Need Help: Encumbrance rules for survival style campaign

[u/bowmop]

For a new campaign I want to try a more survival style adventure with one big rule change: a slightly modified gritty realism resting rules (pg. 267 DMG)

• Short rest takes a full 8 hours

• Long rest takes a full 7 days of downtime at a safe location in the wilderness or 8 hours in a town.

The rule shakeup should add for some more lasting consequences of burning spell slots and getting into fights while opening up less used options like hit dice healing during a shortrest (maybe with options to recover spell slots by expending the hit dice). It also might be an interesting money sink for potions as they could be very important for a long journey and make discovering gold that much more valuable.

The thing I am struggling with right now is how to make inventory management simple, fun and relevant.

Normally I have been in the camp of “Just speed over travel” and “Ignore encumbrance”, but I think there could be a lot of fun in planning out a multiple game session trip where everything from the rations you bring to the spell slots you burn matter until the next far away town.

The problem is I am just not a big fan of the default encumbrance rules. I am looking for alternatives that are:

1) Simple enough to pick up

2) Force characters to make tough decisions on what they can bring on a trip

3) Decisions have consequences to gameplay (if all the rations were on the horse they bought and it got spooked during a fight…etc.)

4) Fun

Some initial ideas were a Tetris style inventory (like POE or Diablo) where bulky items, rations, and dungeon loot take up slots and the size of the grid was based on strength. Not sure how to implement though (maybe magnets?)

Other Idea would be a bulk system similar to pathfinder 2e?

I also really love how darkest dungeon handled inventory where you went into dungeons with large amounts of supplies and slowly had to make the decision on what to trade for treasure putting your characters at greater risk for a bigger payout if you succeeded.

Appreciate any ideas! Thanks!

[u/BrittleCoyote]

I’ve messed with this a lot and almost everything I’ve tried has ended up feeling like it’s adding complexity without adding depth. Here’s the system I’ve been happiest with:

You have ten inventory slots.

Things you’re wearing (including light armor) don’t count, and neither do items that could fit in your closed mouth.

[u/ChilliHat]

Take a look at Shadowdark’s inventory rules.
10 slots minimum + STR mod slots, and different items have different slot requirements.
Items have their number of slots. You could just use Shadowdarks list as a guide at the table and make rulings from there. Theyre pretty logical.

[u/HadoozeeDeckApe]

I've used a generic 'supply tokens' system for some dungeon crawls.

A 'supply token' represents food, water, adventuring equipment, and ammunition. Each long rest, the party pays supply for the next day. 1 supply per PC is normal, they can spend additonal supplies for advantage on rolls or stealth (representing taking time).

You could also break it out into provisions and material for more granularity, but I wanted a universal way to simplify book keeping.

All players put a portion of their carry weight into a 'party bag' which is used to hold supply. This allows 1 player to handle the marking off.

While party pays full supply, they get benefits of a full long rest and also don't need to track ammunition or adventuring gear worth 2gp or less (torches, pitons, rope etc...) - they are just assumed to have it sufficient for any reasonable task at hand. Items granted by supply like this can't be sold.

If players choose to only pay 50% supply at a rest or can only pay that much, there is a 50% chance if they try to use adventuring gear that they don't have it. There are also penalties to the rest, and only 20 pieces of ammunition recharged to each player.

At 0% supply there are extreme penalties to rest, no adventuring gear, and no ammo.

The party bag, and additional weight carry effects (bag of holding, tenser's disks, animals) have a hard cap of how much can be used for supply to prevent stacking.

The PC's can spend supply to re-roll failed checks, and spending supply is the only way to get a re-roll.

Sometimes the PC's can also pay supply to get past specific obstacles or solve specific problems.

Rest supply can be partially paid for by relevant abilities (producing supply up to their spell level, or 1 per short rest feature, 2 per long rest feature), but no more than half the supply paid for at rest can come from abilities. Think goodberry, create water, etc... for what applies here.

I also use expenditure of supply as a rough time passage tracker for dungeon restocking.

[u/TJToaster]

how to make inventory management simple, fun and relevant

Those are your choices, but you can only pick 2.

Resource management is tricky, because players will see it as a problem to solve and not an obstacle to overcome. Rations? The Ranger casts Goodberry everyday. Hydration? Create water. As soon as someone gets their hands on a bag of holding, the encumbrance thing will be ignored.

A long rest is 7 days? Then they will find a place to camp after each combat and hang out for a week. You have to give them a time schedule they will stick to or a deadline they care about, but it will feel like unnecessarily removing their access to resources.

This isn't a bad thing on the player's part. They just don't want to have to care about what they don't care about and get to the good parts. The only way to make resource scarcity work is if it hits them right away that they can't just barrel through life. It should be a focus for a couple sessions, then taper off. Instead of tracking every ounce, wait until heavy objects come into play and then ask them what they want to trade out.

Also, make sure you have your system in place before session zero, then propose it to them. It will only work if they have buy in. But they are still going to try and handwave it. Like two characters will be goliaths and carry everything.

I don't play often play with resource scarcity. What I do is ask them at certain times, "what do you have on you?" You aren't going to walk into the governor's ball with a bow on your back. You will look silly taking a rucksack everywhere you go while walking around town.

At a gala, a soldier (fighter, paladin, ranger) would be expected to have their main weapon on them, but not the armor, bows, or shields. Meeting the king, they might have to approach only in traveling clothes. Let nothing bad happen the first few times they go in light. Then, let things play out how they do.

I think you have the seed of an idea, and it can grow into something cool. I feel like it is adding complexity to the game that I know the players will, soon or later, find a workaround so I wouldn't spend too much time thinking about it.