I like the Knave system the way I’ve seen it houseruled. Items take up slots, but so do fatigue, illness or injury. It makes health and fitness resources to be managed like any other.
I wanted magic to be more accessible in my game, so I decided that spells can be learned and cast as often as you have physical components for. Components are something you have to work to find. Half a dozen uses of the same component fit in a single slot.
I’ve been thinking about how it would be cool if damage took up inventory slots–maybe it would take damage to be more abstracted (like, instead of rolling damage dice, each attack takes up one slot). This might have to do for a less combat-oriented system, though. I’m glad to see it’s been done!
Are components the sole element of a spell, or does the character also have to have a spellbook on hand? This sounds really fun!
Oh yeah that houserule is gold. Fatigue, hunger, compulsive hoarding, magically-acquired weight… all take slots.
I use one slot per spell, handwaved as anything the player wants. Some like scrolls, some say it’s magical frogs and spices, and once there was a guy carrying spells directly in his brain, so his head would get bigger.
You can read from a spellbook, or you can learn the spell. Learning is hazardous - failing the saving roll means rolling on a magical mishaps table. My playtest character could sometimes hear people’s thoughts, but he couldn’t tell the difference between speaking a thought and just thinking it privately.
Hey y’all! Found some really interesting slot-based systems.
This one gives players 8 slots only, and abstracts things like rations and lights (only lanterns+fuel). I really like the abstractions, though I like being able to count down individual torches. Though, I could see torches counting as one item that you would roll luck for.
This other one has the players organize their inventory into certain containers, which I super dig because it emphasizes the spatiality of what characters are carrying. I could see another rule that characters can only carry as many containers (or items not held inside containers) equal to their STR bonus, or a value derived from it.
None.
I ought to explain that. XD As much as I like to obsess over inventory in PC games, in D&D I prefer to spend as little time as possible on figuring out: weights, slots, encumbrance etc etc.
So I simply tell all my players, I will let you run around and carry a reasonable amount of items, and I will consider your stature and strength a bit of course. If at any point I feel the party or PC is carrying a bit too much/not realistic I will ask you to buy a horse, or maybe one each (good way to relieve players of some GP) or to bury part of your treasure or for you to come up with a clever idea to haul all the stuff back to town to sell or store.
If players want to collect more and more stuff, cool! Can be fun. But the party will at one point have to build, rent or buy a base or storage and I will assume that you store everything there, that is not on your sheet (separate single sheet for entire party tracks stuff stored in the base) and reasonable to have as Every Day Carry items for your class/your specific character and personality.
Of course I factor the above in when they find treasure. If I want them to be able to haul stuff easily, perhaps they encounter a man with a cart at the road side they can pay a bit, or they found only PP,… if I want make them think, I will have them find a mountain of CP and/or bulky/heavy items valuable stuff and ask them how to hide or haul it or which spells they want to use to facilitate transport.
Basically if it adds to roleplaying opportunities or fun, induces creativity, might result in side-treks or hiring NPCs or buying services or goods, or if it makes the players think, I will consider encumbrance and let players know they need to take action. But, If they are carrying reasonable amount (and they learn to do this quickly) I prefer not to spend precious session time on encumbrance and on sorta “min-maxing”, bookkeeping and tracking stuff. It is not the most enjoyable aspect of DnD to me and my players, it reminds me a bit too much of PC games. Exploration, roleplaying, collaborative story-telling and world-building, for me personally that is all more fun than encumbrance tracking.
I am doing almost the same thing. I allow my players to carry a small set amount of combat equipment (armour and weapons), but I abstract all other items. Cool idea about adding encounters to help characters with the load, I will use that.
Yeh there is actually quite a bit of Roleplaying opportunities if you suddenly tell PCs, ok, you found all these pretty decent armor pieces and ton of CP or, this antique but top heavy and valuable vase needs to get back in one piece if you want to sell it,… PCs at that point might decide to make a simple sled each (which slows them down a bit and might allow creatures to track them very easily) or to use Wilderness skills to wrap the vase in soft natural materials so that it is protected (perhaps there is fire ants in the some of the earth the packed the vase with)
Or they will have to use up a valuable spell to make sure they can get the items back, or they will have to come back for the items and by then the situation might have changed a lot, perhaps now there is a small army camped on the spot where they buried their loot etc.
My players a few weeks ago were loading all of their loot onto their retainer. They thought this was an excellent idea until the monster threw the retainer (and all of their gold) down a bottomless pit.
Noice. XD They didnt recover any of the loot?
Not yet. They dropped a torch down there and it seemed over 100’ feet down (this is the chasm in Tomb of the Serpent Kings). They figure they can retrieve it later; it’s not likely going anywhere (1-in-6 some gnomes find it or something, though!).
I’ve started working on this for my homebrew lichJammer game, which is going to involve a lot of zero gravity exploration (so I’d probably tie the number of slots to DEX).