War Cry of the Flame Princess: Wilderness Travel

Wilderness travel is one of the things I always wanted to include as a major element of my campaigns but the rules as written in either B/X or LotFP require too much on the spot calculation and conversion of movement speeds in different terrains that I just can’t handle at the table with my ADD when the players are talking about what they are going to do next at the same time. Adding the attack bonus to a d20 roll and subtracting hit points I can manage, but doing divisions and fractions while paying attention to conversations just ends up with me getting brain locked. All my homebrew systems and my choice of LotFP as the system I am using have been done as means to compensate for my impairment in this regard. Making game mechanics more accessible for people with neural impairments is something I’ve never seen anything written about and might be worth dedicating a post or two to in the future.

Last year I already tried my hand at coming up with a simpler and faster solution, but it’s still based on the underlying assumptions of a hexcrawl with way more precision and granularity than I need for Sword & Sorcery adventures. But a great idea for something much better comes once again from Angry-sensei, who just has some kind of gift for making methods that are practical to use instead of being best suited to programm a computer with. There are two big things of beauty in his proposal. The first one is that it doesn’t require a map with precise measurements or any degree of accuracy. In addition to being quite a lot of work for GMs, the current design standard for maps is basically satelite photography which is something that wouldn’t be available to people within most fantasy world but in my own experience also create a sense of the world being fully explored and tamed. Which is the complete opposite you’d want in a mythic bronze age Sword & Sorcery world. Tolkien’s hand drawn map for The Lord of the Rings is what I consider the ideal form of fantasy map. It’s a tool for navigation that provides an idea of the general layout of the lands but also has a level of abstraction that inspires the viewer to wonder what marvelous places might be hidden in all those blank spots that noboy alive has ever set foot in. The second great thing about it is that it works without any calculations and requires only looking up a single number in a simple table. This post is an adaptation of this concept to the rules of LotFP with some tables for actual use in play.

Travel Times and Distances

When a party makes an overland journey, the first step is deciding on the path they want to foollow from their starting point to their destination. The GM then makes a quick rough measurement on the map (which can be as sketchy as you want) or makes a judgement call how long this path is in miles. At the start of each day, the GM decides which type of terrain the party will mostly be travelling through on that day. Knowing the encumbrance rating of the slowest character or pack animal in the party, the GM simply looks up on the following table how many miles the party covers on that day.

Terrain Unencumbered Lightly Encumbered Heavily Encumbered
Road 24 miles 18 miles 12 miles
Heath/Moor/Plains 16 miles 12 miles 8 miles
Desert/Forest/Hills 12 miles 9 miles 6 miles
Jungle/Mountains/Swamp 8 miles 6 miles 4 miles

Soldiers throughout history have been marching at about 3 miles per hour on good roads, so with 8 hours of marching you get 24 miles per day. While those soldiers would have been encumbered by gear, they also wouldn’t be travelling through untamed wilderness, so I think this table makes a decent enough approximation of plausible travel speeds.

Mounts

Contrary to movies and books, horses do not cover greater distances in a day than a human can. While they can run much faster at short distances, humans (and dogs) are the world’s best endurance runners and can keep on walking with much less need for rest than other animals. The distances covered by humans and horses are about the same. The big important difference is that horses can carry a lot more weight than humans and are much less slowed down by the same loads. Riding and pack animals should have the same movement rates as humanoids but with double or tripple the carrying capacity of an average person for calculating encumbrance,

Water Travel

17 different types of ship with different sailing and rowing speeds, 5 classes of quality, and 9 degrees of weather conditions is a bit more than needed when dealing with travel at this level of abstraction. I reduced it all down to this simple table.

Type Favorable Conditions Average Conditions Unfavorable Conditions
Canoe 24 miles 18 miles 12 miles
River Boat 80 miles 60 miles 40 miles
Sailing Ship, Slow 120 miles 90 miles 60 miles
Sailing Ship, Fast 160 miles 120 miles 80 miles

I’ve done some researching of my own about the speeds of (admitedly modern) sailing ships and the numbers in the Expert rules and LotFP seem to be way off. These numbers for distance travelled in a day are much closer to what you could actually expect from real ships. For canoes the distance is given fr 8 hours, as for marching, but for the others the distance is for a span of 24 hours since they are powered by wind and people can take turns with steering while the others rest. For canoes and river boats favorable and unfavorable conditions means going downstream or upstream. Average conditions would be on lakes. For sailing ships these apply to the weather and the wind in particular. Whether they are favorable or unfavorable can be determined with a simple roll of a d6, with a roll of a 1 or a 6 indicating that less or more distance has been covered that day. On the seas travel distances can vary greatly, but this is a good enough approximation for a game.

Wilderness Encounters

Another suggestion by Angry that I also take pretty much as is is rolling for wilderness encounters by rolling a number of d6 bases on how how much monster traffic is present in an area the party is travelling through on a given day. For every die that rolls a 1 there will be an encounter sometime during the day. At what time during the day and in what terrains these encounters will take place is up to the GM to decide. I got curious and calculated the odds for wilderness encounters with this method:

Threat Level No Encounters 1 Encounter 2 Encounters 3 Encounters
1 Settled or desolate 83% 17%
2 Wilderness 69% 28% 3%
3 Hostile Wilderness 58% 35% 7% 1%
4 Hostile Patrols 48% 39% 12% 2%

They are not actually as high as I expected. Not having any encounters at all still remains the most likely outcome by a good margin and even at higher threat levels the chance to have multiple encountes in a single day is very low. As Angry explains it in a much more elaborate way, this is actually a pretty nice addition to the regular wilderness encounter rules. It raises the number of factors players have to consider when picking a route to three: “How long would we be at risk at encuntering monsters in that area?”, “How dangerous are the monsters we might encounter in that area?”, and now also “How many monsters are in that area?” Go through the swamp that is choking with giant spiders or risk the shortcut over the mountains where almost all creatures have been killed by a dragon?

I  very much encourage using the rules for foraging and starvation. Carrying a large amount of rations means the party wil be slowed down but make consistent progress each day. Not packing enough rations for the whole journey (to make room for treasure for example) means that the party is travelling lighter and at a faster speed. While finding enough food in the wilderness is relatively easy with a trained specialist or a scout, the time it takes is highly unpredictable and can cause the party to actually make even less progress in a day. It’s a nice layer of added uncertainty that the players can consider in their planning for wilderness journeys.

Since more than a single encounter per day is very unlikely even in the more crowded regions, the encounter tables should be stocked in a way that there is real danger for the party. If the players have no reason to expect the possibility of a character dying or the party getting captured then they also have no incentive to hurry up, making the whole exercise of wilderness encounters moot.

Encounter Distances

If an encounter happens, use this table to determine the distance as which surprise rolls are being made by both sides.

Terrain Distance
Forest/Jungle 2d6 x 10 yards
Desert/Hills/Swamp 3d6 x 10 yards
Heath/Moor/Mountains/Plains 4d6 x 10 yards
Lake/Sea 4d6 x 10 yards

When travelling on rivers, use the row for the surrounding terrain. The distance for encounters on sea or lakes are for encounters with monsters. Ships can be seen from much larger distances.

War Cry of the Flame Princess: Hit Points and permanent injuries

Like many people, I am not a big fan of having PCs be perfectly fine with 1 hp remaining and instantly dead when they are at 0 hp.

My approach to hit points is to not regard them as wound points but as stamina points. A succesful hit means that the target suffers minor scratches and bruises that interfere with its ability to succesfully deflect or dodge attacks and avoid serious injury. When a character runs out of hit points the extortion becomes too high and he slips, suffering a serious wound. It’s an abstraction like any way you can think of hit points, but I think it’s the best approach to have the fiction of the adventure match the rules of the game.

But the bigger challenge is how to handle the situation of a PC being reduced to 0 hp. I have a big dislike of the complex dice rolling and multiple modifiers of third edition and AD&D and I certainly don’t want to go through anything like the trouble of multiple successive rolls to stabilize and recover while having negative hit points. A much simpler approach is this:

When an attack deals more damage to a character than he has hit points left, the remaining points of damage are compared to his Constitution score. If the points of damage in excess of the current hit points is greater than the Constitution score, the character is dead. If not, the character is only unconscious for 10 minutes and permanently loses 2 points of Constitution. This loss of Constitution represents a lasting injury that neither surgery nor magic will ever fully reverse. While unconscious at 0 hp, any further damage will automatically kill the character. A character who regains consciousness is unable to fight or do other tiring activities until brought to 1 hp or more through resting or magic.

There are no saving throws or Constitution checks. Death and permanent injury are always automatic. In my past campaigns characters running out of hit points was always very rare already. Adding a significant chance to negate the effects only makes it even more unlikely that something bad will happen to a character. (Though running Sword & Sorcery dungeon crawls will probably increase casualties in my next campaign a lot.) I had considered to randomly determine whether the ability loss affects Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, or Intelligence, but with hit points already representing the ability to continue fighting I don’t think it’s necessary.

I like this solution since it’s both somewhat realistic in regard to actual battle injuries, and it also matches the habit of many Sword & Sorcery heroes to be left for dead with grievous wounds. As in Yojimbo or A Fistful of Dollars, being almost dead is nothing that a week of rest can’t heal, even if it leaves a lasting mark. With a Constitution score of 2d6+6, this gives a character about three to seven opportunities to cheat death before being too crippled to continue, though it might be worth considering retirement much earlier than that. It’s a lot more forgiving than the standard rules for death, but it’s still something that players really will want to avoid.

War Cry of the Flame Princess: The Witch (spell point class)

My post from earlier this week about using Lamentations of the Flame Princess for a Sword & Sorcery campaign received some interest, so why not expanding it into a series? Probably the biggest change I’ve made to the rules is a complete overhaul of the magic-user class. I am not a fan of the spell slot and preparation system of D&D. Of the three big flaws I see in the game, it’s the one I don’t like the most. (Negative AC is easily fixed and Alignment can simply be ignorred.) Spell slots just don’t mesh with any kind of fantasy fiction except for the Dying Earth novels. It just doesn’t feel right to me. 3rd Editions sorcerer class was a decent first attempt to adress this, but oddly enough the best magic system I’ve ever seen in D&D is the revised 3rd edition psionics system. The edition with the biggest design flaws and the previously most clunky sub-system. The Witch class is the magic-user class from LotFP converted to spell points and with a revised spell list. In my Ancient Lands campaign it’s the only spellcasting class that covers both witches and shamans, as well as sorcerers who have access to a few unique spells.

The Witch

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Everything else is just as the magic-user class. This table assumes that 5th level is the highest level of spells that characters can possibly learn or cast. For campaigns in which higher level spells are available it can easily be expanded. This spell point conversion uses the exact same spells as usual without any modification to them. The only thing that changes is the way in which spells are learned and limited to uses per day.

Level Hit Points Attack Spells Known Spell Points Max. Level
1st 4 +1 3 3 1st
2nd +1d4 +1 +2 7 1st
3rd +1d4 +1 +2 12 2nd
4th +1d4 +1 +2 18 2nd
5th +1d4 +1 +2 25 3rd
6th +1d4 +1 +2 33 3rd
7th +1d4 +1 +2 42 4th
8th +1d4 +1 +2 52 4th
9th +1d4 +1 +2 63 5th
10th+ +1/level +1 +2/level +12/level 5th

Learning Spells

A first level witch begins the game knowing three spells of first level. Which each additional level the character learns two new spells that can be of any level that is available, as per the column “Max. Level”. At third level, a witch can learn two new spells that can either be of first or second level. At fifth level the new spells may be of first, second, or third level, and so on.

Casting Spells

Spells are not prepared. A witch can cast any spell that has been learned at any time, but has to spend spell points when doing so. How many spell points a witch has is indicated by the colum “Spell Points”. The character’s Intelligence modifier is added to this number at first level (but not at each additional level the character gains later.) The number of spell points that are used is equal to the character level at which the spell becomes available.

Spell Level Spell Point Cost
1st 1
2nd 3
3rd 5
4th 7
5th 9

Witches are highly flexible in chosing their spells and could either cast a smaller number of higher level spells or a large number of lower level spells. Learning a wide variety of lower level spells can be advantageous over always learning spells of the highest possible level as they consume a much lower number of spell points. In return for this increased flexibility in casting spells, witches don’t have the ability to switch out the spells they know between adventures. Witches can only learn new spells when gaining a new level and these spells can not be changed later.

The only way to get access to additional spells is through relics.

Relics

Relics are magic items that allow a witch to gain access to additional spells beyond those the character has learned. Relics are body parts of supernatural creatures or legendary witches and sorcerers who retain some of their former owners magical power. Each relic contains usually one spell and a witch holding or wearing the item can cast this spell just as if it were one of the spells the witch has learned. The witch has to spend spell points to cast the spell, just as with all regular spells, but gains a bonus of +1 to +3 to the spellcaster level to determine its effects, depending on the relic. Even if the witch already knowns the spell granted by the relic, the increased spellcaster level still applies.

Spriggan’s Claw

Spell: Plant Growth
Spellcaster Level: +1

Continue reading “War Cry of the Flame Princess: The Witch (spell point class)”

War Cry of the Flame Princess: Ability Scores and Character Levels

1474423181OSR games, particularly in the Weird OSR scene that Joseph Manola lined out so well here, predominantly focus on low power, low magic adventures in whichopponents are either normal guys or extremely deadly eldritch horrors. While it’s a style that I find very appealing, my greatest love is still Sword & Sorcery. Particularly Conan and Kane, but also Hyperborea, The Witcher, and of course Star Wars. The uselessness of Stormtroopers aside, at least when they are deliberately letting the heroes escape or fight against ewoks, they are all works in which the protagonists are at the very top of what humans can be, but not outright superhuman. And while they have to be cautious, they are always on the offense.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess is my favorite RPG system by a good margin, but it does retain the inherent squishiness of the D&D Basic rules. Which is by design, but I think not fitting so well for Sword & Sorcery. Starting at higher levels is an option, but I always find that unsatisfying and it also means that new wizard players start the game with a considerably wider range of spells from the outset. (Which might sound appealing to some, but my spellpoint conversion already increased the number of spells.)

An in my opinion neater solution is to roll 2d6+6 for ability scores and also let the players assign the six numbers as they see fit for their chosen character class. 2d6+6 considerably shifts the average up and makes 8 the lowest score possible. But since modifiers in B/X are relatively small and don’t increase linearly, the result is that characters will on average have a combined total of +4. A +2 here and two +1s there isn’t hugely imbalancing, but with the ability to assign the scores to abilities freely (and getting maximum hit points at first level) this allows players to make considerably sturdier characters than rolling 3d6 in order. A fist level fighter with 10 hp or a +4 to hit is entirely doable.

The other method I am using is to firmly stick to the paradigm that any NPC who isn’t an outstanding combatant is a level 0 character, and to use a bestiary of entirely custom made creatures. The high end for regular monsters tapers off around 10 HD and I am using relatively smal numbers of special abilities each. In the fiction of the world this makes even 4th level characters already members of the top tier of people who roam the world and who are able to confront gods, demons, giants, and dragons. Maybe not one of those 13 HD behemoths, but certainly one of the smaller 7 HD ones.

War Cry of the Flame Princess: The Scout

I retroactively added this post to the WCotFP series.

Earlier this year many people have been writing about the cleric class being an oddity unique to Dungeons & Dragons that doesn’t really fit in most other fantasy settings and seems rather inappropriate. Priests in other fictional worlds never really look and behave like that, and especially in the early edition a great amount of spells are taken from biblical miracles. There seems to be some move to not use the cleric class and instead represent priests and shamans through alternate spell lists for the magic-user class. I am fully behind that.

That leaves you with the now very well established scheme of warrior, mage, and rogue, which you’ll find almost everywhere in fantasy gaming. And I have to say, I also don’t like rogues.

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Scoundrels on the other hand are a completely different story.

The thief class for D&D was a later addition that didn’t exist yet in the first release of the game but was added very soon after. And in hindsight this move made many people angry and was seen as a move in the wrong direction. But the effect that the introduction of the thief meant that fighters and mages no longer had any reason to try to deal with traps or scout ahead because now there was someone who was always much better at it then them is not my main problem with the archetype. The original thief class had a clear identity but soon people wanted the thief to be good at fighting as well which lead us to the current form of the rogue. And rogues don’t really know what they want to be. The thief aspect has largely vanished and instead we have a fast fighter with light armor, who does huge damage with special attacks, or could be an archer. That takes away almost everything the fighter had left except for heavy armor. In a campaign with knights that’s not necesaarily a problem, but when you play in a setting that doesn’t have heavy armor or huge weapons, what is left? This was one of the reasons that made me pick Lamentations of the Flame Princess as my current system of choice, as its specialist class is meant to be neither great at fighting, nor required to be a thief.

But still, I am not fully happy with that. For my Old World that is full of barbarian warriors and made for adventures mostly set in the wilderness, the specialist seems a bit too flimsy to represent a hardened adventurer and the fighter too simple to represent the more skilled and sneaky hunters. On Dragons Gonna Drag, Justin presented the idea of merging the fighter and specialist classes together. But I really like classes and am already down to only three of them, so my idea is to do something similar but opposite.

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One of the greatest idea I’ve seen for the warrior, mage, rogue archetypes is in Star Wars Saga Edition which has the soldier, scout, scoundrel, and noble classes as a spectrum of different approaches to fighting character and skilled characters. Neither the scoundrel nor the noble are exactly thieves, and the scout is something different than just a fighter/thief. And so I decided to come up with some kind of scout class that represents a more sneaky kind of warrior than the fighter.

One idea I’e seen a while back is that the halfling class would make a pretty good base for a Basic ranger. And while looking around for some more ideas I discovered that this is pretty much exactly what Adventurer Conqueror King did with the explorer class. It’s pretty much the B/X halfling with a different name. That’s also what I ended up doing.

Level Hit Points Attack Bushcraft Stealth
1st 6 +1 3 in 6 2 in 6
2nd +1d6 +1 3 in 6 2 in 6
3rd +1d6 +2 3 in 6 2 in 6
4th +1d6 +2 4 in 6 3 in 6
5th +1d6 +3 4 in 6 3 in 6
6th +1d6 +3 4 in 6 3 in 6
7th +1d6 +4 5 in 6 4 in 6
8th +1d6 +4 5 in 6 4 in 6
9th +1d6 +5 5 in 6 4 in 6
10th+ +2/level +5 6 in 6 5 in 6

Creating a scout class for LotFP turned out to be pretty quick and painless. The basic frame is once again the halfling class with the addition of an attack bonus half that of the fighter (other classes im LotFP always remain at +1) and the saving throws taken from the dwarf class (which covers a wider range of levels) and reduced by 2. Since it’s a scout class, the Bushcraft skill of the halfling is retained, but it also gains the Stealth skill with a chance of 1 lower than Bushcraft and not the flat 5 in 6 chance in wilderness environments that halflings have. A scout also can make a sneak attack for double damage with no option to increase like a specialist does.

And there you pretty much have it. I am considering giving also a 2 in 6 chance for Search and Climb, as it would fit the theme, but right now I am somewhat uncertain whether that might be a bit too much. Compared to the fighter the higher saves should even out with the lower hit points, which leaves all the skills compensated only by the reduced bonus to attack. But overall I am very happy with the class and it really took only about an hour to make, including research.

War Cry of the Flame Princess: Encumbrance

I retroactively added this post to the WCotFP series and made some small channges accordingly.

Encumbrance is possibly the most hated and most ignored rule in games like Dungeons & Dragons, simply because it’s way too much bookkeeping for usually no noticable gain. An Encumbrance system that people are actually going to use has to be so simple that it’s practically invisible when not doing anything, but immediately available when it becomes relevant. As a GM you never want to tell the players “please look up the weights for all the items in your inventory and calculate your modified travel speed because of Encumbrance”. You just wouldn’t do that.

Why have Encumbrance in the first place?

Because Encumbrance shows up so rarely in adventures and campaigns and the games work just fine without it, there’s the obvious question why to bother with it at all? The answer I have to that is that the effects of Encumbrance are actually a lot of fun and can lead to great encounters and even whole adventures. It all comes down to the players having to make decisions what things they want to carry with them and what things to leave behind. The more stuff you carry, the slower you move. In the older editions of Dungeons & Dragons this is hugely important. Characters get some experience points for defeating monsters and other enemies, but the majority of XP will be gained from bringing treasures back from their adventures. The most efficient way to become more powerful and not dying in the process is to steal treasure without fighting the onwer. And if you do get caught, it’s often the smartest way to run. The amount of experience you get depends on how much treasure you collect. The speed at which you run depends on how much tools and treasure you are carrying. This is a kind of conflict, and both in fiction and RPGs, conflicts are always great. That’s where things get interesting.

There are also the wandering monsters and random encounters. The longer you stay in a dungeon, the greater the chance of accidentally running into someone. Since wandering monsters generally don’t carry their treasure with them, they are a lot of danger for very little potential reward. The best way to get treasure out of a dungeon is to do it quick, and to be quick you need to be able to move fast. Do you really need that big bag of copper coins that are worth barely any XP? Would it perhaps be better to just ditch it? How much are you willing to risk for a few XP more?

When dealing with wilderness adventures where the characters are away from civilization for days and weeks, another element comes into play. Without places to simply buy food, you have to bring your own or be able to find some along the way. If you run out, you have a problem. This is especially important when traveling through deserts, where you might have to carry a great amount of supplies, which will slow you down a lot and make the whole trip significantly longer. And staying longer in the desert means greater risk of running into someone hostile. And, as players of post-apocalyptic campaigns might probably know, it makes supplies a potentially valuable type of treasure to be found. Unfortunately, most RPGs don’t bother with any rules for going without food and water and so this is something that almost never comes up. Tankfully, Lamentations of the Flame Princess does have some pretty decent rules to cover thirst and hunger in easy to handle ways and also with a simple system to find new supplies in the wilderness. I recommend using those.

Tracking Encumbrance the easy way

When it comes to a system for determine a character’s Encumbrance level, I simply recommend using the system from Pencil and Paper. This is by far the best way to track Encumbrance I have ever seen and even though it was designed with Pathfinder in mind it works with every game that has a Strength score and movement speeds. LotFP uses something that is based on the same idea, but I think this execution is even much more elegant than that.

The rules I am using for the Ancient Lands are these:

  • All items smaller and lighter than a dagger do not count towards encumbrance. Containers holding multiple such insignificant items (like a bag of coins, a quiver of arrows, and so on) count as a single item.
  • Items that require both hands to carry or are unusually large (such as a polearm) count as two items.
  • Light armor counts as two item, medium armor counts as four items, and heavy armor counts as six items.
  • Characters carrying a number of items no greater than their Strength score are unencumbered and have a speed of 120′ per round/24 miles per day.
  • Characters carrying a number of items no higher than two times their Strength score are lightly encumbered and have a speed of 90′ per round/18 miles per day. If attempting to swim, they have a 1 in 6 chance of drowning.
  • Characters carrying a number of items no higher than three times their Strength score are heavily encumbered and have a speed of 60′ per round/12 miles per day. If attempting to swim, they have a 3 in 6 chance of drowning.

As by the standard rules of LotFP, being encumbered has some limitations on the use of skills. Characters other than specialists can not make dificult climbs requiring Climb checks if they are encumbered. Specialists (and scouts) have their Climb and Stealth skills reduced by 1 in 6 when lightly encumbered and by 2 in 6 if heavily encumbered.

Tracking Encumbrance

But don’t you still have to constantly count the numbers of items in your inventory and then check the Encumbrance table? With the right type of inventory sheet, you don’t. Most character sheets have a space for the inventory that just consists of a number of rows. Simply number each row at the left and then make sure you won’t have any empty spaces when you fill in your items that you are carrying. The number of the last row that holds and item is the number of items you carry. Since the amount of items you can carry never changes as the character advances, you can then simply use some kind of marker to make a clear line below row 10, row 20, and row 30 if your character has a Strength of 10.

To the left of the list you can then simply make a small note for the movement speed your character has when the inventory is filled up to those marked lines. You will always be able to tell immediately what your current movement speed is whenever the GM wants to know it, and it doesn’t mean any extra work for the players. All they have to do is write all their items down on the inventory sheet.

Encumbrance for mounts and pack animals

One thing that RPGs (and fantasy in general) almost always gets wrong is how traveling with a horse works. On a short sprint, a horse will always beat a human easily. But when it comes to endurance running, the only creature on Earth that can keep up with humans are dogs. This is the big superpower of our two species and was the beginning of a wonderful fiendship (consisting mostly of killing other animals and eating them). All other animals need a lot of rest during the day and can’t keep marching all day. For humans and horses, the differences between speed and endurance are about canceling each other out and so you are not going to be any faster on a horse than on foot. That is, if you are not carrying any big loads.

If you have to not just get yourself from one point to another, but also a lot of other stuff, a horse can make a big difference, especially when you’re not riding it. Having a horse allows you to walk without having to carry anything, while your horse is slowed down only very little by what would be a really heavy load for yourself. And if you have two horses you can ride one while the other carries your stuff, and so you don’t have to walk.

So the effects of encumbrance for mounts are like this:

  • Small characters count as 10 items, human sized characters count as 30 items, and large characters count as 50 items for calculating encumbrance. All the items carried by characters have to be added to be mount’s encumbrance as well.
  • Mounts carrying a number of items no greater than their Strength score are unencumbered and have a speed of 240′ per round/24 miles per day.
  • Mounts carrying a number of items no higher than two times their Strength score are lightly encumbered and have a speed of 180′ per round/18 miles per day.
  • Mounts carrying a number of items no higher than three times their Strength score are heavily encumbered and have a speed of 120′ per round/12 miles per day.

I originally had another post covering water and Rations, but I since realized that this system doesn’t really work, so better ignore it