Standing of living clarifications

[Glorelendil]

Sorry typing on phone.

The way to emphasize that it's dangerous to carry too much treasure in the wild is to have the players attract bandits as the rumors spread of the wealth they are carrying.

The way to limit "I put it on my pony" is to occasionally send them places the pony can't follow. Or have the treasure-laden pony bolt in terror. Or plunge into a ravine. Or be rustled by the aforementioned bandits.

Making coins weigh as much as short swords, even if they are on the pony, is not the way.

[Feanor]

toally in agreement with you there. With my previous addons. Treasure points, are per se not JUST money you know. Its a representation of different sorts of items as well as money. And some pretty encumbering. Its a soft description to use mechanically. Generalization.

Abit like Hit points in D20.

[Feanor]

shadow points are worse than encumbrance...

[Glorelendil]

shadow points are worse than encumbrance...

Yeah, but my point was: if players didn't care about shadow points and were running around acting all chaotic neutral, would it make any sense to say, "I really want you guys to get into the Tolkien spirit and stop accumulating shadow points, and I know you care about your prowess in combat, so from now on Shadow points also have encumbrance."

I think not.

And yes, Treasure represents various forms, almost all of which would be smaller and lighter than coins of the same value. Making "1 Treasure weighs 1 Short Sword" even more bizarre. Unless the treasure is in the form of paintings (framed) or rare vases I guess.

[Feanor]

id agree with that statement about the money. Maybe 2 to 1 ratio instead ?

[Glorelendil]

What happens when a hero finds a precious gem, according to the new magical treasure rules, that is worth 60 Treasure, and fits in his pocket? Does 30 Encumbrance make sense? Or even 6 (10:1 ratio)?

Again, this is why I believe the right answer is: treasure doesn't have encumbrance, unless circumstances call for it.

For example, I'm working on an adventure in which it might be entirely reasonable for the heroes to want to retrieve an anvil from an orc-infested ruin. It's not the point of the adventure, but it's conceivable they'll want it (in the same way that it's conceivable that adventurers would want to go back to get the Marsh-Dweller's treasure.)

Fine. You can do that. Let's hear how you're going to get a 100 Encumbrance anvil out of the basement, down the mountain, and back to wherever it is you want to take it. That could be a great adventure in itself.

[zedturtle]

Yeah, this is where I was trying to go with my alternate Treasure rules where 1 Enc of Treasure represents quite a lot of fungible stuff and the Enc maxes out at 6.

In my actual games, I ignore Treasure for the purpose of Encumbrance, though it might be relevant if the heroes found a huge amount and decided that they wanted to take it somewhere...

[Stormcrow]

treasure doesn't have encumbrance, unless circumstances call for it.

This is obviously the correct answer, and most of Francesco's rules work this way. The rules guide you; they don't command you.

But I'd word it the other way round: Treasure equals 1 Encumbrance per point, unless circumstances say otherwise.

[Feanor]

yes stormcrow, which is what our group does, in the instance something small has great value of course the encumnbrance isnt = 1 to 1.

But i would definatley not, as GM in the campaign, generally allow for whatever goes on. there is a system there, and its made to enhance the feeling of Tolkiens world. I wouldnt dabble into something that would change the feeling, to the worse. Quite the opposite.

[Rich H]

treasure doesn't have encumbrance, unless circumstances call for it.

This is obviously the correct answer, and most of Francesco's rules work this way. The rules guide you; they don't command you.

But I'd word it the other way round: Treasure equals 1 Encumbrance per point, unless circumstances say otherwise.

This is the method I've adopted, well more in line with Glor's than SC's, but it hasn't negatively impacted on my game whatsoever. There are so many varied and different forms that treasure can come in that I think trying to codify it [re: encumbrance] is a bit of a fool's errand; far better for each LM to apply case-by-cased rulings on items of treasure rather than work with anything more restrictive.