Your carrying capacity is your Strength score × 15 pounds. A character with 15 Strength can carry 225 lb before the rules care at all. You can push, drag, or lift twice that — Strength × 30 — but while doing so your speed drops to 5 feet. These numbers are the same in the 2014 and 2024 rules.
By default, 5e does not penalize you until you reach your full capacity, which is why most parties ignore weight. If you want a grittier game, the optional variant encumbrance rule adds two earlier thresholds:
- •Encumbered — carrying more than Strength × 5 pounds: your speed drops by 10 feet.
- •Heavily encumbered — carrying more than Strength × 10 pounds: your speed drops by 20 feet, and you have disadvantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws that use Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution.
Size scales everything: a Large creature doubles its capacity, Huge quadruples it, and Tiny halves it. The Powerful Build trait (goliaths, bugbears, and others) counts you as one size larger for carrying, pushing, dragging, and lifting — effectively doubling those limits.
Push, drag, and lift — and size categories
You can push, drag, or lift up to 30 × your Strength score in pounds — double your carrying capacity. While pushing or dragging weight beyond your carrying capacity, your speed drops to 5 feet. Size scales both numbers: Large creatures double them, Huge quadruple them, Gargantuan multiply by 8, and Tiny creatures halve them. Record your limits once on a printable character sheet and you'll rarely need to recompute mid-session.
Variant encumbrance rules
The 2014 variant rule adds bite between "fine" and "immobile": carry more than 5 × Strength in pounds and you are encumbered (speed −10 ft); more than 10 × Strength and you are heavily encumbered (speed −20 ft plus disadvantage on attack rolls and on Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution checks and saving throws). Use it for gritty survival and dungeon-logistics campaigns — it makes pack animals, porters, and the travel time calculator genuinely matter.
Carrying capacity in the 2024 rules
The 2024 Player's Handbook keeps the same math: carrying capacity is Strength × 15, and push, drag, or lift remains Strength × 30, with the same size multipliers. The 2014 variant encumbrance rule was not carried forward as a core option, so tables that want granular weight tracking still use the variant thresholds above.