Carrying Capacity
If you’ve ever been on the wrong end of a Swim check, you know how important it is to stay encumbrance free. Yeah it’s nice to carry your various adventuring gear on the actual adventure, but it’s also nice not to drown, fall off cliffs, or get crushed under the weight of your own loot.
It’s an especially tough problem to deal with for Dexterity-based characters. While Frar the barbarian can soldier on with the rest of the party riding in a howdah on his back, Percival the swashbuckler can’t put on his chain shirt without falling over. It’s even worse in point buy games, where you’re often obliged to dump your Strength in favor of the more synergistic ability scores. While muleback cords, masterwork backpacks, and handy haversacks are the most popular solutions, I favor the old standbys.
A mule costs 8 gp. A hireling costs 1 sp per day. Between the two of them, you’ve got all the carrying capacity you need. Of course, pack animals come with a significant downside. If you park Cletus the mule outside the dungeon entrance, he’s going to get eaten by wolves. If you instruct Nodwik the henchman to guard Cletus, they’re both going to get eaten by wolves. The upside there is that you get your 1 sp per day back, assuming the wolves haven’t eaten that too.
Fighter, being a traditional fighter, has the necessary Strength to avoid all of this tomfoolery. He is, however, a dick.
THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!
So what you’re saying is, I should tame the Wolves as draft animals?
Pack animal are notorious for eating other adventurers’ mules and henchmen. You’d wind up losing money on lawsuits.
Our party is bringing our mule into the dungeon because he’s an awakened mule name Mjulnir.
So… Do you charge as per a hireling, or as per a mule? Can he stable himself?
There was a fighter archetype called Pack Mule that cranked up your carrying capacity in exchange for armor training. I made a character named Bag Fort who had around two tons as his carrying capacity. And of course, I had to give him Boots of Striding and Springing on top of Fleet, since logically, a mountain of luggage would be able to outrun most other people and then brace his lucerne hammer against their inevitable charge of frustration.
I’m imagining the strong man from Baron Munchausen. Dude definitely deserves his own archetype.
Come to think of it, that could be a fun build challenge: Try and calculate the maximum possible carrying capacity.
Yes, encumberance. I try to be strict on keeping to encumberance penalties. That backpack of yours? Take it off before you get into a fight, it’ll only get in the way.
And as an experienced hiker, I can tell the table: if you’re not encumbered when travelling overland (and don’t have a beast to carry your bags), you’re doing it wrong. Nobody actually travels 30 miles on foot in a day, unless they have no pack and are on a road in flat country. Adventuring should be a long, hard slog – you should really feel the relif when you crawl into town after a week in the mountains!
And never again will I let one of my parties have a bag of holding. If the players want to make off with that dragon’s hoard, they’re going to have to out in some serious elbow grease!
I find that reducing the size of the bag’s mouth works a treat. Suddenly it’s much hard to steal those mithril doors when they don’t fit into your convenient extra-dimensional space.
Why does Fighter have a loyal unicorn steed, anyway? He’s clearly not something he earned through diplomacy.
It’s a matter of mutualism: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/tournament-arc-part-7-8