How Much Does It Weigh?
It is very simple to figure out how much something weighs. For armor, take the listed price and multiply it by 10 to get the encumbrance in coins. Thus, leather armor weighs 15 pounds (150 coins), chain mail 30 pounds (300 coins), and plate mail 50 pounds (500 coins). The GM must decide whether a weapon is light or heavy. If it is light, take the gp value and multiply by 5. If it is heavy, multiply the gp value by 10.
A player shouldn’t worry about every little item his character is carrying, but things add up especially when carrying treasure. You never know when a character might have to outrun a horde of monsters only to find his sack of gold weighing him down. It is up to the player to track encumbrance and tell the Game Master if his PC is running with a heavy load.
What is Encumbrance?
Coins are used as the standard measure of weight in the game, with 10 coins weighing in at about 1 pound. A typical adventuring backpack or sack would hold about 300 coins in weight. Anything the character wears, picks up, finds, and carries on him has some encumbrance to it. Some things like paper scrolls and feathers weigh practically nothing, while large weapons and pieces of armor can be quite cumbersome.
A character with average strength of 9 to 12 can carry around 50 pounds (500 coins) in weight. Characters with below or above average Strength scores have different encumbrance limits.
See the Strength page for details about encumbrance limits.
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