4E - Tracking Resources

[verhaden]

This question might be better suited for RPG.net, but I'm flipping through some 4E materials and I was wondering if anybody here with more experience with the game could help me out with something.

In my OD&D games, players move a maximum distance per turn of the slowest person in their group. This represents one turn or 10 minutes of in-game time in the dungeon. I use 6 poker chips to "count down" to an hour. This is how I track duration of spells, light sources, and other resources outside of combat situations.

I notice that characters in 4E have "speed" as opposed to an overall movement rate. A fighter can tactically move, in combat, 6 squares (or 30') per turn. That would put them at a 9" movement rate in OD&D Philotomy inspired terms. But since I'm not seeing the same kinds of encumbrance effects for armor worn and treasure carried, I feel its too static to base anything off of it. (I use a B/X breakdown in my OD&D games where armor (+/- treasure carried) determines your movement rate. I.e., a character's movement rate is 9" if they're wearing leather armor and encumbered by treasure or if they're wearing chain mail and otherwise unencumbered.)

So I guess the question is: Are there any explicit game mechanics in 4E that make it easy to track time, resources consumed in-game, and movement outside of combat?

[jonathan]

I've just started looking at 4E rules myself and don't have any reference material in front of me, so take everything below with a grain of salt.

Technically, characters can move twice in each combat round at a normal pace if they sacrifice their Standard Action for a second Move Action, so you might want to double movement rates depending on how cautious the characters are being. Running characters move at their base speed +2 for each running action, so most characters could break into a full run of 16 squares (or 24" using Philotomy's measurements) when needed.

I believe there's a table that shows reduced movement for various heavy armor in the equipment section, although I can't recall if there's something similar for general encumberence.

I can't recall seeing specific rules for tracking out-of-combat time, so my best guess is that they expect you to wing it and make rulings for individual situations. If you wanted to introduce a more defined set of rules, you could probably port in OD&D rules without too much trouble.

Probably the biggest hurdle would be handling wandering monsters - the assumption behind 4e combat encounters is that they already take up a large block of dungeon real state with multiple rooms being used at a time. Maybe you could include some method that checks to see if monsters from other encounters "wander" out of their area every so often while the PCs do other things.

[vito]

I think the section on ability scores has a brief thing on encumbrance until strength.
If I remember correctly, it goes something like this:
Take a character's strength score, multiply it by 100, and that is the amount of weight the character can carry unencumbered. If the character tries to carry more weight than that, the character is slowed. If the character tries to carry twice that amount, it's immobilized.
For mounts, multiply its strength by 200. That's the amount of weight the creature can carry unencumbered.

[tavis]

verhaden, there are out-of-combat movement rates in the PHB, I believe in the Adventures section. IIRC, they don't vary with the load or armor of the characters - if you reverse-engineer the math to do so, let us know!