Encumbrance and Inventory Management

Encumbrance in The Domains of Dread is a unit measuring how heavy, unwieldy, or otherwise challenging to carry any item is from the context of any character's inventory. While not 1:1 to either real world pounds or kilograms, the implied weight of an item nevertheless plays major role in determining what encumbrance rating (ER) that item is assigned by a Module Developer. It is likewise styled as ER ingame as opposed to lbs. or kgs.

A character's maximum ER is derived from every point of STR they have from a 1:10 ratio. Therefore a character with 13 STR would have 130 maximum ER where a character with 8 STR would have only 80.

Fatigue

Characters running or walking outside of combat do not accrue passive fatigue unless they have exceeded their maximum ER. How quickly and to what severity they will slow down depends on their CON and how overencumbered they are, with breakpoints every 25% encumbrance over maximum until they are at or exceeding 100% overencumbrance, after which they will be unable to pick up any additional items. Once they accumulate enough passive fatigue, they gain the fatigued status until their load is lightened or their next rest. Being fatigued reduces rest quality and will require more rest quality enhancement before reaching 100%.

Inventory Management

A character is allowed one backpack with an interior tab in the inventory, representing the container for their overall belongings fictionally including any "loose" items kept in exterior inventory tabs. Attempting to pick up additional backpacks is possible, but they will not function. This backpack will have a base ER of its own but reduces the ER of other items in the inventory by a set percentage viewable on the item. Better quality backpacks may have requirements to use effectively, such as a minimum STR or DEX or be locked to particular class archetypes like Artificer.

There are some containers available which will hold particular items directly without interior tabs, such as currency pouches for loose currency, but these are solely for the items they are occupied with rather than any item at the character's leisure.

Due to the limitation of held inventory space to 1 interior tab and 7 exterior tabs, inventory management solutions are varied ingame for use by characters. These may include placeable containers (up to a set limit) in privately owned rentals, similar containers available in supported faction headquarters, storage services from non-player characters such as banks or storerooms, and so on. All storage solutions are persistent but may levy fees regarding holding items for periods of time IRT (up to an accruement cap) and upon retrieval.

Because The Domains of Dread is balanced around expecting that characters will not have unrestricted access to extensive inventories of consumables and desirous tools, class archetypes are more fully featured in their own right and drops from hostile encounters are tuned to drop silver directly where feasible as opposed to varied distribution tables composed of so-called "vendor trash".