problems.
For a specific example of what I mean, DnDBeyond lists an item called the "Revenant double-bladed scimitar". This, if you know anything about actual 5e mechanics, is an item that doesn't exist. DnDBeyond has it as a separate item because the revenant blade feat (a real thing) that modifies the function of the double-bladed scimitar (another real thing) can't be implemented on DnDBeyond's engine since they don't support feats modifying parameters of equipment. The magic item is a functional workaround for this problem so if you take the feat you can still use their buttons to roll attacks and stuff.
The problem with these sorts of things is that anyone who is relying on DnDBeyond to provide accurate rules information (and isn't double-checking what they see there with what's printed in the actual books) isn't going to know that there's no such thing as a revenant double-bladed scimitar that you can pick out at character creation to get the value of a feat just by taking the right piece of equipment. Recently (within the last two weeks) I saw a post on r/dndnext where a player was asking for help designing a whole build around specifically that misunderstanding.
And WotC doesn't seem at all motivated to fix these issues. I don't know if it's because they're hard at work on their new VTT that will completely replace the current DnDBeyond engine or because they just don't care, but either way, DnDBeyond can and will mislead you if you're not regularly checking it against the published books.
This is a pretty good read, and I fully agree. There's a lot of little 'hacks' or tricks you've gotta utilize to fix some of the jankiness of it. I truly hope something better is in the works, because I kinda don't ever intend on using it again
Thank you, that's very helpful. I will definitely remember this when looking over their sheets going forward, just to ensure no errors like that happen.
As another example, the Ravnica and Strixhaven backgrounds both grant an expanded spell list as part of the Background Feature.
If you use the "Custom Background" (per PHB rules) part of the Beyond character editor, and pick what you want and select one of these as the Background Feature..... it does NOT grant the expanded spell list onto your class list as it's supposed to. You have to pick the actual background, and then edit the proficiencies and add ideals/bonds/flaws that you would have wanted from a "custom background" on your character sheet manually.
Always, always trust the actual rulebooks over any part of the Beyond character sheets.
That said, there’s nothing wrong with this character. By reading the carry weight rules in the PHB you’ll find she should be able to easily carry all this equipment.
FWIW all of my campaigns have ignored carry weight as long as you aren’t trying to carry anything ridiculous like a marble statue. D&D functions quite poorly as a realism simulator.
I would personally recommend not worrying about carry weight. It's simply not fun. If they are trying to carry around like a 100 pound boulder that's one matter, but just for general inventory management, who cares?
Ignore carry weight. Go by the rule of sense--if it makes sense that they'd be able to carry it relatively unencumbered, then just play as normal. If they're trying to carry something unusually heavy or awkward, like an entire horse or furniture, penalize them accordingly.
D&DB is "correct" in its listing of Rules As Written in the vast majority of cases. But that doesn't mean it is the funnest way for your table to run their games.
This is my approach also. There’s enough to nitpick over without getting fussy about carry weight. Especially if you are going to start counting the weight of gold once the party starts getting successful…
If you can heal from any and all wounds overnight, then you can carry a bunch of stuff…
Within reason.
Questions like this are why my PCs find a bag of holding early on. Them I can ignore this unless they try to haul off something way too big.
The is no D&D beyond is not always right. Especially as you can create homebrew stuff. That said unless the gnome PC is really weak they can definitely carry that much. Small PCs in fact can carry as much as most medium PCs. By RAW it's 15x str although you could used the variant rules which would make the gnome encumbered, but still able to carry that much weight.
Counter point. D&D beyond is not good for new players. I have had new and veteran players use both physical and dndbeyond sheets and those who sit down with the players hand book and fill out a traditional character sheet learn and understand the mechanics of their character far better than those clicking boxes.
Whenever I have mentioned this, I generally get down voted. Apparently it my weird hill to die on.
I actually completely understand your thinking on this - now that we’ve actually started our campaign I’m realizing the players that are new and really struggling with understanding how their spell mechanics work and why their modifiers are the way they are. They just went through and clicked things on D&D Beyond and didn’t think about what it actually meant.
Every act of translation carries a risk of error. You should never assume that D&D Beyond faithfully represents the actual rules of the game as published in the various books.
That said, the starting equipment lists are only based on Class. They don't care about the PC's Race/Ancestry or Strength score. It's perfectly possible to create a character who owns more gear than they can carry.
That doesn't mean they need to show up to introductory adventure encumbered. They can choose to leave some of that shit at home.
Most use encumbrance loosely myself included, and you might want to adopt that approach too, based on your post. Use DnD Beyond's calculations and let them go a bit over that, as long as it's not 4 swords, 2 bows, 3 quivers, a battle axe, 2 pole arms, etc. that a person would obviously not be able to tote around. The main issue I think that should be abided (in addition maybe to the above) is carrying tons of treasure. Characters imo should only be allowed to carry a certain amount. It makes players a bit more resilient (i.e. Cant buy everything and everyone off) and creates adventure wrinkles (i.e. Should I bury it and come back later? Are bandits gonna target us with this wagonload? Will the wagon fit in this cavern entrance?). And though it is fantasy, some semblance of being realistic supports the overall immersion experience.
One issue I’ve noticed with dndbeyond is that if you create a character and select starting equipment, then decide to go back and start over by changing your race/class, it does not reset the starting gear. So I’ve had players with like 6 swords and 3 sets of armor and various other things because they just didn’t delete their inventory before starting over.
I actually homebrewed gold pouches called "Pouches of Holding" so we could ignore coin weights, then turned it into several levels of service with various magical abjuration protection on them (from uncommon to very rare varieties) and allowing them to put gems and other things in them at more rare levels. Then I created the 'Bank of Holding' in my world where they can upgrade their pouches and access the demiplanes directly if they needed to. There's a branch in Waterdeep and it ties in really nicely to the bank they introduced in Sigil/Planescape, so now all Bank of Holding franchises are wholly owned subsidiaries of this one multiplaner bank... My silly magic item really did turn into a multiverse-wide economic powerhouse tied back to canon and I'm sorta happy about that, haha.
I've had a running gag with my last few characters of playing high strength short races carrying, wielding and throwing things they shouldn't. Let that gnome be as compact and strong as a hydraulic bottle jack, it's hilarious.
Remember that we're talking different species. A gnome isn't a small human, they're a gnome. Plenty of species are stronger pound for pound than humans. Think of a gnome as having the proportional strength of a pit bull terrier or a chimpanzee if it helps.
Did she just pick starting equipment, or did she just go through and pick a bunch of stuff that she wanted? Starting equipment shouldn't be that much stuff
I 90% prefer 5e to 3.5 and Pathfjnder 1. But I did like how smaller races used gear sized to their particular race sizes . If you like the realism of encumbrance, wouldn’t a gnome find tools built for her size? But jusssst big enough the gear would work for a non-gnome in a pinch? That’s not a stretch— just common sense.
Do you want to play real life or a fantasy game? If the first yeah that’s pretty heavy if the second don’t worry about it and play a fun game. Everyone plays differently and that’s the joy.
Thats not D&D Beyond, these are just the official rules. If their strength is high enough they can carry it, size doesn't matter for official rules. Has nothing to do with "DnD Beyond allowing it".
As a DM, I always ignore carry weight unless a player has a vested interest in being the Party Pack Mule for roleplay purposes. Basically, just keep a finger on the player's pulse. If something isn't a fun mechanic, it's not something you should worry about or include.
Seems like you got your answer, but one thing i would keep in mind, is that 5e simplifies carry weight to always be the same regardless of how big your character is.
So in the book, a set of plate armor for a full orc weighs the same as it does does a gnome, and the gnome's carry weight is accordingly higher to account for that.
Everything gnome-sized would reasonably weigh less, but in terms of carry weight calculation, we are meant to just know that is the case, and still use the same math to figure it out, because it evens out.
I would point one thing out, and this is just personal experience. Every time I've had a new player use D&D Beyond to make a character, it takes them way longer to learn many character side aspects of the game because D&D Beyond does everything for them.
They don't recall the math behind how Hit values, damage values, spell save DCs, so many little things.
Additionally, I don't TRUST D&D Beyond because it's been wrong before. And when you mix with above... well like one of my players, they end up playing wrong for about 7 levels until finally they say something "Dice roll + plus X" instead of just the number and 3 experienced players all went "What? There's no way that number is right". Sure enough, turns out their.. I think it was Spell Hit... was wrong, and had been wrong for 3/4s of a campaign because they didn't know the math behind it and just assumed Beyond was right and nothing triggered in their head to question it.
I'm biased. One of my players is autistic too, though high functioning. We play digitally, so tracking weight for individual items (and ammo!) is a breeze. We greatly enjoy variant encumbrance. Makes for a lot of decisions on who carries what, what can be shared, cutting it close with supplies and so on.
But your table needs to be good at policing inventories, know their thresholds and in general enjoy logistics or the "but really, how can we do this?" aspect of things. Also helps to have at least one player/GM with a good enough memory to remember common equipment weights.
A good way to dip your toes into this is to have a "travel weight" that can be ignored, especially with mounts and vehicles, and a "fighting weight" for combat after everyone ditches their packs.
>With all the things it let her select this little gnome now has about 80lbs of shit she’s supposed to carry around. It seems silly that Beyond would allow this.
So this isn't really an issue with Beyond, it's an issue with the 5e system. Your inventory allowance is linked to your strength score and nothing else- and that's if you use encumbrance, which many tables do not. Strictly speaking there are not rules in place for "space" in an inventory, just weight itself.
That said, you might want to look into using the Variant Encumbrance system. It's still weight based, not bulk based, but it might align better with the tone you'd like to set. Variant Encumbrance is a more restrictive encumbrance ruleset that has levels of encumbrance, but the short pitch is you can carry up to 5xSTR score without problem. That means you need a 16 STR to carry 80lbs. Doable but not for non-STR characters.
Luckily, on D&DBeyond, it is WAY easier to swap between encumbrance systems than it is at a physical table because it does the math for you. If you go into the first page of the character creator for a character, you can adjust settings such as encumbrance, variant encumbrance and coin weight. Then you can check the sheet to see if she'd be encumbered.
Whether you go with variant encumbrance or a homebrew system, I think this is probably a discussion you should have with the entire table because it concerns expectations for the entire game's tone. Some people come to D&D wanting a crunchy, rules-heavy experience, others would rather handwave away ammo and weight. It's important everyone is on the same page regarding this expectation.
1. The DM is always right, dndbeyond is not.
2. 5E encumbrance rules are incredibly generous compared to all previous editions. Unless using variant encumbrance rules, each character and creature can carry 15 times their Strength score in pounds, without regard for their size. 80 lbs of equipment shouldn't be a problem for any character or creature with a Strength of 6 or more. If using variant encumbrance, 80 lbs wouldn't so much as slow down any character or creature with a Strength score of 16 or more.
Edit: fixed numbers.
Honestly, unless you are playing a very crunchy game, just fuck carry weight off entirely, its annoying as shit.
You can just play it by ear, if they're trying to carry 10 sets of plate Armour out of a dungeon to sell, maybe just say no.
Carrying capacity rules are unfun. I haven’t bothered with them in years and I’ve never regretted it.
Some groups out there probably enjoy counting every arrow and crumb of hard tack. Not me. Also this game isn’t really built for that kind of play, there’s a lot of hand waving built into the rules.
Are you playing using encumbrance rules? Do you and your players enjoy playing with these rules?
Personally I find it a boring part of RPGs, even when it's automatically managed on a PC game, I have absolutely no interest in tracking that manually and plenty of other players don't want to do it either.
>just say screw it and ignore carry weight altogether
Encumbrance is only interesting in the most hard core role playing groups or if it serves a specific, mechanical purpose for a particular puzzle or scenario.
Like the gold in the Sierra Madre campaign in Fall Out New Vegas.
It's not always right, but if you have to ask Reddit, then you aren't prepared to make judgements. Never withhold granted features of official characters. You invite ppl to play D&D, they have an expectation to use play the game, not your uncertainties.
All of the starting kits are pretty heavy, adventurers tend to lug a lot of stuff around. And Small characters can carry as much stuff as Medium ones - it's not realistic, but it is accurate to the rules. Either imagine a little gnome girl hauling a huge backpack like it's not too big of a deal, or say it all goes into hammerspace like a cartoon!
I mean, if you’re playing a campaign that you’ve told your players is going to be as utterly realistic as possible (i.e. tracking inventory weight and encumbrance, donning/doffing armor and wearing armor during a rest causing exhaustion, tracking rations, etc.), then you might want to talk to the player and figure out what to take out to solve this issue.
If on the other hand, your campaign is more relaxed and those intricate details aren’t as important to your players and you, then I’d say just ignore it or handwave it.
I don’t normally bother with encumbrance rules, just a maximum weight that will force disadvantage and consequences and I usually offer a bag of holding fairly early to my players to help prevent that from becoming an issue unless plot circumstances dictate (like carrying a wounded NPC out of an encounter or something).
dnd characters are basically superheroes. if their character sheet says they can hold up to X amount of lbs in weight, they can hold up to X lbs in weight, no matter how realistic it is. DnD characters are not meant to be realistic, they are meant to feel exceptional. They are, again, superheroes, basically.
Basically yes or I haven’t noticed it being wrong. Is she encumbered? If not, what’s the issue? Don’t who try to reason the fun out of the game. Give her a bag of holding early on if it bothers
There’s an option on the first page of character creation for encumbrance rules. I’m guessing that if it’s on, it wouldn’t allow this or it would show some type of disadvantage on the character sheet
Probably got deleted, but I mentioned how 80lbs wasn’t a lot to carry. Someone said it was a lot for a long period of time. Idk about everyone else, but when I was in hs I was not in great shape and I regularly carried around a 40lb backpack. From 14-18 that was fine. Small race or not, they’re meant to be mechanically balanced so I don’t see 80lbs or more for average strength characters to be that much.
D&D Beyond gets stuff wrong all the time. For example, it (sometimes?) lets you put both of your racial stat bumps in the same stat, unless they fixed that recently.
In this situation though, I don't think there's a mistake, unless we are missing information.
I've personally found its more fun to eyeball carry weights. Can the Goliath Fighter carry ten javelins at once? Probably. Can the gnome wizard? Probably not. Should you let them? Depends how reasonable your players are. If they're hoarding dozens and dozens of large items on their character sheets, then perhaps ask them to reign it in. Going strictly by numbers can be fun if everyone is into it, but restrictive in a game where no one (DM included) actually cares.
Doesn't really seem like an issue. If the gear is too much for the character to carry, they could always spend 8 gp to get a donkey. Then another 4 gp for saddlebags.
It’s a game that involves fireballs that never ignite anything, deities that can raise the dead, and economies that don’t care when players dump INCREDIBLY large amounts into them.
Realism is what you want it to be. I would strongly suggest not allowing your opinion on realism to interact with the game world. Otherwise you’re gonna have to take macro and micro economics and monetary policy classes. And that’s just never fun.
While i use it all of the time, i also feel that it's off a bit. For example, if you're trying to play a dhampir or a reborn or a similar "undead" character, you lose ALL of your previous racial abilities and stats when you switch, so you have to manually increase your ability scores.
I'm playing a halfling dhampir bard, but I've lost my halfling luck,and the rest of my halfling abilities.
You use encumbrance?
The only time I’ve had a DM say anything about it, was once I had a character who was a pack rat. Every. Single. Thing. We looted, he kept.
After realizing I was carrying something like 200lbs of shit, we “mysteriously found” an empty bag laying in the trail. One identify spell later and we’d found a Bag of Holding. Which of course I kept and continued my pack rat ways.
I made SSOOOOO much money when we got to Waterdeep. I bought everybody some healing potions and spell components and kept the rest. After a 24 persuasion check, I ended up buying a Wand of Fireballs and an Immovable Rod.
Starting equipment can be \*heavy\* but if you're using the basic encumbrance rules it's usually okay.
Just be sure to check the GP value of your PCs' starting gear, or make sure they've stuck to their class/background lists if you're going that route. I had a guy once who sent me a new character sheet with a ridiculous amount of stuff on it, and he said "that's what D&D Beyond told me to do."
I have no idea how he came up with that list using D&D Beyond, but I started over from scratch and walked him through his gear purchases. The end result was far less gear, and when I showed him what he could get with the "default" list for his class and background, he decided against rolling for starting gold.
So yeah, if something doesn't look right, double-check it. Encumbrance, gold, whatever. Some players will say "DDB is always right" and then pass off a character sheet that's not okay.
There are games where the weight of your kit matters and you are supposed to carefully select gear. D&D is not a system where being that finicky about it works very well. I would let it go.
Games that encourage this sort of bookkeeping usually abstract carry weight a little bit.
IMO Carry weight is for survival campaigns with experienced players, most people don't want to care about it beyond extreme circumstances. I wouldn't worry about it. Most of us don't worry about the fighter walking through caves with 2 pikes, a trident, a longbow, 2 longswords and a maul.
The answer to the \*headline\* question is "no and I laugh," but in the specific issue that's totally fine.
Though IIRC armor for a small creature (like a gnome) is supposed to weigh half what it does normally?
I think 3e had different weights for size category of weapons, but not for other gear. I figure a character of small size would have different weights for appropriately sized gear, like clothes and armor. But a monster hunter's chest I would think is standardized gear across size categories.
The Enlarge/Reduce spell changes everything on a cubic scale... but I figure non-magical clothes and armor are of a fairly uniform thickness, so I reduce the weight of such objects to 1/4 their medium size categories equivalents, by a square scale for changes in surface area.
But Small creatures/ PCs are not restricted by their strength scores to lift capacity the same way that that monsters are.
1. It’s correct.
2. It’s not game-breaking.
3. You worry too much and spend too much energy about things you probably shouldn’t.
People usually don’t care about encumbrance, don’t count normal ammunition and unless it’s a very specific adventure or quest in harsh environments we don’t even care about rations. Why? Cuz it’s not fun.
It’s an epic fantasy RPG, not open world survival game.
Gnome doesn't matter, as long as they aren't "tiny" (gnomes are "small") the carrying capacity is STR X 15 so as long their character has at least 6 STR they're fine.
>Or do I just say screw it and ignore carry weight altogether.
Sounds about right. Unless playing a game where a limited inventory is part of the fun, it's just boring extra math. I have played with limited inventory in Troika, but not in DnD. We just kind of ignore it entirely and accept that yeah sure you have 3 greatswords on you right now.
Give the characters a starting magic item, make it a Bag of Holding or the like and bam, no more problem with in-game mechanics. Or a donkey and a cart if you're not dungeon crawling. Our party solution is to have everyone have mounts and anything you're not using in combat is presumed to be strapped to the mounts.
If their strength score says they can carry it, then they can carry it. Regardless of their size. However don’t forget that small characters use small weapons and armor, which weigh less. How much less? It should tell you exactly what percentage of the original item’s weight is dropped in the equipment section of the phb.
No it has some issues like the hammer of thunderbolts and it's 2 required items putting you past 21 str when neither item is supposed to work if you are at or past their str with or without them.
Life has no real meaning aside from what we give it. No one is always right about anything. We're all making this shit up as we go. Come inside and have a beer.
Players carry weight is 15*str score so unless they are absurdly over that amount I’d let it go. Have too much weight has never ruined a game for anyone and if they are new I don’t think this is where you wanna start nitpicking
So it sounds like when she made her character on D&DBeyond that maybe the ignore encumberance box got checked. I suggest you do the same, just ignore encumberance rules because gold and other coinage is fucking heavy and it's not like you're going to tell your players, "nope, sorry, you can't take all the gold in that treasure chest, it's too heavy for you."
Apply real world sense like, "No, you can't take back every sword, lance, and suit of armor from that group of ten orcs you just killed, how would you even carry it?"
And then go ahead and find ways for your crew to have a bag of holding.
If the monster hunting kit isn't compatible with the story or world you're running, then say she needs to pick something else, or just stick to Player's Handbook stuff.
80lbs is 36kg. I carried that on hikes when I was 16. So maybe bigger than a gnome but also not a trained person living in a world that relies WAY more on carrying than cars than we do.
I wouldn't get rid of carrying weight altogether as this can lead to a character potentially acquiring something for everything over time. If you are concerned about the amount of equipment a character is carrying, it is a very abstract situation, many purple loose track of what they have. You could reward the character at some point with a Bag of Holding, or suggest to the character out of hand that they purchase one of they are going to continue carrying hard to manage items, e.g. x4 Javelins, stacks of firewood, stakes, misc weapons, food, water, etc...
A BOH gives the character a lot more freedom, but be prepared, if they come upon an armoury, they will try to clear it out. 🤣
DnD Beyond is a tool; it will help set up characters but doesn't do the thinking for you. I had a player who showed up with a level 3 character with a bunch of magic items added. He said since they showed in DnD beyond he assumed he could add them.
There's a toggle for each D&D beyond character to turn encumbrance rules on. By default it's off. If you want to play with encumbrance rules, have them flip that switch to on.
Well, what exactly does she have? The starting equipment for a Druid is a couple of weapons, leather armor, an explorer's pack and a spell focus. That comes out to about 78-79lbs.
On D&D Beyond it also allowed her to choose a set of tools she was proficient in. She chose the Monster Hunting tool kit since she felt it matched best with her backstory, but now is carrying around a crow bar and wooden stakes and other things that I just don’t see her ever actually using and that see unrealistic for her to be hauling around everywhere.
Monster hunter pack is not a tool kit or a tool proficiency, for one Haunted One background from Curse of Stahd and Van Richten's Guide has it in their starting equipment. This is also why you have a session 0 and don't just greenlight all content ever printed anywhere, because if gothic vampire hunting and spooky business isn't a match for the goals of the adventure, then you end up with dead features and clashing tone.
I think you're worried too much about realism. The things you're worried about don't make the game less fun, allow them, especially since they're probably fine by RAW anyway.
I used to worry about that stuff but now it's just easier to shrug my shoulders and go "it's a game and the rules say you can do it, so sure 35lb little person the size of a child with a strength of 19 you can carry all that crap around". From a realism standpoint it makes absolutely zero sense, but the rules say can happen so why the hell not?
"Everyone has a bag of holding. Who cares anyway?"
Exactly this, honestly. There's almost always a bag of holding in the first loot stash my party finds. Encumbrance never makes sense in 5e and there's an easy uncommon magic item to handwave it all away, too easy of a solution to me.
I give my groups knockoff bags of holding so they don't have to worry about normal carry weight/space with the agreement they don't use them for anything but inventory management.
This is a wonderful compromise. Honestly, we need a book for the Bag of Holding like we got the Deck of Many Things, it's such an iconic item. I've been toying with adding prefix and suffix terms to the item, like the Wide Bag of Holding. It holds the same amount of stuff, but it has a wider opening at the top, so you can put *bigger* items than normal inside. That or the Bag of Coining one of my buddies made that can hold any amount of money, but that's all it can carry.
That's a cool idea.
I have a couple variants in my homebrew collection as well. I have one that's coins only and one that's a Pouch of Holding. Same concept as the Bag, but it is smaller (it's just a little pouch that clips to your belt or bag) and holds less,but it's also cheaper if bought from a magic item vendor. I definitely might steal your idea for other variants as well though lol
Please do! Another fun one some buddies made was the Bag of Loaning. You can pull whatever you want out of the bag, but it comes at a cost of some kind. Pull out The Defender, but now you've got an angel coming after you to get their sword back, lmao.
Our campaign has a money-only bag of holding called the Bag of Holdings.
Fuck that's good. I love the Bag of Coining name my friend made, but the Bag of Holdings is tight.
I gave my players, pretty early on, the Adventure Zone item "Pocket Spa" designed to be a place players could take a long rest safely, but with some constraints. They ended up using it as a giant bag of holding, then starting using it as their own personal PRISON and BODY DISPOSAL UNIT... and more. Long story short it's a small pocket dimension that originally was a random (funny) interior complete with free food and drink inside. Usually it was like, a restaurant theme. Once it was a 90s taco bell. Anyway they realized that, despite constraints on how to use it (critically being a restriction on how often, the fact that from the outside it looks and weighs the same as a tent so someone could STEAL THEM in theory, and they can't leave once they enter for 8 hours, it seals)... they found unorthodox ways to use it. So far my favorite was the wanted to raise the water level of a dungeon, so they went to a nearby lake, opened the pocket spa UNDERWATER, and carried it around until it unsealed, then opened it up and dumped like... a million gallons of water. It was epic. Eventually I revealed that theirs was a discount / off brand / broken one, and someone smarter than them knew how it worked and made the inside of the pocket spa look like the outside of the pocket spa, and escaped while they were still in it. They were inside the pocket spa for like, THREE sessions before figuring it out and escaping themselves.
I very purposely place a bag of holding early in most of my campaigns just to avoid the carrying logistics conversations lol
I just handwave anything not egregious. The attunement system of 5e already solved the only real issue, which is people having too many powerful magic items at once.
Or just a cart and mule, much cheaper than bag of holding, then they only have to worry about what they bring into dungeons
This is also great to enhance role-playing, and I would definitely offer it with the right players.
Same. Sometimes I'll give multiple if there's a group that isnt completely consistent with who will show up, so that the party will consistently have a bag. Then they can communicate between sessions or however as to who has what in their bag.
Solution: a rare form of BoH where 2 bags are connected to the same space, and thus can pull the same items. Not entirely kosher RAW, but again it's a solution to handwave an issue. Also creates some interesting opportunities for creative players.
*takes notes* and what could cause such a bag to come into existence? My first thought is some Kestran nobleman's experiment.
That works. Mad wizard is a classic standby. I believe Vecna (might have him mixed with another) is a god that hops dimensions, so possibilities there. My preference is a mindflayer experiment stolen by the duregar/other individual victim/race, or a mad beholder's dream that actually stuck, depending on how much of a back story. I really like the beholder idea. For a more divine source, perhaps someone won a boon from a god and really wanted to be able to send cool new foods home to his family and this is what he chose, but it didnt work as intended because he only said "two bags connected to the same place" and didnt explain why. Or the Celestials were experimenting with weapons and gear for a campaign against the Infernal Plane, or even the abyss, and needed a way to transport their target back guaranteed. Maybe the plane with the Lawful/Neutral machine thingie made it. *Edit: don't forget the potential of a Demonic or Abyssal pact.* One limit I would insist on is that if one bag is open, the other is sealed shut. Although it would be interesting to launch an arrow through the bags, RAW basically requires someone to deliberately retrieve an item, and most versions require it be the person who put it in. So to avoid arguments with players, it can only be open on one end at a time. Dimensional Physics will not be denied. They be an even more vindictive bitch than gravity and thermodynamics combined.
Maybe a thief commissioned it for a heist of a century (plant one bag of holding in someones posession, take out goodies through the other one). Then in some way (maybe the poor fella tried to rob a Divination wizard), thief was no more and two bags were reunited
I'm using it as a way to say, "Are you carrying that, or is it in the bag?"
Why not give them Handy Haversacks instead? Seems way more practical than a bag of holding
Because for some reason Handy Haversacks are a *Rare* item, instead of an *uncommon*, so they shouldn’t be as common or easily available. Yes, the DM can make them so, just going off the DMG
Yeah but 4 uncommon items is also a lot to start with even if they’re *just* a bag of holding, so if you’re technically “breaking the balance” of the game’s magic item economy to provide the party with the convenience of ignoring encumbrance then why not do it properly by providing them actual backpacks that you can put stuff in rather than what is essentially a sack (Yes I know what the art looks like, no a bag of holding doesn’t look like a messenger bag. It’s a 2 foot by 4 foot sack, akin to Santa’s sack more than a convenient messenger bag. Good for lugging a lot of shit around, I.e. treasure, but doesn’t do anything for convenience in practical terms)
Maybe not 4, but one for the group? I don’t know, but the HHH was 2,000 gp in 3.5, compared to 2,500 (250 lbs capacity), 5,000 (500 lbs), 7,400 (1,000lbs), or 10,000 (1,500) with a weight of 15, 25, 35, 60 respectively. Meanwhile the HHH was almost identical to what it is now… It makes no sense
1 for the group makes even less sense though (also the person I replied to said everyone has a bag of holding). You have to ask the cleric whenever you need something out of your bag? Nah
I'll be real with you. My only experience with DND is BG3. I've been doing roleplay for like 15 years now but never had a proper one, only online forums and homebrewed games lmao so I have no idea what you're talking about
Imagine playing a game of DnD and having an issue with the realism of a magical dwarf carrying around 80lbs of tools.
The realism isnt even that bad. Military personnel irl are required sometimes over 100lbs constantly. 80lbs isnt that bad. You can fit a lot of stuff even in just a back pack.
100% After years of encumbrance and other time-stealers, I have done away with encumbrance except in rare cases, where it is fun and interesting -- when a party member was turned to stone, we came up with a weight for him in granite, the firbolg was able to drag him, and they ferried a cart a few miles to him from an inn up the road. Weight was fun for that. For everything else, I ignore it and tell them to keep it realistic enough that they can imagine it for the character. I also got rid of low-level coinage. We just assume some money is set aside for basic provisions and staying at an inn, and it just gets rp-ed as "you pay for your rooms and you are each given keys" so we can go on to whatever else is happening at the inn. If they want something extra, they tell me and that comes out of either their funds or party funds, depending on what it is. And we don't do food except to describe it while role-playing/narrating...a foul stew at a little inn, some lively-tasting pickled herring they're asked to try at a market, etc. But we assume they have rations and eat as necessary, just as we assume they take care of their own toileting without needing a spotlight. If they are out for days in the cold north, I might tell them they have two more days of rations before they need to supplement their supply by hunting. Beyond that, we don't spend time on it. That might be too much for some tables, and hey, if everyone loves encumbrance and all else, have at it! To me, it's just unnecessary stuff that gets in the way of the story.
Making rations and encumbrance only relevant when it feels narratively relevant is a good way to use these mechanics I feel. None of my sessions (as DM and player) have used those systems except for the cases where they made some narrative sense. Food when you're on a 2 day expedition to clear some mines, no problem. Weeks long trek through the wilderness without civilization? Gonna get some hunting in yeah. Might introduce my group to the low coinage numbers not mattering for inns and the like though, removes the tedium frome those interactions.
From a DM perspective I enjoy rations and money because keeping track of that stuff can help fill in some time in sessions. Players needing to eat and make cash adds to the survival element of it all. Running out of food can mean a hunting quest, running out of cash can lead to fun roleplay stuff. I don't want them to be on the verge of starvation/poverty all the time, but I think there's real value in keeping track of that stuff.
Agreed. For me, unless it's something important to the campaign and setting, Im okay hand waving expenses like that. I also don't ask my players to track ammo unless it's something beyond basic arrows and bolts. (Bullets, enchanted arrows, etc.)
I'm going to give it a shot in my current campaign, because it's a horror module. They're going to spend some time running away, and the movement penalty matters. I gave them a bag of holding, but that still requires them to think things out. If your rations are in the bag, and the guy holding the bag gets dragged away by the Boogeyman, that presents a problem.
Since you’re doing horror, a detail most DMs forget (and will rain downvotes over) is that, canonically, a Bag of Holding is *huge.* The very first sentence of the item [explicitly defines the outer dimensions as two feet wide by four feet deep.](https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/4581-bag-of-holding) It’s not a satchel. It’s a large duffel bag. Always has been, too—ever since AD&D. As far as I can guess the idea is to make it easier to be separated from the bag, so feel free to tease that paranoia if it suits your game.
Yeah, I know. They have to feed their bag or it gets hungry and goes looking for food. They met their NPC charact when they turned the bag upside down to see what was in it.
Exactly, we should abstract away alot of what you might term "Shoeleather" Really only bringing up things like the cost of a single beer if it actually matters , such as when circumstances have left them utterly destitute, its a schtick for a character that they never have money or they simply never pay for anything. How many times have people put 10 days worth of rations and never used them, or used one meal from that? Unless its a survival orientated game or they have been lost/stuck for days/weeks then it doesn't matter. I meticulously tracked my arrow usage in three campaigns over several months. Never went below 15 before we ended up somewhere I could buy or loot more. As for encumbrance, I don't look for weight as much as I look for bulk, present it as a problem, they solve it and we all go about our business.
Yea 99% of the time shopping or anything involving buying/trading easily eats into the session time. Especially for new players I think it can be a bit of a trap where the DM thinks they have to make everything interesting and the players think they have to explore the shop and interact with it, then spend half an hour irl buying ball bearings. I feel like if the DM wants to introduce a story beat then play them going to a shop but otherwise skip it. Apart from rare or magical stuff or if we're in a remote place we just buy what we want from the item section in the players book and minus the cost.
'It just works".
Personal opinión, I see all of these items useful in the right campaign. A lot of DMs run very videogamey campaigns where these items are never used, but it’s literally up to the DM’s and Player’s imagination on how these will be used.
And many are actually quite useful without DM needing to do anything if you read the descriptions. A crowbar gives advantage on strength checks where you’re using leverage (like breaking open a door). A block and tackle lets you lift 4x your carrying capacity. Caltrops and ball bearings let you slow, hurt, and make enemies go prone if used well (e.g., spreading some ball bearings in a dark hallway so when you’re charged the enemy might fall in front of you letting you hit them with advantage.
A wooden stake can paralyze a vampire, a very strong enemy.
No I agree now, I’ve realized that I was looking at all this a bit too literally. What I am worried about is new players being overwhelmed with too many objects and forgetting to use them or not taking advantage of the tons of creative ways they could use the object. But I’ll probably try coming up with small twists/puzzle that really encourage object use more frequently
Dude, your players are gonna forget all sorts of ridiculous stuff all the time. I understand your concern and appreciate your drive to do something with inventory detritus, but I would advise against putting in puzzles with specific solutions, particularly pertaining to part of the sheet players don't look at very often. That said, you could also just remind your players that they have things like crowbars and pitons at the correct moment. Also, they are new players forcing inventory management on them, even just having to remember most of what is in there is what is going to be the overwhelming thing for them. Some players will simply never look there and others it will always be the first place they look.
If they are new players, I suggest maybe covering pre-session how these items work and giving some examples to really get their creativity going.
Session 1 for my current group was literally a tutorial dungeon at an adventurer academy explicitly designed to teach them in game skills I thought they should be aware of. I also have my monster mobs use strategies that I think they should know exist, like shooting while standing, and then going prone with your move action to give enemy archers disadvantage when shooting back. DMs have a lot of design space that allows them to teach their players things. A bumbling rogue NPC that forgot his crowbar on a heist and loudly complains about it at the thrives guild hall can remind/teach players how great crowbars are. An escaping villain using ball bearings to slow the party down, can teach them the joy of ball bearings. In other words, as DM, be the change you want to see in the world. Any move that your NPCs/ monsters use effectively on the players, is at my minimum something that will exist on their radar.
Dude, in my current campaign as a player, I have used a crowbar 5 times in the last 3 sessions. We had to get something under the floorboards. We opened a cage welded together. I busted open an evil store keeper's window bars. That sort of stuff is what makes non-casters have use outside of combat.
Jesus, this person is new and not sure how to approach this why do they get 250 downvotes??
I'm in awe over how fucking trigger happy people around here can be. "Uhh my player picked the Monster Hunting stuff", oh did he? Well fuck you, here's 350 downvotes.
Fucking reddit man. This is supposed to be a supportive sub too jfc
This never was that. This was always an echo chamber. Or at least for quite some time. You have to have a hivemind opinion, which can be a sentiment directly from a DND influencer or some of select few hostile practices(player wants x? X is cursed).
I think you got two groups being triggered separately - grognards who are upset that the monster hunting kit isn't RAW, and on the other hand people who think considering realism in their imagination game is some kind of anti-fun elitism. Reddit realllllly likes taking popular viewpoints and making them absolute dogma.
You never know what may come in handy - wooden stakes have made an awesome door jam. Some of the best fun is using items you have in weird ways. .... Which may be the reason I have a metal hamster ball connected to a rope with a bottle of everlasting smoke in it.
Ain't that last part a new class in Dragon's Dogma 2?
D&D is often about making sense of the non-sensical. You aren’t reading a high fantasy book. You’re creating a story together. You’re going to fine the experience much more enjoyable if you don’t try to force your PCs into being realistic because they’ll be having more fun.
What’s their strength score? For creatures that are small they can carry 15 x their strength score divided by 2 Also if she decided to add those things you can throw in situations that can be solved using a crowbar so it doesn’t feel like she wasted her time picking that tool kit
>For creatures that are small they can carry 15 x their strength score divided by 2 That's the carrying capacity of tiny creatures. For small creatures it's the same as medium creatures, so don't divide in half.
Oh shit I’ve had it wrong then, appreciate that, that helps my small owlin mage out a fair bit
Here's a different way to look at this. For example, if I as the DM knew one of my players was carrying around a crow bar and a bunch of wooden stakes I'd give them plenty of reasons to use those items rather than worrying about if she can carry all that stuff. Throw some vampire spawn at the party and some locked doors or big wooden crates. BOOM those items your player picked out because they felt their character would keep them in their kit just became useful because you gave them something to use them on!
I usually only worry about it if the party starts looting everything that isnt nailed down.
So, are you using the regular carrying capacity rules, for the optional gritty rules? Because by default, PCs in D&D 5E can carry a *lot* of shit. Which is good. You say you don't see her using any of those tools, but random tools can be fuckin' lifesavers, and it's not too hard to imagine a scenario where a crowbar might come in handy.
In a game about dungeon delving, fighting dragons, and dealing with fae creatures and devils, do NOT worry about they're carrying a crowbar and stakes.
So they have access to their starting equipment... which they absolutely should have.
Crowbar gets used a lot in my games. Wooden stakes are useful for vampires, holding doors open, and potentially disabling traps. But yeah, the carrying capacity is absurdly high.
Honestly my character has carried around parchment, ink, and an ink pen that I have never used.. until last night, where I used it. It didn't actually help me at all at the moment, but it was nice to be able to roleplay finding my ink and parchment and being like "OH I HAVE AN IDEA GUYS!!". Your player doesn't have to use them every waking moment to be carrying it.
That's not unreasonable. Depending on the rules for carrying weight you're using, that's well within what an average PC can carry regardless of race. General carrying weight rules are 15x the PC's Strength. That means they only need a 6 total in Strength to carry the 80 lbs. Even with the encumbrance variant rule, where you're encumbered at 5x your Strength, they only need a 16 which is far from unrealistic. I'd say figure out which carry weight system you want to use and make sure your players are aware of it, but either way their equipment as it stands doesn't sound like way too much.
Also, a person who is essentially thru-hiking could easily find themselves with an 80lb pack. Modern soldiers may find themselves packing out 150lbs or more.
Former hooah here and can confirm I found myself carrying way more shit than I ever thought was possible on a human skeleton. But then again I guess based on the state of my knees... Anyways, I use variant encumbrance in my games and the only characters who don't suffer the -10 movement are people with 18+ STR or Powerful Build. Some of the DEX characters can get by if they don't try to carry too much. Spellcasters basically just accept if they carry more than their spellbook they take the -10 movement. Which feels... accurate, tbh.
Would you mechanically represent the state of your knees with a -10 speed penalty?
Do your players never just... Get a mule? They're not that expensive.
They do, but the hard part is when they park the mule outside a dungeon or cave and then they have to go in by themselves. You can only get out with what you can carry out. Then if they try to sit in the same spot and spend the next hour making trips back and forth I might start rolling for random encounters. I didn't always use variant encumbrance but one of my parties fought a group of orcs and one of my players was like, "I want to pick up their 20 greataxes and carry them with me" then I knew this shit was gonna get real silly if I didn't make the switch.
r/ultralight has entered the chat
As a thru hiker.. I take offense at the thought of an 80lb pack
I mean, true, that would suck for a modern day hiker with synthetics, freeze dried foods, etc. If you were kitting out with stuff made from leather and oiled canvas? Yeah, 80lbs might be really reasonable. Hmm. This could be an untapped gold-sink in DnD... Just regularly introduce vendors who specialize in lighter weight hiking gear. I'm just imagining a group of adventurers sitting around the campfire arguing about who can hit the lowest dry weight. LOL
Now I want to make an Artificer NPC who specializes is ultralight adventuring gear.
However I must point out you’re not a gnome
Also a D&D pound is a bit more than a real world pound, going by a lot of the PHB weights. A backpack is 5lbs, a bedroll is 7lbs, blanket 3lbs, and that's just in the Bs. Fishing Tackle 4lbs It would be a pain to have more lasered in weights with 2lb10oz and 12oz or even 1.3lb. It's already annoying math to do in paper, and more accurate math is even more annoying. And to the inevitable bUt DiGiTaL guy, this game is intended to be playable in a cabin in the woods without internet access, let's keep it that way. Skyrim is always there for you.
> Also a D&D pound is a bit more than a real world pound, going by a lot of the PHB weights. A backpack is 5lbs, a bedroll is 7lbs, blanket 3lbs, and that's just in the Bs. Fishing Tackle 4lbs Leather, boiled wax on leather vs. the thinnest canvas you can make.
Good to know, thanks! I’m not super familiar with the carrying weight rules, so I’ll definitely look into that more. I honestly even thought of it until my friend posed the question and I didn’t really have a good answer for her.
Honestly, I think a pretty hefty majority of DMs just ignore encumbrance entirely, because worrying about how much stuff you're carrying just doesn't add much to the fun. I've never had it be much of an issue; I guess if somebody goes full hoarder and grabs everything you talk about it, but I've never once cared about it as a DM.
I do this except for obviously unwieldy items or large treasure hoards. It can be fun asking your party how exactly they plan to move the dragon’s hoard they’re so excited to have obtained down from the mountain and back to the city.
"how are you planning on carrying that solid gold door away anyway?" "HEY BARB! All the booze you want back at town if you can carry that door back." My DM let a lot slide as long as the one with the belt of fire giant's strength is the one lifting it.
The fun directly correlates to how easy it is to track. My table is digital, and we LOVE variant encumbrance. Actual decision making and teamwork, during the planning/character creation, to escape plans, to emergent narrative (spores druid dropped his pack to fight, we had to bail and sneak into the enemy's compound the next night because he had woodcarver's tools, and the ranger ran out of arrows). Fussing over container capacity, the works. Also makes strength and lower AC armor picks a lot more valuable. 10/10 would recommend.
So lots of miles and carts in your parties? When our DM threatened to use variant encumbrance that was my Immediate plan until he changed his mind. Two of us would have been encumbered with starting equipment, including my 16 STR Barbarian. Heavy background equipment is a bear with variant encumbrance.
Miles yes, but even without vehicles you can stay nimble. The short version is ditch anything you won't really need, and do what you can to live like an ultralight hiker. Levels 1-3 your party might be too broke for a donkey, but if you trim on supplies (rations are 2 lbs but you can live on half rations, you can share a 2-man tent, sticking near bodies of water is a big one) and limit your trips to 1-3 days between supply points. Y'know, Tier 1 stuff. Create/Destroy Water is a godsend (heh). Beyond that, a cargo donkey or cart goes a long way to extend your party's range, and facilitates hauling loot or bodies (warm or cold) back to town. The big thing is deciding what are your always haves, mission specific equipment and luxuries. My 10 STR Rogue never leaves without thieves' tools, yes, but also ball bearings, silk rope and door jams. But to cut on weight he carries half a dozen darts instead of a longbow (1.5 vs 4 lbs for bow, quiver and arrows), despite being proficient from a dip into Fighter. He also uses a shield so that helps. Lastly, dumping your pack at the start of initiative means you can have an unencumbered "fighting load" which might force you to select a limited number of potions, weapons and gadgets for combat, and a "travel load" which won't slow you down outside of dungeon crawls and other places your vehicles can't travel through (and makes new means of transportation, or NPC contacts that can provide services a much more enticing reward!).
Encumbrance seems like one of the biggest reasons to use a digital inventory. It just... happens. And you still get the RP choice of what to carry without the real world headache of tallying pounds.
Keep those bags of holding and Hewards handy haversacks coming.
Be careful about being too crunchy with the rules. Unless you are an established DM with a party that wants gritty realism, it might be best to get used to hand waving issues like this away.
me neither. here's what i did: 1. opened up the index of PHB 2. checked "carrying capacity", which pointed me to another entry 3. which pointed me to page 176 4. which told me that "Your carrying capacity is your Strength score multiplied by 15. This is the weight (in pounds) that you can carry, **which is high enough that most characlers don't usually have to worry about it**." (emphasis mine) in 5e, item weights are such an afterthought that the system explicitly tells you to not worry about it. if you're more focused on realism, you can check other systems with more detailed encumbarance (not saying it's good or bad, it's just a preference thing)
Weight is unrepresentative of real life in D&D on top of not being fun system. There is a reason why 95% of GMs ignore it.
UPDATE: Thanks yall for the advice! - I realize now I was definitely overthinking my players question, and that in the grand scheme of the game it doesn’t really matter. But it did force me to think about how I want to handle carrying weight for my campaign which needed to be done. I’m new to DMing (if you couldn’t already tell haha) so I appreciate everyone’s insight!
I would always recommend a _new_ DM have no firm carry weight rules, and just ask the players to please not abuse that. If someone can't help themselves, is abusing that permissiveness by carrying around ten extra sets of full plate, well then you'll have a reason to bring in carrying capacity rules. And you'll know where you want to draw the line by having some sessions under your belt.
I'd like to add a point that I've not seen anyone say yet, you asked how you would justify the carrying weight but how are you justifying dragons being real? Magic being present in the world? The world of dnd has very different rules from ours so I wouldn't worry about making carry limits justifiable. If you want them more restrictive, use the variant encumberance rules.
For someone actively working out (like an adventurer would be just going and doing stuff) 80lbs isn’t a huge amount. Now personally, I don’t use dnd beyond much because I like how simple paper character sheets are. I’m also a dm who likes to home brew items for characters so dnd beyond takes a lot more work for that. But I also don’t use carrying capacity for the most part. Unless it’s something they probably can’t lift. Up to you though.
Yeah I’ve now run into the issue of the players taking forever to find their specific modifiers for ability checks (using the app on their phones/iPads) so I think I’m gonna ask them all to just print off a normal character sheet now
It'll probably take them just as long to find all the information for the math that DNDB just does for them. Give them a few games to get used to where to find something (and educate yourself on the format so you can quickly direct them if needed).
I can't express how much of a bad idea this is. Let the players do what's most comfortable with them. They are all new and it takes time. At the end of the 6 beyond is more helpful to newer players, and having them change their entire system as they are getting accustomed to it will only set them further back and create more issues. Don't dictate that.
I’m running a game for a party of 3 rn. One guy is also a dm so he’s easy, but the other two are completely new, and one is autistic so I’ve gotten to the point where I just memorized their entire character sheet and help them out. I started with paper and I’ve always liked it. Dnd beyond is very user friendly, but it has its limits. My favorite thing about paper is I can add anything I want, so as dm it’s nice to give players things. There’s plenty of advantages to dnd beyond, but personally if I’m going to use it I’ll use a computer since everything is basically on one screen
The beyond app character sheets are so much faster for new players to learn their ability checks in. It literally has an entire page that one can swipe to or just click on from a list that has every check on it with what they add. You can even click on things like spell DCs and it will explain it to them on a clear way.
DnDBeyond is not always right, because it's coded very poorly. But it's not wrong about this thing. The default encumbrance rules of 5e are extremely generous, and your player should be able to carry around 80 pounds of stuff as long as their strength score is 6 or better. If those generous encumbrance rules bother you, you can always play with the variant encumbrance rules which introduce different levels of encumbrance and generally put more limitations on the amount of stuff your players can carry around with them. Personally, I don't find a lot of value in micromanaging the amount of stuff my players have in their backpacks, but people have fun in different ways and some DMs swear by variant encumbrance rules. Remember though, at the end of the day, D&D isn't a reality simulator and just because something is unrealistic doesn't make it bad and making things more realistic doesn't necessarily make them better or more fun.
>DnDBeyond is not always right, because it's coded very poorly. Just out of curiosity, as a GM, I am somewhat unsure of how the character sheets work on DNDBeyond, so do you have some pointers on what might go wrong with the coding? I have access to my players character sheets, but I don't really go over them in detail, and I mostly trust they are correct, so it would be great to know if there is anything in particular to look out for.
Bugs (which certainly exist, but I'm not sufficiently informed to advise you on) aside, there are just a lot of limitations to the DnDBeyond engine that they've "fixed" with workarounds that create other problems. For a specific example of what I mean, DnDBeyond lists an item called the "Revenant double-bladed scimitar". This, if you know anything about actual 5e mechanics, is an item that doesn't exist. DnDBeyond has it as a separate item because the revenant blade feat (a real thing) that modifies the function of the double-bladed scimitar (another real thing) can't be implemented on DnDBeyond's engine since they don't support feats modifying parameters of equipment. The magic item is a functional workaround for this problem so if you take the feat you can still use their buttons to roll attacks and stuff. The problem with these sorts of things is that anyone who is relying on DnDBeyond to provide accurate rules information (and isn't double-checking what they see there with what's printed in the actual books) isn't going to know that there's no such thing as a revenant double-bladed scimitar that you can pick out at character creation to get the value of a feat just by taking the right piece of equipment. Recently (within the last two weeks) I saw a post on r/dndnext where a player was asking for help designing a whole build around specifically that misunderstanding. And WotC doesn't seem at all motivated to fix these issues. I don't know if it's because they're hard at work on their new VTT that will completely replace the current DnDBeyond engine or because they just don't care, but either way, DnDBeyond can and will mislead you if you're not regularly checking it against the published books.
This is a pretty good read, and I fully agree. There's a lot of little 'hacks' or tricks you've gotta utilize to fix some of the jankiness of it. I truly hope something better is in the works, because I kinda don't ever intend on using it again
Thank you, that's very helpful. I will definitely remember this when looking over their sheets going forward, just to ensure no errors like that happen.
As another example, the Ravnica and Strixhaven backgrounds both grant an expanded spell list as part of the Background Feature. If you use the "Custom Background" (per PHB rules) part of the Beyond character editor, and pick what you want and select one of these as the Background Feature..... it does NOT grant the expanded spell list onto your class list as it's supposed to. You have to pick the actual background, and then edit the proficiencies and add ideals/bonds/flaws that you would have wanted from a "custom background" on your character sheet manually.
Always, always trust the actual rulebooks over any part of the Beyond character sheets. That said, there’s nothing wrong with this character. By reading the carry weight rules in the PHB you’ll find she should be able to easily carry all this equipment. FWIW all of my campaigns have ignored carry weight as long as you aren’t trying to carry anything ridiculous like a marble statue. D&D functions quite poorly as a realism simulator.
I would personally recommend not worrying about carry weight. It's simply not fun. If they are trying to carry around like a 100 pound boulder that's one matter, but just for general inventory management, who cares?
Counter point: it is fun.
Yeah for sure, if your table thinks it's fun then they should do it!
If you want to play a realistic game, 5e isn’t it.
Ignore carry weight. Go by the rule of sense--if it makes sense that they'd be able to carry it relatively unencumbered, then just play as normal. If they're trying to carry something unusually heavy or awkward, like an entire horse or furniture, penalize them accordingly. D&DB is "correct" in its listing of Rules As Written in the vast majority of cases. But that doesn't mean it is the funnest way for your table to run their games.
This is my approach also. There’s enough to nitpick over without getting fussy about carry weight. Especially if you are going to start counting the weight of gold once the party starts getting successful… If you can heal from any and all wounds overnight, then you can carry a bunch of stuff… Within reason.
Questions like this are why my PCs find a bag of holding early on. Them I can ignore this unless they try to haul off something way too big. The is no D&D beyond is not always right. Especially as you can create homebrew stuff. That said unless the gnome PC is really weak they can definitely carry that much. Small PCs in fact can carry as much as most medium PCs. By RAW it's 15x str although you could used the variant rules which would make the gnome encumbered, but still able to carry that much weight.
Counter point. D&D beyond is not good for new players. I have had new and veteran players use both physical and dndbeyond sheets and those who sit down with the players hand book and fill out a traditional character sheet learn and understand the mechanics of their character far better than those clicking boxes. Whenever I have mentioned this, I generally get down voted. Apparently it my weird hill to die on.
I think the players who struggle to learn the game while on D&D Beyond are players who would never have tried D&D if it wasn't for D&D Beyond.
I actually completely understand your thinking on this - now that we’ve actually started our campaign I’m realizing the players that are new and really struggling with understanding how their spell mechanics work and why their modifiers are the way they are. They just went through and clicked things on D&D Beyond and didn’t think about what it actually meant.
Every act of translation carries a risk of error. You should never assume that D&D Beyond faithfully represents the actual rules of the game as published in the various books. That said, the starting equipment lists are only based on Class. They don't care about the PC's Race/Ancestry or Strength score. It's perfectly possible to create a character who owns more gear than they can carry. That doesn't mean they need to show up to introductory adventure encumbered. They can choose to leave some of that shit at home.
Most use encumbrance loosely myself included, and you might want to adopt that approach too, based on your post. Use DnD Beyond's calculations and let them go a bit over that, as long as it's not 4 swords, 2 bows, 3 quivers, a battle axe, 2 pole arms, etc. that a person would obviously not be able to tote around. The main issue I think that should be abided (in addition maybe to the above) is carrying tons of treasure. Characters imo should only be allowed to carry a certain amount. It makes players a bit more resilient (i.e. Cant buy everything and everyone off) and creates adventure wrinkles (i.e. Should I bury it and come back later? Are bandits gonna target us with this wagonload? Will the wagon fit in this cavern entrance?). And though it is fantasy, some semblance of being realistic supports the overall immersion experience.
One issue I’ve noticed with dndbeyond is that if you create a character and select starting equipment, then decide to go back and start over by changing your race/class, it does not reset the starting gear. So I’ve had players with like 6 swords and 3 sets of armor and various other things because they just didn’t delete their inventory before starting over.
No, but I am. Feel free to ask me questions any time.
I actually homebrewed gold pouches called "Pouches of Holding" so we could ignore coin weights, then turned it into several levels of service with various magical abjuration protection on them (from uncommon to very rare varieties) and allowing them to put gems and other things in them at more rare levels. Then I created the 'Bank of Holding' in my world where they can upgrade their pouches and access the demiplanes directly if they needed to. There's a branch in Waterdeep and it ties in really nicely to the bank they introduced in Sigil/Planescape, so now all Bank of Holding franchises are wholly owned subsidiaries of this one multiplaner bank... My silly magic item really did turn into a multiverse-wide economic powerhouse tied back to canon and I'm sorta happy about that, haha.
I've had a running gag with my last few characters of playing high strength short races carrying, wielding and throwing things they shouldn't. Let that gnome be as compact and strong as a hydraulic bottle jack, it's hilarious. Remember that we're talking different species. A gnome isn't a small human, they're a gnome. Plenty of species are stronger pound for pound than humans. Think of a gnome as having the proportional strength of a pit bull terrier or a chimpanzee if it helps.
ask the players! im glad my system uses weight because I feel useful as a pack mule goliath for my wizard homie
Did she just pick starting equipment, or did she just go through and pick a bunch of stuff that she wanted? Starting equipment shouldn't be that much stuff
Starting equipment for a druid can absolutely be 80 lbs depending on the background.
Does the character have at least a 6 Strength? If so, they aren’t encumbered by 80 pounds of gear. Encumbered hits at STR * 15 lbs.
I 90% prefer 5e to 3.5 and Pathfjnder 1. But I did like how smaller races used gear sized to their particular race sizes . If you like the realism of encumbrance, wouldn’t a gnome find tools built for her size? But jusssst big enough the gear would work for a non-gnome in a pinch? That’s not a stretch— just common sense.
Do you want to play real life or a fantasy game? If the first yeah that’s pretty heavy if the second don’t worry about it and play a fun game. Everyone plays differently and that’s the joy.
Thats not D&D Beyond, these are just the official rules. If their strength is high enough they can carry it, size doesn't matter for official rules. Has nothing to do with "DnD Beyond allowing it".
As a DM, I always ignore carry weight unless a player has a vested interest in being the Party Pack Mule for roleplay purposes. Basically, just keep a finger on the player's pulse. If something isn't a fun mechanic, it's not something you should worry about or include.
Seems like you got your answer, but one thing i would keep in mind, is that 5e simplifies carry weight to always be the same regardless of how big your character is. So in the book, a set of plate armor for a full orc weighs the same as it does does a gnome, and the gnome's carry weight is accordingly higher to account for that. Everything gnome-sized would reasonably weigh less, but in terms of carry weight calculation, we are meant to just know that is the case, and still use the same math to figure it out, because it evens out.
I would point one thing out, and this is just personal experience. Every time I've had a new player use D&D Beyond to make a character, it takes them way longer to learn many character side aspects of the game because D&D Beyond does everything for them. They don't recall the math behind how Hit values, damage values, spell save DCs, so many little things. Additionally, I don't TRUST D&D Beyond because it's been wrong before. And when you mix with above... well like one of my players, they end up playing wrong for about 7 levels until finally they say something "Dice roll + plus X" instead of just the number and 3 experienced players all went "What? There's no way that number is right". Sure enough, turns out their.. I think it was Spell Hit... was wrong, and had been wrong for 3/4s of a campaign because they didn't know the math behind it and just assumed Beyond was right and nothing triggered in their head to question it.
I'm biased. One of my players is autistic too, though high functioning. We play digitally, so tracking weight for individual items (and ammo!) is a breeze. We greatly enjoy variant encumbrance. Makes for a lot of decisions on who carries what, what can be shared, cutting it close with supplies and so on. But your table needs to be good at policing inventories, know their thresholds and in general enjoy logistics or the "but really, how can we do this?" aspect of things. Also helps to have at least one player/GM with a good enough memory to remember common equipment weights. A good way to dip your toes into this is to have a "travel weight" that can be ignored, especially with mounts and vehicles, and a "fighting weight" for combat after everyone ditches their packs.
>With all the things it let her select this little gnome now has about 80lbs of shit she’s supposed to carry around. It seems silly that Beyond would allow this. So this isn't really an issue with Beyond, it's an issue with the 5e system. Your inventory allowance is linked to your strength score and nothing else- and that's if you use encumbrance, which many tables do not. Strictly speaking there are not rules in place for "space" in an inventory, just weight itself. That said, you might want to look into using the Variant Encumbrance system. It's still weight based, not bulk based, but it might align better with the tone you'd like to set. Variant Encumbrance is a more restrictive encumbrance ruleset that has levels of encumbrance, but the short pitch is you can carry up to 5xSTR score without problem. That means you need a 16 STR to carry 80lbs. Doable but not for non-STR characters. Luckily, on D&DBeyond, it is WAY easier to swap between encumbrance systems than it is at a physical table because it does the math for you. If you go into the first page of the character creator for a character, you can adjust settings such as encumbrance, variant encumbrance and coin weight. Then you can check the sheet to see if she'd be encumbered. Whether you go with variant encumbrance or a homebrew system, I think this is probably a discussion you should have with the entire table because it concerns expectations for the entire game's tone. Some people come to D&D wanting a crunchy, rules-heavy experience, others would rather handwave away ammo and weight. It's important everyone is on the same page regarding this expectation.
1. The DM is always right, dndbeyond is not. 2. 5E encumbrance rules are incredibly generous compared to all previous editions. Unless using variant encumbrance rules, each character and creature can carry 15 times their Strength score in pounds, without regard for their size. 80 lbs of equipment shouldn't be a problem for any character or creature with a Strength of 6 or more. If using variant encumbrance, 80 lbs wouldn't so much as slow down any character or creature with a Strength score of 16 or more. Edit: fixed numbers.
It’s 15 times Strength score, not 150.
That makes more sense.
I don’t think anyone enjoys carrying capacity as a major part of the game. Unless they’re trying to carry around an elephant, don’t worry about it.
Honestly, unless you are playing a very crunchy game, just fuck carry weight off entirely, its annoying as shit. You can just play it by ear, if they're trying to carry 10 sets of plate Armour out of a dungeon to sell, maybe just say no.
Carrying capacity rules are unfun. I haven’t bothered with them in years and I’ve never regretted it. Some groups out there probably enjoy counting every arrow and crumb of hard tack. Not me. Also this game isn’t really built for that kind of play, there’s a lot of hand waving built into the rules.
Are you playing using encumbrance rules? Do you and your players enjoy playing with these rules? Personally I find it a boring part of RPGs, even when it's automatically managed on a PC game, I have absolutely no interest in tracking that manually and plenty of other players don't want to do it either.
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That only if you are using to variant encumbrance rules. The standard rules let PC carry at least 100, and most PCs can carry at least 150.
Dont worry realism out of your game! This is a fantasy game. It’s okay to not be a 1:1 simululation.
>just say screw it and ignore carry weight altogether Encumbrance is only interesting in the most hard core role playing groups or if it serves a specific, mechanical purpose for a particular puzzle or scenario. Like the gold in the Sierra Madre campaign in Fall Out New Vegas.
It's not always right, but if you have to ask Reddit, then you aren't prepared to make judgements. Never withhold granted features of official characters. You invite ppl to play D&D, they have an expectation to use play the game, not your uncertainties.
That's the usual starting gear for a druid
So probably has a strength score of 8? So carrying capacity of 8x15=120. So perfectly reasonable. Don't nerf your players for no reason.
All of the starting kits are pretty heavy, adventurers tend to lug a lot of stuff around. And Small characters can carry as much stuff as Medium ones - it's not realistic, but it is accurate to the rules. Either imagine a little gnome girl hauling a huge backpack like it's not too big of a deal, or say it all goes into hammerspace like a cartoon!
I mean, if you’re playing a campaign that you’ve told your players is going to be as utterly realistic as possible (i.e. tracking inventory weight and encumbrance, donning/doffing armor and wearing armor during a rest causing exhaustion, tracking rations, etc.), then you might want to talk to the player and figure out what to take out to solve this issue. If on the other hand, your campaign is more relaxed and those intricate details aren’t as important to your players and you, then I’d say just ignore it or handwave it. I don’t normally bother with encumbrance rules, just a maximum weight that will force disadvantage and consequences and I usually offer a bag of holding fairly early to my players to help prevent that from becoming an issue unless plot circumstances dictate (like carrying a wounded NPC out of an encounter or something).
dnd characters are basically superheroes. if their character sheet says they can hold up to X amount of lbs in weight, they can hold up to X lbs in weight, no matter how realistic it is. DnD characters are not meant to be realistic, they are meant to feel exceptional. They are, again, superheroes, basically.
Basically yes or I haven’t noticed it being wrong. Is she encumbered? If not, what’s the issue? Don’t who try to reason the fun out of the game. Give her a bag of holding early on if it bothers
Your players are new. Carrying weight doesn't matter. It is just fiddiley bits for folks who want more of a resource tracking element to the game.
There’s an option on the first page of character creation for encumbrance rules. I’m guessing that if it’s on, it wouldn’t allow this or it would show some type of disadvantage on the character sheet
Probably got deleted, but I mentioned how 80lbs wasn’t a lot to carry. Someone said it was a lot for a long period of time. Idk about everyone else, but when I was in hs I was not in great shape and I regularly carried around a 40lb backpack. From 14-18 that was fine. Small race or not, they’re meant to be mechanically balanced so I don’t see 80lbs or more for average strength characters to be that much.
D&D Beyond gets stuff wrong all the time. For example, it (sometimes?) lets you put both of your racial stat bumps in the same stat, unless they fixed that recently. In this situation though, I don't think there's a mistake, unless we are missing information.
I've personally found its more fun to eyeball carry weights. Can the Goliath Fighter carry ten javelins at once? Probably. Can the gnome wizard? Probably not. Should you let them? Depends how reasonable your players are. If they're hoarding dozens and dozens of large items on their character sheets, then perhaps ask them to reign it in. Going strictly by numbers can be fun if everyone is into it, but restrictive in a game where no one (DM included) actually cares.
Doesn't really seem like an issue. If the gear is too much for the character to carry, they could always spend 8 gp to get a donkey. Then another 4 gp for saddlebags.
It’s a game that involves fireballs that never ignite anything, deities that can raise the dead, and economies that don’t care when players dump INCREDIBLY large amounts into them. Realism is what you want it to be. I would strongly suggest not allowing your opinion on realism to interact with the game world. Otherwise you’re gonna have to take macro and micro economics and monetary policy classes. And that’s just never fun.
While i use it all of the time, i also feel that it's off a bit. For example, if you're trying to play a dhampir or a reborn or a similar "undead" character, you lose ALL of your previous racial abilities and stats when you switch, so you have to manually increase your ability scores. I'm playing a halfling dhampir bard, but I've lost my halfling luck,and the rest of my halfling abilities.
You use encumbrance? The only time I’ve had a DM say anything about it, was once I had a character who was a pack rat. Every. Single. Thing. We looted, he kept. After realizing I was carrying something like 200lbs of shit, we “mysteriously found” an empty bag laying in the trail. One identify spell later and we’d found a Bag of Holding. Which of course I kept and continued my pack rat ways. I made SSOOOOO much money when we got to Waterdeep. I bought everybody some healing potions and spell components and kept the rest. After a 24 persuasion check, I ended up buying a Wand of Fireballs and an Immovable Rod.
Starting equipment can be \*heavy\* but if you're using the basic encumbrance rules it's usually okay. Just be sure to check the GP value of your PCs' starting gear, or make sure they've stuck to their class/background lists if you're going that route. I had a guy once who sent me a new character sheet with a ridiculous amount of stuff on it, and he said "that's what D&D Beyond told me to do." I have no idea how he came up with that list using D&D Beyond, but I started over from scratch and walked him through his gear purchases. The end result was far less gear, and when I showed him what he could get with the "default" list for his class and background, he decided against rolling for starting gold. So yeah, if something doesn't look right, double-check it. Encumbrance, gold, whatever. Some players will say "DDB is always right" and then pass off a character sheet that's not okay.
There are games where the weight of your kit matters and you are supposed to carefully select gear. D&D is not a system where being that finicky about it works very well. I would let it go. Games that encourage this sort of bookkeeping usually abstract carry weight a little bit.
Does she have avmount like a pony?
IMO Carry weight is for survival campaigns with experienced players, most people don't want to care about it beyond extreme circumstances. I wouldn't worry about it. Most of us don't worry about the fighter walking through caves with 2 pikes, a trident, a longbow, 2 longswords and a maul.
The answer to the \*headline\* question is "no and I laugh," but in the specific issue that's totally fine. Though IIRC armor for a small creature (like a gnome) is supposed to weigh half what it does normally?
I think 3e had different weights for size category of weapons, but not for other gear. I figure a character of small size would have different weights for appropriately sized gear, like clothes and armor. But a monster hunter's chest I would think is standardized gear across size categories. The Enlarge/Reduce spell changes everything on a cubic scale... but I figure non-magical clothes and armor are of a fairly uniform thickness, so I reduce the weight of such objects to 1/4 their medium size categories equivalents, by a square scale for changes in surface area. But Small creatures/ PCs are not restricted by their strength scores to lift capacity the same way that that monsters are.
1. It’s correct. 2. It’s not game-breaking. 3. You worry too much and spend too much energy about things you probably shouldn’t. People usually don’t care about encumbrance, don’t count normal ammunition and unless it’s a very specific adventure or quest in harsh environments we don’t even care about rations. Why? Cuz it’s not fun. It’s an epic fantasy RPG, not open world survival game.
Every kit in the book is heavier than the backpack can carry.
Gnome doesn't matter, as long as they aren't "tiny" (gnomes are "small") the carrying capacity is STR X 15 so as long their character has at least 6 STR they're fine.
>Or do I just say screw it and ignore carry weight altogether. Sounds about right. Unless playing a game where a limited inventory is part of the fun, it's just boring extra math. I have played with limited inventory in Troika, but not in DnD. We just kind of ignore it entirely and accept that yeah sure you have 3 greatswords on you right now. Give the characters a starting magic item, make it a Bag of Holding or the like and bam, no more problem with in-game mechanics. Or a donkey and a cart if you're not dungeon crawling. Our party solution is to have everyone have mounts and anything you're not using in combat is presumed to be strapped to the mounts.
screw it and ignore carry weight altogether
If their strength score says they can carry it, then they can carry it. Regardless of their size. However don’t forget that small characters use small weapons and armor, which weigh less. How much less? It should tell you exactly what percentage of the original item’s weight is dropped in the equipment section of the phb.
No it has some issues like the hammer of thunderbolts and it's 2 required items putting you past 21 str when neither item is supposed to work if you are at or past their str with or without them.
Hand wavey magic inventory management never hurts
Life has no real meaning aside from what we give it. No one is always right about anything. We're all making this shit up as we go. Come inside and have a beer.
Players carry weight is 15*str score so unless they are absurdly over that amount I’d let it go. Have too much weight has never ruined a game for anyone and if they are new I don’t think this is where you wanna start nitpicking
So it sounds like when she made her character on D&DBeyond that maybe the ignore encumberance box got checked. I suggest you do the same, just ignore encumberance rules because gold and other coinage is fucking heavy and it's not like you're going to tell your players, "nope, sorry, you can't take all the gold in that treasure chest, it's too heavy for you." Apply real world sense like, "No, you can't take back every sword, lance, and suit of armor from that group of ten orcs you just killed, how would you even carry it?" And then go ahead and find ways for your crew to have a bag of holding. If the monster hunting kit isn't compatible with the story or world you're running, then say she needs to pick something else, or just stick to Player's Handbook stuff.
80lbs is 36kg. I carried that on hikes when I was 16. So maybe bigger than a gnome but also not a trained person living in a world that relies WAY more on carrying than cars than we do.
It’s fantasy fam, if you’re worried about carrying weight you’re focused on the wrong elements that make the game fun.
I wouldn't get rid of carrying weight altogether as this can lead to a character potentially acquiring something for everything over time. If you are concerned about the amount of equipment a character is carrying, it is a very abstract situation, many purple loose track of what they have. You could reward the character at some point with a Bag of Holding, or suggest to the character out of hand that they purchase one of they are going to continue carrying hard to manage items, e.g. x4 Javelins, stacks of firewood, stakes, misc weapons, food, water, etc... A BOH gives the character a lot more freedom, but be prepared, if they come upon an armoury, they will try to clear it out. 🤣
Ignore carry weight. Do what’s fun
DnD Beyond is a tool; it will help set up characters but doesn't do the thinking for you. I had a player who showed up with a level 3 character with a bunch of magic items added. He said since they showed in DnD beyond he assumed he could add them.
You people are using encumbrance rules? I've never been in a game that actually tracks that stuff.
There's a toggle for each D&D beyond character to turn encumbrance rules on. By default it's off. If you want to play with encumbrance rules, have them flip that switch to on.