Riddle me this...

[Racocac]

...I have a character (a mage, specifically) who has recently run into a very interesting little quandary. She had a set of armor and weapons on including a bronze broadsword (mostly for show... or so I thought) and a wooden shield. At some point, I found a steel shield and decided to upgrade. Lo and behold, the next time I tried to cast spells, I got a message along the lines of "your character's armor is too bulky to cast spells". Now, by that point, I had picked up the "Strong Back" trait (or whatever its name is, too lazy to check), but I figured that fair enough, I guess upgrading the shield was just too much anyway. So I decided to try switching out the broadsword for a Nephil Warblade, which was 1 lb lighter and also conveyed a few useful utility bonuses, among them +1 Strength, which I figured would help. But no - still too encumbered. Then I tried switching back to the wooden shield - and that's where things got strange. Despite having +1 strength and -1 lb compared to the original situation, I was still unable to cast spells. Further experimentation showed that the following combinations did not allow me to cast spells either: Nephil Warblade and no shield; no weapon and wooden shield(!); no weapon and no shield(!!!???...), and of course, Nephil Warblade and steel shield (although maybe that wasn't so obvious, given that it seemed like I had a minimum as well as a maximum weight limit). However, the bronze broadsword allowed me to start casting spells once again, with or without the wooden shield!

With that in mind, I have merely two simple questions:

- How does mage armor encumbrance work?
- What in the flying rat's ♥♥♥ is going on here??? Forgive my incredulity. Is Strong Back (or whatever the name is) bugged? Is Avernum bugged? Is this some secret game mechanic I do not understand?

(I have a savegame, which I can upload upon request.)

[Twistor]

Hey, it has been answered in this thread already.