Heavy armor and acrobatics.

[BagramPl]

So I was wondering if wearing heavier armors influences your acrobatics skill in any way. I recently switched from steel to ebony armor and I am quite sure my character isn't jumping as well and high as he used to. Since both those armors are heavy I was wondering if this has something to do wtih the weight (ebony armor is twice as heavy as steel).

[piccolo255]

Kind of. AFAIK, encumbrance influences it, similarly as it does movement speed. I.e., you're moving slower and not jumping as high because you're carrying more stuff.

Couldn't find a reference on UESP (isn't mentioned in any of these articles: Encumbrance, Strength, Acrobatics, Heavy Armor, Speed), but it's easy to test:
1) Jump fully loaded.
2) Take off the armor (but keep it in the inventory), jump and compare.
3) Drop it on the floor, jump and compare.
I think that 1) and 2) will be the same, while 3) will be substantially higher.

Therefore, to raise your jump height, there's a few things you can do:
* Drop most of your inventory to reduce encumbrance.
* Apply the Feather effect to reduce your current encumbrance (same effect as dropping stuff).
* Raise or fortify your Strength, to increase max encumbrance (penalty is percentage based).

[BagramPl]

Ok thanks, gonna test it out. Now I am kinda afraid how my jumping skills gonna look like when I get my hands on deadric armor...I guess, I will have to enchant it.

[piccolo255]

Heh :) Luckily, Daedric armor is very good for enchanting :) Load up as many pieces as you can with Constant Effect Fortify Strength, and you're golden (well, maybe not golden, gold is very heavy... let's say you're titanium :D ). As a bonus, your damage will jump high as well :)

(Feather would be a good alternative, if not for the fact that one point of Feather costs the same as one point of Strength... which is more-or-less equivalent to five points of Feather. If you use a mod that fixes the balance of magic costs, Feather becomes better than Strength for pure speed and jumping power, while the damage bonus means that Strength is still better for pure combat purposes.)