Encumbrance rating
An encumbrance rating is a penalty applied by almost all body armour and bardings. This is a measure of how much your defensive equipment gets in the way of your attacks, spellcasting, and attempts to evade enemy attacks. Multiple sources of encumbrance rating stack with each other. Shields also have a penalty, but it is handled differently and is never actually named in game.
In general, the heavier your equipment, the greater the encumbrance rating will be. You can reduce the impact of your encumbrance rating by increasing your strength or Armour; generally speaking, having strength equal to the item's encumbrance rating will significantly reduce the penalty it applies, though further strength will still provide you with diminishing returns.
See the Table of Armours for numerical details on all items with encumbrance ratings.
Contents
Penalties
Adjusted body armour penalty
Where e is the encumbrance rating of the armour, a is the armour skill of the attacker, and s is the strength of the attacker.
After the division by 20 the result is then randomly rounded up or down.
This penalty is not applied directly, but it is the base for calculating all the other ones.
Unarmed Combat speed penalty
1d10 + 2d(Adjusted body armour penalty) - 10
If this amount is greater than zero, it is added to your unarmed combat attack delay (in auts).
Armour to hit penalty
1d(Adjusted body armour penalty)
This amount reduces the accuracy of your melee attacks and decreases the chance of performing an unarmed auxiliary attack without the corresponding mutation.
Adjusted evasion penalty
Barding ER/3 + Adjusted body armour penalty
This amount is subtracted from your evasion before applying a stepdown function.
Dodging penalty
The games takes your body armour encumbrance rating and adds to it (or subtracts from it) a percentage which depends on your size:
| Size | Size factor |
|---|---|
| Little: Spriggan | +50% |
| Small: Kobold, Halfling | +25% |
| Medium | +0% |
| Large: Troll, Ogre, Centaur, Naga | -25% |
If the resulting value is greater than 3, the difference is multiplied by 10, divided by your strength and subtracted from your dodge bonus, if you had any. This penalty makes it harder to get some evasion from your dodging skill, and does nothing if you have not trained that skill.
Stealth penalty
2 × (body armour encumbrance rating)2 / 3
This amount is subtracted from your stealth score.
Spellcasting penalty
25×Adjusted body armour penalty - Racial bonus + 25×Shield penalty - 20
If this amount is positive it is added to your failure chance. See spell success for more information.
History
Encumbrance ratings were introduced in 0.13, replacing the EV penalty system.
