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 b(S) is the base evasion penalty function over a scale, e is the encumbrance rating of the armour, S is an arbitrary scale the base is used at for the particular penalty, a is the armour skill of the subject, and s is the strength of the subject.
This penalty is not applied directly, rather it is used in evasion, to hit, and cast chance. For to hit the scale used is 20, while for evasion and cast the scale used is 100. This syntax is the same for the other formula.
Armour to hit penalty
This amount reduces the accuracy of your melee attacks and decreases the chance of performing an unarmed auxiliary attack without the corresponding mutation.
After calculating this formula; first the result of the division by 20 is randomly rounded up or down, then a value from 1 to the penalty is randomly selected as the final penalty applied for each attack. Typically this means that the highest possible penalty value is much less likely than any other roll.
Adjusted evasion penalty
This amount is subtracted from your evasion along with other factors such as your size and dodge skill before being stepped down.
Dodging penalty
This penalty makes it harder to get some evasion from your dodging skill, and does nothing if you have not trained that skill.
The dodge penalty is only applied if the encumbrance rating is over 3, if the penalty is applied then one of two formula are used:
- If (e - 3) ≥ s
- Else
Where d is dodge skill, D is dexterity stepped down if it is above 24, and F is normalized size factor.
The size factor is normalized around medium size, and can be derived from the following table:
| Size | Size factor |
|---|---|
| Little: Spriggan | -2 |
| Small: Kobold, Halfling | -1 |
| Medium: Most Races | 0 |
| Large: Troll, Ogre, Centaur, Naga | 1 |
Stealth penalty
This penalty is subtracted from your stealth score.
Spellcasting penalty
If this added to your shield penalty is positive then it is added to your failure chance. See spell success for more information.
History
Armour no longer slows down unarmed melee attacks, and some of the mathematics have changed between 0.13 and 0.17.
Encumbrance ratings were introduced in 0.13, replacing the EV penalty system.
