Exitium said:
The point of having 18/00 Strength is that you've the strength of 10 men. You're Hercules.
I think in VD's game you aren't able to be that strong or at least you shouldn't be considering some of the other things he's said. That in mind, I always thought that an inventory based completely space on the character would be ideal. There would be three place for items: around the character's waist, on the character's back and in the character's hands.
Around the waist there could be either belt or a sheathed weapon, although every character can carry various denominations of money by default. The belt would have pouches for small items and for small commonly used items e.g. lockpicks for a thief. A pouch could hold things like keys, herbs, or ammunition for a sling. There could be space for a weapon dagger size and smaller. A larger one-handed weapon could take the place of a belt. Anything stored around the waist should only cost 1 or 2 AP if the maximum is 10 because the whole point is to have easy access. Ammo stored around the waist would be considered where the ammo is normally stored.
On the back could be either a backpack or a larger weapon / bow with a quarrel. The backpack would hold food, small amounts of loot, bandages, extra ammo for slings and useable items not around the waist. A weapon on the back should cost 2 or 3 AP because of extra time needed to get them. It should take the whole turn to get and use anything from the backpack because its meant for storage, not access midbattle due to having to put a weapon away and then take the pack off and sort through it.
Bandages would be stored on the pack or in the belt. They would use no room in the backpack because they would be stored seperatly, and would take up on slot on the belt. If a wound needs to be bandaged on the character it would use up all the character's AP; if some else needs bandaging it would take essentially take one to get to the person if they aren't in range and one to bandage them. Skill would determine the amount and quality of the bandaging.
Whatever is currently in the character's hands plus whatever is in the second equip slot is considered equipped and uses no AP to switch between them. If the large and larger item slots are occupied by a backpelt or belt, the weapon can't be put away. It can only be dropped or thrown if appropriate.
Total item weight influences movement and the chance to hit. At a certain threshold, item weight starts to impact movement and attacking. The detriment is gradual until the character basically can't move and can't attack due to the weight and eventually pass out due to stamina loss if there is stamina. The first threshold would be based on strength while the second on endurance/constitution and would obviously stack on top of the first.
The belt would have four or five spots for either pouches or items plus a seperate spot for a small weapon. There could be varying sizes of backpacks with different sizes, but the largest would be no larger than a camping backpack. The backpack is for storing needed supplies not huge amounts of loot and weapons.
That is more or less what my dream inventory system. The key idea is that you shouldn't be able to store more than the absolute necessities. The decisions with loot shoudn't be "Should I drop my +4 dagger of stabbing or my +5 mace of bashing" but rather "Is it worth dropping three days worth of food for the ...".