YOUR BACKPACK IS A SECONDARY OBJECTIVE
Don’t Let Monsters Steal Them
There was a discussion in a Discord forum I inhabited about how realistic the encumbrance of rations are in BX D&D. That doesn’t interest me. What interests me is what the PCs chose to do with those rations.
But related interest is what do you do with the pack on your back?
I was a Boy Scout back in the day and the summer before high school, I participated in Philmont. This consisted of doing a roughly 10-day hike over 120 miles with everything I needed in a frame pack on my back. You can’t really fight in such a thing. Even a loaded school backpack is going to encumber you or throw you off balance when you are swinging a weapon. But how can this be gamified?
A dungeon delve is a raid not a camping trip. Let the hirelings carry stuff, you’re there to delve...
✤ If you drop your pack or are not carrying one at all, you are limited to 4 encumbrance slots +2 for hands, but you gain a +1 on all d20 rolls.
✤ However, if the PCs dropped packs are marked on the battle map and become a target for monsters. If monsters reach this marker, they destroy it or take a random item.
✤ If monsters take an action at this backpack marker, they now own a whole pack of items.
Something I think about is should I hold onto the treasure or the hireling? If I risk everything for treasure and the hireling is carrying it and the crap it's the fan, moral is rolled and the hireling takes off running with my treasure, how much will I regret it?