You know what? Playing Pathfinder, and the same issues with encumbrance and juggling items around exists. In Pathfinder, instead of Send to Camp, you can literally drop all loot on the ground, and when you leave an area, it asks you if you'd like to pick up all the loot you left behind anywhere on the map. So, what's the point of carrying all the loot around with you if you can just pick it all up at the end and drop it all on the next map and then pick it all up again and so on and so forth? Just drop it, run around unencumbered, and when you leave, you pick it all up.
The endless loot juggling is meaningless, to be quite frank. What's the point? The only time I deal with loot juggling and inventory management is in video games like this one and Pathfinder and Solasta and such. In an actual D&D Tabletop game, I'd never weigh my players down with excess garbage loot. No one wants to keep track of tons of items in their inventory, whether in a video game or in TT. (Well... that is... I shouldn't say no one. I'm sure there are some, but I don't know any personally.) The players search a room, I tell them what's valuable inside and worth picking up and taking with them, they move on. Only if they REALLY did a lot of long distance adventuring with no merchant anywhere for days upon days might I consider bogging the game down even remotely with inventory management and loot, and that would only be IF they decided to grab everything including the kitchen sink as they went from place to place because they were going survivalist-mode. If they're really hard up for money, and they start saying they're going to strip every carcass of items, even then I'd say, "You pick up about 15 gold worth of items that you are now hauling on you. When you get into combat, you will either have to drop it while you fight or you'll get a -1 to attack rolls," or something like that, and that's only IF I think they're focusing too much on picking up and scavenging everything under the sun. When not in combat, they can flipping carry whatever they want. Like I said, it'd be within reason. If there was no merchant or anything for days, I might start telling them that they're picking up too much, but I keep it light and easy so we're not bogging down game sessions with lists of items that they've picked off of the dead.
I used to do that, actually, and it was REALLY no fun. "You find 5 suits of armor on these bandits. Mark it down on your inventory. Total up the encumbrance." Man! The game became homework especially when you got to a merchant. Ugh! The players would hand me, the DM, their inventory piece of paper and say, "We want to sell all this. How much gold do we get? Oh, and I want to roll to haggle." And there I am, taking time to check prices for each item and total it all up and figure out how much it should cost: 6 Shortswords, 40 arrows, 120 bolts, 3 Ringmail armors... It was painful. Pulled out my calculator to total it all up. Players getting antsy because I'm taking so long. Boring as heck. It's so much easier to just say, "You pick up 20 GP worth of stuff," and move on.
Inventory management isn't fun in Tabletop, and it's really not the highlight of any video game either, IMO. It's kinda pointless moving items around and playing a juggling game trying to determine who should carry what and see just how much you can fit on one person before they are slowed down. It's annoying when they are encumbered because suddenly you are moving super slow on the game map, and it really just wastes the player(s) time. Think about it. What is the end result with carrying mass quantities of things? Eventually, you're going to sell the items for gold, or if you really like to decorate your camp with the stuff, you might do that. Either way, why waste the player's time at all?
Here is the ONLY point of encumbrance: To prevent the player from hoarding a ton of loot on them that they can use in combat or skill checks, etc. In other words, if it can be used to enhance a skill or ability or in combat, or it is important in any way to the quest, THOSE are the only items that the players should have to manage. Anything not important to the adventure should just auto-send to camp. So, important items that SHOULD be managed and cost encumbrance are things like: Healing Potions, Potions of Speed, Spell Scrolls, Alchemist's Fire, weapons you are keeping on you that you might want to equip (like switching from slashing to blunt when fighting undead because blunt works better against undead), magic items like wands of magic missiles, books that have some important purpose to the story, like the Necromancy of Thay (all others can be sent to Camp as Wares), magic rings (not useless ones with no abilities that you can't even see on your character so there's not even a cosmetic reason to carry it), cloaks, special ammunition, etc.
Example: You enter the Dank Crypt in the room with the fireplace where there is the blonde guy who says, "You're dead!" and you gang up on him and take him out easily. You know... right after you take down Gimblebock and his group or chase them off, and you go through the door instead of down through the hole in the ground. You search the room and find a cheese wheel, sausage, spoons, knives, forks, plates, cups, water, wine, etc. You pick it all up. BAM! It is all immediately Auto-Sent to camp. It isn't even in your inventory at all. It's not cluttering up anyone's inventory because it all got sent to camp without you having to Multi-Select or click Send to Camp one item at a time, and you didn't even have to mark it as wares.
Then, include a Camp Inventory Tab on the Group Inventory screen, so if you want to take anything out of camp inventory, you can do so and drop it onto your character, removing the Wares tag that I am suggesting to have defaulted on such items. So, only if you really want to carry it on a particular person for some reason, like you have this idea you want to chuck spoons or forks at enemies, you can take it out of the Camp Inventory instead of the opposite and having to put unwanted items into Camp Inventory. And that way, with the inventory tab there for you, you don't have to fast travel to camp and waste your time going to the chest and pulling items out one at a time.
So food and cups and knives and forks and so on would default to having a Wares tag and any Wares would just Auto-Send to Camp as soon as you pick them up, but it'd all be in your Camp Inventory tab so you could retrieve it any time you want by simply dragging it and dropping it into whoever's inventory you want. As soon as you drag and drop it (or select Send to whoever), the Wares tag is auto-removed. Cuts down on all the meaningless back and forth to and from camp or sending one item at a time to and from camp. Then the player can worry only about managing useful items like potions and scrolls and books and weapons and armor and equipment.
And yes, even with those, let the player have the ability to tag any item as Wares, and it is Auto-Sent to Camp Inventory. And make it so that there is a Wares radial button or something on each item's icon, in the corner or something, so a single click puts it in Wares. So if I pick up eight ring mail armors, and I tag them all as Wares, because all my armor is way better, then just Auto-Send them right into Camp Inventory so I don't have to painfully and painstakingly Send to Camp each and every one and then painstakingly pull each and every one out later just to sell them at the merchant. Let me just open Camp Inventory when I'm at a merchant, and let me sell things right from Camp Inventory right to the merchant.
I mean, I'm going to do it anyway, right? So why make me waste a ton of time going back and forth and slowly and meticulously drag things out of Camp Inventory and then go back to the merchant and sell them and then go back to Camp Inventory to pull more out and then back to the merchant... or send three armors to Lae'zel so she can carry them because Shadowheart is weighed down, but then send a few spoons to Shadowheart because she has just enough room to carry them, and that will allow Astarion to no longer be encumbered because he is just barely over the encumbrance line, and all so that each of my characters doesn't have to walk all the way from the waypoint to the merchant to sell the items in the inventory.
It's just kinda silly time wasters that are unnecessary. Let me focus on the adventure and not on useless item dragging and dropping from one window to another or right-clicking and Send to commands just so I can juggle it all without penalties.
So, to be clear, Camp Inventory Tab would NOT be accessible during combat or dialogues, but it would be accessible at any other time so you can access anything from it whenever you want except when you shouldn't be able to, during fights or important encounters. So, you're talking to the hag in her lair, Camp Inventory isn't available. If you put some Potion of Speed or something in Camp Inventory, tough luck. You should have equipped it to someone instead. However, once the hag sequence is over, NOW you can pull it out of your Camp Inventory and equip it. Do you have to fast travel to camp? No. Just pop open the Camp Inventory tab and drag and drop or Send to. Done.
