Weights of leathercrafted goods are out of whack

[Kent]

Now that encumbrance penalties affect characters, I would like to point out that many leather crafted goods are too heavy. One example is a beaver fur tunic my character wore last winter, but it became unbearable because it weighs six pounds or more, instead of an expected two or three pounds. My character was forced to unload many of his crafted items and shop around in stores for lighter items to replace them. The manufacture of most player-made goods is hobbled because of encumbrance.

If anyone wants to start in with the argument, "Well a tunic requires eight pelts to make, and each pelt weighs one pound, so that's why a tunic weighs eight pounds", let me refer them to an earlier thread where it was stated by Rithiel that the required number of pelts has little to do with what is really needed to make a leather good, but was arbitrarily increased to make it's manufacture more difficult, to compensate for the ease of collecting pelts in CLOK.

As it stands, it is difficult for a player to know how much the item he can manufacture (a) weighs, and (b) is supposed to way. One good suggestion I have would be to introduce a new command, say call it lspecs (short for leather specifications) and the player would type in lspecs <item> and would get an output similar to Order <n> in a shop. For example, for a fur tunic, the player would hold a piece of fur and type LSPECS TUNIC. The output would be a list of the specs on a fur tunic, including weight and number of pieces of fur required for it's manufacture.

What would even be nicer would be if poorer crafted items weighed more, and better crafted items less. For example, an item in average quality weighs 1 pound. If it is below average, it would come out weighing 1.2 or 1.1 pounds, but above average quality of the same item would weigh only .9 or .8 pounds.

If there was a Weight Grid available, that is, an online spreadsheet listing the thousand or more possible in game items, belt, socks, tunic, boots, etc etc. along with the expected weight range of each item (eg. Belt - 0.4 to 0.6 pounds) it would make it simpler for players to identify and bug report errant weights in items.

[Elystole]

Did you see my earlier thread about this and, more importantly, Rias's reply?

This stems from the fact of each pelt weighing a full pound, and not accounting for any presumed trimming-down of materials and ... something. Armors are supposed to be heavier. I agree clothes should be a lot lighter. However, since the system is currently based on "you need x pieces to make something" and each piece weighs a pound, and each pound stays with the resulting item, we've got some heavy clothing pieces. The only way to currently make an item weigh a single pound is to have it require a single pelt, but we don't want people making coats from a single pelt, considering you can get a pelt from a raccoon.

So yeah, it's wonky for non-armor pieces, and not in a place we're currently satisfied with.

Right now, all non-armor leather items weigh the same as the number of pelts. The GMs aren't happy about this and want to change it, but I'm sure it is lower on the priority list than some other much-needed changes. I agree that it sucks: Elystole is cranking out exquisite stuff now, but I'm also very concerned with my encumbrance so he can't wear much of it. There's only so much that can be done at once though.

[Kent]

Did you see my earlier thread about this and, more importantly, Rias's reply?

Oh, okay, no I didn't see it till now, and thank you for linking that here.