Quote:
Originally posted by ZFR:
youre right...
Fireballs I can cast, monsters I can summon, invisible I can become... but I certainly cannot walk with 30lbs for 8 hours  in spite of trying lots of times. So unrealistic. Or my strength is not enough.
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I know it might sound silly, but even though magic and the supernatural are practically everywhere in the Forgotten Realms, it is still a "logical" world structured according to a set of systematically interrelated rules.
For example, magic just isn't "magic". There is a finite list of spells that can be analyzed and categorized according to an established typology. Each spell has a precise casting time, requires specifc components, belongs to a school of magic, etc. It's not as if a mage character can simply re-direct the energy in the universe to create unique spells of her own.
Further, the laws of physics are expected to apply except where modified by some logical means. Even if those means cannot exist in our empirical reality we accept that they exist in the Forgotten Realms. For example, a human fighter can turn invisible if he drinks a potion of invisibility, or has a ring of invisibilty, etc. There has to be some explanation since normal people can't become invisible.
The game makes an conscious decision to take encumberance into effect. It recognizes that there is a reasonable limit to how much can be carried without a character becoming encumbered. My observation is that these limits are set a bit too high to be realistic. For example, the strongest humans (men or women) can naturally have a STR=18/00, which would allow them to indefinitely carry, unencumbered, 400lbs! It's not reasonable to think a natural person could walk for days and fight monsters while carrying such weight. I would think that even a giant of a man, who might weigh over 300lbs, wouldn't be able to carry more than 100 lbs and still feel "unencumbered" by it.
This just takes me to another issue: Gold. There's no encumberance for gold whatsoever. You can carry infinite gold pieces and not feel a change in carried weight. If 20 small coins weigh about a pound, 100,000 gold would weigh 5,000 lbs! That's a lot to carry.
Also, notice that potions weigh a pound each, but don't weigh anything when you put them in potion cases. A case of 20 potions weighs only what the case weighs.
[ 11-01-2004, 07:09 PM: Message edited by: jmsteven ]