I believe that Sheaths, Holsters, and Slings should allow you to carry a weapon that is not in your hands without it adding to your volume. This would make them valuable items. This should turn the weapon in question into a worn item and it would have it’s encumbering effects. I think this could be pretty readily balanced. There also should be a hard limit to the number of worn weapons and the more weapons worn there should be a heavy encumbrance modifier as they would tend to tangle. Even weapons like a mace can have a leather loop added to it to go over a hook on your belt. Just a random thought I had for a system that would fit in more with what we have and (I hope) not involve too much coding.
I was thinking about this as well actually! Good idea.
I always thought it was odd that wearing a holster would add to your volume even if you don’t actually have anything that goes in it.
Given that holsters don’t add to your encumbrance at all, it seems like a good trade-off. Giving you free space for a gun (of the appropriate type) is worth it.
Perhaps for larger weapons, weapon slings could reduce their unheld volume. It’s not like you’d be carrying your assault rifle around in your pocket or your backpack anyway.
That’s what the trade off is. If you put a sling on it and wear it it’ll be encumbering but not take up volume. Just one isn’t too bad. But trying to wear a lot of weapons would get difficult and they would start to tangle.
Uh, dunno about you, but I select gear to minimize encumbrance. I’d much rather pay for a carried item in volume (which costs encumbrance itself) than in encumbrance directly.
(Melee fighter: even 1 torso encumbrance is a Bad Thing early on.)
I wouldn’t take this tradeoff.
Not everyone would. But a gun fighter who would like to carry and extra gun and rarely is attacked directly wouldn’t mind it as much.
It would definitely change the way many of us play the game if interesting flavor and mechanics such as holsters only allowing you to carry a pistol or a smaller smg
This kind of overlaps the idea for “specific pockets” for clothing. You could craft these pockets, they would decrease the volume & weight of that one object in that specific pocket - but decrease the overall volume of the clothing suitable for everything else - giving you some net profit for having such pockets but you would “commit” to lugging that one item around to have the benefit.
Like this :
Originally:
Trenchcoat : volume 24
Double barrel shotgun: volume 12
Total : 24 volume, 12 available
After specific pocket:
Trenchcoat (modified): Volume 18
Pocket for double barrel shotgun: Volume 6
Double barrel shotgun (in pocket) : Volume 0 (already in pocket volume).
Total : 30 volume (18 free + 12 real volume of shotty), 18 available
BUT if you dont have shotty with you the trenchcoat (modified) would have only 18 volume, not 24 like normal trenchcoat because the specific pocket is always reserved away.
I like the modified clothing to match items to specific gear. I imagine something like that would require a pretty extensive amount of number crunching to balance all the available combinations and their cost / benefits of modification though.
Good idea though.