Encumbrance

Tracking encumbrance sucks, but hammerspace sucks, too.  So… we’re going to use a riff on the “anti-hammerspace encumbrance system.”

Each character can carry up to six (logical) containers (define as you wish), each of which can hold up to three items.  The number of slots an item takes up depends on weight, size and unwieldiness.

Armor takes up some number of the logical containers; light armor is one container, medium armor is two containers and heavy armor is three containers.

Shields take up one slot per point of shield bonus.

As for weapons, light weapons take up one slot, medium weapons take up two slots and heavy weapons take up three slots (an entire container).  Polearms take up an entire container regardless of weight.

Other gear takes up an arbitrary number of slots based on the item, but the rule of thumb is one stone (1000 coins, or ten pounds) of weight is one slot.  Miscellaneous tiny items can be listed and will take up one slot on its own (for each stone of weight).

The number of containers a character may carry is adjusted by their strength bonus; for each plus, you may carry one additional container.  For each minus you can carry one container less.

For example, your character has a 16 strength, which confers a +2 strength bonus.  You can carry six standard plus two more bonus containers, for a total of eight containers.

A character may carry an additional encumbering container, but for each additional container their movement drops by 25% and they take a cumulative -1 penalty on all rolls.  No one may carry more than three encumbering containers.

For example, your character has an 11 strength and gets no bonus, but is carrying eight containers.  This means that your character only moves at (100% - (2 * 25%)) == 50% of the normal rate and takes -2 on all rolls.

Each container should be labeled what it is.  This means that if you lose items for whatever reason (thievery, effect from a trap or spell, need to shed weight during an encounter) we know what isn’t in your possession anymore until you recover them.

Also, the more items you put in a given container makes it harder to find things under duress.  If you have four containers and label them all “backpack” (or don’t label anything and we assume that it’s all in a really unwieldy backpack) then if you are searching for a healing potion during combat you might have to rifle your bag to uncover it rather than it just being available to use immediately.