Slot-Based Encumbrance

Last night, my broke players stumbled on a windfall: thousands of gold and silver pieces. Despite actually taking a minute to look up the exact encumbrance rules of 5th Edition, we quickly came to an unspoken agreement communicated through a moment of silence.

An encumbered man

No one had the desire to start tracking the weight of their stuff even though we all knew that the fiction of this moment demanded a choice: drop something important or leave most the money.

So, after a few seconds, I declared they could all grab 250 coins with a hand wave. In future dungeon delves, I hope to test out a slot-based encumbrance system like this:

• Every player character has 2 hand slots, 4 body slots, and pack slots equal to their STR score

• Items take up inventory slots equal to the number of hands it takes to hold them (1 slot for a book, 2 slots for a bedroll, and anything that takes 3 hands you can't carry alone)

• You can bundle small items together equal to the number you can hold in a single hand (3 glass vials per slot, a pouch of 100 coins per slot, something like that)

• Armor takes up slots and must occupy body slots to contribute to your AC

• You can grab any item stored in a body slot as a free action

• Store your pack items in order and include a dice roll to retrieve them or lose your action trying (Troika! has a great simple 2d6 mechanic for this)

• Once you fill all of your slots, you can't carry any more; no rules for being encumbered or any nonsense like that

If you keep the rules for encumbrance simple, your players are more likely to follow them. Once you implement this system, you can expand on it later by adding injuries or conditions as items that fill up your slots (as used in Mausritter).

A system that players actually use is a system that leads to interesting decisions during the game. I can't wait to try it out.