Character weight and attack penalty.

[mb3]

Hi, i'd like to bring up the topic of character weight and how it affects the characters. Specifically how its being implimented wrongly. Based on the rules of a well known table top game system, a character with a 14 strength would have a carrying capacity of 58 lbs., for a light load, once you hit 59 lbs. plus, you are now considered to be carrying a medium load, which imposes some penalties to your character. Now, if you are wearing heavy armor like Half-Plate, and a Heavy Shield, and useing a common weapon like a 1h Battle Axe, according to Low Magic Age, your total weight would be 66 pounds, which puts you well into the medium load catagory. With 66 pounds your now giving my character a -2 to all attack rolls, plus other penalties which I haven't calculated yet. Now, if you ask me, a 14 strength isn't all that bad for a fighter....Sure its not Min/Maxing my stats to get an 18 strength and 8 Intelegence, Wisdom, and Charasma. A Fighter with a 14 strength is supposed to be able to wear Half-Plate, a Large Shield, and a Battle Axe, easily with lots of carrying capacity still available to use boots, helm, gauntlents, and have a back pack for adventuring gear too! I have a character I made in your game whos a high AC tank specialist. Hes got Full Platemail, a Tower Shield, and a Heavy Mace, and a 19 Strength! Yet hes on the verge of taking weight limit penalties and that bothers me.

If you look at all the rules I could find for Weight / Encumbrance limits, they all say 'Carrying Capacity' above the table, but when armor is being worn, it doesn't feel as heavy as if you are carrying it around in a bag. I used to play Hockey, and every time I played, I had to drag that huge, heavy as heck bag into the locker room, but after I put all that protective equipment on, I could fly around and speed up and down that ice so fast I had blur effects.

Lasty, lets not forget that our characters are profecient with those medium and heavy armors, and that each armor has an Armor Check Penalty, and a Max Dex bonus allowed, so each armor is already properly penalized by there weight and encumbrance. This really needs to be looked at more closely.

[Low Magic Studios]

The carrying capacity values are from the carrying capacity rule of dnd 3r directly. May be a bit strict, but it makes the carrying capacity meaningful.

Besides, the medium load is not that unacceptable. Otherwise there is no need to divide into Light/Medium/Heavy/Overload ;)

[Guy Duderson]

I thought it was that when you wear something like meduim or heavy armor you count for most purposes as having a meduim and heavy load respectively based on the armor class and only got 'encoumbered' further when the weight you're carrying goes further than the weight class of the armor you're wearing?